DANNY BOYS

 
I learned “Danny Boy” to play in Ireland, but nobody wanted to hear it there. I also learned “Irish Washerwoman,” another non-hit.

Yesterday I played  “Danny Boy” at a nursing home in Cleveland. Big success. My friend Irwin says the tune was written by a Jew. Not true, Itchie. An Englishman wrote it. But a lot of Jews and Tin Pan Alley types helped popularize it.

Irwin plays Irish music on occasion. I once saw him jamming at Horseshoe Lake with an Irish trad-music group. I’m not very knowledgeable about Irish music, although I certainly appreciate the fact the lyrics are in English and not, say, Romanian

I busked in Ireland last month. I was at a public park in the middle of nowhere: County Wicklow. There was a food-truck area, featuring Blaa Burger and ice cream. There were picnic tables. I often busk on holidays to meet people. The busking is most fun if people are seated and somewhat trapped. If they’re walking by on their way to some place else, that’s tougher. These folks were trapped, seated at tables, chomping on Blaa Burgers.

When I asked an Irishman if he knew “Danny Boy,” he said no. A second Irishman knew the tune; he had spent 10 years in the US as a CPA.

My swing tunes went over best. Also, a klezmer tune for Germans tourists. There were many teenagers at the park. I told them, “I don’t play for anybody under 19.” They were glad. A Brazilian wanted “Ipanema.”

I wore a chai necklace — a gift from former Yiddishe Cup dance leader Danny Ducoff.  In Cleveland, Danny had said if I got punched by an antisemite in Ireland, I should compliment the assailant on his knowledge of Hebrew.

Only one person in Ireland reacted to my necklace — a Russian tourist, who ripped open his shirt to reveal a Star of David pendant. The Russian was on vacation. I didn’t know Russians vacationed in the West. He told me he was one-eighth Jewish. One of his great-grandfathers had been Jewish. The Russian was Mark, and I went on and on about how Jewish “Marks”  in America, at least in the 1950s, were usually “Marc.” I should have asked Mark more about Russia, and talked less about “Marc.”

“Danny Boy” — I like it. The melody. I also like Andy Statman’s “Song of Redemption,” which sounds Irish to me. All major-key pentatonic.

If you’re ever in Ireland and want to jam with the trad bands there, you should learn up-to-date tunes. Not 1920s-era Irish-American classics like “Danny Boy.”

Everybody knows a Danny. At yesterday’s nursing home gig, at least four people said they were related to a Danny. I bet even Danny Ducoff has a Danny relative.

Danny Ducoff (w/ red maracas), 2004

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Yiddishe Cup  plays a free concert 2:30 pm SUN. (Aug. 30) at the Coventry PEACE Park stage, which is at the corner of Coventry Road and Euclid Heights Boulevard in Cleveland Heights. The concert is part of the Heights Music Hop. Bring a blanket or a chair.