Sad to learn of the death at 97 of Cleo Laine and of Tom Lehrer
Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth was an English singer and actress famous for her huge vocal range and known for her scat singing. She was the wife of jazz composer and musician Sir John Dankworth.
Probably the best scat singer after the late, great. Ella Fitzgerald.
Tom Lehrer, a Harvard-trained mathematician, and writer of darkly humorous songs, often with political connotations.
He is probably best known for his song "The Elements": a 1959 song with lyrics by Tom Lehrer, which recites the names of all the chemical elements known at the time of writing, up to number 102, nobelium.
THE ELEMENTS
Words: Tom Lehrer
Music: "The Major General's Song" from The Pirates of Penzance, by Arthur Sullivan (public domain)
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discavard.
