History Creator / AllanSherman

* IncrediblyLamePun: The last line of "One Hippopotami":
-->With someone you adore,\\
If you should find romance,\\
You'll pant, then pant once more\\
[[PunctuatedForEmphasis And that's! A! Pair! Of! PANTS!!]]

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: In "America's a Nice Italian Name", the line "In Rome, the opera house is called La Scala." La Scala is actually in Milan (they still call it La Scala in Rome, it's just not located there).

* SongParody: He began writing them in college, and became the first American pop singer to achieve mass success performing them. What's interesting is that he took several different approaches to parodies. A few just rewrote the originals into a different context ("Shake Hands with Your Uncle Max" is "Dear Old Donegal" switched from an idealized Irish to a modern American Jewish setting, including the "long list of names" section). Most others just completely subverted the originals. And there were also WithLyrics versions of familiar instrumental melodies (most famously "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh").

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness[=/=]NewSoundAlbum: His last major album, 1967's ''Togetherness'', was not recorded in a front of a studio audience and featured on the cover a slim Sherman wearing contacts, looking quite different from the fat, glass wearing man of a few years prior. Many of the parodies used musical arrangements that closely emulated those of the original hit versions of the parodied songs, which Sherman didn't usually do. The previous year, he issued the single "Odd Ball"/"His Own Little Island", both serious songs, in an ill-fated attempt to position himself as a straight pop singer.

* PuppyLove: ''I Can't Dance'' is about a pair of cute, awkward middle-schoolers falling in love at a school dance.

* SongParody

Born in Chicago to two first-generation Jewish immigrants from Poland, he had a varied career encompassing music, scriptwriting, creating, producing and even acting (including a turn as the voice of the Cat in the Hat in the [[WesternAnimation/TheCatInTheHat 1971 animated adaptation]] of the famous Creator/DrSeuss book, as well as ''Dr. Seuss On the Loose'').

* NomDeMom: He was born Allan Copelon in 1924 to Percy Copelon[[note]]born Peretz Kaplan in Poland in 1896, but his family Anglicized their name to Coplon when they emigrated to the US in 1901, then Percy changed the spelling to Copelon after he got married. [[IHaveManyNames He also bounced between Percy and Perry as a first name]].[[/note]] and Rose Sherman, then found himself having to change his surname a few times among his mother's many divorces and remarriages as he was growing up, before finally adopting her maiden name as he entered show business. Sherman not being a specifically Jewish-coded name (though it had been her family's name in the old country) likely helped him reach a broader audience.

In the course of his career, Sherman turned his hand to scriptwriting, creating, producing and even acting (including a turn as the voice of the Cat in the Hat in the [[WesternAnimation/TheCatInTheHat 1971 animated adaptation]] of the famous Creator/DrSeuss book, as well as ''Dr. Seuss On the Loose'').

** "Shake Hands with your Uncle Max" and "Sarah Jockman" both have sections with obscenely long lists of relatives.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The two songs he recorded for Jubilee in 1951, "A Satchel and a Seck" and "Jake's Song" [[note]](each was released on a separate single with flip sides not featuring Sherman, but confusion about the rare songs often leads to sources wrongly conflating them into one single)[[/note]], were more overtly Jewish-themed than his later material, with Sherman (credited as "Eln Shoyman") singing in a Yiddish accent and throwing in Yiddish words.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The two songs he recorded for Jubilee in 1951, "A Satchel and a Seck" and "Jake's Song" [[note]](each was released on a separate single with flip sides not featuring Sherman, but confusion about the rare songs often lead to sources wrongly conflating them into one single)[[/note]], were more overtly Jewish-themed than his later material, with Sherman (credited as "Eln Shoyman") singing in a Yiddish accent and throwing in Yiddish words.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The two songs he recorded for Jubilee in 1951, "A Satchel and a Seck" and "Jake's Song" [[note]](each was released on a separate single with flip sides not featuring Sherman, but most sources that bother mentioning those songs conflate them into one single)[[/note]], were more overtly Jewish-themed than his later material, with Sherman (credited as "Eln Shoyman") singing in a Yiddish accent and throwing in Yiddish words.

With [[Film/{{Fame}} Albert Hague]], he cowrote the 1969 Broadway musical ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fig_Leaves_Are_Falling The Fig Leaves Are Falling]]'', which is notable for two things: the Broadway debut of Creator/DavidCassidy (later of ''Series/ThePartridgeFamily''), and [[ShortRunner closing after only four performances]]. He also guest-hosted ''Series/TheTonightShow'' on several occasions, including the night Creator/BillCosby made his first appearance on the show; he would later be credited as co-producer on Cosby's first three albums for Creator/WarnerBrosRecords.