{"id":34387,"date":"2026-06-17T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=34387"},"modified":"2026-06-17T09:28:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:28:03","slug":"bug-me-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/17\/bug-me-please\/","title":{"rendered":"BUG ME, PLEASE"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nSome musicians hear every microtone and nuance. They say \u201coh, he\u2019s flat,\u201d or \u201cshe\u2019s pitchy.\u201d Come on.<\/p>\n

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, hears everything. He tells me to \u201cpush in\u201d my saxophone mouthpiece, because I\u2019m often flat. (More on Alan later.)<\/p>\n

I’m bringing back an old Yiddishe Cup tune from 2009. We originally learned the piece, “Sam Malik’s Tune,” from the New Shtetl Band, who learned it from one Sami Malik, a Macedonian village musician.<\/p>\n

I tried the tune the other day and didn\u2019t nail it right off. I figured out the first section, but not the second. I had forgotten a lot. Which reminds me, clarinetist Sid Beckerman, at a Klezkamp workshop, once said, \u201cI haven’t played this tune in\u00a0 20 years,\u201d and then nailed some obscure freylekhs<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I didn’t nail “Sami Malik’s Tune.” But I want to perform it at Cain Park. [Alma Theater, Cleveland Heights. 7:30 Sun., June 28. Free.]<\/p>\n

Alan listened to the tune, which he hadn’t heard in 16 years, and nailed it. He remembered every nuance. And \u201cSami Malik’s Tune\u201d is not \u201cMary Had a Little Lamb\u201d; it\u2019s a strange Macedonian tune. Or maybe Albanian.<\/p>\n

Jazz pianist Joey Hunter once said about Alan: “he hears everything.\u201d Alan, on gigs, knows when the other musicians are off, but he doesn\u2019t bug them, except me., because I ask him to bug me. Why not? I don\u2019t want to sound bad if I don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

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(L) Alan Douglass and Bert Stratton, Cain Park, 2022. (Photo by Lloyd Wolf)<\/p><\/div>\n

—<\/p>\n

\n
The Cain Park PR for Yiddishe Cup’s upcoming Cain Park concert [ 7 pm Sun., June 28] is somewhat amusing. I’ll paste the “copy” here:<\/span><\/div>\n
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 <\/p>\n

\n
The Cleveland-based band has performed at the Chautauqua Institution (NY) Amphitheater, Brooklyn (NY) Center for the Performing Arts, and many times at Cain Park. The band has also made five excursions to Florida, four runs to Missouri, and three to Texas, but who\u2019s counting? Also, the band has played internationally \u2014 the Windsor, Ontario JCC! The band\u2019s music has been used in the film Harley, Son of David<\/em>, about Jewish motorcyclists, and has been featured in an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Some musicians hear every microtone and nuance. They say \u201coh, he\u2019s flat,\u201d or \u201cshe\u2019s pitchy.\u201d Come on. Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, hears everything. He tells me to \u201cpush in\u201d my saxophone mouthpiece, because I\u2019m often flat. (More on Alan later.) I’m bringing back an old Yiddishe Cup tune from 2009. We originally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34387","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=34387"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34489,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34387\/revisions\/34489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}