A Few Words About the Chinese New Year - Allan Sherman

Now this next song was a big hit comedy song

Before I was born and I took this song and modernized it, I hope

The hero of the song was originally Jewish and I made him Chinese

Which is no small achievement, actually

Uh and the reason I did that was that a couple months ago

In January, I was appearing in San Francisco

And it happened to be during the Chinese New Year

And I learned that to the Chinese people, this is the year 4664

And of course to the Jewish people, this is the year 5726

Which means that for 1062 years

Jewish people have had to do their own laundry

Now this is a very tender, poignant song, actually

It’s beautiful if you want to know

I figure I better tell you it’s beautiful before I start singing it

Because once I start you’ll have no way of knowing that it’s beautiful

This is a song about a man who walks into a tailor

And tells him a very sad story and it goes like this