Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman Sing Tom Lehrer’s Menu Song on The Electric Company

A classic song from The Electric Company in the 1970s Morgan Freeman & Rita Moreno perform The Menu Song by Tom Lehrer. The song was arranged by Joe Raposo (a classmate of Lehrer’s at Harvard, who himself wrote the classics Bein’ Green and C is for Cookie).

While several of Lehrer’s children songs on the show have become classics, he is otherwise known for his often dark and always funny compositions that often appeared on the Dr. Demento radio show such as Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, The Old Dope Peddler, and The Masochism Tango

Like few other performers, Lehrer had to make the difficult choice between being a full-time recording artist and teaching math. Until 2001, when he retired, he was on the faculty at UC-Santa Cruz.

Below Lehrer in action more recently (1997), as he revisits some of his more advanced math songs, Calculus specifically, written in the 1940’s. This and other videos are available on archive.org.

See also these lyrics for various Tom Lehrer songs including Silent E and L-Y from The Electric Company.

via Sherilyn Connelly

mikl-em
Mikl-em

Actor, nerd, poet, producer, writer mikl-em made his name short so you wouldn't have to. In addition to his blog you can find his writing in "Hi Fructose" magazine and witness him almost life-sized in various plays at The Dark Room Theater in SF's Mission district.

He tends to write about theater, humor, San Francisco culture and history, and stuff that's just plain weird. He thanks Scott for sharing the keys to the Laughing Squid virtual HQ and promises to uphold whatever it is that the mirthful cephalopod would prefer to be uplifted.