Subject: Lyr Add: THE REBEL (Allan Sherman)
From:
Jim Dixon
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 06:45 AM
I'm not sure what "song" Allan Sherman was parodying here. It might be Lorne Greene's RINGO, or Jimmy Dean's BIG BAD JOHN. (Are there other songs of that genre I'm not remembering?) Like them, it is recited, not sung, against a music background. Unlike them, there is no chorus, no backup singers. I don't recognize the music.
You can hear this recording at YouTube.
THE REBEL
Allan Sherman
As recorded by Allan Sherman on "Allan Sherman Live! (Hoping You Are the Same)" (2005)
He stood four-foot-eight and wore a beatnik beard.
He had big thick glasses that looked real weird.
He weighed ninety-eight pounds, but a whole nation feared
The Rebel.
He had a chick named Rhonda, the college prize.
Her long hair hung down over her eyes,
Kinda half Barbra Streisand and half Joan Baez.
She dug the Rebel.
Well, they met one day at a pop-art bash
Between a painting of a can of succotash
And a high-camp sculpture of a pile of trash.
It was groovy.
Rhonda dug the Rebel and the Rebel dug Rhonda,
So she grabbed her guitar and rode off on his Honda
To a discotheque called the Anaconda
With the Rebel.
When the fruging was over at the discotheque,
The Rebel was a-tryin' to pay his check,
But his pockets they were empty so he yelled, "Oh, heck!
Heck!" said the Rebel.
Well, the dean walked by just as that occurred.
He said, "You can get expelled for what I just heard.
Don't you realize 'heck' is a four-letter word,
You Rebel?"
But the Rebel said to his old adversary,
"Just as long as that word's in the slang dictionary,
I swear by Peter, Paul, and Mary,
I'll use it.
"Furthermore," said the Rebel, "I won't let the issue pass.
The whole student body's gonna sit down en masse.
Besides, that way we don't have to go to class.
We're gonna cool it."
Well, the sit-in started 'bout seven-fifteen.
The whole thing was covered by Time magazine.
They even took Batman off the TV screen
To show The Rebel.
Up came the captain of the state police,
Arresting lots of students for disturbing the peace,
Including his own son, his daughter, and his niece,
And the Rebel.
Someone called the governor to see what he could do.
The governor said, "Sorry, but I cannot talk to you,
'Cause I'm a-sittin' in at the State House too,
Just like the Rebel."
Soon the secondary schools began to Rebel.
Kindergarten kids were sitting during show-and-tell.
Then the older generation started sitting down as well.
Man, what a protest!
Doctors sat, and firemen sat, and teachers wouldn't teach.
People sat at home, and on the street, and on the beach,
Just a-sittin' and a-waitin' for freedom of speech.
Nobody was talkin' to anybody!
The nation was in trouble, there wasn't any doubt.
The president went on TV to try to pull us out.
And the president shouted, "What the heck's it all about?
Heck!" said the president.
Soon everyone was saying "Heck." They said it ev'rywhere.
The Rebel said to Rhonda, "This is terribly unfair.
Being hip is getting middle-class. Let's you and I be square."
And they did; they squared it up.
Rhonda got a haircut. The Rebel shaved his beard.
They were married and had children, which they subsequently reared.
They moved out to the suburbs and they really disappeared.
Wow, did they conform!
Folks built a statue of the Rebel just to prove the people's love,
But the public soon forgot. Just the pigeons up above
Seemed to know the right location. They all found that statue of
The Rebel.
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sj
