The first of his songs I heard was the Irish Ballad, sung by a fellow highschool student in the back of a truck, ca. 1954, without mention of his name. You cannot imagine what a breath of fresh air it seemed in the middle of the Stuffy '50s! But N.B., despite the animadversions in "The Folk Song Army" & "Clementine", he was already in the folk tradition.

Later that year, my mother gave me his first record as a graduation present, and I took it to Caltech with me. I still have it. I know all the songs on it, in order.

My mother & I once visited her friend Maurice Samuel, a well-known writer on Jewish subjects, and she played that record for him. He sniffed at it, saying it lacked moral content. I said, but isn't he clever & funny? He replied that he had heard better -- which he probably had, being familiar with the European cabaret & music-hall traditions. Such an immigrant might well ignore the stuffiness of the Stuffy '50s.

Around 1967, I heard on the radio a priceless interview (in English) with the German press magnate Axel Springer. He behaved just like the stereotypical Tactless German. He had set it up like a presidential press conference, so that the assembled reporters had to vie for his attention by shouting "Herr Springer!". One of them asked him if it bothered him to have been called a Nazi. Not at all, he replied, and then added "Nazi, Schmazi, as your American folksinger put it." Observe: Lehrer invents a deliberately tactless remark & foists it on von Braun for satirical purposes; Springer picks it up & makes it his own, at the same time managing to call Lehrer a folksinger. %^)

A few years ago I happened to be shopping in Cambridge on the day of the Harvard-Yale game, and the Harvard band marched past on JFK St. They played "Fight Fiercely, Harvard", which was sporting of them.