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#sherman and larsen’s smash flops!
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“Congratulations, Tom Dewey” (1959), music and lyrics by Dick Sherman and Milt Larsen, performed by Gene Casey’s Mayfair Players for ‘Sherman and Larsen’s Smash Flops!’ (2015).
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karltface · 4 years
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Screw it, I'm going through my record collection. Gotta be some worthy posts in there somewhere.
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Here's a good starter. Smash Flops, written by Richard Sherman and Milton Larsen. I love novelty records, and the idea here is that these songs were written in advance to commemorate events that ended up going horribly wrong.
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The Characters, Sharon Randall, and the Crown City Four put a fair bit of effort into these, but most fail in more ways than one. Legit highlights include the sweet but sad "Oh, what we grow", and.... honestly, this record isn't very good apart from that. Still, it's a fun concept, and well worth the fifty cents.
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Bonus points for the label, though.
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miltlarsen · 7 years
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Blog #102
Back in the early fifties I had the good fortune to meet a young man who would become my best friend and collaborator for the next six decades. Dick Sherman and I met when I was working at a Los Angeles rare record shop He was looking for old records of songs written by his father Al Sherman.  When I told him I knew of his dad, and had collected dozens of his songs, our life-long bond was cemented. Before he teamed with his brother Bob Sherman and became the iconic Sherman Brothers Dick and I wrote a number of songs. In the late fifties we were asked to write some comedy songs for a very popular Las Vegas group called “The Characters.” Dick’s father wrote a smash hit in 1927 when Charles Lindbergh became a national hero when he flew solo from New York to Paris. The song “Lindbergh, the Eagle of the U.S.A” was published immediately. We posed the question: ”What would have happened if Charlie didn’t make it? We came up with a whacky idea of writing happy songs about events that turned bad. 
Instead of Smash Hits the would have been Smash Flops.
Our first songs for the Characters included songs like “Bon Voyages, Titanic” and “The Confederate Victory Song.” We wrote our first Flops in 1959 and written over a hundred over the years. 
One of the first batch included a rousing little ditty’ “Congratulations, Tom Dewey.” 
In 1948 N.Y. Governor Dewey was predicated to be the sure-fire winner for President again incumbent Harry S. Truman. The Chicago Sun even jumped the gun with a morning head-line” “Truman Wins!”
OUR SONG: 
CONGRATULATIONS, TOM DEWEY
YOU WON BY A LANDSLIDE TODAY
THROUGH THICK AND THROUGH THIN, 
WE KNEW YOU WOULD WIN.
‘CAUSE WHO’D EVER VOTE TO LET TRUMAN STAY IN.(CHEK OUT ITUNES STORE FOR THE COMPLETE VERSION.)
---Hey, 78 years later those hapless songwriter came up with this hit:
CONGRATULATIONS, MS. CLINTON
YOU WON BY A LANDSLIDE TODAY.
THROUGH THICK AND THROUGH THIN, WE KNEW YOU WOULD WIN,
‘CAUSE WHO’D EVER VOTE TO LET DONALD GET IN.
--OH WELL, YOU GET THE IDEA. 
HAPPY INAUGURATION DAY.
Whatever happened to Sherman & Larsen?
Check out Itunes = Sherman and Larsen for most of the songs
Or www.magiccastlerecords.com 
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“Bring Back Those Guillotine Days” (c. 1959), music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Milt Larsen, performed by Sharon Randall.
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