"This recording of the imitable songs of Tom Lehrer has been issued, in spite of widespread popular demand for its suppression, primarily for the benefit of a small but diminishing group of admirers of his dubious talents, talents which have been on display for several years at functions, orgies, and divers festive occasions around Harvard University, where he was in attendance until June of 1953, as undergraduate, graduate student, and teacher of mathematics. A few television and night club appearances have also been part of his infamous career. Now at last some of the songs with which he has been revolting local audiences for years are available to all, and it is no wonder that a great deal of public apathy has been stirred up at the prospect.

For those who are unfamiliar with the details of his sordid life, brought so vividly to the screen in Quo Vadis, we offer a brief biographical note:

Tom Lehrer, longtime exponent of the derriere-garde in American music, is an entirely mythical figure, a figment of his parents' warped imagination. He was raised by a yak, by whom he was always treated as one of the family, and ever since he was old enough to eat with the grownups he has been merely the front for a vast international syndicate of ne'er-do-wells. But enough of Lehrer the artist. What of Lehrer the bon vivant, man about town, and idol of three continents (and Madagascar, where half a million gibbering natives think he is God)? At last reports he had settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he earns a precarious living peddling dope to the local school children and rolling an occasional drunk. Here he spends his declining years with his shrunken head collection, his Nobel Prizes, and his memories..."

Lehrer Records