Shel Silverstein
Sheldon Allan Silverstein was an American writer, cartoonist, songwriter, and musician. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Silverstein briefly attended university before being drafted into the United States Army. During his rise to prominence in the 1950s, his illustrations were published in various newspapers and magazines, including the adult-oriented Playboy. He also wrote a satirical, adult-oriented alphabet book, Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book.
As a children's author, some of his most acclaimed works include The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic. His works have been translated into more than 47 languages and have sold more than 20 million copies. As a songwriter, Silverstein wrote the 1969 Johnny Cash track "A Boy Named Sue", which peaked at number 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. His songs have been recorded and popularized by a wide range of other acts including Tompall Glaser, The Irish Rovers, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show and Marianne Faithfull. He was the recipient of two Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for both a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award.
His book A Light in the Attic is dedicated to his daughter who died at age 11. Silverstein died at home in Key West, Florida, of a heart attack on May 10, 1999, at age 68.
Early life
Sheldon Allan Silverstein was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 25, 1930. His father, Nathan, was a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and his mother, Helen, was born in Chicago to a Hungarian-Jewish family. They ran a bakery which fared poorly, having been opened during the Great Depression. He grew up in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, but spent summers in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at his family's summer home; Kenosha would be referenced in several of his published works, including in A Light in the Attic and Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book. In Chicago, he attended Theodore Roosevelt High School. He then attended the University of Illinois for one semester and was enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts for one semester before being drafted into the U.S. Army; he served in Japan and Korea.Career
Cartoons
Silverstein began drawing at age seven by tracing the works of Al Capp. He told Publishers Weekly: "When I was a kid—12 to 14, I'd 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 'til 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."He was first published in the Roosevelt Torch, a student newspaper at Roosevelt University, where he studied English after leaving the Art Institute. During his time 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. He later said his time in college was a waste and would have been better spent traveling around the world meeting people.
After 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.
Mass-market paperback readers across America were introduced to Silverstein in 1956 when Take Ten was reprinted by Ballantine Books as Grab Your Socks!
In 1957, Silverstein 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 Pennsylvania naturist community, the Chicago White Sox training camp, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, 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.
In a similar vein were his illustrations for John Sack's Report from Practically Nowhere, a collection of humorous travel vignettes previously appearing in Playboy and other magazines.
"Now here's my plan..."
A cartoon he made during the 1950s was featured on the cover of his next cartoon collection, titled Now Here's My Plan: A Book of Futilities, which was published by Simon & Schuster in 1960. Silverstein biographer Lisa Rogak wrote:The cartoon on the cover that provides the book's title would turn out to be one of his most famous and often-cited cartoons. In the cartoon, two prisoners are chained to the wall of a prison cell. Both their hands and feet are shackled. One says to the other, "Now here's my plan." Silverstein was both fascinated and distressed by the amount of analysis and commentary that almost immediately began to swirl around the cartoon. "A lot of people said it was a very pessimistic cartoon, which I don't think it is at all," he said. "There's a lot of hope even in a hopeless situation. They analyze it and question it. I did this cartoon because I had an idea about a funny situation about two guys."
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, his first book of new, original material for adults.
Music
Silverstein studied briefly at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Silverstein was associated with the outlaw country movement. His musical output included a large catalog of songs; a number of them were hits for other artists, such as the rock group Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show. He wrote Tompall Glaser's highest-charting solo single "Put Another Log on the Fire", "One's on the Way" and "Hey Loretta", and "25 Minutes to Go", sung by Johnny Cash, about a man on death row with each line counting down one minute closer. Lynn recorded five songs written by Silverstein. Lynn's producer Owen Bradley once said Silverstein's style of song writing was the most similar to that of Lynn's own writing. Silverstein also wrote one of Cash's biggest hits, "A Boy Named Sue", as well as "The Unicorn", first recorded by Silverstein in 1962 but better known in its version by the Irish Rovers. Other songs co-written by Silverstein include "The Taker" written with Kris Kristofferson and recorded by Waylon Jennings, and a sequel to "A Boy Named Sue" titled "Father of a Boy Named Sue", which is less known, but he performed the song on television on The Johnny Cash Show. He also penned a lesser known song titled "Fuck 'em."He wrote the lyrics and music for most of the Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show songs on their first few albums, including "The Cover of "Rolling Stone"", "Freaker's Ball", "Sylvia's Mother", "The Things I Didn't Say" and "Don't Give a Dose to the One You Love Most". He wrote many of the songs performed by Bobby Bare, including "Rosalie's Good Eats Café", "The Mermaid", "The Winner", "Daddy What If", "Warm and Free", and "Tequila Sheila". He co-wrote with Baxter Taylor "Marie Laveau". The third album by Tompall Glaser contained eight songs by Silverstein and three by Silverstein and others.
Silverstein's "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan", first recorded by Dr. Hook in 1975, was re-recorded by Lee Hazlewood, Marianne Faithfull, Belinda Carlisle, and Bobby Bare 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, Emmylou Harris and 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 American Civil War, 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. He also co-wrote with Waylon the song 'A Long Time Ago'.
In addition, Silverstein wrote "Hey Nelly Nelly", a 1960s-era folk song recorded by Judy Collins.
Silverstein had a popular following on Dr. Demento's radio show. Among his better-known comedy songs were "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout ", "The Smoke-Off", "I Got Stoned and I Missed It" and "Stacy Brown Got Two." He wrote the 1962 song "Boa Constrictor", sung by a person who is being swallowed by a snake. The latter song was recorded by the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, and also by Johnny Cash for his 1966 album Everybody Loves a Nut.
One of Silverstein's last musical projects was Old Dogs, a 1998 album with songs about getting old, all of which Silverstein wrote or co-wrote.
A longtime friend of singer-songwriter Pat Dailey, Silverstein collaborated with him on the posthumously released Underwater Land album. It contains 17 children's songs written and produced by Silverstein and sung by Dailey. The album features art by Silverstein.
He was a friend of Chicago songwriter Steve Goodman, for whom he wrote the final verse of "What Have You Done For Me Lately?".
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. Other artists who recorded Silverstein's songs include the Brothers Four, Andrew Bird, My Morning Jacket and Bobby Bare Jr.