Allan Sherman - A Few Words About the Chinese New Year Lyrics

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: