| Shel Silverstein | |
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| Born | Sheldon Allan Silverstein September 25, 1930 Chicago, Illinois |
| Died | May 10, 1999 (aged 68) Key West, Florida[1] |
| Occupation | Author Short story writer Poet Cartoonist Songwriter Playwright |
| Nationality | American |
| Genres | Children's fiction Black comedy Playwright |
| Notable work(s) | Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974) The Giving Tree (1965) "A Boy Named Sue" (1969) |
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Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein (September 25, 1930 – May 8/9, 1999),[1][2] was an American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books. Translated into more than 30 languages, his books have sold over 20 million copies.[2]
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Born in Chicago, Silverstein began drawing at age 12 by tracing the works of Al Capp.[3] He told Jean Mercier of Publishers Weekly: "When I was a kid—12 to 14, around there—I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style; I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit."[4]
He attended the Art Institute of Chicago but left after one year. He was first published in the Roosevelt Torch (a student newspaper at Roosevelt University). In the military, his cartoons were published in Pacific Stars and Stripes, where he had originally been assigned to do layouts and paste-up. His first book, Take Ten, a compilation of his military Take Ten cartoon series was published by Pacific Stars and Stripes in 1955.
Returning to Chicago, Silverstein began submitting cartoons to magazines while also selling hot dogs at Chicago ballparks. His cartoons began appearing in Look, Sports Illustrated and This Week.[5]
Mass-market paperback readers across America were introduced to Silverstein in 1956 when Take Ten was reprinted by Ballantine Books as Grab Your Socks! with a foreword by Bill Mauldin.
In 1957, he became one of the leading cartoonists in Playboy, which sent him around the world to create an illustrated travel journal with reports from far-flung locales. During the 1950s and 1960s, he produced 23 installments called "Shel Silverstein Visits..." as a feature for Playboy. Employing a sketchbook format with typewriter-styled captions, he documented his own experiences at such locations as a New Jersey nudist colony, the Chicago White Sox training camp, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Fire Island, Mexico, London, Paris, Spain and Africa. In a Swiss village, he drew himself complaining, "I'll give them 15 more minutes, and if nobody yodels, I'm going back to the hotel." These illustrated travel essays were collected by the publisher Fireside in Playboy's Silverstein Around the World, published in 2007 with a foreword by Hugh Hefner and an introduction by music journalist Mitch Myers.[6]
In a similar vein were his illustrations for John Sack's Report from Practically Nowhere (1959), a collection of humorous travel vignettes previously appearing in Playboy and other magazines.[7]
His best known cartoon of the 1950s was featured on the cover of his next cartoon collection, Now Here's My Plan: A Book of Futilities, published by Simon & Schuster in 1960. Silverstein biographer Lisa Rogak wrote:
Silverstein's cartoons appeared in issues of Playboy from 1957 through the mid-1970s, and one of his Playboy features was expanded into Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book (Simon & Schuster, 1961), his first book of new, original material for adults. Because some of his material was unclear whether it was intended for adults or children, the 1985 reprint had a conspicuous cover label, "A Primer for Adults Only".[5]
Silverstein's editor at Harper & Row, Ursula Nordstrom, encouraged Silverstein to write children's poetry. Silverstein said that he never studied the poetry of others and therefore developed his own quirky style, laid back and conversational, occasionally employing profanity and slang. In the 1975 Publishers Weekly interview, he was asked how he came to do children's books:
Otto Penzler, in his crime anthology Murder for Revenge (1998), commented on Silverstein's versatility:
| “ | The phrase "Renaissance man" tends to get overused these days, but apply it to Shel Silverstein and it practically begins to seem inadequate. Not only has he produced with seeming ease country music hits and popular songs, but he's been equally successful at turning his hand to poetry, short stories, plays, and children's books. Moreover, his whimsically hip fables, beloved by readers of all ages, have made him a stalwart of bestseller lists. A Light in the Attic, most remarkably, showed the kind of staying power on the New York Times chart—two years, to be precise—thought that most of the biggest names (John Grisham, Stephen King and Michael Crichton) have never equaled for their own blockbusters. His unmistakable illustrative style is another crucial element to his appeal. Just as no writer sounds like Shel, no other artist's vision is as delightfully, sophisticatingly cockeyed. One can only marvel that he makes the time to respond so kindly to his friends' requests. In the following work, let's be glad he did. Drawing on his characteristic passion for list making, he shows how the deed is not just in the wish but in the sublimation. | ” |
This anthology was the second in a series, which also included Murder for Love (1996) and Murder and Obsession (1999). All three anthologies included Silverstein contributions. He did not really care to conform to any sort of norm, but he did want to leave his mark for others to be inspired by, as he told Publishers Weekly:
Silverstein's passion for music was clear early on as he studied briefly at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. His musical output included a large catalog of songs; a number of which were hits for other artists, most notably the rock group Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show.[6] He wrote Tompall Glaser's highest-charting solo single "Put Another Log on the Fire", "One's on the Way" (a hit for Loretta Lynn), "The Unicorn" (which became the signature piece for the Irish Rovers in 1968) and "25 Minutes to Go", sung by Johnny Cash, about a man on Death Row with each line counting down one minute closer. Silverstein also wrote one of Johnny Cash's best known whimsical hits, "A Boy Named Sue".
He wrote the lyrics and music for most of the Dr. Hook songs, including "The Cover of the Rolling Stone", "Freakin' at the Freakers' Ball," "Sylvia's Mother", "The Things I Didn't Say" and a cautionary song about venereal disease, "Don't Give a Dose to the One You Love Most".[6] He wrote many of the songs performed by Bobby Bare, including "Rosalie's Good Eats Café", "The Mermaid", "The Winner", "Warm and Free" and "Tequila Sheila". He co-wrote with Baxter Taylor "Marie Laveau", for which the songwriters received a 1975 BMI Award. "The Mermaid" was covered in 2005 by Great Big Sea, which released its version on The Hard and the Easy album.
Silverstein's "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan", first recorded by Dr. Hook in 1975, was re-recorded by Marianne Faithfull (1979), Belinda Carlisle (1996), and Bobby Bare (2005) and later featured in the films Montenegro and Thelma & Louise. "Queen of the Silver Dollar" was first recorded by Dr. Hook on their 1972 album Sloppy Seconds, and later by Doyle Holly (on his 1973 album Doyle Holly), Barbi Benton (on her 1974 album Barbi Doll), Emmylou Harris (on her 1975 album Pieces of the Sky) and Dave & Sugar (on their 1976 album Dave & Sugar).
Silverstein composed original music for several films and displayed a musical versatility in these projects, playing guitar, piano, saxophone and trombone. He wrote "In the Hills of Shiloh", a poignant song about the aftermath of the Civil War, which was recorded by The New Christy Minstrels, Judy Collins, Bobby Bare and others. The soundtrack of the 1970 film Ned Kelly features Silverstein songs performed by Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and others.[5]
Silverstein had a popular following on Dr. Demento's radio show. Among his best-known comedy songs were "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout (Would Not Take The Garbage Out)", "The Smoke-Off" (a tale of a contest to determine who could roll—or smoke—marijuana joints faster), "I Got Stoned and I Missed It" and "Bury Me in My Shades". He wrote "The Father of a Boy Named Sue", in which he tells the story from the original song from the father's point of view, and the 1962 song "Boa Constrictor", sung by a man who is being swallowed by a snake (recorded by the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary) although it is now better known as a children's playground chant.
A longtime friend of singer-songwriter Pat Dailey, Silverstein collaborated with him on the posthumously released Underwater Land album (2002). It contains 17 children's songs written and produced by Silverstein and sung by Dailey (with Silverstein joining him on a few tracks). The album features art by Silverstein.
In 2010, Bobby Bare and his son Bobby Bare Jr produced a CD called Twistable, Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute to the Songs of Shel Silverstein which was released on Sugar Hill Records. Artists covering Silverstein songs include Andrew Bird, My Morning Jacket and Bobby Bare, Jr.[9][10]
In January 1959, Look Charlie: A Short History of the Pratfall was a chaotic off-Broadway comedy staged by Silverstein, Jean Shepherd and Herb Gardner at New York's Orpheum Theatre on Second Avenue in the Lower East Side. Silverstein went on to write more than 100 one-act plays. The Devil and Billy Markham, published in Playboy in 1979, was later adapted into a solo one-act play that debuted on a double bill with Mamet's Bobby Gould in Hell (1989) with Dr. Hook vocalist Dennis Locorriere narrating. Karen Kohlhaas directed An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, produced by New York's Atlantic Theater Company in September 2001 with a variety of short sketches:
In December 2001, Shel's Shorts was produced in repertory as two separate evenings under the titles Signs of Trouble and Shel Shocked by the Market Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Signs of Trouble was directed by Wesley Savick, and Shel Shocked was directed by Larry Coen.
Silverstein was born into a Jewish family and had two children.[11] His first child was daughter Shoshanna (Shanna), born June 30, 1970,[11][12] with Susan Hastings. Susan Hastings died five years later, on June 29, 1975, in Baltimore, Maryland. Shoshanna's aunt and uncle, Meg and Curtis Marshall, raised her from the age of five until her death of a cerebral aneurysm in Baltimore on April 24, 1982, at the age of 11.[11][12] She was attending the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore at the time of her death. Silverstein dedicated his 1983 reprint of Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros to the Marshalls. A Light in the Attic was dedicated to Shanna, and Silverstein drew the sign with a flower attached. Shoshanna means lily or rose in Hebrew. Silverstein's second child was his son Matthew, born in 1983.[11][12] Silverstein's 1996 Falling Up was dedicated to Matt.
Later in life, Silverstein divided time between his favorite places such as Greenwich Village, Key West, Martha’s Vineyard and Sausalito, California. He continued to create plays, songs, poems, stories and drawings until he died at his home in Key West, Florida on May 8 or 9, 1999.[13] of a heart attack. His body was discovered by two housekeepers the following Monday, May 10. It was reported that he could have died on either day that weekend.
Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue" won a 1970 Grammy. He was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his song "I'm Checkin' Out" in the film Postcards from the Edge. He was posthumously inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002.[14]
Silverstein believed that written works needed to be read on paper—the correct paper for the particular work. He usually would not allow his poems and stories to be published unless he could choose the type, size, shape, color and quality of the paper. Being a book collector, he took seriously the feel of the paper, the look of the book, the fonts and the binding. Most of his books did not have paperback editions because he did not want his work to be diminished in any way.
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