{"id":32253,"date":"2024-10-02T07:44:24","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T11:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=32253"},"modified":"2024-10-23T09:34:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T13:34:13","slug":"i-dont-like-rock-n-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/02\/i-dont-like-rock-n-roll\/","title":{"rendered":"I DON’T LIKE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nThe Hollywood<\/strong><\/span> Palladium on Sunset Boulevard . . . I used to bump into Larry there. He always considered himself second-string to Guy Lombardo. Lawrence Welk \u2013 I miss him.<\/p>\n

I detest rock music. The Beatles\u2019 \u201cYesterday\u201d is good, and so are a couple tunes by Billy Joel. That\u2019s it. I miss Guy and Larry. And don\u2019t get me started on hip-hop.<\/p>\n

I play clarinet. Are you familiar with clarinet? Nobody plays it anymore. A friend of mine — a music teacher — tells kids not to play clarinet. There are no clarinet heroes to look up to these days, and the axe is too hard. There used to be Pete Fountain, but that was 50 years ago. It\u2019s a dead axe.<\/p>\n

I like the woody middle register of the clarinet — you can\u2019t beat it. The clarinet talks, and it says \u201cThis\u00a0 ain’t rock ‘n’ roll!\u201d<\/p>\n

Klezmer? <\/strong>What <\/strong><\/span>about it? Klezmer had a moment. Maybe it’ll come back. In the meantime I play standards at nursing homes, and not just in Cleveland. I’ve played the Century Village circuit in Florida. What does an 80- year-old man smell like? Depends.<\/p>\n

I talk to my audience before I play, like \u201cHow about those Guardians?\u201d Sports talk. I played with Goodman at the Music Hall in Cleveland. Benny and I traded eights. Wait, I\u2019m imaging that.<\/p>\n

Rock \u2018n\u2019 roll came. And I went. I barely survived. Luckily I got gigs on the cruise ships. Google \u201cBert Stratton.” I\u2019m a favorite on the Princess Line. I love the fun on the ships. Everybody forgets their troubles. I\u2019ve been all over the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"Have you ever been to the Hollywood Palladium? I have. Have you been to any ballroom? Are you familiar with the Aragon in Cleveland? I’m not talking about the Agora, the rock club. I had steady work. Then the money dried up . . . crazy rock \u2018n\u2019 roll.<\/p>\n

I have friends visiting Cleveland soon. Old chums. Stipulation: no tour of the Rock Hall. We don’t want to see kooks’ costumes.<\/p>\n

I once bumped into Lawrence Welk in Detroit. He had just signed with Dodge for a TV show. He was jumpy. He said, \u201cGuy had a TV show and it was a flop. I don\u2019t know.”<\/p>\n

I like Larry. My grandkids don\u2019t know from Lawrence Welk. My kids don\u2019t know either.<\/p>\n

One more<\/strong> <\/span>thing . . . And this is crazy. I met Al Jolson. He told me I need to talk to the audience before I blow a single note. “Say something!” Jolson said \u201cThen you\u2019re on first base. The audience is relaxed, thinking \u2018he\u2019s a nice guy.\u2019\u201d Jolie also told me to add humor to my shows. He said I could hem and haw all I want — stumble around verbally. Just communicate. \u201cPeople don\u2019t want robots,\u201d Jolie said.<\/p>\n

I have fans. Jack Saul (a record collector in Cleveland), for instance. He loves my work. Unfortunately he\u2019s dead. A lot of my fans are dead. They count, particularly if they don’t like rock ‘n’ roll.<\/p>\n

—
\n
\nfiction. (Thirty-three percent of this is stolen from Irving Fields’ as-told-to autobio, The Pianos I Have Known.)<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The Hollywood Palladium on Sunset Boulevard . . . I used to bump into Larry there. He always considered himself second-string to Guy Lombardo. Lawrence Welk \u2013 I miss him. I detest rock music. The Beatles\u2019 \u201cYesterday\u201d is good, and so are a couple tunes by Billy Joel. That\u2019s it. I miss Guy and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake-profiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32253","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=32253"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32296,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32253\/revisions\/32296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}