{"id":1549,"date":"2010-06-02T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=1549"},"modified":"2012-03-26T17:50:36","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T21:50:36","slug":"crossover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/02\/crossover\/","title":{"rendered":"CROSSOVER"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>Everybody in world music<\/strong><\/span> wants to be the next crossover act.<\/p>\n<p>Eddie Blazonczyk, the Chicago Polish polka musician, tried. And then there was Ruben Blades, the Panamanian salsa guy.<\/p>\n<p>In klezmer, nobody has done it lately.<\/p>\n<p><em>Lately<\/em> is the key word.\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #008000;\">[Continue by clicking on video]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nsUsO1g0pJQ?wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>CLOSED CAPTION.\u00a0 6\/4\/10.\u00a0 The paragraphs below are what the man in the video is saying, more or less, prior to playing &#8220;Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn&#8221; . . .<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>In 1938 the Andrews Sisters<\/strong><\/span> made \u201cBay Mir Bistu Sheyn\u201d (By Me You Look Grand) the number one song on the American pop charts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBay Mir Bistu Sheyn\u201d is <em>the <\/em>tune in the klezmer concert repertoire.<\/p>\n<p>Yiddishe Cup was playing a concert in Detroit &#8212; just barreling through a medley of esoteric klezmer fusion &#8212; when I called an audible (changed the set list) to play \u201cBay Mir Bistu Sheyn.\u201d\u00a0 Bingo, the mostly elderly crowd was right back with us.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>My daughter, when she<\/strong><\/span> was little, called the song \u201cMy Bear, Mr. Shane.\u201d\u00a0 My youngest son performed it at 3 \u00bd. [Check out the boy\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=198252245877741240#\">video<\/a>.]\u00a0 Jazz musicians call the tune \u201cMy Beer is Duquesne.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Only Jews think \u201cBay Mir Bistu Sheyn\u201d is Jewish.\u00a0 Everybody else thinks it\u2019s German or plain nothing.\u00a0 (The spelling on the original record label was \u201cBei Mir Bist du Sch\u00f6n.\u201d)\u00a0 I lectured a group of gentile senior citizens in Westlake, Ohio.\u00a0 I asked if they knew \u201cBay Mir\u201d was Jewish.\u00a0 None did.<\/p>\n<p>Sholom Secunda wrote the melody to \u201cBay Mir Bistu Sheyn\u201d for a Yiddish play in 1932.\u00a0 Then he sold the rights to a music publishing house, the Kammen Brothers, for $30.<\/p>\n<p>Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin put English words to the Yiddish version.\u00a0 The tune became a huge hit for the Andrew Sisters.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>Secunda supposedly had<\/strong><\/span> a conversation with a shoeshiner, who was whistling \u201cBay Mir\u201d in 1938:<\/p>\n<p>Secunda: \u201cThat song is making quite a hit now, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<br \/>\nShoeshiner: \u201cHit ain\u2019t the word.\u00a0 It\u2019s a riot.\u201d<br \/>\nSecunda: \u201cI guess the guy who wrote that must be making plenty of dough.\u201d<br \/>\nShoeshiner: \u201cNot him.\u00a0 That dope sold his song for thirty bucks.\u201d<br \/>\nSecunda:\u00a0 \u201cAnd that isn\u2019t the half of it . . .\u201d **<\/p>\n<p>**From the Camden (N.J.) <em>Courier-Post<\/em>, Jan. 26, 1938.<\/p>\n<p>Secunda had to split the $30 fee with the original Yiddish lyricist, Jacob Jacobs.<\/p>\n<p>A Jewish tune crosses over to the big-time about once a century.\u00a0 That\u2019s my guess.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking the next hit will be the Hip Hop Hoodios\u2019 \u201cMy Nose is Large and You Know I\u2019m in Charge.\u201d<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #008000;\">&#8212;-<br \/>\nOn Sat. June 12, Yiddishe Cup plays the best event in Cleveland, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.universitycircle.org\/uci.aspx?page=122\">Parade the Circle<\/a>. We\u2019re not marching in the parade; we\u2019re playing a post-parade concert at 1 p.m. on Wade Oval. Gonna be a massive bar mitzvah party.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everybody in world music wants to be the next crossover act. Eddie Blazonczyk, the Chicago Polish polka musician, tried. And then there was Ruben Blades, the Panamanian salsa guy. In klezmer, nobody has done it lately. Lately is the key word.\u00a0 [Continue by clicking on video] CLOSED CAPTION.\u00a0 6\/4\/10.\u00a0 The paragraphs below are what the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1549"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8790,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions\/8790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}