Sylvia Pandolfi and Louisa Pandolfi (Sylvia's mother) tell the story of 'Sylvia’s Mother' by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, written by Shel Silverstein. A short documentary by Top 2000 a gogo (Dutch Public TV) from 2002.
This is why I love the Internet. Who ever thought that we would actually be able to see Sylvia's mother...AND Sylvia; and get the real story directly from them?
Savoir Rare...Yes, no kidding! I always assumed that it was a true story, but that it was a personal experience of lead vocalist Dennis Locorriere, simply because of the amazing level of emotion and passion in his voice. I didn't realize until watching this video that it was written (and lived) by Shel Silverstein, who I also just learned penned most of Dr. Hook's hits.
I was listening to this song when I was 6. (49 years ago) The song made me cry for him and I couldn't understand why Sylvia's mother was so damn mean. In my 6 year old mind it was true. I find out today it really was! I'm glad I wasn't crying over a song that wasn't true. Yep gotta love the internet.
Pretty amazing, right ? 😊. I was a little kid when it came out .. one of my parents must’ve played it over and over .. lol. Because I’ve always known it 💕✌🏻
It's what gives it so much power as a song. He is singing it like he is on the verge of tears and the song comes across as a person who their heart is actually broken and although not written by Dennis it feels like he is pleading with the girl on behalf of Shel. The only other place I ever saw someone sing this way is someone attempting to sing a final farewell song at a funeral who lost someone. Dennis seems to be able to channel that sense of sadness in his voice.
@@smisch7720 He was probably calling from a pay phone and if it was long distance that would be why the operator kept asking for more money, because that used to be the way you did it back in the day when cell phones did not exist. :)
Shel wrote the best line in all of rock music " Well, we're big rock singers, we've got golden fingers, and we're loved everywhere we go. We sing about beauty, and we sing about truth, for ten-thousand dollars a show."
R.I.P Ray Sawyer. Amazing story and fantastic to hear Silvia and her mother being interviewed. I always felt it had to be a true story because the emotion transcends the song. Impossible for Silvia not to feel anything after having been immortalized in song💖
Impossible for any woman not to have feeling after knowingly have been loved, followed, begged upon for so long. Must have been stressful, yet delightful to the heart! To this man, you, Sylvia, are a woman to love.
@@kurtdahle Um, she didn't say he did. And if you don't care, why are you wasting your time here? Why bother to comment on something you don't even care about? No need to actually answer. Because, well, no one cares about your answer. 🙄
This song is so sad ... I want to cry every time I play it ....... I Love this song ... I wish someone Loved me that much ... I Also loved this video .. that’s real Love and I Love miss Avery and Silvia
I must have had this song sung to me 1000 times during the first couple years after it came out . I'm 61 now and every once in a while someone will still sing a bit of it for me .
What I find is that Dennis Locorriere's vocals on the song had, to me, a sort of similarity to Shel Silverstein's voice that I heard on his recordings. I don't know if others would agree, but regardless the vocals fit the song well, as you noted.
Doctor Hook was always one of my favorite groups, and even though I'm in my 60's now, time hasn't changed that at all. Listening to them always brings a bittersweet tug at my heart for those long ago days & all of the fine music that came with those times....... For those who want the story of this song, this comes from the site "Songfacts" : "Like most of the early songs recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, this was written by Shel Silverstein. Silverstein 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. Silverstein 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."
thank you,wow, i have so many phone booth stories, one was i was in Minnesota winter, kicked out of my place, trying to get into rehab, & i had to arrange it via phone, call back to confirm, when they got the paperwork i'd sent & it's frozen, im at an outside phone booth at gas station & the operator comes on & needs whatever $ while im on hold & i empty my pockets & i need 10 more cents & there at my feet, under a half inch of sheet ice, is a dime, im trying to get the operator to wait, trying to dig this dime out with my frozen fingers....swearing, people getting gas, giving me a wide berth, u know, well i finally made it to treatment, & after a few detours, am not drinking today. *please check out my other favorite ph.booth song" standing outside a broken ph.booth with money in my hands, by primitive radio gods" & another one came out same yr. 1996,song" Pepper" by the butthole surfers
For years, this song has made me tear up every time I've heard it and here once again, I hear it and have grab tissue and I'm nearly 70 now!!! Dr. Hook was one of my favorites.
I thought of this video for some reason today. And am enjoying it once again. Mrs. Pandolfi (Sylvia's mother) was a dear friend and colleague of my mother, and her granddaughter (Sylvia's daughter) would come out to our town (Beecher, Illiinois) to visit us in the summer. We were about the same age. I think about their family often.
Wowww amazing! Are they still around? I am trying to find people to participate in a radio broadcast/ interview about shell. Is there any way i could get in contact with sylvia? I would put her in contact with the radio host lady...
This IS so cool... There really is a Sylvia... and her mother.. and they remember the incidents... Not just a Brill building knock off.. the feeling that I got from the song was real... That doesnt happen often.
I've always thought from the song that her mother wanted him to stop her. After all, she told him when she was leaving and that he should take an umbrella.
This is so interesting. It actually happens everyday though. A man doesn't tell the girl how much he loved her, Until she was gone. So, so depressing and sad.
Nyckname : No,she told Sylvie to take her umbrella ☂️”Sylvia’s mother says take your umbrella,cause Sylvie it’s starting to rain” 💦Us moms do that no matter what age our kids get to! 😊
I looked this up because I am reading a book about Shel Silverstein and finding out all these songs he wrote. I only knew him as a writer/illustrator of children's books. He wrote "A Boy Named Sue" and "The Unicorn" and the original album for Dr. Hook before someone found Dr, Hook to perform them. A lot of these comments seem to assume that the person singing the song was the person that wrote it. From the book I am reading, Shel never was that hooked on anyone & never would be tied down in any way. As soon as he started making money as a cartoonist for Playboy magazine, he would travel all over the place on impulse to homes all over the US and in other countries. People describe his voice like the sound a dog makes when you step on its tail. There are other videos with him so have fun looking!
Maybe they have a reason for not caring. You can't treat a person like crap and then expect them to want to come back to you once they've left and you realize that you've been a jerk. Happens all the time.
Yep. Let people know that you love/care about them. I lost a girlfriend just a few years back and the main thing that got me through was I had been sure to let her know, and I was sure she understood and believed me...peace and good things to all.
I f someone is too slow to reveal their feelings or plays partner merry-go -round, it's hard for the other person to take them seriously. It makes the person who is serious feel so belittled, used and forgotten. I don't think Syliva could take this guy seriously because he was all over the place. He caused his own heartache. Thanks for sharing your story.
Sylvia's mother took her I Phone and deleted her texts just doesn't have the same ring to it. We will never hear music like this again. It was an amazing era for music.
Omgosh this song made me cry every time I heard it since I was like 6 years old. Now at 54 years old I still cry. I never knew it was a true story. Maybe that's why it has always made me cry. I was a weird kid. What 6 year old kid knew this song and cried about it?! 😁
That's is so uncanny. I am 55yrs old, and I am the 9th child in family of 10 children. There was music playing all of the time. So from very young age, I was captivated by so many songs. Especially songs that I was able to understand the lyrics to. There were ( and still are) MANY songs from the 50's-70's that I clearly recall. I was drawn into the very emotional songs ( at 5-8 yr oldl? Really? but I loved music and singing. Plus I am quite certain nobody was actually concerned "where I was or what I was doing" in that enormous bustling house) I do know THIS was one of them! And: : Roberta Flack "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" R. Flack "Killing Me Softly" Billy Joel "Piano Man" . Don McLean " Bye Bye Miss American Pie" Bill Withers "Ain't No Sunshine" Perhaps because. I had so so many older siblings that were very much into buying records and playing radio? I had no choice but to "hear" these songs. There was obviously little to do when "we" were young. TV had 3 local stations of news, lol. No electronics etc. So music surrounded us and we connected?! Warm regards, Joan
Joan - this to let you know that I found your comment (story?!) so wonderful, warm and unusually uplifting. Thank you for making the time and taking us back to your youth in the way that you have!
🎼🎤. & Sylvia’s mother spoke.. she went down in history todayyy .. cuz Sylvia’s mother said.. “ i know he loved her.. but I don’t remember acti’in that wayyy” 🎼🎤 So thanks Mrs Avery ... I’m glad that you talked to us, you made us all want to smile ...And bless you Mrs Avery, Sylvia’s mother.. you’re gonna be around quite awhile 🎼🎼💕✌🏻
Without a doubt ,one of the most under appreciated bands of all time !!! Like CCR or Janis Joplin , if any attempt had been made to polish any of them it would have killed the MAGIC !!! By being that raw all that emotion comes through. Man, to be able to go back to like 65 or 66 and watch them all again. I'd give every dime i ever made or going to make. to see it happen one more time!!
Wow! Cool! I listen to you guys almost every day. I have a question maybe you can answer? Who was Roland the roadie and Gertrude the groupie? Were they real?
These videos are incredible. To hear the story behind the songs, what was happening in the writer's lives, what things are all about. I love this song, and often wondered if Sylvia was a real person, or her real name, and here we see Sylvia and her lovely mother. Both such nice people. And real ! Amazing. Thank you !!!
Agreed! One of the 1st bands I ever saw live, at an armory in Clarksburg, WV circa 1976-77, w/Dark Horse & Appalachia. Dennis gave me his harmonica instruction booklet as a souvenir, Ray his broken tambourine, which I saved for yrs (wish I still had it now), & Billy the rest of the joint he was smoking :). R.I.P. Messrs. Silverstein, Sawyer, Francis, Garfat, Wolters, & Smarr - rock on...
Shell Silverstein........... A legend. I can't help but feeling sorry for him. He really loved Silvia. He never got over her. My heart is broken for him. He died, with his love in his heart he always had for Silvia.
... but seriously, how much can one write about TidePods. "MY breath smells GREAT but me tummy feels ... AWE ... not so good." Watch for this one-hit wonder on the next top 10 list.
@@equin0xia So? They performed it well and put the emotion into it, so obviously it moved them as much as it's moved us all. What's it matter if they wrote them or not if the performance was this stellar? Mr. Silverstein might not have performed it as well as Dr. Hook. He may very well have been too overcome to do so.
I was a young teenager when this beautifully sad song was released. Ive always wondered what the story was behind the lyrics. The song is even more touching now that ive seen the faces of these lovely ladies. Thanks for sharing. ❤️😀
First heard this song a couple years ago, I've been married to my sweet wife 39 years now. If my girlfriend's mother had not told me my girl did not want to speak or see me again I would have missed out on meeting my wife and having our three wonderful children, adults now. Broken hearted for a few years, met a woman working in a sporting goods shop and she lit up my life, a year later we got married. Told my wife about the song and my history. It worked out for the best.
One of my all time favorite songs. I still sing it at my acoustic gigs. When my brother and I were kids we thought the singer was crying and we thought it was funny...we didn't understand heartbreak yet.
I LOVED this song as a 12 year old...I never knew it was written by S. Silverstein, whose books I now read to my first grade classes! W.O.W. I learn something new everyday!
Shel's books were (no joke) my favorite books as a kid and when I was a teenager, i heard Dr. Hook for the first time and found out Shel Silverstein helped write for Dr.Hook, and that instantly magnified my "love" or appreciation for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Men! Now I see that Sylvia's Mother was a factual event just blows my flippin fanboy mind! This is so awesome this interview happened! Totally made my day! Thank you! Haha thank you!
Oh wow! Shel Silverstein who wrote THE GIVING TREE I used to read to my kids! Awesome! But, I was just looking at the lovely Sylvia & thinking, "How cool to have someone soooo in love w/you they write you such torrid love letters AND make your MOM a legend in the process!" They're both just lovely.
Shel wrote tons of songs including many recorded by Bobby Bare (great album for you and the kids is "Lullibies, Legends and Lies") and "A Boy Named Sue " that was a hit for Johnny Cash.
I was 14 when this was released in the UK and loved it. I didn't understand the emotion behind it until a few years later, but Dr Hook became one of my favourite bands to listen to and also to see. I saw them in London, possibly The Palladium and had seats in the front row. What a brilliant band they were. This popped up in my feed somehow. I've not thought of them in years, but this song really pulls at the heartstrings. Even more so now that I know the people really existed! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. It will be the next band that I ask Alexa for!
I have seen a couple of short docs from your channel and have shared a few of them. I need to dwell deeper into your archives. Finding Sylvia and her mother interviewed is just downright magical to me.
Wow!!! For years when I was little I thought Sylvia's mother was about me😂😂😂. I didn't understand the lyrics but I was young enough to believe that I was the only Sylvia in the world, so this must be my song!!! Made me feel so special that someone had written this beautiful song about me!!! Still get chills when I hear it.
Wow! Always loved that song from the minute I first heard it.Had NO idea it was a real story of heartbreak. What an excellent video.Dr.Hook did Shel Silverstein's song beautifully.
Yeah! Butttttttttttttttttttttttttt! Some of Shel's stuff is too hot to handle and you can't get the lyrics of them! He is one of the only Jews I really like! When you think of Weinstein & Epstein, Shell was a Saint!
Shel was amazing . I still think its worth to look at how he writes and how he expressed himself. Lots of writing now are too flowery and complex lol its only for literary critics... they build their carrear out of that, and pulling some of the writers along with them... but the public were the ones paying writers for their work lol
The singer's plaintive quality struck me when I first heard this on the radio and still does, poignant and plaintive. We watched this with great interest and fascination, thank you for uploading this unexpected gem.
As a young boy of 14, back in 72, I Knew Slade were my band, nothing else mattered, But When I heard this song, Sylvia's Mother, I thought to myself, Wow ! what's this song, It still blows me away at 6 1 . Beat that .
I bought this single when it first came out. Haven't listened to it in years, It's still a beautiful ballad. And now I've seen the actual Sylvia and her mother. Thanks for uploading this.
This was always a favorite band & song. I had heard it was true! I was about 10 when it came out, & I always thought Ray Sawyer wrote it! (I always thought he was cool!) It was only later I learned he didn't write it. I never got to see Dr Hook in concert. Never had the money! When I heard Ray passed away, it was a punch in the gut! Rest in Peace, Ray. To all the guy's still with us, THANK YOU for the Great Music. I still listen to you guy's all the time!
Love spreads out over many years in the heart of the lover. In this particular case Shel called Sylvia somewhere around 1958. He got her mother on the phone, but Sylvia was there present, and he knew 'Take your umbrella, cause Sylvie is starting to rain'. Betweem him and Sylvia stood the mother an the operator constantly blocking his desparate attempt to 'Just wanna talk to her.' Well, he never got to see, talk or hear from her again. So twenty years later he wrote this marvellous song, sang by an extraordinary singer. Well, Shel; 'Thank you for calling,' you made us all aware of the meaning of 'loving someone dearly'.
All these years and I was thinking Sylvia's mother just needs to give her the phone and mind her own business. NOW I see Sylvia was real and so was her MOTHER. Used to think this was just another stoner song cause we all knew that's who the Medicine Show played to. So all that sincerity and emotion really was heartfelt that came through in the song not a freakin act. Glad i found this out before i kick the bucket. Thanks Top 2000 a gogo ! I love real artists.
I always thought that Sylvia's mother (and probably dad, too) had interfered with Sylvia and the caller and maybe caused a breakup, because of the part where her mom says, "please don't say nothing to make her start crying again." Why would you be crying when you're going off to get married, unless you're not marrying the one you love? Why would you marry someone else? Usually it's because the parents interfered and persuaded you to marry "a respectable man with good prospects". I thought maybe they had kept them apart - kept her busy and maybe out of the country, hid his letters to her, didn't tell her about phone calls - until she thought he was no longer interested.
@@pirbird14 Ahh, I see. Well to answer a question you had, about why would she be crying if she's off to get married? Well, because she cared deeply for him. As a friend. And it hurt her to have to hurt him. That is a painful situation for both of them. His unrequited love, and her not being able to love him the way he wants her to. I can't even begin to understand how horrible it would be to find out your best friend is in love with you.
To find this out of no where and watch it. I understand the reason for leaving but the heart really never let go. More on one side then the other. Thank you for this. Took half a lifetime to know the story and yes as Savior says.......meet the mom and SYLVIA. God Bless All.
All the credit going to Dr. Hook and His Medicine Show. The true story was that Shel Silverstein, who wrote the song, truly loved Sylvia Avery. I think she loved him too. They both had different lives and different ways of thinking about love. Truly a wonderful update on the real story behind the song that Shel wrote.
I remember this song came out just before i left school in the UK and i used to listen to it sharing his anguish and desperation of loosing someone he loved and i still remember the emotions it stirred up at the time.
I just realized that the songwriter was Shel Silverstein who also wrote “Purple People Eater” the books “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “The Giving Tree”
And " don't forget to put the garbage out" poem. Or the title was something like that. I loved it because I could never get my kids to take out the garbage and it made me laugh.
I had that song on my ipod and it'd pop up in the shuffle, a friend of mine really dug that song as if it told one of his personal stories and it probably did but he never explained. I always felt that the words of the song were a true story because he sang it with such passion and feeling, now I know it was.
Awesome video, I never dreamed I would see the people who this song was written about, Sylvia, and Sylvia's mother. I grew up listening to Dr. Hook, and still listen to them to this day. Thanks for posting this.
