{"id":34598,"date":"2026-08-26T08:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T12:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=34598"},"modified":"2026-08-26T08:31:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T12:31:16","slug":"danny-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/26\/danny-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"DANNY BOYS"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI learned “Danny Boy” to play in Ireland, but nobody wanted to hear it there. I also learned “Irish Washerwoman,\u201d another non-hit.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I played\u00a0 \u201cDanny Boy\u201d at a nursing home in Cleveland. Big success. My friend Irwin says the tune was written by a Jew. Not true, Itchie. An Englishman wrote it. But a lot of Jews and Tin Pan Alley types helped popularize it.<\/p>\n

Irwin plays Irish music on occasion. I once saw him jamming at Horseshoe Lake with an Irish trad-music group. I\u2019m not very knowledgeable about Irish music, although I certainly appreciate the fact the lyrics are in English and not, say, Romanian<\/p>\n

I busked in Ireland last month. I was at a public park in the middle of nowhere: County Wicklow. There was a food-truck area, featuring Blaa Burger and ice cream. There were picnic tables. I often busk on holidays to meet people. The busking is most fun if people are seated and somewhat trapped. If they\u2019re walking by on their way to some place else, that\u2019s tougher. These folks were trapped, seated at tables, chomping on Blaa Burgers.<\/p>\n

When I asked an Irishman if he knew \u201cDanny Boy,” he said no. A second Irishman knew the tune; he\u00a0had spent 10 years in the US as a CPA.<\/p>\n

My swing tunes went over best. Also, a klezmer tune for Germans tourists. There were many teenagers at the park. I told them, \u201cI don\u2019t play for anybody under 19.\u201d They were glad. A Brazilian wanted \u201cIpanema.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wore a chai<\/em> necklace — a gift from former Yiddishe Cup dance leader Danny Ducoff.\u00a0 In Cleveland, Danny had said if I got punched by an antisemite in Ireland, I should compliment the assailant on his knowledge of Hebrew.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Only one person in Ireland reacted to my necklace — a Russian tourist, who ripped open his shirt to reveal a Star of David pendant. The Russian was on vacation. I didn\u2019t know Russians vacationed in the West. He told me he was one-eighth Jewish. One of his great-grandfathers had been Jewish. The Russian was Mark, and I went on and on about how Jewish “Marks”\u00a0 in America, at least in the 1950s, were usually “Marc.” I should have asked Mark more about Russia, and talked less about “Marc.”<\/p>\n

\u201cDanny Boy” — I like it. The melody. I also like Andy Statman\u2019s \u201cSong of Redemption,” which sounds Irish to me. All major-key pentatonic.<\/p>\n

If you’re ever in Ireland and want to jam with the trad bands there, you should learn up-to-date tunes. Not 1920s-era Irish-American classics like “Danny Boy.”<\/p>\n

Everybody knows a Danny. At yesterday’s nursing home gig, at least four people said they were related to a Danny. I bet even Danny Ducoff has a Danny relative.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Danny Ducoff (w\/ red maracas), 2004<\/p><\/div>\n

—<\/p>\n

Yiddishe Cup<\/strong>\u00a0 plays a free concert 2:30 pm SUN. (Aug. 30) at the Coventry PEACE Park stage, which is at the corner of Coventry Road and Euclid Heights Boulevard in Cleveland Heights. The concert is part of the Heights Music Hop. Bring a blanket or a chair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I learned “Danny Boy” to play in Ireland, but nobody wanted to hear it there. I also learned “Irish Washerwoman,\u201d another non-hit. Yesterday I played\u00a0 \u201cDanny Boy\u201d at a nursing home in Cleveland. Big success. My friend Irwin says the tune was written by a Jew. Not true, Itchie. An Englishman wrote it. But […]<\/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-34598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34598","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=34598"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34621,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34598\/revisions\/34621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}