Category — Klezmer

Yiddishe Cup played a wedding in a backyard in Connecticut where the floor partially collapsed.  The ground became soggy underneath the tent, which was built into the side of a hill.  The tent grid work — which supported the plywood floor — sunk.  About 50 semi-drunken partygoers did athletic hora steps and pogo-ing, and the floor buckled.

The groom’s mom told me to stop the music.

I  didn’t. You can’t stop the hora at a wedding; it’s bad luck for the marriage.  I said, “Two more minutes.”  She said no, and jumped onto the bandstand and yanked the saxophone from my mouth. Luckily, I wasn’t playing clarinet (different embouchure, more likely to damage my teeth). I said, “Don’t ever do that again!”  She was oblivious to me.   She frantically dialed her phone for a repairman.

The tent-repair crew arrived shortly, and during a break the crew crawled under the tent and put in extra supports.  The mom had the band playing only background music. We sounded like a string quartet at a funeral.  We didn’t want anybody to dance, because the floor would collapse even more.   We had traveled 500 miles to play tepid tunes like “Jerusalem of Gold” and “Tumbalalaika,” and have my ax yanked.  What a letdown.

The dancing picked up after the repair crew fixed the support grid work.  Lots of ruach (spirit), and no more assaults on my teeth.

***

SIDE B

Watch out,  literature here . . .

THIRTEEN JEWS
IN CONNECTICUT

I.

13 Jews are in line
for omelets

II.

A woman says
“Do I want the mushroom omelet?”
Is she talking to me?
No
To herself

III.

The beauty of the East Coast
Red maples in Connecticut
We’ve come a long way

IV.

Why do I imagine everybody at this wedding
is thin and wearing black?
Because everybody is thin and wearing black

VI.

“You’re from somewhere near Hungary,” I say
“Finland,” the woman says
“Don’t they share a language bond?”
“Distantly”
I’m on a losing streak with accents

IX.

Where is the euphony?
This band is loud
This band is Yiddishe Cup
Turn it down, guys!

XIII.

We are in the Berkshires
The leaves are falling
So are we

The tent and Yiddishe Cup, Lakeville, Conn., 2010

—

I wrote this op-ed, “Main Street’s Landlord,” for the New York Times, 9/30/12. (Illustration by
Rebecca Mock.)

—
Yiddishe Cup plays for Simchat Torah 7 p.m. Sun., Oct. 7, Fairmount Temple, and 7:15 p.m. Mon., Oct. 8, Park Synagogue. Cleveland.

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The Jazz Temple was a music club in a former Packard showroom at Mayfield Road and Euclid Avenue.   Coltrane played there.  Dinah Washington too.  Everybody played there.  The Jazz Temple was in business from 1960 to 1963.

I passed the Jazz Temple weekly on my way to Sunday school at The Temple, a Reform synagogue in University Circle, Cleveland.

Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver was the head rabbi at The Temple.  Rabbi Silver was  very prominent; he spoke at the United Nations, advocating for the establishment of the state of Israel.  Rabbi Silver’s son, Danny, was the assistant rabbi.  He played football at Harvard and blocked hard for his dad.

The Sunday school kids at The Temple were mostly from Shaker Heights.  One kid got a ride in a limo to shul.  The driver wore a chauffeur’s cap.

I couldn’t grasp how temple — the word — fit into a non-Jewish setting, like in “Jazz Temple.”  Was Jazz a religion too?  (Give me a break. I was 10.)

Years later, I met a couple ex-beatniks who had been old enough to go to the Jazz Temple in the early 1960s.  They had heard Trane and Ella.

The Jazz Temple was blown up in 1963.  Somebody didn’t like the club, or the owner, Winston Willis, a controversial black businessman.

At The Temple, the religious-school kids would attend the last part of the service and hear the sermon.  Rabbi Silver looked like God and talked like Him.

Today, at The Temple East in Beachwood, there is an Abba Hillel Silver memorial study.  The rabbi’s desk is laid out like he just stepped out for lunch. He died in 1963.

Rabbi Silver: Live at the Jazz Temple.  Interesting.

John Coltrane: Live at The Temple.  Another possibility.

A love supreme . . .

A love supreme . . .

—

SIDE B

PRECIOUS

In the arts, if you’re precious, you’re bad. Precious is the worst thing. Precious means you’re dainty and overly refined.

A friend (a former music critic) called all college a cappella music precious.

Harvey Pekar called Willio and Phillio — the Cleveland music-comedy duo — precious. (Willio and Phillio was around in the 1980s.) Willio and Phillio was precious — their stage name for sure. Willio (Will Ryan) went out to Los Angeles to work for Disney, and Phillio (Phil Baron) became a cantor in L.A. They were good, and probably still are.

Yiddishe Cup is precious occasionally. The musicians say “oy vey” too much on stage. I’ve tried to get my guys to stop. I can’t.

Peter Laughner, a Cleveland rocker, died from drug abuse and alcoholism at 24. He killed himself, basically. (This was in 1977.) He was not precious. He was dead — and funny — about art. He was in the Pere Ubu underground before Pere Ubu was famous.

Suicide doesn’t appeal to me for two reasons: 1) My wife would kill me if I tried it. 2) I want to attend my kids’ weddings and eventually meet my grandkids-to-be.

“Precious” is OK for grandkids. (“Grandkids” is precious.)

—

SIDE C

New construction — Side C — for Michiganders. . .

THE LODGE

Chester Ave., Cleveland, 2011

I drove to Rochester, Michigan, which is not as cool as Rochester, New York, but it does have a small-town charm.

I’ve seen Father Coughlin’s former church in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I’ve been to Detroit many times.

My wife, Alice, said, “Detroit has very long roads.”

She probably meant Woodward, Gratiot and Telegraph.

Detroit also has the Lodge. Elmore Leonard mentions the Lodge in his books, like, “The gambling casino, Mutt, you can’t fucking miss it, over by the Lodge freeway.”

A couple Cleveland freeways and bridges have names, like the Bob Hope Memorial Bridge, but nobody ever uses the names.

I stayed at a hotel near the Silverdome, which looked like a big pillow. (The stadium did.) A Detroiter told me the Silverdome sold for about $200,000. A stadium for the price of a California carport.

Who was John C. Lodge? Probably a labor leader. [No, the mayor of Detroit in the 1920s.]

Detroit is like Cleveland. Detroit has the Eastern Market; Cleveland has the West Side Market. Detroit has downtown casinos. Now Cleveland has a downtown casino.

Metro Detroit has a few more Jews than Cleveland. And probably more Arabs, Poles and Ukrainians. And more blacks.

People who wear Tiger caps are cool, as are Indians cap wearers.

What about Berkley, Michigan? Is that worth a visit?

Elmore Leonard eats at the Beverly Hills Café. I wonder if that’s part of the Beverly Hills Café chain, or an independent restaurant in Beverly Hills, Michigan.

I wonder if Elmore Leonard spends his winters in Detroit. I bet he doesn’t. He writes a lot about Florida.

I have some Elmore Leonard junk mail.

City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. That’s worth reading.

Maple means 15 Mile. Big Beaver is 16 Mile.

What about Oakland University? Does the university have Bobby Seale barbecue sauce in the cafeteria?

I live only three and a half hours from Berkley, Beverly Hills and Oakland.

—

Yiddishe Cup pulls into Motown Sunday. See us at Cong. Beth Shalom, Oak Park, Mich.,
2 p.m., Sept. 9. Open to the public. Concert info here.

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I see Hankus Netsky, the leader of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, every couple years.

He never remembers my name.

I don’t hold that against him.  His best greeting is “How is your Mickey Katz project coming?”  (Yiddishe Cup is at times a Mickey Katz cover band.)

I’m flattered.  Hankus remembers something about me.

How many musicians does Netsky see in a week?  A lot.  He teaches at the New England Conservatory, leads a well-known klezmer band, does music projects at the Yiddish Book Center, and plays in a world music group.

I’m Netsky to some people.  I don’t know these people but they know me. For example, Oberlin and Cleveland State students attend Yiddishe Cup gigs, looking for term-paper material, and I don’t remember who they are when they call me three months later.

Hankus Netsky

I wonder who says to Netsky:  “Sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

Nobody says that to Netsky.  Obama doesn’t, Romney doesn’t, Perlman doesn’t.  Sapoznik doesn’t.

Netsky, the Great One . . .

—-

Footnotes:
1. Hankus Netsky’s wife is Clara Netsky.  Say that.  (Don Friedman, Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, concocted this pun.)

2. Ring Lardner Jr. said a well-known person will not remember you unless you’ve been introduced at least five times.  (This Lardner Jr. factoid courtesy of  Mark Schilling.)

3. Hankus Netsky is a great guy.  One of the nicest, smartest, most considerate guys on the klezmer scene.  Seriously.

—
SIDE B

Qué pasa, Harvey Pekar? Vos machst du, Michael Wex? . . .

MÁS ACCLAIM

1.

Harvey Pekar’s reputation took off on December 31, 1979, when he got a rave in the national press — The Village Voice — for the first time. But he wasn’t happy.

He told me in 1980, “Movies, interviews — it all falls through. Maybe I’m bowed — my back is short. I’ve got to become more famous. If you’re not a doctor in this town [Cleveland], you’re stuck. The comic-book thing has picked up some, but it doesn’t mean anything in this town. I’d love a groupie to screw, listen to records with, and leave me alone.”

Harvey’s woe-is-me schtick was no schtick; he was down and out. Even after he became famous — after the movie American Splendor — he kvetched a lot: he had money worries, he said; his family scene was precarious; his health was tenuous; and his toilet handle jiggled. Harvey was the guy with the perpetual toothache who thought happiness was not having a toothache. He never ran out of material.

After American Splendor, the movie, Harvey sat on his porch, and fans from all over the world stopped by. He met interesting people without going out.

I went with a foreign fan to Harvey’s porch. The fan and Harvey BS’d for an hour, mostly about Harvey’s upcoming projects.

2.

Michael Wex was on Fresh Air, Terry Gross’s radio show, one time. Pekar was on Terry Gross twice.

Wex was on the show for his book Born to Kvetch. When Wex’s second book, Just Say Nu, came out, he tried to get on again, but didn’t make the cut.

Wex wrote on his website: “I don’t want a niche, I want an empire!” Funny — and true. In the arts, the more fame the better until you need bodyguards.

3.

I was standing in the prescription pick-up line at CVS with fellow AKs. The man behind me said, “Saul Ludwig, here. You played my daughter’s wedding. Not only that but we also saw you at Chautauqua.”

“I remember you,” I said. “Your daughter is Amy Shulman. I ran into her at a gig in Buffalo.”

“Shuman.”

Give me a break, Saul.  Do you know how many weddings I play? Shuman, Shulman, abi gezunt. I can’t even go to CVS anymore.

—
Joke, Saul, joke.

—

Mickey Katz

I wrote this article, “Mickele: Mickey Katz Lives,” for the Cleveland Jewish News, 7/27/12.  More than you want to know about Mickey Katz, probably.

Yiddshe Cup performs a tribute to Mickey Katz 7 p.m. Thurs., Aug. 9, at Cain Park, Alma Theater, Cleveland Hts.

Tix: www.cainpark.com, 216-371-3000, or 800-745-3000.

$20-22 advance. $23-25 day of show. Discount for seniors and students.

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Rabbi Samuel Benjamin — from my synagogue — was arrested by the cops and beat up by congregants.  Then he got fired.  He went off to Jerusalem.

He resurfaced stateside in Jacksonville, Florida.

This was in 1926.  Rabbi Benjamin fought the great Conservative-Orthodox civil war at the Cleveland Jewish Center, East 105^th Street, in the early 1920s.

Rabbi Benjamin oversaw the construction of a huge new sanctuary, complete with a swimming pool, and was supposed to keep the shul Orthodox.  He tried.  But the Conservatives wanted him out.  Punches were thrown.  One of the punchers was a certain Philip Rocker.  Check it out.*  The rabbi left town.

The Cleveland Jewish Center, aka the “Polish synagogue,” aka Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo, stayed at East 105^th Street for a couple decades, then moved to a park-like setting in Cleveland Heights.

I belong to the Heights shul — Park Synagogue.  I do not see any signs of civil war.  Very few congregants know about Rabbi Benjamin.

Rabbis don’t get in fights like they used to, either.  Does any rabbi don boxing trunks with the Jewish star?  I think there is a Russian rabbi in New York who does.  [Yes, Yuri Foreman. Photo: Foreman taking a punch from Miguel Cotto.]

My rabbi doesn’t fight — my guess.  If he does, he’s a welterweight.  He’s not big.

Some rabbis play basketball.  Several Cleveland rabbis played an exhibition basketball game at the Cleveland Cavaliers pre-game this month.  There was no score in ten minutes.

Next year for the pre-game, the rabbis should reenact the Conservative-Orthodox civil war of 1921.
—

* “Near [Rabbi Benjamin’s] house was Philip Rocker, son of Samuel Rocker of The Jewish World. He waited for the rabbi and when he saw him he attacked him and beat him up quite severely.”  From Jewish Life in Cleveland in the 1920s and 1930s by Leon Wiesenfeld, 1965. 
—
SIDE B
Jumping ahead about 90 years . . .

THE JEWISH WEDDING BAND WARS, 2009

The Orthodox Jewish (OJ) music scene is centered in New York City, where most of the OJ gigs are.

An OJ band not based in New York is called an “out of town” band, even if the band plays its own hometown.  There are a couple home-grown “out of town” OJ bands in Cleveland.

The Barry Cik Orchestra dominated the Orthodox Jewish Cleveland music scene in the 1980s.  Cik had yikhes (lineage), coming from a long line of distinguished Hungarian musicians.  I played a couple gigs with him.  His talented son Yehuda became an Ortho pop star.

Barry Cik was superseded in Cleveland by the Kol Simcha Orchestra in the 1990s.  Some bridal couples perceived Cik as not being frum (religiously observant) enough.  The Orthodox world, in general, was becoming increasingly more ritually observant.

Cik placed an ad in the Cleveland Jewish Times (no longer in existence) in 1991 that read in part: “I am as scrupulous in shimras Shabbos [guarding the Sabbath] as I can be, and I don’t believe that I’m any less Shomer Shabbos [Sabbath-observant] than most anybody else.”

Cik sometimes played for non-Orthodox Jewish simchas (celebrations) with mixed dancing — men and women dancing together.  Kol Simcha — the new band– typically didn’t play for mixed dancing.  Kol Simcha picked up a chunk of Cik’s frummer gigs.

Kol Simcha’s drummer got in trouble for using treyf (non-kosher) meat at his kosher Chinese restaurant, so he left town.  Still, Kol Simcha — the band — stayed in business.  The lead singer, Rabbi Simcha Mann, was a very good singer.

Several years later Simcha Mann’s expert keyboard player, Yosef Greenberger, put together a one-man band, which cut into Kol Simcha’s full-band wedding business.

Simcha Mann and Yosef Greenberger took their dispute to an unofficial beis din (house of judgment), where three rabbis decided Greenberger could keep his one-band and Rabbi Mann could have the full-band scene.  The two musicians agreed not to cut into each other’s turf.

This ruling held for 13 years, 1996 to 2009.

In 2009 Greenberger and Mann remembered the ruling differently.  Greenberger recalled the rabbis saying the ruling was void if new competition came to town.  Greenberger’s Jewish-law counsel, his toyan, backed him up in writing.  Mann disagreed.

New bands were playing Cleveland.  Yosef expanded to a full band.  Orthodox bands from Columbus, Ohio, and Detroit came through.  A young Orthodox musician started a new Cleveland Ortho band.

Yiddishe Cup joined the fray!  But Yiddishe Cup had three major flaws:

1. Yikhes (lineage/pedigree).  We had none.
2. We didn’t know the OJ repertoire very well.
3. Yiddishe Cup’s name was unorthodox.

For Ortho purposes, Yiddishe Cup became Shir Perfection.  (Shir is Hebrew for song.)   We had an Ortho singer who knew all the Ortho tunes.  We  held a couple rehearsals.  These get-togethers were secretly called Project O.  (‘O” for Orthodox.)  One musician called our project “Project Zero”; he didn’t like OrthoRock music and dropped out.

We didn’t get any gigs.  We thought we might get a couple.  For instance, Yiddishe Cup once played an OJ wedding for the daughter of an Orthodox blues harmonica player.  The dad, who didn’t blow on shabbes, sat in with us.

We were looking for Ortho gigs like that.

Still looking.

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Cleveland is in the middle of the cereal belt.  Shredded Wheat of Niagara Falls, New York, is to the east, and to the west is Kellogg’s of Battle Creek, Michigan.

Shredded Wheat moved from Niagara Falls years ago, but the cereal belt remains.  Cleveland is the buckle.

Clevelander Marty Gitlin just published a cereal encyclopedia, The Great American Cereal Book  (Abrams Images), featuring “hundreds of images of vintage cereal boxes and spokes-characters — Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle, Pop, and Lucky the Leprechaun.”

Test-marketed in Cleveland

I had a prospective store tenant who wanted to open a cereal store.  He opened down the street and went under almost immediately.  He was Cereal Central, aka Cerealicious.   Nobody in Cleveland wanted to eat cereal in a store.  (He also had a store in Columbus near Ohio State.  Apparently,  OSU students were willing to eat cereal in a restaurant.)

Most people like to eat cereal alone and not talk about it.  That’s my guess.

In my temple bulletin, no bar mitzvah kid’s profile reads: “Jacob is interested in cereal.”  More often it’s “Morgan enjoys  Sudoku and chatting online, and is a member of the recycling club.”

What is Morgan’s cereal?

Marty Gitlin and I want to know.

***

Musicians — at least one — eat cereal at home after late-night gigs.  Musicians can’t fall asleep after gigs.  Musicians’ heads are filled with fruit loops of “Simon Tov” and “Hava Nagilah.”  (Klezmer musicians’ heads, that is.)

Shredded wheat choices at 1 a.m.: Barbara’s shredded wheat or Quaker shredded wheat.  (Shredded wheat is not trademarkable.)  I mix Barbara’s with Autumn Harvest (Kashi).

—-
I wrote an “advice column” for the Ann Arbor Observer (February 2012).  Check it out: “Hit the Road, Jack . . . A dad’s advice.”   

Click here to hear what junior (Jack) is up to today:  “Louder Naftule.”  The latest in klezmer.

Drummer Jack Stratton, backed by clarinetists Merlin Shepherd and Lucy Stratton. KlezKamp, 1993. (Photo by Al Winn)

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If I didn’t lead a klezmer band, I might not hire one.  Yiddishe Cup might be too Jewish for me.

“Too Jewish” means anything — or anybody — more Jewish than oneself.  Example: Franz Rosenzweig, a German Jewish intellectual, said nothing Jewish — no matter how far out — was alien to him.  I tried Franz’s approach: I davened (prayed) with the yeshiva buchers in Boro Park, Brooklyn; drank schnapps at Telshe Yeshiva, Cleveland; and soaked in the mikvah (ritual bath) in Cleveland Heights.  Also, I read Rabbi Sherman Wine’s God-is-dead books.  I covered a lot of humentashn (bases).

Would I hire a klezmer band?

Yes.

I did.  I hired Yiddishe Cup three times — for my kids’ b’nai mitzvot parties.  (And I got a decent price.)

1. For my daughter’s bat mitzvah party, I also hired a troupe of hospital-therapy dogs for the cocktail hour.

2. For my younger son, we had a DJ party, plus the klez band party.  My son organized the DJ party.  He hired the DJ — himself.

3. My older son had a trivia quiz, plus the klezmer band. That worked out well.  He wound up on Jeopardy!

Yiddishe Cup plays, at minimum, 15 minutes of Jewish music, and we use a dance leader, so everybody knows what to do.

Naturally, the goys like us best.  Jews have hang-ups.

I know about Jews and hang-ups.  I have belonged to more shuls than the Pope.  I was Reform, then Conservative, then Reform, and now Conservative again.

My friends and relatives don’t always hire Yiddishe Cup.  But I go to their parties and have a good time.  The weddings are enjoyable; the bar mitzvahs are sometimes difficult.  The DJ and his “dance facilitators” can be loud and obnoxious.  The DJ announces, “The young adults will gather on the dance floor for a group photo.”

Get in the picture yourself, DJ.  You look 18.   And the “young adults” are not young adults, they’re animals.  Stow the glow sticks.  Bring out the cattle prods.

The optimal level of Jewishness is Yiddishe Cup with therapy dogs.

—

Yiddishe Cup plays  The Ark 8 p.m. Sat (Feb.4), Ann Arbor, Mich.   Here is an unrepresentative video from last year’s  show:

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I was back from Las Vegas, attending a Shaker Heights brunch.  Several people asked, “Did you play?”

Did Yiddishe Cup play Vegas?

I wish Yiddishe Cup had played Vegas.

I had been in Las Vegas on vacation with my wife, Alice, and older son, Teddy.   I had played blackjack.

Monaco Motel. The Strattons stayed here in '62. Caught Red Skelton at the Sands nearby.

That was my second trip to Vegas. My first trip was in 1962, when a Vegas waitress predicted I (then-12 years old) would return to Nevada for my honeymoon.  That waitress was very wrong.

I prefer outdoorsy vacations.

On my latest trip I won $7.50 at blackjack at the Jokers Wild, then quit.  I could hardly breathe in the Jokers Wild –- or in any other Nevada casino — because of the cigarette smoke.  I hung around the casino parking lot, waiting for Teddy and Alice to finish up.

My favorite Las Vegas attraction is the Red Rock Canyon, which is similar to Zion National Park, but only 17 miles from Vegas.

The Red Rock performs daily in an original revue that is F’n Crazy!   Be a Part of  It!  Best Show in Vegas for the Past 900 Years!

***

Scouting locations for a Las Vegas School of Klezmer

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Doctors like to complain how their pay isn’t what it used to be.  Another  gripe of docs is the increased paperwork.

But doctors do all right.  They are one of the few professions that still hire bands.

A side benefit for Yiddishe Cup is we sometimes get free medical advice at gigs.   At a Pittsburgh wedding, a doctor checked one of our guys for a hernia in the men’s room stall.

In Cleveland, a doctor asked me for an appointment.  He was a Washington heart specialist, considering a job at the Cleveland Clinic.  He played mandolin.  He wanted to know if Cleveland had a good quality of life.

I said yes.

He spent several years at the Cleveland Clinic giving me –- and others — the lowdown on HDL.  (The lowdown is there is no sure-fire way to raise your HDL.)

Yiddishe Cup occasionally gets gigs from immigrant doctors from South Africa.   One doc had a diploma on his office wall from the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa).  I thought “witch doctor” — like the doctor in the Mickey Katz parody “My Son the Knish Doctor.”  The Katz doc had studied at the Bwana Wana Yeshiva.

South African doctors are often Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) and plugged into Yiddish culture — what’s left of it.

***

I met a doc at Klezkamp who was atrocious on soprano sax and would repeat,  “I’m a doctor!  I’m a doctor!”  That worked.  It made him feel better.

He had a point.  He saved lives.  So what if he couldn’t play “Khasidim Tantz”?

Yiddishe Cup had a medical student in the band.  Dave Jaffe, guitarist/singer and Case medical student.  He lasted a year.  Med school and the band were too much.

Doctors often form their own bands because of their busy schedules.  These bands play a couple benefits a year and often have names like No Evidence of Disease.

I wish I had studied harder in Inorganic and Organic Chemistry.  I wouldn’t mind being a brain surgeon with a side interest in klezmer.

Turns out I’m a klezmer musician with a side interest in brain surgery.  This scares people.

I accept most insurance plans.

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I could get the Ohio klezmer vanity plate.

In Chicago, a musician from the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band has the Illinois klezmer.  I saw the Illinois plate on the cover of a Maxwell Street CD.

klezmer is taken in New York.  I saw New York klezmer in the KlezKamp parking lot.

Ohio klezmer is available, according to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Do I want klezmer?  What if I cut somebody off; they’ll know it’s me.  (I remember getting cut off by ezras.)

What if I’m checking out a potential tenant, and  I’m parked by the guy’s sleazy mini-market on West 25th Street, and he comes out and has an anti-klezmer ’tude.

I remember mazel on Fairmount Boulevard.

I’ve seen yenta.

I’ve seen gevalt.

On Ohio’s newest license plate, you practically need a microscope to find the OHIO. Why does the state devalue Ohio so much?  Ohio is pretty catchy compared to other states.   How would you like to live in Maryland?

oHIo.

That’s my gift to the BMV.

Ohio first cluttered its plates in 1973 with Seat Belts Fastened?  That innocent public service opened the doors to Birthplace of Aviation, Bicentennial 2003 and Beautiful Ohio.

OHIO in big block letters would work.  If the BMV ever goes retro, back to  block OHIO, 1950s-style, I would seriously consider klezmer.

I want a plate I can nail to the side of the barn and be proud of.
—
Footnote: Jewish license plates in California are well-documented, per this video:

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Ben & Jerry’s was supposed to hand out free ice cream at last year’s Yiddishe Cup concert in University Heights, Ohio.  But Ben & Jerry’s didn’t show up.  They received no reminder call from the city, supposedly.

Why would a private business, like Ben & Jerry’s, need a reminder call from the government?  Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

The University Heights mayor borrowed Yiddishe Cup’s microphone and told the crowd, “Get your tomatoes ready.  We’ve had a snafu.  There’s no ice cream tonight!”

Nobody booed.  There was no ice cream riot.  Klezmer crowds are polite.  The Russians have assimilated.

Maybe the city will pass out Klondike bars tomorrow night (for the 2011 Yiddishe Cup concert).  Easier to deal with — Klondikes.  And they’re kosher.  Just dole out a few cartons of Klondikes, like in years past.

Ice cream hondling (negotiating) is tough — on the band.   Last year’s show was our best because listeners weren’t continually streaming back and forth from the ice cream stand.  There was no ice cream stand.

I told the guys in the band to stop making ice cream references.  I said, “We might not be asked back if you keep talking about ice cream.”

Yiddishe Cup’s pianist, Alan Douglass, told the audience how happy he was they hadn’t left.  He said, “You mean you came to hear us?  You really like us!”  Let it go, Alan.

Tomorrow at University Heights, see Yiddishe Cup and the Klondikes.  That’s my prediction.

—-

Yiddishe Cup plays 7 p.m. tomorrow (Thurs. Aug. 25) at Wiley Middle School auditorium, 2181 Miramar Blvd., University Hts., Ohio.  The concert is in the air-conditioned auditorium, rather than on the lawn, due to outside construction.  Free admission.  Might be ice cream.  Might not, too.  Call 216-932-7800 for more info.

You’ll hear the premiere of Yiddishe Cup’s song  “Warrensville and Cedar Road,”  written especially for the Wiley concert.

Here’s a clip of Yiddishe Cup at the Wiley auditorium two years ago:

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A Jew Grows in Brooklyn, Jake Ehrenrich’s one-man Broadway show, was unadulterated nostalgia.  Jake even flashed photos of his bar mitzvah on the big screen on stage.

The show came through Cleveland recently.  The audience, for the most part, loved the sentimentality and obviousness of the play.  Did you know Jake and other Brooklynites played stickball?  Did you know Irving Berlin was born Isadore Balin?  Did you know Jews wrote many popular Christmas and rock songs?

This just in: Jews like baseball.

What about bark mitzvahs?  (Bar mitzvahs for dogs.)  Aren’t those (fake) events outrageous and cute?  Jake projected dogs in yarmulkes and tallism (prayer shawls) onto the screen.

There are acceptable levels of schmaltz and shtick.  Jake exceeded those levels.

I know, Yiddishe Cup is not exactly schmaltz-free.  And Yiddishe Cup gets negative reviews too.  We’re schmaltzy. We play “Romania” at the end of most of our shows.  That is the imprimatur of a klez shtick band.  But we also play original comedy tunes and regularly rip off the great Mickey Katz.

We would gladly add more high-brow material to our shows if we could play our instruments better.  But we wouldn’t add too much high-brow.

Some high-brow bands are monotonous, repetitive and monotonous.  No names here; I don’t want to alienate any of my musician friends.  OK, I’ll name one group . . .

Los Muñequitos de Matanzas.

These drum-crazed Cuban dudes play rhythm patterns on four drums for 45 minutes.  And that’s just the first set. Very little melodic or harmonic variation.  No chording instruments.  No talking between songs.

Yiddishe Cup talks.  We explain our tunes and ad lib asides. I might say, “Ladies and gentlemen, on keyboards, Winston Churchill.”  That’s class.

Jake Ehrenrich, in his show, lifted many old Jewish jokes. That was the best part of his show — his Catskills routine.  (And he’s a good singer and musician.)

Jake’s best joke:

Two Jewish men are walking by a church sign:

Abe says, “I’m thinking of doing it — converting.”

Murray says, “What? Are you crazy?”

Abe goes into the church and comes out ten minutes later.

“So?” Murray asks. “Did you get the $500?”

Abe says, “Is that all you people think about!”

Hurray for Oy Vey.  There’s a market.  And I want the T-shirt concession in the lobby.

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For “inside baseball” blog talk, please check out the post below.

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TAKE ONE:

How did you start Yiddishe Cup?

I got a gig, which other musicians wanted in on.

I made $10 on the gig, and paid the other guys $60 each.  We played for the Russian immigrants’ club at the  Mayfield Road JCC. The Russians liked our waltzes.  Screw klezmer.  I hired two musicians who had played with the Kleveland Klezmorim, and a Swiss jazz bass player.

On our next gig, I lost money. I used a black jazz guitarist.  All his Dm chords came out like Dm7’s (jazz chords). His name was Jewish, though:
Larry Ross.

How did you get your first gig?

We played for free on John Carroll University’s Jewish hour.  The radio show’s host — a cantor, my cantor — couldn’t easily 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 Celtic hour?)

The Yiddishe Cup radio gig impressed our first paying client.

The rest is video . . .

TAKE TWO:

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My basement — where Yiddishe Cup rehearses — smelled like a skunk.

The skunk was under the stoop by my front door, next to the basement.

I could hardly breathe in the basement.  How was I supposed to play clarinet?

Skunks are bad people.  The city won’t deal with them.  So I hired a private company, Critter Control.

The Critter Control  “technician” liked my collection of Jewish-star necklaces — Purim bling — in my basement.  He said he was Jewish. (I run into Jewish handymen more often than most people, I think.)  He said, “I don’t know much about the ritual and all that, but my mother was Jewish.”

“If you say you’re Jewish, that’s good enough for me,” I said.  And get rid of the skunk, please. He set a trap under the stoop.

And he sold me a can of Odor Assassin for $15.  Just three squirts of the spray got rid of the skunk smell in the basement.

When the Yiddishe Cup musicians came over for rehearsal that night, the basement smelled tangy and lemon-lime fresh, courtesy of the Odor Assassin.

But the skunk decided to spray, counterattacking during rehearsal. I thought Yiddishe Cup would disband.  I said, “Let me get out my Odor Assassin.  It’ll only take five years off our lives, at most.”

The guys agreed to the chemical battle.

Odor Assassin saved Yiddishe Cup’s rehearsal.  (No small thing. Some Yiddishe Cup musicians drive up to 35 minutes to rehearsal.)

Yiddishe Cup rarely endorses products.  To date: Golden Herring and all sardines.  Add Odor Assassin.

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1. My father had a game idea Let’s Blow Up the World.  I apportioned the megaton bomb ratings to various countries.  What kind of bomb did Paraguay deserve?  An M-80 firecracker?  Let’s Blow Up the World never made it past “high concept.”

2. Alan Douglass, Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, was a klezmer-revival pioneer.  He could have called klezmer “anchovy pear music” in Cleveland in the 1980s and people would have believed him. Alan let other musicians start the klez bands.  These others musicians got the extra money for being bandleaders.  What can a gentile do?  It wouldn’t have looked right for a goy — Alan — to lead a klez band.

3. Len Gold, a Cleveland ad man, wanted to make a Yiddishe Cup exercise video, Stretch ‘n’ Kvetch, to sell at temple gift shops.  Never happened.

4. Don Friedman, Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, was on What’s My Line in 1966. Don’s line (job) was testing drums for the Rogers Drum Co. in Cleveland.  (He was a drum tester, not a rum tester.)  Don probably could have had several more minutes of fame if he had asked Bennett Cerf to explain his name.

Don Friedman (L) with host John Daly

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5. Yiddishe Cup had a gig lined up for Fuerth, Germany, but the klezmer festival organizers there changed directors, or something, and we got canned.  I heard years later, through the klez grapevine, that Yiddishe Cup will never play Fuerth.  “They don’t like you!”  That’s the word on K Street.

Why don’t they like us? Maybe because I wrote the festival committee: “For three years we think — with good reason — we will be playing a concert in Germany.  Then, boom, it all goes kaput!”  I ended with a string of rage: “unscrupulous,” “shameful” and “dirty.”  I did not play the race card.  I did not call the klez-festival organizers anti-Semites.

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I had a custodian who enjoyed the Weather Channel and thought the end of the world was coming every day, via hurricanes or snowstorms. I don’t think she ever went outside.

Another employee was also fixated on the weather. He did a lot of indoor apartment painting and wanted every day to be 74 degrees like Costa Rica, so he wouldn’t sweat.

A neighbor of mine asked if I had a winter place in Florida.

I was surprised. I’m not there yet — retirement in Florida.

But I know a klezmer musician — a bushy-haired baby-boomer clarinetist — who is moving to Florida and taking up golf.  So anything is possible.

Maybe my friend will play a freylekhs (hora) by the water fountain on the 16^th hole.  (Mickey Katz did that.  His band got paid to surprise a golfer on his birthday.)

Some Clevelanders complain about the cold. Arizona versus Florida.  That is the discussion.

My wife, Alice, and I went to a wedding in Florida last spring, and a guest asked Alice, “Are you still in Cleveland?” Meaning “Are you nuts?  Do you like gray skies, slush and potholes?”

Another Cleveland woman at the wedding said, “The day I hit sixty-two I had to leave.”  She spends the winters in Scottsdale, Ariz.  A third Clevelander, originally from South Africa, preferred Florida over Arizona.  “I like the ocean,” she said.

Last month at a gig in Florida, I ran into a waiter who had lived in Florida and Arizona.  He said summer in Arizona is unbearable. Florida is bearable.

What about Ohio?  Ohio-with-layers in the winter and pleasant the rest of the year.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s new.   And check out this  video, “Albert Stratton Practicing his Comeback.” The clip is  an Ann Arbor song, taped at The Ark this month.

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“Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” by Louis Armstrong is probably the best song title.  It has action, smell and humor.

The worst title is “Rise Up to New Jewish Music.” A couple Jewish bands go for that sort of thing.  They are not playing klezmer — which peaked a while ago.  They are playing “New Jewish Music.”

Anything new is old.

Several newer klezmer bands don’t use klezmer in their names.  Like Shtreiml, Golem and the Kosher Spears.  (That last band is made up.)

“Yiddishe Cup,” the name, gets the job done around town, but doesn’t get us any gigs at Ashkenaz or other mohel’s-edge international music festivals.  “Yiddishe Cup” is bubbe’s procus (grandma’s stuffed cabbage.).

Before Yiddishe Cup released its latest CD, Klezmer Guy, I test-drove several album titles.  One was Jammin’ with the Salmon.

Smokin' salmon

Nobody understood it.  “Nobody” was my wife, Alice.  I didn’t run the title by anybody else.  I didn’t want the aggravation of more artistic input.  I’m not running a democracy.  I settled on Klezmer Guy. It gets the job done.

— Bert Struttin’

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Klezmer violinists often don’t get along with klezmer clarinetists. The animosity goes back to the late Chagall era.

In the early 1900s, recording engineers favored the piercing clarinet over the murky violin.  Studios had big acoustic horns the musicians played into.  The clarinet’s sound picked up better than the violin’s.  The clarinet’s ascendancy was quick, and the violin became passé and alter heym (old country).

Violinists are sensitive about this.

Violinists don’t like playing second fiddle.   They ask for “more violin” in the monitor mix and the house mix.  (The “monitor mix” is what the band hears on stage.  The “house mix” is what the audience hears.)

Truce time . . .

Let’s just forget about mikes. You don’t see them at New Orleans parades.  You don’t see them at bluegrass jam sessions.  Ban mikes.  Let lungs rule.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, likes to get to concerts early to talk about mikes with the sound mixologists.  Alan is Yiddishe Cup’s spokesman to the sound guys; if I would let the other band members chime in, we would spend the entire sound check saying, “more clarinet,” “more violin” and “more vocal.”  Every musician has a focus — himself.

I tell the sound techs, “Can you turn my moish up?”  (I like moish better than mike.  As for mic, that is totally absurd.  Fiction alert.)

Before Yiddishe Cup goes on stage, the sound guys — for no apparent reason — spin all the dreidels on the mixing board, and we sound like soup.

Throw away the mikes, musicians.  If you can’t hear yourself, so what? You shouldn’t have taken up violin.

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January is the big month for wedding planning.  Yiddishe Cup usually advertises in the Cleveland Jewish News “Weddings” supplement, which comes out next week.

Women ponder dresses, make-up and plastic surgery.  There are also ads for face lifts.  The face lift ads are for mothers of the brides, presumably.

There isn’t much talk about music in the wedding mag supplement.  It’s more about dresses, flowers, rings and gifts for the bridal party.  Destination weddings are another major topic.

The wedding bands in the CJN supplement are usually of a certain type: sexy female lead singer, black male singer, plus a lot of horns and guitars.

Then there’s Yiddishe Cup (we place a small ad): no females, no blacks and a lot of Jews.

A lot of Jews can’t stand a lot of Jews.  The majority of Jews want just a few minutes of “Hava Nagila” at a wedding.  They want half a Nagila.

A prospect asked for a five-minute hora.  I told her a Yiddishe Cup hora has to be at least 10 minutes.

She said, “In that case, I’ll give my DJ a CD for a five-minute hora.”

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Not all musicians have gigs on New Year’s Eve.

A lot of would-be partiers stay home for a quiet evening, or they go to the movies. There aren’t that many gigs.  The era of the fraternal organization New Year’s Eve dinner dance is long gone.

Sometimes people eat special New Year’s Eve foods.  I know a family that eats lobster.  My family eats oatmeal on New Year’s Eve.  We learned that habit in Akron, Ohio.

Yiddishe Cup had a gig at First Night Akron for 12 years in a row, and occasionally my family stayed overnight at the Quaker Square hotel, which was in a remodeled Quaker Oats grain silo.  The hotel’s New Year’s Eve dish was oatmeal, served at midnight.

Yiddishe Cup didn’t play First Night Akron last year.  The event coordinator called and said, “We’re reducing our footprint.”

My wife, Alice, plus a Yiddishe Cup musician and his wife, made a small dinner and then we went to the movies.  Not memorable, except for the oatmeal.

Klezmer musicians around the country lamented the downsizing of First Nights. This kvetching started a couple years ago on a Jewish-music listserv. First Nights had been the rage in the 1990s but had become part of the scenery.  (Similar to klezmer music’s popularity arc.)  In the 1990s, the director of First Night Akron told me she had just been to a national First Night conference in Boston and the word was “get a klezmer band.”

Yiddishe Cup worked up to playing First Night Akron. We played Warren, Ohio, First Night a couple times prior.  (A good event.)

Last year I checked out First Night Akron’s program online. I looked to see if another klezmer band was playing. There was a Beatles tribute band, a blues band and a couple generic American acts.   That was gratifying.

Yiddishe Cup is back at First Night Akron this year.  “Raisins and Oatmeal.”  That will be our opening song. No, it won’t. The tune doesn’t exist. We’ll open with
“Shalom Aleichem” — the version made popular by  Shmuel Brazil and Regesh.

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Yiddishe Cup plays First Night Akron this Friday., 7:30 p.m.
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Sports fans, please see the post below too.

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The highest paid Jewish communal worker in America is Steve Hoffman, president of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland — a united charities for Jews. Hoffman makes $687,000 a year.

He makes more than double the Atlanta federation president’s salary; 86 percent more than the Detroit chief; 56 percent more than the Chicago president; and more than the boys in New York.  [Source: Forward]

This gives Cleveland Jews another excuse not to give tzedakah (charity).  Donors want reasons not to give.

“That’s disgusting. He should be in private industry,” said a friend of mine.

Another friend stopped giving to the federation because a volunteer called and asked my buddy to up his pledge. My friend didn’t like the personal touch; he stopped giving altogether.

I asked the federation to switch my pledge solicitor.  I was in the federation’s real estate division — where the heavy-hitters are — and I didn’t want a phone call from an owner of a “lifestyle” shopping center, on principle. Now I have a friend who solicits me.  And with email, it’s all pretty painless.

I give.

But when I read in the Forward last week that Steve Hoffman is making two cents for every dollar the Cleveland campaign raises, I had second thoughts on Hoffman’s two cents.  A sizable chunk of the federation’s annual $28.8 million campaign is going to Hoffman.

On the other hand, Hoffman is no doubt a capable executive, dealing with very finicky donors around the clock. He also oversees the federation’s enormous endowment and philanthropic funds. He was offered $687,000 a year and took it.  That’s not a crime. He’s probably a good guy. Just an overpaid good guy.

In my father’s day, the federation published an annual blue book that listed everybody’s contributions.  My dad was proud he was “anonymous.”  My former rabbi, Michael Hecht, differed.  Rabbi Hecht said it was best to attach your name to your contribution so peers would be embarrassed and/or motivated to give more.  (The bell rings . . . Rabbi Hecht vs. Maimonides.)

The best place to give — at least in the non-Jewish realm — is to the Salvation Army.  The Salvation Army is a religion.  The Sallies — the troops — are almost like nuns. The Sallies don’t spend much on overhead.  They are in the streets, doling out food.  And don’t forget about their brass bands.

Every year I write on my Salvation Army donation: “I’m Jewish.”  I got a call from the major once.  He didn’t mention the Jewish part.

The most ardent fund-raising drive ever, surprisingly, was at Klezkamp — the artsy klezmer convention.  A spirited 80-something New Yorker took center stage and asked for pledges.  He announced the pledges and checks . . . $18, $25, $36, $50.  A musician gave $5,000.  That was Gates-ian.  When all the pledges were counted, the speaker said: “Here’s something I learned from our Irish friends.  It’s called the waving o’ the green.”  He took a dollar from his wallet and waved it. Klezkamp volunteers with buckets circulated through the crowd to collect bills the audience waved back.

It was good theater, somewhat creepy, and somewhat effective.  A buck goes into the bucket. “Transparency” in action.  Nobody at Klezkamp was making $687,000 from that bucket.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s fresh paint.
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And win a free CD — One Ring Zero’s Planets — by entering Zeek‘s First Klezmer Liner Note Contest. Zeek is a Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. I wrote the rules for the Zeek contest. Click here to enter, or just to read the nutty rules.
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Yiddishe Cup plays First Night Akron (Ohio) 7:30  Fri. , Dec. 31.

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