{"id":2783,"date":"2010-12-10T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=2783"},"modified":"2023-12-28T16:59:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-28T21:59:16","slug":"walkman-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/10\/walkman-man\/","title":{"rendered":"WALKMAN MAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walt Mahovlich, <\/strong><\/span>the leader of the Gypsy-style band Harmonia, <\/a> had hundreds of cassette tapes in his living room.\u00a0He had custom-made bookshelves lined with tapes. There were Yugoslavian field recording from the 1970s and commercial ethnic tapes from the 1980s and 1990s.\u00a0 And he had dubbed some LPs to tape.<\/p>\n

Walt’s wall o’ tapes was organized by nationality: Albanian, Croatian, Hungarian, Jewish, Macedonian, Romanian, Rusyn, Serbian, Slovak and Turkish.<\/p>\n

A tape — a brand-new chrome tape with Dolby — often sounded as good as the original LP.\u00a0 But few dubbers bought chrome.\u00a0 Even the commercial tapes released in the 1980s weren’t always chrome.<\/p>\n

One big downside <\/strong><\/span>to tape: the tape player would occasionally eat the skinny tape, and you’d have to splice it back to health.<\/p>\n

The cassettes, with their cases, were compact.\u00a0 Give them that.<\/p>\n

\"\"I bought a Sony Walkman cassette player in 1981, just prior to my first son’s birth. \u00a0\u00a0My wife, Alice, went through three 24-hour shifts of obstetricians before she delivered.\u00a0 I had the cassette tapes (dubbed jazz LPs) and two corned beef sandwiches from Irv’s Deli.\u00a0 I was set.\u00a0 My wife had complications.<\/p>\n

The doctors wanted to check it out.\u00a0Not the complications. The Walkman. They had never seen one.<\/p>\n

Three years ago I bought a Chinese Walkman knock-off for $40 at Radio Shack.\u00a0 I thought the Walkman might disappear.<\/p>\n

Sony recently announced the end of Walkman cassette player production.<\/p>\n

Two words:\u00a0 Stock up.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Teddy Stratton, 1 month<\/p><\/div>\n

***<\/p>\n

Walt Mahovlich’s<\/strong><\/span> wall o’ tapes still exists in the same West Side living room.<\/p>\n

Last week Walt said, “I should transfer my tapes to digital.\u00a0 Who knows how long they’ll last — the tapes.\u00a0 But what I really need to do is record a 78 — something that will really last!”<\/p>\n

“You want to record a 78 RPM?”<\/p>\n

“Yes.\u00a0 Alan [Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player] has a 78-making machine.\u00a0 I saw it years ago.\u00a0 I want to record a tune, then prematurely age the disc — the 78 — and place it in strategic places for people to find.”<\/p>\n

“Like at Goodwill stores?”<\/p>\n

“Maybe.\u00a0 It’ll be a hoax, like Piltdown Man.”<\/p>\n

“An original tune?”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“No, a clarinet piece I learned years ago.\u00a0 I’ll call it ‘Der Freylekher Bulgar’ for the Jewish market and ‘Lerinsko Narodno Oro” for the Macedonians. It’ll be the same tune, two markets.\u00a0 Like Tarras.” *<\/p>\n

“Do you have a Walkman?”<\/p>\n

“No, I’ve never had one.”<\/p>\n

“You should get one.”<\/p>\n

“I have a tape deck. I’m set.”<\/p>\n

\"\"

Walt, on accordion, had an aura. 1983<\/p><\/div>\n

—–
\n* Dave Tarras, klezmer clarinetist, sometimes “re-gifted” his Jewish tunes to fit the Greek market, and vice versa. <\/small><\/p>\n

“Der Freylekher Bulgar” is Yiddish for “The Happy Dance.”\u00a0 “Lerinsko Narodno Oro” is Macedonian for “Lerin Region Folk Dance.” <\/small><\/p>\n

Thanks to Lori Cahan-Simon<\/a>, musician and Yiddishist, for the\u00a0 correct spelling on “Der Freylekher Bulgar.” <\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walt Mahovlich, the leader of the Gypsy-style band Harmonia, had hundreds of cassette tapes in his living room.\u00a0He had custom-made bookshelves lined with tapes. There were Yugoslavian field recording from the 1970s and commercial ethnic tapes from the 1980s and 1990s.\u00a0 And he had dubbed some LPs to tape. Walt’s wall o’ tapes was organized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kinder-the","category-klezmer","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2783"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31290,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783\/revisions\/31290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}