I Got Stoned & Missed It

Don't panic mom and dad, I'm not talking about myself. I heard this song on the radio today, and was SHOCKED to find out that it was done by Shel Silverstein! This is the same man who wrote such inspirational tales as The Giving Tree and The Missing Piece. These are children's classics! I also vividly remember reading his books of poetry in gradeschool - Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic. We even wrote a book of poetry as a class when I was in gradeschool and called it "A Candle in the Basement" in tribute to the great Shel himself. I guess I have to take off my rose-colored glasses now.

So, I went on to do a little research to find if there were other things I didn't know about Mr. Silverstein. Did you know he wrote the Grammy-winning "A Boy Named Sue" for the late great Johnny Cash? Neither did I! There's a lot more to this man than his children's books - here's what I found in Wikipedia:

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Silverstein's talents were already well-developed by the time he served in the US armed forces. Silverstein was stationed in Japan and Korea in the 1950s, and while in the military, he was a cartoonist for the Pacific edition of the military newspaper, Stars And Stripes. After serving in the military, Silverstein became a writer, photographer, cartoonist for Playboy in 1956 (and ended up living in the Playboy Mansion for an extended period of time), but he is best known for writing and illustrating his children's literature including The Missing Piece, A Light in the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Falling Up and The Giving Tree. He also wrote Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book, a satirical mock children's book, and created Different Dances, a coffee-table book of wordless, adult-themed cartoons.

Silverstein's passion for music was clear early on as he studied for awhile at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. As a songwriter, Silverstein kept a low profile but cast a long shadow. He tended to shun publicity and even photographers. Nonetheless, his musical output included many songs which were hits for other artists. Most notably, he wrote the music and lyrics for "A Boy Named Sue" that was performed by Johnny Cash (for which he won a Grammy
in 1970); "One's On the Way" (which was a hit for Loretta Lynn), and "The Unicorn Song"; which, despite having nothing to do with Ireland nor Irish culture, became the signature piece for The Irish Rovers in 1968 and is popular in Irish pubs all over the world to this day. He wrote the lyrics and music for most of the Dr. Hook songs, including "Cover of the Rolling Stone," "Freakin' at the Freakers' Ball," "Sylvia's Mother" and the cautionary song about VD, "Don't Give a Dose To the One You Love Most." He also wrote many of the songs performed by Bobby Bare, including "Marie Laveau", "Rosalie's Good Eats Cafe", "The Mermaid", "The Winner", and "Tequila Sheila". The song "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," recorded in 1979 by Marianne Faithfull and later featured in the films Montenegro and Thelma & Louise,
was also by Silverstein.

Silverstein also had a popular following on Dr. Demento's radio show. Among his most popular 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) and "I Got Stoned And I Missed It". He also wrote "A Boy Named Sue, Part 2", in which he tells the story from the original song, but from the father's point of view.

During his short career as a producer, he co-wrote the screenplay Things Change with David Mamet, and was nominated for an Oscar for his music for the film Postcards from the Edge. He also composed original music for several other films, and displayed a musical versatility in these projects, playing guitar, piano, saxophone and trombone. He continued to write colloquial poetry on occasion throughout his life, including a rap version of Shakespeare's Hamlet that was published (on yellow-beige specialty paper) in Playboy magazine in 1998.

Silverstein was posthumously inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002.

In 2005, Silverstein's most recent book, entitled Runny Babbit, was published. As the title suggests, every poem and illustration in the book consists of spoonerisms.
Silverstein died on May 10, 1999 in Key West, Florida of a heart attack. He had two children. Shel's daughter was named Shoshanna, shortened to Shanna. Her mother was a woman named Susan Hastings, whom Shel had a relationship with but did not marry. Shanna, born on June 30, 1970, died in Baltimore, MD, in April 24, 1982, at the age of eleven of a brain aneurysm. "It was the single most devastating event of his life, and he never really did recover from it", says a close friend. Had Shanna lived, she would have been 29 at the time of Shel's death. Shoshanna's mother, Susan, died on June 29, 1975, also in Baltimore. A side note: "A Light in the Attic" was dedicated "to Shanna", and Shel had drawn the sign with a flower attached. Shoshanna means "rose" in Hebrew. Silverstein's son, Matthew, was 15 when his father died on May 10, 1999. Matthew is the sole heir to Shel Silverstein's $20 million estate. Shel's 1996 "Falling Up" was dedicated to Matt

Wow, what a career! What I love best about all this information is that most of his amazing career took place beneath the radar of the common Joe. More than that, he was so well-rounded. He was a novelist, a poet, a lyricist, a producer, a father, a playboy (I'm assuming giving the fact he lived in Playboy mansion), a soldier, a rapper, a satirist, and probably more that we don't know about.

I wonder which of these descriptions he would list first?