Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show – Sylvia’s Mother

“Sylvia’s Mother” – Single by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show from the album Dr. Hook. Released in March 1972. Charted #2 in UK and #3 in United States.

Like most of the early songs recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, this was written by Shel Silverstein. Silversteen was a brilliant storyteller with a vivid imagination, but this story was real.

In the song, Sylvia’s mother is Mrs. Avery, and while that wasn’t her real last name, the rest of the story – exaggerated a bit – was true. Silversteen told Rolling Stone in 1972: “I just changed the last name, not to protect the innocent, but because it didn’t fit. It happened about eight years ago and was pretty much the way it was in the song. I called Sylvia and her mother said, ‘She can’t talk to you.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ Her mother said she was packing and she was leaving to get married, which was a big surprise to me. The guy was in Mexico and he was a bullfighter and a painter. At the time I thought that was like being a combination brain surgeon and encyclopedia salesman. Her mother finally let me talk to her, but her last words were, ‘Shel, don’t spoil it.’ For about ten seconds I had this ego charge, as if I could have spoiled it. I couldn’t have spoiled it with a sledge hammer.”

The real Sylvia kept her secret to all but a few family and friends. Remarkably, it was a Dutch public television producer named Arjan Vlakveld who found not only Sylvia, but also Sylvia’s mother. Arjan told Songfacts: “The search for Sylvia was a big coincidence. I was having a glass of wine in the garden of my brother. He had quests and there was an American woman who after I explained what kind of things I produced, told me the story about Sylvia and her mother, who she knew. It was an old story because it was about her mother working on a high school with ‘Sylvia’s Mother.’ She was already old in the time of her story. She didn’t knew if it was true but the woman had claimed ones that she was the mother in the song. I only had a few names to go on and ended up in a telephone conversation with Sylvia Pandolfi, who at that time was a museum director in Mexico City. (‘Down Galveston way’ in the song meant in real life that she was getting married to a Mexican and moving there).

So I asked her the question: Are you by any chance the Sylvia in the song ‘Sylvia’s Mother?’ She was very surprised because nobody knew, it was a personal and family story, she never told anyone. I filmed the interview with her mother in Homewood, Illinois. The same house where she had the telephone call with Shell Silverstein, probably even the same telephone number. She was 95 years at that time.”

After this song became a hit, audience members would sometimes throw coins at the band Rocky Horror-style at the line “40 cents more.” This could hurt quite a bit, especially when they were launched from the balcony.

This was the first single released by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, who later became simply Dr. Hook. While they were playing bars in the New Jersey area, they got a gig appearing in the movie Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, and signed with Columbia/CBS Records, which is the label that released the soundtrack for the film. “Sylvia’s Mother” was their first single; it made the Hot 100 at #99 for one week when it was first released, but months later, after CBS (led by Clive Davis) started promoting it, it took off and became a hit.

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Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show - Sylvia's Mother

Dr. Hook The Medicine Show ~ "Sylvia's Mother"03:46

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