Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

STAMPS ARE OUT

 
Some of my friends and relatives are extremely cheap. I know two people who reuse dental floss. I’m not like that, but the one thing I do like to save money on is postage stamps. I won’t use two first-class stamps on a two-ounce letter. I go with one first-class, 73-cent ‘forever’ stamp, plus one “additional-ounce” forever stamp, 24 cents.

I’m a former philatelist. I have a U.N. souvenir sheet from 1965. United Nations stamps were a hot item back then. I got the souvenir sheet as a gift for my Confirmation. It cost my parents $75 ($749 in today’s dollars). The sheet is worthless now. U.N. stamps tanked just like the org.

I made a trip to the P.O. to buy “additional ounce” stamps. Also, I decided to get some extra 2-centers, too. Yes, I use Quickbooks and Venmo, but I use the USPS as well. The P.O. clerk handed me the 2-centers  and informed me she had no “additional ounce” stamps.

“Do you sell milk?” I said. “This is a post office. You sell stamps! You don’t have stamps? Where can I get the stamps?”

She said try another branch.

I left. I’m not doing any more runs to the P.O. for “additional ounce” stamps. I’ll simply put two first-class stamps on two-ounce mail from now. So it’ll cost me an extra 49 cents each time. (Maybe my son Ted will get me some additional-ounce stamps if he reads this.) I’ll be spending about $10 more per year by not using the additional-ounce stamp.

By the way, I didn’t say “Do you sell milk?” at the P.O. I dreamt up that retort in the P.O. parking lot, post-visit. But the dialogue looks good here, in writing, so pretend I said it.

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September 11, 2024   3 Comments

I’M THROWING OUT THESE BOOKS

 
Every two years I prune my library. My wife insists. If you want any of these books (see list below), stop by my tree lawn before Tuesday — garbage day.

Glenn E. Schembechler

Bowl Game Disasters by Glenn E. Schembechler

Stupid Bastard: The Life of Harry Purim by Meier Meier

10 Days to a Hairless Body by Anne Greune

The Whim of Grit by Malcolm Bolivia

So You Want to Be Jewish? by Miriam Roth

The Story of the Harlem Cooperative Bakery by Rose Lee Pak

Cover Your Lawn with Green Sheet Metal by Jennifer Budzowski

Throw Away Your Truss by Jon Kades

So You Want to Dance, Act, and Play the Clarinet! by Pippi

Kreplach in the Congo by Reb Yellen

Amusing Car Sales by Sid Halpern

Spelling Made EZ by Jaimi Michalczyk

The Peacock Invasion by Morry Corriendo

Good Riddance, Chancres! by Rodney Benton

Cryptic Tokens of Praise (poetry) by Del Spitzer

Whoring in Milan, Rome and Naples by “Lilly”

Goldwater by William E. Miller

The Streets of San Francisco and Richmond, California by Cindy L. Barbour

The Man: Susan B. Anthony by Janice Kugelman-Sugerman

Milk Will Kill You by Len Saltzberg, M.D.

Pet Insurance for Dummies by Buster

Guess Your Friends’ Net Worth by James Kirston

Barbados: Our Key Ally by Cecil Hernandez

Thinking is the New Smoking by Amos The Bison

No Mo’ Boca: A Baby Boomer’s Guide to Retirement by Esther Palevsky

Cuckoos and Grosbeaks by Nancy Dubick

Carolina: The New Promised Land by Irv Weinberg

Visceral Robotics by Suellen Montague

Garbage: A History of Waste Management Inc. by Lake Koonce-Katz

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September 4, 2024   5 Comments

EGO

 
A musician told me he did 200 gigs a year. Impressive. He mentioned they were all nursing-home gigs. Not impressive. (I brag about my nursing home gigs but he can’t.)

The writer Donald Hall told me how much money he made for articles in the The New Yorker and Playboy. He had an audience.

Yiddishe Cup has an audience sometimes, sometimes not. Yiddishe Cup played for 30 people in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That was a long drive. (We’re playing tonight. Details below. A short drive — Pepper Pipes, Ohio.)

A neighbor recently asked my wife and me if we were available for dinner. No, Yiddishe Cup was going on a road trip; the band was flying to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for a wedding, then flying to Columbus the next day for a party, and driving home to Cleveland for something — probably a nursing home gig. The neighbor texted Alice and me: “Ahh, the Yiddishe Cup World Tour 2024! How could I forget? Keep on rocking!”

Musicians whine about “World Tour” road-trip trials and tribulations. And you think, “I’d like to do that — go on a tour. Shut up.”

Our recent Yiddishe Cup road-trip weekend was intense — and rare.

A woman asked me, “Does Yiddish Cup still exist?” She had been checking out our Yiddishe Cup website, which hasn’t been updated in years. Maybe I should update it.

. . . My cousin Howard Golden just updated the site. Here’s the new home page:

Is that legible? Probably not. Here’s what it says:

“This website is way out-of-date. We don’t need your business. That said, we want your business!

“Some readers — after checking out this historic website — ask, ‘Does Yiddishe Cup still exist?’

“Yes, Yiddishe Cup exists. In 2023 and 2024, Yiddishe Cup played weddings in Temecula, California; Washington, D.C.; Hillsdale, New York; and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. And of course, we played in Ohio, at concerts, weddings, b’nai mitzvot and community celebrations.”

Yiddishe Cup plays tonight (Wed. Aug 28) at 7 p.m. at the outdoor, covered Wain Pavilion on the grounds of Park Synagogue, 27500 Shaker Blvd., Pepper Pipes, Ohio. There are chairs. The concert is free. And if you want, you can donate to Magen David Adom (the Israel Red Cross) at the show.

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August 28, 2024   2 Comments

CONCERT FOR ISRAEL

 
There are three types of Jews. No, not Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Try American, Israeli and victims of the Holocaust. Each about a third.

The Israeli contingent is top of mind right now, with Iran and its proxies wanting to turn Israel into dead Jews. In America — in Cleveland — what is a Jew to do? I called my friend Shelly Gordon, who moved to Israel after college to become a tennis pro. He played for Ohio State. He still gripes about my childhood private lessons; I violated the South Euclid Tennis Court Oath, which was Don’t Be a Tennis Snob. Shelly‘s strokes are bad but he’s good. He never took a private lesson.

He said, “Ninety percent of Israel is business as usual — going about our lives. I play tennis.” Shelly is a sports nut. He follows the Browns, Buckeye, Cavs and Guardians. In Israel he logs on at 3 a.m. to catch Cleveland sports scores. He once had a yarmulke that read “Cleveland Cavaliers.” On his off days, he visits his children and grandchildren and hopes they don’t get killed.

What‘s a Cleveland Jew to do? Here’s an option. Yiddishe Cup plays a benefit concert for Magen David Adom — the Israeli emergency blood and medical services operation.

The concert is 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 28, at the outdoor, covered Wain Pavilion, Park Synagogue, 27500 Shaker Blvd, Pepper Pike, Ohio.

Magen David Adom is like an Israeli Red Cross. The concert is free but donations are encouraged. Money from the concert — along with gelt from other Cleveland-area contributors — will go toward buying an ambulance.

Yiddishe Cup will play songs from Holocaust-haunted Eastern Europe, America, and songs from Holocaust-avoiding Israel.

Cleveland stands (and sits) with Israel. There are chairs.

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August 21, 2024   2 Comments

GREAT BOOKS AND
SOME GREAT PROFS

 
Paul Ilie, a Great Books professor at Michigan called his students “Mr.” and “Ms.” For example, “Mr. Stratton.” Eighteen-year-old me — Mr. Stratton? Ilie taught The Iliad, Thucydides, Plato, and Sophocles. Glad I read those books.

Paul Ilie

I begged my Inorganic Chem prof for a B. I needed the B for my pre-med transcript. I did C work throughout the semester but got an A on the final. Paul Rasmussen wouldn’t deal; the numbers didn’t add up. Attention, Bert, adulthood ahead.

I asked my Calculus professor, “What is the meaning of all this?” Wilfred Kaplan didn’t blanch. He said he wasn’t sure.

I got a D in Organic Chemistry and switched to English.

Benjamin Franklin V taught Hawthorne, Melville and Twain. I visited Franklin’s house a couple times to listen to jazz records. He had a thing for Babs Gonzales, a hipster vocalese bopper. Franklin was an Ohio State grad from Gallipolis and was related to Ben Franklin. Franklin-the-prof was 11 years older than me and had caught some of the beatnik era.

Another young prof was Bernard Q. Nietschmann. He taught a gut course — Human Geography. He gave me four credit hours for writing a novel. Nietschmann’s main focus was the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua. He once tore up a $20 bill in class to show his disdain for materialistic mainstream culture. The class went nuts, several students screaming at the prof to hand over the money. (Twenty dollars in 1970 equals $160 now.)

Donald Hall held a poetry-writing workshop at his house on South University Avenue. (Workshops weren’t common at Michigan. Lectures were, like 200 kids in a room.) At the workshop we critiqued each other’s work. Hall owned one LP record: Sgt. Pepper’s. Never a music guy – Hall.

Ted Berrigan, an East Village poet, was at Michigan one semester as a visiting professor. Hall got Berrigan the job. Berrigan had interviewed Jack Kerouac for the Paris Review. Berrigan had fans. I was a super-fan.

English 231, Fall 1969

Robert Hayden, another English professor, wound up on a U.S. postage stamp. At his office, I showed him my latest poems but he didn’t cotton to jokey, light fare. He was polite, though. He dressed properly, just like my Great Books prof. Profs dressed either like profs or hippies. There was no in-between.

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August 14, 2024   3 Comments

THE MUSICAL INFLUENCES
IN MY LIFE

 
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer (7/24/24) . . .

The musical influences in my life

by Bert Stratton

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — I played music with a prodigy. I didn’t know he was a prodigy. He and I were in junior high. He played piano. I played clarinet. I just googled him — William Goldenberg. He wound up at Oberlin College, Julliard, and then Indiana University. He became a professor of piano at a university. I didn’t know him that well; he was the son of a friend of my parents.

I wasn’t in the prodigy’s league. Not even close. But I did practice a lot. I enjoyed the “typing” aspect of clarinet — learning where to place my fingers on the instrument. I blame my parents and my clarinet teacher for much of my musical shortcomings. Leonard Bernstein was not on the TV at our home. There was no “Peter and the Wolf” by Prokofiev. Harry Golub, my clarinet teacher, was an alumnus of the Ohio State University concert band and owned a music store in South Euclid. He sold guitars, bongos and band instruments.

I entered The Contest every year in junior high. The Contest — as we kids called it — was a music-recital competition sponsored by the state music-educators’ association. Young musicians would play their repertoire in front of teacher-judges, who would give us ratings of I, II or III.

I often got III — the worst. I would get nervous and lose my place in the sheet music. Worse, I didn’t know how the piece was supposed to sound because I had never heard a professional recording of it. I especially remember a train wreck on Mozart’s “Divertimento in D Major, Minuetto,” at a contest held at Moody Junior High School in Bedford around 1963. I lost my place several times and had to start over from the beginning. My prodigy accompanist was of no help.

Classical musicians tell you, “I studied with Joe So-and-So, who studied with Marie So-and-So, who studied with Maestro So-and-So.” It’s biblical – the lineage obsession in classical music.

Philip Setzer

My pianist developed a long, impressive bio over the years, but not as long as another guy — from my Little League — who intimidated me even more. He was Philip Setzer, a violinist I went to grade school with. At holiday school concerts at Victory Park School in South Euclid, I’d botch “The Theme from Exodus,” and Setzer would ace-play a Brahms sonata. Phil was a founder of the world-renowned Emerson String Quartet, which, until its members’ recent retirement, was like the New York Yankees of string quartets. Setzer’s mother and father were violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra; he attended many Cleveland Orchestra concerts as a kid. That helped.

In the early 1990s, I played a benefit concert with two Cleveland Orchestra musicians. It was a fundraiser for a Jewish day school. The orchestra musicians asked me whom I had studied with. I said, “Nobody.”

Mr. Nobody: Harry Golub. His store was on Warrensville Center Road at East Antisdale Road. The structure now houses South Euclid Hardware. The building — in the 1960s — also featured a hair salon and a kosher butcher shop, run by Mr. Golub’s father.

Harry Golub often ate Hebrew National salami sandwiches during my lessons. That stunk. He was into real estate. He built a four-suite apartment building across the street from the music store. So he owned two buildings: the music building and the apartment building. He named the apartment building after his daughter, Joyce. Mr. Golub, by his example, taught me about real estate and very little about music. Maybe that’s why my parents sent me there for lessons.

Bert Stratton, a frequent contributor, lives in Cleveland Heights and has also written for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He writes the blog “Klezmer Guy: Real Music & Real Estate.”

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August 6, 2024   5 Comments

GOING FULL-ESPAÑOL

 
When I traveled in Latin America in the early 1970s, I was constantly on the lookout for American culture. American culture, not Latin American culture. I was homesick. In Mexico City I heard Kurt Vonnegut give a lecture. I went to American movies. I remember Paper Moon. I attended a Charlie Byrd concert in Bogota. Bryd — a jazz guitarist — had played with Stan Getz. Byrd introduced his band in Spanish, saying “en la batería” for “on the drums” and “en el bajo“ for “on the bass.” Byrd connected linguistically and I admired that. His concert was part of a U.S. State Department tour.

I did an Charlie Byrd imitation last week. I introduced Vulfpeck in Spanish at a concert in Madrid. I spoke Spanish to 3,500 Spaniards!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-e3bGDSak

Outdoor concert, Vulfpeck, Madrid, 7/21/24.

I told my son Jack that my intro would take a minute. It took 4:19 minutes. While I blabbed on, Jack became slightly agitated stage-left, in the wings. He signaled me to speed it up but I didn’t see him.

I hate it when a musician says he’ll do a minute and then solos for two minutes. In my defense, re Madrid, some of my stage-hogging time consisted of applause and laughter.

Here’s a translated joke from my intro: “Ladies and gentlemen, I was so excited when I first heard Vulfpeck was going to play Madrid that I immediately went on the internet and checked out the lineup for tonight’s show — Apertura de puertas 7:30 pm, Judith Hill 8:45 pm, Vulfpeck 10:15 pm. I wondered, What is this band Apertura de Puertas?”

“Apertura de puertas” means “Doors open.”

Maybe you had to be there.

I had a terrific Spanish teacher, Judith Worth, at Brush High. She wrote me in 1980: “Bert, I was glad to have news of all your classmates, and to know that they are doing well — and have used their Spanish. I was very attached to all of you, as if you were my own kids.” I’ll send her this post. (According to the internet, she’s 87 and living near Austin. I last talked to Mrs. Worth four years ago.)

Charles F. Brush High yearbook, 1968.

 

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July 31, 2024   3 Comments

REFRIGERATORS ARE FUN

 
The Hotpoint refrigerator — the “value” brand of G.E. — is a good product. It lasts 20 years.

That’s what you want: 15-to-20 years.

And if we start talking stoves, you want even longer. I got 24 years out of a Magic Chef stove.  The burners were clogged and the thermostat was shot. Time to buy another one.

I used to buy Spanish refrigerators. Welbilt. The spelling said it all. Good for only nine years. Frigidaire isn’t much better — 10 years.

I buy appliances from a distributor out of  Stow, Ohio. He’ll hook up the gas flexline (pigtail) to the stove. I could go to Bernie Marcus at Home Depot, but my guy in Stow is hassle-free and about the same price.

Refrigerators are fun; they don’t often screw up, and you can occasionally get a few beers and pops after the tenant moves out. Definitely some open ketchup.

I didn’t take anything from this refrigerator.

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July 24, 2024   1 Comment

IF YOU’RE LOUD, YOU’RE LOVED

 
When Trombone Shorty played last month at Cain Park, in Cleveland Heights, he was loud. I didn’t take out a decibel reader but the show was ear-splitting. And I was wearing earplugs. Trombone Shorty frenetically ran around saying, “Let’s get crazy!” and “How you feeling? Feeling Good!” He played mostly super-loud funk and not much New Orleans brass-band music.

Trombone Shorty

Why did I go? Because I like the name “Trombone Shorty.”  If Shorty had been Joe Smith, I probably wouldn’t have gone. [What’s Shorty’s real name? . . . Troy Andrews.] I like New Orleans brass-band jazz. I don’t like rock-level blasting. Two guitars, electric bass, loud drums, no sousaphone.

Eleven years ago I was in New Orleans on vacation,  and I sat in with some pro musicians on Jackson Square. Trumpeter Kenny Terry had a slick ensemble which entertained tourists on the square. I went back to my hotel room, got my axe, and — heads-up, Kenny — here I am!

Terry said, “Where you from — Kansas?” Close enough. He announced to the crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special guest from Cleveland!”

Cleveland was good business for Terry; eyeballs focused on the white guy with the clarinet. Tip-jar activity increased. There were about 100 people.

We did a Bb blues. I didn’t project enough; I had a thin sound, at least for outdoors. Kenny said, “You got to play with some balls!” That hurt.

I said, “I have this cheap plastic reed!”

The word in New Orleans is “If you’re loud, you’re loved.” (Phil Frazier, of Rebirth, said that.)

Back home in Cleveland, I bought a new, louder clarinet barrel so I could played with “some balls.” Trombone Shorty, at Cain Park, played with a lot of balls. He should have stuck with two.

I’ve disliked loud music for a long time — way before I became an old crank. My freshman roommate at college was into the MC5. I convinced him to move out of our room. Then I got a roommate who liked Jefferson Airplane. That didn’t work out well, either. Pure jazz — that was my thing. The blues, too. My third — and final — roommate was into nothing musically, and we got along fine.

So I had three roommates my freshman year. Does that say anything about me? Nothing! (Screeched at a high decibel.)

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July 17, 2024   5 Comments

A BAD THING

 
I was in for 46 days — 30 at county and 16 in Grafton. Handcuff this, handcuff that. My wife said I did some bad stuff. She told the judge I did 100 bad things. I did a bad thing, and I apologized. I told my wife I had an affair three years ago, and she wasn’t cool with that. If I hadn’t told her, she never would have known. She said there would be consequences. There were. She divorced me.

And she told the judge I was coming on to her like ISIS for years. I admitted to a bad thing.

I’m not going out to bars or drinking anymore. Too many bad things happen when I do that. I’m just going to my job and the gym now. That’s it. I’m on five years’ probation.

(fiction)

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July 10, 2024   1 Comment

A WRITER’S GUIDE (1974)

 
I’m back in Cleveland. I’m thinking about Boston and New York. I know you are, too.

Here’s the title of my next book: Horseman Jake Rides the Syrup.

Nostalgia is a drag. Jack Kerouac is an inspiration. How about reading My Friend Henry Miller by Alfred Perles?

The dinosaur was the most successful specie that ever lived.

I left my heart in Sandusky.

My friend Chap owns a Corvette. He rendezvoused with 11 other Corvette owners at Eastgate. He’s got a 350 hp with headers, minus emission controls.

I saw Sleeper. I resented the nebbish-Jewish stereotypes.

Dad: “If you get a car, what are you going to do to support it?” Me: “I’ll get some money somewhere. I’ll rob a bank.” Dad: “You do that and I’ll wipe my hands of you — finished!”

Anybody who talks Lit in this town is talking $.

Stan Smith vs. John Newcombe.

Nelson Algren’s tough-guy first-person stories are obnoxious. Bukowski can pull it off because he really is a fuck-up.

To Martha Winston at the Curtis Brown Agency: “This is my latest novel. I’d appreciate it if you’d take a look at it. The book is mostly about a junior-high-school boy. I haven’t sent this manuscript to anybody else.”

Terry Southern, Erje Ayden, Buk, Dreiser and McMurtry ought to form a horny men’s club. I’d join.

Never write about a place you haven’t done time in — at least a year.

Here’s a simile. Not sure where it’s from:  He looked like a chalkboard eraser floating in a pool of beer.

High school is something I’m trying to forget — not remember!

I dig Bob Newhart because his humor is so low-key, and he’s so shy. Richard Price said, “I used to think writing was like being a stand-up comedian.”

Anthony Burgess doesn’t crack a joke in the first 60 pages of his novel M/F.

Detail for detail’s sake is useless.

My dad said I should apologize to my friend Dennis for calling him a “swine” on the phone.

Horse sit.

Anwar Sadat. Answer Sadat.

Erza, from the Bible, lived in Babylonia.

I’m buying my dad’s Plymouth Valiant, and he’s  buying a new Dodge Dart Swinger. I’ll need plates, a title, and insurance.

Dad says, “You don’t know what rough times are.” He knows. His mother wouldn’t allow him to go out for track in high school because he had to work in the store after school.

Authors have two jobs: writing stuff and learning stuff. You need to know something. What do I know?

Music is easier than Lit. In music — at least instrumental music — you can play scales all day if you’re uninspired. In Lit you can pick your nose and flip out.

Zawinul. Hank Crawford. Adderley. The Nude Wave is on Impulse.

Bert Stratton, U-M Hopwood photo, 1974.

Characters in novels go to Chapel Hill (Thomas Wolfe), Harvard (Wolfe again), U. of Chicago (Roth), or Columbia (Kerouac). Where is the great A2 novel?

Blue and maize will make a purple Hayes.

Tickle University, Philadelphia, Pa.

This Book Closes at 10 pm.

The Bar Mitzvah Goer by Walker Pearl.

Never again — Meir Kahane.

I’m thinking of getting married. To whom? You!

The Time-Life building is right here. I’m living in it — the Mark IV apartments, Beachwood, Ohio. (So are my parents.)

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July 3, 2024   4 Comments

MY SON THE TRAVEL CONCIERGE

 
My son Ted specializes in extracting parents and relatives from travel crises. He never gets lost. He always knows where he is. Ted has been like that since he was age 9, when he rode the Lee Road bus for the fun of it.

Ted, Alice, and I recently got delayed at LaGuardia Airport. Delayed big-time. Our flight was canceled. It was canceled just as I pointed out to Alice, “This weekend has been seamless.” We had  traveled to a family wedding a couple hours north of NYC. When our LaGuardia flight was canceled, Ted immediately got on Priceline and booked us a hotel at a nearby dump in Queens. But a nice dump.

New York’s outer boroughs — I like them, in theory. But when I go to NYC, I rarely leave Manhattan. How often do I ride the bus in Queens? Just this once. With Ted’s assistance, we caught a city bus outside our hotel and went to Flushing and wound up at a noodle house. I hocked the Chinese-American guy next to me in the restaurant. He said Chinatown in Manhattan is bigger than the Chinatown in Flushing. But Flushing’s Chinatown felt bigger to me. Flushing was like a total-immersion Asian experience. (Manhattan’s Chinatown is more like a neighborhood touristy thing, next to another colorful neighborhood, Little Italy.)

Ted [pink shirt], England, 2016 bike tour.

The next morning we caught the first flight out of LaGuardia. Ted arranged all that. (Also — on our way to the wedding — Ted had done a magic trick with Turo, the car rental company, which delivered a rental car right to our exit door at LGA. No shuttle bus to a rental-car area.)

Koffi, an African clerk at the Delta Airlines counter, said to me, “Your son is in charge now. He has a good demeanor.”

Right. Glad.

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June 26, 2024   1 Comment

THE ONE AND ONLY
ROLAND HANNA

 
I talk a lot at nursing-home gigs. I like to get the audience talking, too. I ask the audience about their favorite delis and where they went to high school. One guy always heckles me – “Again with the high schools?” Yes, again with the high schools. And this guy is not even a resident; he visits a friend who lives in the nursing home.

I often ask listeners their names. At my last gig, there was a woman, Ona, who said she was named for the actress Ona Munson. Never heard of Ona Munson. I didn’t ask Ona where she went to high school because she’s from New Jersey and nobody in Cleveland knows about New Jersey high schools.

An elderly husky black man had some musical requests. He was a visitor. He wanted “One O’Clock Jump.” I didn’t know it. Then he said, “Anything by Glenn Miller?” I played “I Got Rhythm.” Close enough. He rocked-and-rolled to every song – clapping and singing along. Alan Douglass (my piano accompanist) and I played all kinds of music: klezmer, American pop, Israeli. The man grooved to everything. He said his name was Roland Hanna.

“Roland Hanna! I guess Alan and I better go home now,” I said. Alan and I would leave and let Roland take over. Roland smiled. Roland Hanna, the renowned pianist. Roland told us to continue.

Roland Hanna

Alan asked Roland if he liked “sweet soul,” a favorite genre of Alan’s. Roland was cool with that. Alan did “Stone in Love With You” by the Stylistics. Roland knew every word. Then Roland requested Billy Joel. It’s affecting when black musicians request songs by white artists. Roland said, “You can do Billy Joel! You’ve got a harmonica player.” I did have a harp. We played “Piano Man,” featuring harp.

Alan did a country tune, “Behind Closed Doors” by Charlie Rich, and  we did the soul tune “My Girl,” and Alan did a funk tune, “Will It Go Round in Circles.” All for Roland Hanna.

Before the final tune of the set, I asked Roland if he wanted to play something with us. He passed. After the gig, we schmoozed. I asked if he still played. He said he had never played. He said he was Rollin Hannah, Cleveland Heights High class of ’69. He said, “It’s Rollin like in Sonny Rollins, and Hannah, spelled the same backwards and forward.”

Pianist Roland Hanna was a Detroit musician who played in the Thad Jones –Mel Lewis Big Band in New York in the 1970s. “Roland Hanna” — the name — stuck with me all these years. Stuck a bit too hard.

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June 19, 2024   1 Comment

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE RACKET

 
From today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer . . .

It’s not about the racket

by Bert Stratton

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — When I trounced my friend Jimmy in tennis, he blamed it on his racket. His racket — his good racket — was in the shop for restringing. Jimmy said he was hitting the ball longer than usual with his back-up racket, and he didn’t have his usual deft touch on drop shots. I was surprised by the kvetching; Jimmy is usually stoical about his game and has never been an equipment freak.

Lance Armstrong said it best: “It’s not about the bike.” Or, it’s not about the racket. For example, I have a childhood friend who is a tennis pro in Israel, and he occasionally comes back to Cleveland to visit relatives and beat me in tennis. My friend, Shelly Gordon, doesn’t even bring a racket with him from Israel; he borrows one of mine. Shelly and I grew up playing tennis on the public courts at Bexley Park in South Euclid. The dress code then, in the 1960s, was Bermuda shorts, Jack Purcell tennis shoes and T-shirt (optional). Shelly never took private tennis lessons; nevertheless, he made the Ohio State University tennis team.

I took about 10 private lessons at the Cleveland Skating Club in Shaker Heights. My dad paid a nonmembers’ rate for the lessons. The club pro called me “Tiger.” I think he called all nonmembers “Tiger” because he didn’t want to learn their names.

At a recent high school reunion, a former Brush High tennis player was still mad at me — and envious of me for my private lessons. Hotshot players like him, from all over the East Side, would schlep down to Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, where the best public-court players hung out. There was a Cleveland Heights High player, Rich Greenberg, who was so into tennis he would shovel snow off the courts in the winter. He eventually played for the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Bert Stratton, age 16, 1967, Brush High courts

Rich taught me an important life lesson: how to wait. Every winter, I had to wait six months for good weather to come around again, so I could play tennis. I wasn’t going to shovel courts. Think about it: No snow blowers in the 1960s, and the courts had to be perfectly dry. And right after you shoveled, it would snow again. (And we didn’t have access to indoor courts.)

When I played my friend Kvetchin’ Jimmy — the man with the bad racket — he muttered unintelligible things to himself and fiddled with his strings. I beat him 6-2, 6-2. He usually beats me. Funny, I, too, had a handicap. But did I complain? No, I didn’t. My left hand (my dominant hand) tingled from having played a steel-string acoustic guitar the night before. I didn’t mention that to Jimmy. Probably because I won.

In tennis, it’s all on you. There’s usually nobody else to blame. Here’s a useful rule: If you lose, blame the wind. That’s less offensive than blaming your racket.

Yiddishe Cup performs 2-3 pm this Sun. (June 16). Father’s Day. Free. Beachwood Branch, Cuyahoga County Library, 25501 Shaker Blvd. (corner of Shaker Boulevard and Richmond Road). Indoors.

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June 12, 2024   3 Comments

GERSHY AND TOBY

 

Toby Stratton (1917-1986). Photo 1984.

My father, Toby, took me to a lightning-round tutorial with Cousin Gershy. (Gershy is short for Gershon.) Gershy looked horrible — three strokes and two heart attacks. My dad didn’t look any better. My dad died of leukemia two months later.

Gershy had shotguns, a steer horn and a shalom plaque over the mantle. Gershy said, “You wouldn’t believe it, but I used to be a shtarker (strong guy/bully). Now I’ve got this little curl in the tail — that little something different — that something the new treatment doesn’t cure. You’re in trouble, they say. They say, ‘We can’t straighten out your tail. You’re dead.’ That’s what the doctors tell me.”

My dad didn’t chime in. (The docs guessed my dad had another two years.)

A gun dealer had sold Gershy the steer horn for $50, and now the gun dealer wanted the steer horn back. “Gun dealers is a funny ballpark,” Gershy said. “He could shoot me, but a deal is a deal. That’s the way it is.”

Gershy owned a shopping strip center on Mayfield Road in Cleveland Heights. (The building had Gable Pharmacy and Bass Lock & Key.)

Gershy’s price was too high, Toby said.

“If the kid is interested,” Gershy said, looking at me. “I’d come down.”

“It’s up to the kid,” Toby said.

“I’ll work with him,” Gershy said.

On the drive home from Gershy’s, Toby said to me, “Gershy has mellowed.”

Mellowed?  Gershy did not seem mellow to me — not part of the Donovan, mellow-yellow ethos.

“And he’s a gonif,” Toby said. “Don’t buy anything from him.”

I didn’t. Instead I bought an apartment building in Lakewood a year later. I bought the Lakewood building because I wanted to prove to myself I could pull the trigger — buy a piece of investment property — without my dad telling me what to do. My dad was dead. I was 36. I bought the apartment building from a man named Chisling. Odd name, right? I could have used some advice from my dad.

Yiddishe Cup is part of the Shavuot celebration 7:15-8 pm Tues. (June 11), Park Synagogue, Pepper Pipes, Ohio. We’re doing a 45-minute concert. For more info, click here.

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June 5, 2024   1 Comment

BIKING BACK

 
I live two miles from where I was born. Every 60 years or so, I bike back to Kinsman – the area my parents lived pre-1951. St. Luke’s Hospital — where I was born — abuts Kinsman. Kinsman used to be a mix of Italians, Jews and Slovaks.

The first time I left home on my own steam was when I biked to Cermak Drug at East 93rd Street and Union Avenue. This was about 1962. I went with Cermak himself — the son of Cermak, actually. The Cermak family lived across the street from us in South Euclid. John Cermak (around age 12 at the time) and I used red city map books to navigate to the city. What were those books called? Street Atlases. Cermak and I made it to the drugstore and back.

Last fall I biked to a different Kinsman drugstore to get a Covid booster. I couldn’t get it in my neighborhood, so I found a CVS at East 108th Street and Kinsman Road. I mapped out my route. It was like I was going to a foreign land. I biked by Benedictine High and boarded-up Audubon School and Woodland Hills Park, which is now Luke Easter Park. (Easter was a Cleveland Indians player.) The pharmacist at CVS said, “You’re the third person today who said he came from Shaker or the Heights.”

I’ve been through Kinsman many times in a car, but my recent bike thing was the most memorable excursion. I doubt I’ll bike through Kinsman again. I’ll go to Europe.

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May 29, 2024   3 Comments

WHAT SMELLS?

 
Last week Ms. Seif, a tenant, claimed she needed to move out because she’s allergic to the smell of Indian food, which was coming from the restaurant below her apartment. She is on the second floor, above the restaurant. Her text to me read: “I am allergic to the Indian restaurant spices. I keep smell it everywhere especially in the toilet.” She also said she went to her doctor, “and he asked me if I can leave my apartment.”

She phoned me:,“I’ve been stuck in bed for a month. It smells in the toilet.” She’s a foreigner and her English is a bit peculiar.

I said, “There are a billion Indians in India and they’re not allergic. One-eighth of the world! You were aware there was a restaurant when you moved in. We have a good venting system here.”

Ms. Seif has been a tenant for only three months, and she has been late with her rent twice, and she tried to install a bidet herself and ruined the coupling, so the toilet leaked into the Indian restaurant.

Four years ago, when the Indian restaurant opened, I was concerned about possible odors coming from the restaurant. That’s why we have a good exhaust fan. Nobody else has complained so far. Just her.

How can you be allergic to a smell? Don’t you have to eat something to be allergic to something? Or at least have particles in the air, like hay fever. Strange: Indian spices make you sneeze and put you in bed for a month.

Ms. Seif is 27. I’m probably going to let her out of her lease, but she definitely is not getting her security deposit back, and I’ll try to get an extra month’s rent from her. She’s got nine months to go on her lease!

. . . A relative of hers just called. He said she is recently divorced and has a kid, and he feels sorry for her.

I just stopped by her apartment. She seems friendly enough. I said, “Ms. Seif, to change the subject, you sound like you have a Spanish accent but have an Arabic name.” I was hoping she was Lebanese from South America, so I could practice Spanish with her. She’s Egyptian.

 . . . She moved. She left the place “pristine,” says the on-site building manager. She left the bidet. Our new rental ad will read “toilet has bidet attachment.” Maybe that’ll help rent the apartment.

I didn’t get the extra month’s rent.

What smells?


Seif is a pseudonym.

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May 22, 2024   1 Comment

I GOT A GIG . . .

 
I landed a gig. Other musicians wanted in on it. We played for a Russian immigrants’ club at the Mayfield Road JCC, in 1988. The Russians liked the waltzes. Screw klezmer. I had hired two musicians who played with the Kleveland Klezmorim, Alan Douglass and Joel O’Sickey; and a Swiss jazz bass player, Francois Roland.

For the next gig, I hired a black jazz guitarist. All his Dm chords came out like Dm7’s (jazz chords). His name was Jewish though: Larry Ross.

Those were the first two paying Yiddishe Cup gigs. The very first Yiddishe Cup gig was non-paying. We played on John Carroll University’s Jewish hour. The radio show host — a cantor, my cantor — couldn’t turn down a fellow congregant. Also, he often requested Jewish musicians stop by John Carroll to play on his show, and few did. John Carroll is a Jesuit school. Does Yeshiva University have a Catholic hour? The line-up for the John Carroll radio gig was Sandy Starr, fiddler from Indiana U.; Francois the Swiss; and me.

The rest is  . . . whatever.

Here’s my essay that was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Friday:

Keeping Faith with Israel

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — I’ve been hearing bad things about Zionism since at least 1975. That was the year I wore a sticker which read “I Am a Zionist.” I got the sticker at the El Al ticket counter at Ben Gurion Airport. The United Nations had just passed the Soviet-sponsored “Zionism is racism” resolution. (The U.N. revoked that conclusion in 1991.) I wore the sticker in Greece — my next stop after Israel. I was 25. In Greece, a slightly drunk Greek man kissed the sticker, mistaking it for the blue-and-white Greek flag.

Back home, several of my friends were into edgier causes than Zionism. One friend said he was going to Cuba to harvest sugar cane. He didn’t go to Cuba, but he talked about it. I took a Hebrew class at Hillel at Case Western Reserve University to pick up basic Hebrew expressions, which I then used in Israel. I had grown up attending The Temple (also known as The Temple-Tifereth Israel and Silver’s Temple) in University Circle, and hadn’t learned much conversational Hebrew. (The Temple in University Circle is now the Maltz Performing Arts Center.)

”The Temple” — the name — sounded snobby, and it was. One Shaker Heights boy got a ride to temple in a limo. The driver wore a chauffeur’s cap. The limo wasn’t a Rolls; it was a Buick station wagon. The Temple was founded in 1850 by German Jews. The Temple moved to Beachwood 25 years ago. The Temple is not snobby these days.

Last century, The Temple wore its Zionism elegantly, in a Theodor Herzl, well-bred, top-hat way. Abba Hillel Silver was the senior rabbi. He was God-like –or at least Moses-esque –with a mane of silver hair and a booming voice. Rabbi Silver — along with Rabbi Stephen Wise of New York — were the two most prominent rabbis in post-war America. In 1947, Silver addressed the U.N. General Assembly. Silver said, “We are an ancient people and though we have often on the long, hard road which we have traveled been disillusioned, we have never been disheartened. We have never lost faith in the sovereignty and the ultimate triumph of great moral principles.”

The Temple, in the 1950s, sometimes held Sabbath services on Sundays instead of Saturdays, in a nod to their congregants’ acculturation into mainstream Christian-dominated America. My family put out Easter eggs, and I got Christmas presents. (No Christmas tree, though.) On the Jewish High Holidays, my mother wrote to my teachers: “Please excuse Bert’s absence from school due to religious observances.”

In the run-up to the 1967 Six-Day War, my parents attended an Israel Bond rally for the first time. They, and a lot of other Jews, thought there might be a second Holocaust. But after the quick Israeli victory, my parents began to utter “Jew” — the word — in public places in, for instance, restaurants, not caring whether other diners overheard them. In 1967, several of my high school friends wore “Jewish Power” buttons, purchased via mail order from a hippie button shop in Greenwich Village. I didn’t wear the button. The button-wearing kids had grown up in the Jewish section of South Euclid, near Cedar Center, not with the Italians like I had, closer to Mayfield Road. That Italian bread at Alesci’s, on Mayfield Road, was my go-to purchase on my walks home from elementary school.

My “I Am a Zionist” sticker is long gone, but I recently picked up a Jewish-star pin at a benefit for the American Friends of Magen David Adom (Israel Red Cross). I have played klezmer music at many community events and dozens of Israeli Independence Day celebrations. This year’s Israeli Independence Day celebration is Tuesday, and my band will be there.

Non-Jews, intrigued by the music, sometimes come up to me after performances and ask me some tough questions: “Do Jews believe in Jesus?” “How do you say c-h-a-l-l-a-h?” “Is Israel going to make it?”

My answers are: a) Jesus was a great man, but Jews don’t consider him the son of God; b) “Challah” is pronounced with a guttural “ch,” like you’re clearing your throat; c) It’s always a bad bet to count the Jews out. We’ve been around a long time.

The Jewish community in Cleveland numbers about 80,600. A Cleveland State University professor, Samantha Baskind, recently wrote an essay about Cleveland’s Jewish community for Tablet, an online magazine. She mentioned how Cleveland sent 1,700 Jews to Washington on buses for a pro-Israel rally in Washington last year. The headline of the article was “Cleveland’s Jewish Community Punches Above Its Weight Class.”

Here in Cleveland, we hope and pray that Israel punches above its weight, too. On Tuesday, my band will play the tune “Am Yisrael Chai” for Israeli Independence Day. “Am” means “people” in Hebrew. “Yisrael” means “Israel,” but in a biblical sense, as in “children of Israel,” meaning the Jews of Israel, Cleveland, and everywhere else. “Chai” means “lives.” Put it all together and you get: The Jewish People Lives.

Bert Stratton, a frequent contributor, lives in Cleveland Heights and has also written for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He writes the blog “Klezmer Guy: Real Music & Real Estate.”

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May 15, 2024   2 Comments

DICK FEAGLER, COLUMNIST

 
Dick Feagler, the late Cleveland newspaper columnist, wrote about World War II, the Korean War and similar good-old-days topics. When he ran out of material, he made stuff up. He invented a fictitious West Side coffee shop where he and his buddies would hang out and reminisce. He didn’t tell his readers the coffee shop wasn’t real. The coffee shop’s non-existence was revealed on Feagler’s last day of work, in 2008, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer ombudsman.

Dick Feagler

I wrote the ombudsman: “Dick Feagler has been writing fiction all these years about characters in a made-up coffee shop on the far West Side? Hey, is there a real Heinen’s in Bay Village, or did Feagler make that up, too? I’m an East Sider. I need to know.”

The omsbudsman wrote back: “No matter what you think of the way he handled the boys in the coffee shop, Feagler has been the Mike Royko of Cleveland for longer than Royko was the Dick Feagler of Chicago, and we have been lucky to have him.”

True.

Royko, in Chicago, telegraphed his made-up columns with character names like Slats Grobnik and Dr. I.M. Kookie. Feagler’s coffee-shop people were Jim, Frank, and Loraine — a waitress. Funny, those names weren’t funny. Feagler should have asked one of his made-up character, Mrs. Figment, to nickname the gang in the coffee shop.

This major criticism aside (about Feagler making stuff up), he was very readable, good at nostalgia, and amusing. I miss the man’s writing. He died in 2018 at 79.

I ran into an alter kocker former journalist the other day who started name-dropping PD writers like they were old car models. (DeSoto, Packard, Studebaker) . . . Mary Strassmyer, Karen Sandstrom, Dick Feagler, Doug Clarke.

Here’s my addendum: Tom Green, Alfred Lubrano and Jim Parker. These guys weren’t around long but they could write. Terry Pluto is my favorite these days.

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May 8, 2024   3 Comments

UNCLE BOB

 
Uncle Bob sat in his backyard in Athens, Georgia, and talked about Cleveland. He told me he had had dreams about long-gone Cleveland streetcars. And he said he periodically checked out the Cleveland obits to see who died. (Bob was born in Cleveland in 1924 and died in Atlanta in 2011.)

Bob Kent, 1962, Mill Valley

Bob said he had wanted to join the Haganah. But for some reason that never happened. He did, however, serve during World War II and Korea. Bob was an artist and one of the first gringos to head down to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico — around 1949. San Miguel was an artists’ colony packed with former GIs. Then Bob taught art at Tamalpais High School (Mill Valley, California) in the 1950s and early 1960s. He said he saw Kesey in the Haight but never saw Kerouac in North Beach.

In his youth, Bob was a bit of a brawler and had a broken nose to prove it. He said he had regularly crashed Jewish weddings at the Cleveland Jewish Center on East 105th Street and the Temple on the Heights on Mayfield Road. High-class shuls. Bob grew up in Kinsman — working class. He married my mother’s sister Celeste Zalk, also of Kinsman.

Bob got a PhD while teaching high school in California and wound up as an art-education professor at the University of  Georgia. Athens — in the mid-1960s — was no San Francisco, but it was a job. Bob was adept at slinging the prof lingo: “existential,” “seminal,” and “cognitive.”

Bob changed his last name from Katz to Kent. I don’t know when. I think my father had something to do with the name change. Speaking of Kent, I knew a Winston who had previously been a Weinstein. Are there other Jews named after ciggies? Old Gold? (Herb Gold.) I miss cigarettes — the names. Tareyton, Benson & Hedges.

This isn’t the whole story of Bob. Bob’s children — my first cousins — know more, and they ain’t going to tell it!

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May 1, 2024   3 Comments