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Holy grail <\/strong>level? Yes.<\/span> You are about to see vintage <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>footage of Mickey Katz playing klezmer clarinet on TV in 1973. <\/span><\/span>(D<\/span><\/span>etails below.)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n For newbies: Katz — besides playing\u00a0terrific clarinet — wrote and sang comedic songs like <\/span><\/span>“Duvid Crockett,” “How Much is that Herring in the Window?” and “16 Tons (of Hard Salami).” He was a huge success. OK, make that \u201ca moderate success,” but big with yids in the 1950s and 1960s. Katz played on the Goodtime<\/em> boat in Cleveland. He played at the gambling casinos in suburban Cleveland in the 1930s and at the Alpine Village — Herman Pirchner’s downtown club — during the World War II. Katz moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles after the war. Joel Grey is Mickey Katz’s son.<\/p>\n Katz melded klezmer music with Jewish comedy. He almost single-handedly popularized that shlub-genre. My band, Yiddishe Cup, is, in a way, a Mickey Katz tribute band. Mickey Katz is my Mickey Mantle.<\/p>\n The 3:27-minute<\/span><\/strong> video, below, is the totality of all Katz klezmer footage on the internet. There ain’t none else. It’s as if somebody suddenly came up with film of Naftule Brandwein. (Ah, forget it — unless you’re a klezmer musician.) Ladies and gentlemen, this is the missing link.\u00a0This clip is a musical and cultural lodestone. It’s the visual link between pre-war klez and the klez revival of the late 20th century.<\/p>\n This vid was sequestered in my closet for 17 years. It escaped today!<\/p>\n