I can't recall now much else of what I experienced in Indianapolis-- when not inside Broad Ripple High School, not delivering the Indianapolis Times, not doing my homework, not watching television and not being driven down to Bloomington or up to Chicago--between January and June of 1963. But among the other things I do recall were two separate visits to my family's rented house for dinner of two men who worked for the same downtown Indianapolis-branch of UM&M's Homestead textile, piece goods and drape wholesaleing subsidiary, where my father was also then employed.
The first employee of that UM&M/Homestead branch office that came over for dinner, came over one evening during the week in the early part of 1963. He was a guy from Brooklyn, in his mid-or-late-20's, whose last name was Goldberg.
Goldberg was a good-natured fellow who, after being on the Abraham Lincoln High School football team in Brooklyn, and after apparently serving the required two years in the then-peacetime U.S. military (that every guy growing up in the 1950's and early 1960's in the USA automatically assumed they would be required to serve in), was now working for UM &M/Homestead in the Midwest; as some kind of drapery and piece goods wholesale traveling salesman, who was being paid a salary and a commission on whatever sales he made in his assigned territory, and who had an expense account.
Because Goldberg didn't strike me as being that intellectual, he also didn't strike me then as someone who had graduated from college--although it's possible he had. But in the early 1960's, a white guy could get hired by corporations like UM &M to be a traveling salesman without having a B.A. in either the liberal arts or in "business administration" or "merchandising" from some U.S. college; as long as he had a high school diploma, was willing to dress in a suit and tie each weekday, had short hair and was beardless and well-groomed-looking, knew how to drive a car and had the kind of outgoing, friendly "sales personality," that Goldberg certainly had.
Having grown up in Brooklyn during the decades when large numbers of assimilated New Yorkers of Jewish religious background lived there, Goldberg seemed unused to being in a city like Indianapolis and a state like Indiana, in which people of Jewish religious background were such a small percentage of the general population. But Goldberg, himself, wasn't particularly religious and, like my father, was the kind of assimilated U.S. citizen who would now only attend a religious service in a synagogue on Rosh Hoshanna and Yom Kippur, or if invited by one of his relatives to attend their son's bar mitzvah service in a synagogue.
The main memory I still have of the evening Goldberg came over for dinner in early 1963 when my parents and I lived in Indianapolis is of how Goldberg brought with him his copy of the My Son, The Folk Singer vinyl record album, on which Allan Sherman had recorded. himself, his humorous parody versions of folk songs; wherein his parody lyrics reflected the humor of different aspects of daily life within communities of various types of Jewish background in the USA. during the post-World War II late 1940's, 1950's and early 1960's era.
After dinner, Goldberg, because he thought Allan Sherman's My Son, The Folk Singer album was very funny and witty, was eager to play the record album for us and listen to the album with us. He apparently thought both my parents and I would also find the My Son, The Folk Singer album as entertaining as he did.
Because I was still mostly into just listening in 1963 to the vinyl albums with the melody-emphasized songs of "hit" Broadway musicals and even "flop" Broadway musicals, I did not expect to have much interest in listening to My Son, The Folk Singer album as much as Goldberg then seemed to have. Also, before moving from New York City to Indianapolis in late 1962, a member of the Queens boy scout Troop 363 had played some tracks from his copy of this same album once at one of our monthly boy scout troop meetings; and I hadn't then previously thought the My Son, The Folk Singer album was worth listening to over and over again, myself.
But, surprisingly, after listening again more carefully and attentively to the My Son, The Folk Singer album with Goldberg and my parents that evening in Indianapolis in early 1963, I found it more entertaining and interesting to listen to than I had when I half-listened to parts of it the first time in New York City; and I purchased a copy of Allan Sherman's My Son, The Folk Singer album the following week.
In 1963, like many U.S. music fans, I listened more to the melody and rhythm of a song's music than to the lyrics of a song. And although the more I played and replayed the My Son, The Folk Singer album on my family's cheap hi-fi record player in 1963, the more I started to notice how clever and witty the lyrics of Allan Sherman's parodies were, I think it was actually the melodies of the songs parodied which Allan Sherman had recorded that led me to replay his album a lot in 1963.
Not having heard much Irish folk music or Irish rebel folk music or heard any Clancy Brothers records played on the radio prior to 1963, the melody of Allan Sherman's "Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max" parody of an Irish folk song, for example, was what caused me to want to listen to the song again and again, rather than the funny parody lyrics which I listened to less attentively.
And although I had watched Harry Belafonte perform some of his songs on television and had heard his 45 rpm hit single records on my transistor radio during the 1950's, because I had never purchased a vinyl album like Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, (seemed to expensive for me) that contained a lot more other songs that Belafonte sang, I actually heard first the melody of the "Matilda" song only after listening to the parody of "Matilda" that Allan Sherman sang on his My Son, The Folk Singer album.
Of course, if you had told me in 1963 that I would end up writing so many folk songs myself and that, by the early 1970's, my mother might have legitimately characterized her son in conversation with others as "My Son, The Folk Singer," I would have thought you were out-of-your mind.
Although I wrote a few songs in 1963 and began to think that getting into writing Broadway musicals might be a long-range possibility, it wasn't until 1965 and 1966 that I began to both write a lot of a cappella folk songs and purchase some albums of folk music; and it wasn't until the summer of 1966 that I taught myself to play basic open chords on a guitar and started writing folk songs with guitar chord accompaniment.
But once I got more into listening to the folk song repertoire, from which Allan Sherman had taken the folk song melodies he used for his clever parodies, I pretty much no longer played his My Son, The Folk Singer album and his follow-up album that included his "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadda" hit single novelty song, after 1966.
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