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in Boston, of the days of my undergraduacy long ago when there used to be these very long
Saturday afternoons in the fall with nothing to do - the library was closed - just waiting around for the cocktail parties to begin. And on occasions like that...did come to realize that the football fight songs
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I mostly thought these songs weren’t of interest to anyone! I wrote ‘Fight
Fiercely, Harvard’ in 1945. That’s the earliest song on any of my records. The others were written a little later. I wrote a lot of songs for special occasions ... silly songs, songs about math, and so on, but nothing else
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and was included on their 75th anniversary album released in 1995. The song remains fairly well known in the
Harvard community. On visiting Harvard for the first time in decades, Lehrer was pleased to find that his song had been performed at every home football game for many years.
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that one hears...have a tendency to be somewhat uncouth, and even violent, and that it would be refreshing, to say the least, to find one that was a bit more genteel. And here it is, dedicated to my own alma mater, and called Fight
Fiercely, Harvard.
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The only one of those songs that eventually made it into my repertoire was 'Fight
Fiercely, Harvard,' which was written in 1945 and shows it. I started singing these songs at parties, but never with the intention of their becoming
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Lehrer later responded to rumors that he had stopped performing because the displeasure of
Harvard University's administration over the satirical lyrics of "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" threatened to ruin his career, by saying:
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In speaking about "Fight
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A sample of the
Harvard University Band's version of "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" can be downloaded from
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The song was Lehrer's earliest—and for a while his only—musical work and was included on
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format produced by Lehrer at his own expense, these records were sold in stores around
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The humor of "Fight
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The lyrics also refer to celebrating victory by inviting the "whole team up for
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Today "Fight
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The lyrics are written with an exaggeratedly erudite style of
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DMDdetails for Fight Fiercely, Harvard - Tom Lehrer
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434:: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (
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202:that would be recordable until 1948.
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144:written and originally performed by
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182:of 400 copies of the then-novel
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249:. As it appears on
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723:More of Tom Lehrer
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362:Harvardiana
282:pro at the
243:gentlemanly
215:commercial.
208:songwriting
839:Categories
816:Tomfoolery
645:Tom Lehrer
421:2008-07-26
372:References
342:non-rhotic
338:pronounced
150:alma mater
146:Tom Lehrer
142:fight song
65:Tom Lehrer
32:Tom Lehrer
754:Revisited
321:and from
257:use of a
180:press run
136:satirical
681:New Math
560:Archived
464:Archived
430:cite web
355:See also
280:Scrabble
247:athletes
38:Released
808:Theater
334:persona
293:diction
266:English
164:History
139:college
134:" is a
52:Novelty
799:(2000)
789:(1997)
768:(1965)
758:(1960)
748:(1959)
727:(1959)
717:(1953)
705:Albums
319:Jewish
271:stadia
262:plural
176:Boston
652:Songs
415:(PDF)
408:(PDF)
345:drawl
259:Latin
237:Theme
74:Audio
47:Genre
436:link
336:and
118:The
100:help
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41:1945
28:Song
315:tea
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