Dick Sherman & Milt Larsen / The Crown City Four: Sing a Song of Sickness

Here's the 1960 follow-up to Sherman & Larsen's Smash Flops, again on the PIP label (this must have been S&L's own vanity label because this and the previous LP are the only two PIP titles for which I can find evidence). This time the pickup ensemble doing the singing is another quartet from the casino circuit, The Crown City Four. I first heard cuts from this LP while listening to an old aircheck of Nightsounds, the ur-freeform radio show hosted by John Leonard syndicated from KPFA in the early 1960s. The album's side 1 cut "Fifty Million Commies Can't Be Wrong" became something of an underground hit, especially with the Birchers. This isn't a classic collection ("Watch World War Three on Pay TV" and "Oh What We Grow in Old Mexico" only bring to mind better songs on the same subject matter by Tom Lehrer), but I'm in love with "I Saw Adolph Today", a ballad in the spirit of inspirational folk songs like "Joe Hill" wherein everyone's favorite 20th century dictator is spotted alive and well and slinging kosher meat at the deli.

This LP was later reissued as Twelve Delightful Ways to Roast a Sacred Cow in 1962.

Watch World War Three (On Pay TV)
Fill Out The Policies, Mother
The Annual Get-Together (of the KKK and the NAACP)
Guillotine Days
Fifty Million Commies Can't Be Wrong
That Big Sporting House in the Sky
It's Fun To Be Hazed
Oh What We Grow (In Old Mexico)
Send the Girls Over There
I Saw Adolph Today
The Richer They Are (The Slower I Cure Them)
Leave the Slums Alone

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.