{"id":31461,"date":"2024-02-28T08:05:31","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T13:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=31461"},"modified":"2024-04-02T17:51:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T21:51:22","slug":"cleveland-clarinet-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/28\/cleveland-clarinet-comedy\/","title":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND, CLARINET, COMEDY"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nIn Mickey<\/strong><\/span> Katz\u2019s autobiography, Papa, Play For Me<\/em>, Katz tells some off-color jokes, like \u201cTailor, I have a problem. I have five penises. Will the pants fit?\u201d The tailor says, \u201cLike a glove.\u201d Then Katz name drops: \u201cI was part of a regular bridge game consisting of George Burns, Dave Siegel, George Raft, and myself. Occasionally Chico Marx.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katz kvells about his “creative wife\u201d Grace, and sons Joel and Ron.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s deli (along with a corned beef sandwich) because Solomon\u2019s was out of bagels. That’s<\/em> detail.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Mickey Katz 1959<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1977, when the book came out, Katz was somewhat famous because his son Joel Grey was huge in Cabaret<\/em> then. The first line in the book has the words \u201cmy son Joel Grey.\u201d (The ghost writer of Katz’s autobio is Hannibal Coons, who was the main writer for the Addams Family<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

A couple decades ago, I took some Katz Yinglish (Yiddish-English) lyrics to a Workmen\u2019s Circle meeting for translation. The translators \u2013 generally elderly Yiddishist purists — considered Katz shund <\/em>(literary trash). Songs like \u201cK\u2019nock Around the Clock\u201d and \u201cNudnik the Flying Shisl\u201d (Pest the Flying Saucer) were beyond the pale.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, a 1960s off-Broadway show. I asked them what Mickey had been like because I couldn\u2019t tell from the autobio. I didn\u2019t get a good answer from Tanja because she had been only 8 when she performed with Katz. She had been \u201cLittle Tanja.\u201d Hale Porter didn\u2019t say much memorable either. But it was interesting — at least for me — to simply meet people who had giggled with Mickele.<\/p>\n

Myron “Mickey”<\/span><\/strong> Katz (1909 – 1985)<\/em>: Clevelander, clarinetist, comedian.<\/p>\n

Katz writes about playing clarinet on the Goodtime<\/em>, the Lake Erie cruise boat. (I\u2019ve been on the Goodtime<\/em>, and so has every other Clevelander.) The Goodtime<\/em> was owned by the Seeandbee line. The \u201cSee\u201d is for \u201cCleveland\u201d and the \u201cbee\u201d is for \u201cBuffalo.\u201d Does that interest you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In Mickey Katz\u2019s autobiography, Papa, Play For Me, Katz tells some off-color jokes, like \u201cTailor, I have a problem. I have five penises. Will the pants fit?\u201d The tailor says, \u201cLike a glove.\u201d Then Katz name drops: \u201cI was part of a regular bridge game consisting of George Burns, Dave Siegel, George Raft, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31461","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=31461"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31576,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31461\/revisions\/31576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}