Posts from — February 2024

 
In Mickey Katz’s autobiography, Papa, Play For Me, Katz tells some off-color jokes, like “Tailor, I have a problem. I have five penises. Will the pants fit?” The tailor says, “Like a glove.” Then Katz name drops: “I was part of a regular bridge game consisting of George Burns, Dave Siegel, George Raft, and myself. Occasionally Chico Marx.”

Katz kvells about his “creative wife” Grace, and sons Joel and Ron.

Fine, but the best stuff in the book is about Cleveland. Katz mentions many Cleveland landmarks. The first half of the book — before Katz moved to L.A. in 1946 — reads like an unofficial Jewish Encyclopedia of Cleveland. For instance, Katz mentions a musician who went to an East 105 Street bagel shop at 1 a.m. in 1935 and demanded a half-dozen fresh bagels, which he ate next door at Solomon’s deli (along with a corned beef sandwich) because Solomon’s was out of bagels. That’s detail.

Mickey Katz 1959

In 1977, when the book came out, Katz was somewhat famous because his son Joel Grey was huge in Cabaret then. The first line in the book has the words “my son Joel Grey.” (The ghost writer of Katz’s autobio is Hannibal Coons, who was the main writer for the Addams Family.)

A couple decades ago, I took some Katz Yinglish (Yiddish-English) lyrics to a Workmen’s Circle meeting for translation. The translators – generally elderly Yiddishist purists — considered Katz shund (literary trash). Songs like “K’nock Around the Clock” and “Nudnik the Flying Shisl” (Pest the Flying Saucer) were beyond the pale.

I once lectured on Katz at the International Association of Yiddish Clubs convention in Cleveland (2007), and I met two musicians who had worked with him: cantor Hale Porter and singer Tanja Solnik. They had appeared with Katz in Hello Solly, a 1960s off-Broadway show. I asked them what Mickey had been like because I couldn’t tell from the autobio. I didn’t get a good answer from Tanja because she had been only 8 when she performed with Katz. She had been “Little Tanja.” Hale Porter didn’t say much memorable either. But it was interesting — at least for me — to simply meet people who had giggled with Mickele.

Myron “Mickey” Katz (1909 – 1985): Clevelander, clarinetist, comedian.

Katz writes about playing clarinet on the Goodtime, the Lake Erie cruise boat. (I’ve been on the Goodtime, and so has every other Clevelander.) The Goodtime was owned by the Seeandbee line. The “See” is for “Cleveland” and the “bee” is for “Buffalo.” Does that interest you?

 
FLOOR

I rented to a yoga lady. I went halves with her on a laminate floor for her storefront. She did the legwork, hired the installer, and sent me a bill. I expected a copy of the installer’s invoice, but I got the yoga woman’s note as to what I owed.

I did a Reagan trust-but-verify; I called the floor installers, whom I knew from way back. They had rented a store from me down the street. I hadn’t talked to them since they had moved out. The flooring woman said the numbers on the invoice were right, and she told me her husband had died of cancer at 54 in 2008. I said, “I can still picture you and Rick walking around the [flooring] store with sweaters on, freezing.” The store was on the end of the heating line and didn’t warm up too quickly.

The flooring woman mentioned my father, whom she remembered and had a good impression of. That always gets me –when people remember my dad. Not too many people do; he died in 1986. My dad had had a real affinity for young entrepreneurs: flower shop guys, flooring stores, beauty parlor owners, resale shops, bars, you name it.

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I had an essay in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Feb. 16. The story might have been paywalled. Here’s the whole thing:

SHY NO MORE

Bert and Toby Stratton, 1957, Victory Park School, South Euclid, Ohio

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — My family used to be shy. Then, in the 1950s, my father enrolled in a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking and became less shy. When I was in my 20s, my father bought me Carnegie’s book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” and I became less shy, too. When my children grew up, I bought them the book. Carnegie’s book, written in 1936, holds up. Carnegie’s message is, essentially, it’s not about you. He wrote “arouse in the other person an eager want.” Let the other person talk her head off, and you listen. Warren Buffet displayed his Carnegie-course diploma on his office wall.

Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan wrote that shyness is partially inherited. There is a brain marker for shyness. However, if you are willing to work on shyness, you can become less shy.

I’m an extrovert now in my old age. When I play clarinet at nursing homes, the audience members occasionally heckle me, and I welcome that. I actually relish it. One listener blurted out, “Shut up and play!” And I kept on talking – bantering about whatever seemed amusing. I typically poll the audience about their lives and tell anecdotes between songs. I like all kinds of interactions, short of violence.

I ask the nursing-home residents what high schools they attended, and which delis they like. Corky & Lenny’s and Jack’s Deli finished in a dead-heat for first. Then Corky’s went under. Now the residents and I try to create lists of defunct Jewish delis: Budin’s, Seiger’s, Solomon’s, Irv’s, Lefton’s, Sand’s and Diamond’s. Are there others? As for where everybody went to high school, Cleveland Heights High comes in first. (It used to be Glenville High. I play mostly Jewish nursing homes.)

My dad, toward the end of his life, became fearless and often sent back tepid soup at restaurants, and he once told floor sanders to re-sand floors that came out too wavy. (My dad owned Lakewood apartment buildings with wood-plank floors.) The sanders were off-duty policemen, and my dad wouldn’t pay until those floors were smooth. I was impressed my dad would go head-to-head with cops. The height of my dad’s boldness was when he was in the Cleveland Clinic dying of leukemia. He told the doctor, “I own this place.” My father owned a $10,000 Cleveland Clinic municipal bond.

A hardware-store owner in Lakewood once said to me, “Nobody is going to jew me down on that price.” This was in the 1970s, and I was in my 20s and very shy. I spent several minutes pacing the store’s aisles before reapproaching the owner. I said, “Bob, you know, I’m Jewish.” Bob didn’t know that. He didn’t know “jew” was derogatory. He apologized. No big deal, in hindsight.

Jack Stratton on his first gig, age 3 1/2, Beachwood Library, 1991

When my youngest child, a musician, finished college, he moved to California to try to make it in the music business. I told him to call Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish. I had gotten Joe’s number from a friend. Joe lived in California. My son said, “Who’s Country Joe?” Huh? Had my son never heard of Woodstock? Or at least seen the movie. I said, “Don’t be shy. Call him.” I was talking to myself mostly – my younger self.

My son didn’t call Country Joe. It takes time to become less shy.

Bert Stratton, a frequent contributor, lives in Cleveland Heights and has also written for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He writes the blog “Klezmer Guy: Real Music & Real Estate.”

 
A Cleveland friend, Alan Sherwin, started an avant garde jazz band, which I followed around. Me and about two other people. This was in 1975. The band had zero commercial success; however, one musician ultimately wound up in Tin Huey — a big deal in northeastern Ohio — and another guy, a some-time drummer, wound up in Devo.

Alan Sherwin, circa 2020

Alan’s band was called Jazz Death. “Jazz Death?”– with a question mark — was the name of a jazz tune written by trumpeter Lester Bowie of the Art Ensemble of Chicago.  One couldn’t get more “outside” than Bowie and the Art Ensemble. (“Outside” means playing outside the traditional chord structure.)

Alan outlined Jazz Death’s M.O. to me: “Everybody plays at once but we don’t get in each other’s way.” Besides the Art Ensemble of Chicago and other avant garde groups, Alan also liked bebop: Parker, Monk, Bud Powell. We’re not talking smooth jazz here.

Alan was an electronics teacher at my alma mater, Brush High School. He was pretty much self-taught on sax. He majored in something non-music-y at Miami University of Ohio. He didn’t care what others thought of his musical tastes. He said to me, “I don’t need Downbeat to tell me who to listen to.” He didn’t care who was playing at Slug’s.

Alan was intrigued by my career path. He said I was on “an old Jew trip” because I was going into real estate. No selling out for Alan! He wouldn’t even listen to music while he drove. He needed to sit alone in his apartment and focus hard on the tunes. (He did install a cassette player in my car. He knew electronics.)

Alan eventually moved to Washington, D.C., for a girlfriend, and I didn’t see him for years after that. I looked him up in 2012. Alan told me to learn some jazz licks — “you only need to do it in four keys” — and I’d be decent. Four keys beat 12 keys, but still, I stuck to klezmer for the most part.

A few years ago I sent Alan a comic strip by Harvey Pekar that acknowledged the late, not-lauded Jazz Death. Alan wrote me back, “What is Pekar smoking?” (Pekar was dead but that’s beside the point. The point: Alan was being self-deprecating.) Alan had become more mainstream — less Art Ensemble of Chicago, more Duke Ellington. No more going “outside.”

This link here and this one are all I can find on Alan’s music on the internet.

Wait, I’ll check Spotify . . .

Nothing. Just “Allan Sherman.”

 
“Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” by Lil Hardin Armstrong is probably the best song title. It has action, smell and humor. The worst song title is “Rise Up to New Jewish Music.” Some Jewish bands go for that sort of thing. (Anything “New” is old.)

The worst name of a klezmer band is the Klezmer Conservatory Band, They are a good band but a bad name. “Yiddishe Cup,” the name, gets the job done around town, but doesn’t land us any concerts at cool, mohel’s-edge music festivals. “Yiddishe Cup” is bubbe’s procus (stuffed cabbage). Very soggy.

I once changed the band’s name to Funk A Deli but that only confused people. Every Purim, a synagogue scheduler emailed and ask what the band’s name was going to be for that year.

Last month, when I was on vacation in Mexico, I was jamming on the street (which I often do on vacations to meet people), and  I was playing “Misty,” when an American couple asked me if I knew any klezmer. I said, “So happens I do!”  The couple was from Madison, Wisconsin, and had hired Yid Vicious for their wedding. I’ve always liked “Yid Vicious,” the name.

Speaking of which,  I was playing a gig recently at a nursing home, Menorah Park, where the fairly new activities director came up to me and said, “Do you know any Jewish songs?”

I said, “Do you know who you’re talking to!” She didn’t. She explained that the new owners of the nursing home requested all musicians play at least “4 to 6 Jewish songs.” I said, “We can play 999 Jewish tunes if you want.”

Yiddishe Cup’s last CD, Klezmer Guy, 2009, was almost called Jammin’ With Some Salmon. I test-drove that title, and nobody understood it. “Nobody,” meaning my wife, Alice. I didn’t run the title by anybody else. I didn’t want the aggravation of multiple artistic input. I wasn’t running a democracy. I settled on Klezmer Guy and started this blog, Klezmer Guy: Real Music & Real Estate, to promote the album.

–Bert Struttin

P.S. To purchase a Klezmer Guy CD, contact Alan Douglass. He has a few cartons in his basement.

Alan Douglass (above) has cornered the market on “Klezmer Guy” CDs