History Trivia / AllanSherman

* SleeperHit: As an ethnic humor comedy album by a 38-year-old TV writer and producer whose only previous released work had been two obscure BorschtBelt parody singles recorded a decade earlier, Creator/WarnerBrosRecords only expected ''My Son, The Folk Singer'' to sell in the neighborhood of 10,000 or maybe 20,000 copies upon its release in early October of 1962. Instead, it almost immediately started selling more than 100,000 copies ''a week'', hitting a million sales by the start of December.

* HeAlsoDid: Besides his voicing of the title character in the 1971 ''WesternAnimation/TheCatInTheHat'' special, Sherman made three on-camera acting appearances in his career: guest appearances on the TV shows ''Series/TheLoner'' (as a bumbling sheriff in TheWildWest), ''Mr. Novak'' (as a {{Jazz}} bandleader), and his only film appearance, as a goateed, high-strung, gluttonous OneSceneWonder taxi passenger in the obscure, ultra-low budget, mesmerizingly cheesy 1972 comedy ''Wacky Taxi'' (aka ''Pepper and His Wacky Taxi''), a starring vehicle for Creator/JohnAstin (who gets a co-directing credit as well).

* DiedDuringProduction: Creator/WarnerBrosRecords gave Sherman a greenlight for a comedy album about golf he prposed to them in late 1973, and he was working on pre-production for it the day he died.

* ScrewedByTheLawyers: Recording and releasing song parodies were still legal gray areas in 1962,[[note]]It was [[https://tinyurl.com/62wkprz3 a 1964 court decision]] involving ''Magazine/{{Mad}}'' that established song parodies as being protected under fair use.[[/note]] so Creator/WarnerBrosRecords asked Sherman to restrict the material he parodied on his debut album to songs in the public domain, which meant that he had to write the ''My Son, The Folk Singer'' album pretty much from scratch, since he couldn't record any of the Jewish-themed show tune parodies (a collection of material he called "Goldeneh Moments of Broadway") that he'd gained a following among the comedy community with. As it happened, they found out after the album was released that "Matilda", the calypso song that "My Zelda" parodied, was still under copyright, and there was a legal scuffle over it.

** Christine Nelson, who did the female voice on "Sarah Jackman", recorded the album ''Did'ja Come To Play Cards Or To Talk?'' in 1966, where she's obviously a DistaffCounterpart to Sherman, doing parodies in front of a live audience, and Lou Busch, who'd arranged Sherman's early albums, also did the arrangements for Nelson's album. One song, "Marvin" ("you're a rotten kid", to the tune of "Funiculi, Funicula") became a longstanding favorite on Creator/DrDemento's radio show.

** Dickie Goodman, the inventor of the "break-in" record (fake interviews with the "answers" being snippets of hit songs, with "Flying Saucer" in 1956 and "Mr. Jaws" in 1975 becoming Top 10 hits), did a CreatorsOddball with the album ''My Son, The Joke'' in 1964, which was pitched somewhere between TheMockbuster, SpoofingSpoofiness and a BawdySong collection, starting with a cover photo that's an obvious parody[=/=]homage of ''My Son, The Folk Singer'''s cover photo (Goodman standing on a crate playing a guitar with his "mother" close by). The Goodman album is ''very'' heavy on off-color sexual humor. It also generated a song that Dr. Demento has played a fair amount over the years, "Harry's Jockstrap" (parodying "Sarah Jackman"[=/=]"Frere Jacques").

** Dickie Goodman, the inventor of the "break-in" record (fake interviews with the "answers" being snippets of hit songs), did a CreatorsOddball with the album ''My Son, The Joke'' in 1964, which was pitched somewhere between TheMockbuster, SpoofingSpoofiness and a BawdySong collection, starting with a cover photo that's an obvious parody[=/=]homage of ''My Son, The Folk Singer'''s cover photo (Goodman standing on a crate playing a guitar with his "mother" close by). The Goodman album is ''very'' heavy on off-color sexual humor. It also generated a song that Dr. Demento has played a fair amount over the years, "Harry's Jockstrap" (parodying "Sarah Jackman"[=/=]"Frere Jacques").

** Dickie Goodman, the inventor of the "break-in" record (fake interviews with the "answers" being snippets of hit songs), did a CreatorsOddball with the album ''My Son, The Joke'' in 1964, which was pitched somewhere between TheMockbuster, SpoofingSpoofiness and a BawdySong collection, starting with a cover photo that's an obvious parody[=/=]homage of ''My Son, The Folk Singer'''s cover photo (Goodman standing on a crate playing a guitar with his "mother" close by). The Goodman album is heavily based in off-color sexual humor. It also generated a song that Dr. Demento has played a fair amount over the years, "Harry's Jockstrap" (parodying "Sarah Jackman"[=/=]"Frere Jacques").

** Dickie Goodman, the inventor of the "break-in" record (fake interviews with the "answers" being snippets of hit songs), did a CreatorsOddball with the album ''My Son, The Joke'' in 1964, which was pitched somewhere between TheMockbuster, SpoofingSpoofiness and a BawdySong collection, starting with a cover photo that's an obvious parody[=/=] of ''My Son, The Folk Singer'' (Goodman standing on a crate playing a guitar with his "mother" close by). The Goodman album is more based on off-color sexual humor. It also generated a song that's gotten some Dr. Demento airplay over the years, "Harry's Jockstrap" (parodying "Sarah Jackman"[=/=]"Frere Jacques").

* LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition: ''My Son, The Box'' from 2005 collected almost ''all'' of Sherman's recorded material from TheSixties, including outtakes and rarities, on a 6-CD set.

* LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition: ''My Son, The Box'' from 2005 essentially collected ''all'' of Sherman's recorded material from TheSixties, including outtakes and rarities, on a 6-CD set.