{"id":10647,"date":"2013-02-06T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T13:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=10647"},"modified":"2013-10-17T16:35:39","modified_gmt":"2013-10-17T20:35:39","slug":"yikhes-lineage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/06\/yikhes-lineage\/","title":{"rendered":"MISSISSIPPI BUBBE AND
THE XYLOPHONIST"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I look<\/strong><\/span> for musical yikhes<\/em> (lineage\/pedigree) wherever I can find it.\u00a0 My grandmother played piano at a white Baptist church in Yazoo City, Mississippi.\u00a0 Not bad.<\/p>\n

This Mississippi bubbe — <\/em>Ida Kassoff Zalk — had a brother, Earl Kassoff, in Cleveland.\u00a0 Earl was a drummer, xylophonist and house painter.\u00a0 He went by the stage name Earl Castle, and led bands in the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Xylopainter<\/p><\/div>\n

In the 1990s —<\/strong><\/span> when I first began looking for musical yikhes<\/em> — I couldn\u2019t find much info on Earl. \u00a0I talked to a couple relatives.\u00a0 Earl didn\u2019t leave behind sheet music or tune books.\u00a0 He died in 1969.<\/p>\n

At a Yiddishe Cup gig, an elderly musician schmoozed with me.\u00a0 I asked him if he knew Earl Kassoff.\u00a0 Yes, he\u00a0 remembered Earl. \u00a0The schmoozer was Harold Finger, age 77.\u00a0 He had made a living playing clarinet and sax during the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n

I took my tape recorder to Harold\u2019s apartment and interviewed him. He said there were \u201cfour or five bands that got the Jewish work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"I asked,<\/strong><\/span> “What bands?”\u00a0 He didn’t remember the names.\u00a0 “What were the most popular Jewish tunes?” I said.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cThe songs from the Kammen Book. That was the big thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kammen International Dance Folio, published in 1924, is still around.\u00a0 The Kammen book is to Jewish music what a sex manual is to sex. (Pianist Pete Sokolow makes this statement at most KlezKamp conventions.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kammensutra<\/p><\/div>\n

My Uncle Earl\u2019s<\/strong><\/span> band did mostly \u201cdance work\u201d — American music, Harold said. Earl worked the downtown theaters, as well as the Golden Pheasant — a Chinese restaurant where Artie Shaw started.<\/p>\n

Harold said he didn’t stick to the melody all the time. He did some \u201cfaking\u201d (improvising).\u00a0 Now he played clarinet with a community orchestra.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t do much jobbing anymore,\u201d he said.\u00a0 (Jobbing is gigging.)<\/p>\n

Harold died three years after the interview.\u00a0 I thought his kids might enjoy the\u00a0 interview tape, from 1992, so I called a Finger relative and left a message in the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t<\/strong><\/span> hear back.<\/p>\n

The relative should have called!\u00a0 Harold\u2019s wife was on the tape, teasing Harold about how he loved his saxophone more than her.\u00a0 Harold said, \u201cWhat? I quit playing music for you!\u201d
\n—<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\" Michiganders, come to the Klezmer Guy show at The Ark,<\/a> Ann Arbor, Feb. 15. 8 p.m. $20.\u00a0 Bert Stratton on clarinet and prose, <\/span>Alan Douglass on piano and vocals, <\/span>Gerald Ross<\/a> on ukulele and Hawaiian lap steel guitar. Prose pieces will contain words such as “Ann Arbor,” “Michigan”\u00a0 and “Rudy Tomjanovich.”
\n<\/span>
\n—<\/span>
\nMore on Mississippi Ida — my bubbe<\/em> — later.<\/span>\u00a0 Maybe not.<\/span>
\n —<\/span>
\nYikhes<\/em> update.\u00a0 Check out the latest from Jack Stratton’s band, Vulfpeck.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n