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.


 
 

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY,
KLEZ-STYLE

I followed klezmer clarinetist Sid Beckerman around KlezKamp — the annual music conference in the Catskills. Sid talked to me. Big deal? Yes. Sid was paid staff, and I was just a paying student. Staff had a lot of demands on their time.

Sid had no ego. Sid was “discovered” by klez revivalists and made his first record at age 70. (He died in 2007 at 88.) Sid had a proprietary book of his own tunes. The book was nicknamed “the sheets,” short for “sheet music.” Sid’s sheets were guarded — quarantined — by pianist Pete Sokolow, who had transcribed the tunes.

Sid Beckerman 1998

Sid Beckerman 1998

I wanted a copy of the sheets, so I gave Pete a xerox of a 1938 magazine article about “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn,” hoping to get in Pete’s good graces. Pete was not impressed. He said, “The sheets? What sheets? I’m so busy. I’m working up an arrangement for fifteen people. What did Sid say?”

Sid said, “What transcriptions?”

I offered Sid $20 for the sheets, which he turned down.

A year later, 1991, the sheets came out as the Klezmer Plus! Folio by Tara Publications. Everybody could now buy the sheets. Pete and Sid had just been protecting their intellectual property.

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1 comment

1 Ken Goldberg { 07.03.19 at 9:24 am }

Can’t trust Klezmer types….

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