<\/p>\n
Everybody needs a mentor.<\/strong><\/span> Trouble is I’ve only found semi-mentors.<\/p>\n For music, I’ve basically taught myself.\u00a0 My clarinet teacher showed me the notes and fingerings but he couldn’t improvise.\u00a0 And he never recommended music to listen to.\u00a0 \u00a0He thought clarinet was like typing.<\/p>\n That was OK with me. I liked typing.\u00a0 I practiced a lot.\u00a0 My mother had me sign a contract not <\/em>to practice more than an hour a day.\u00a0 And I could not throw my clarinet when I hit a wrong note, particularly at my sister.<\/p>\n Here’s the secret to superior musicianship: Lock yourself in a room for years and hope you were born with a good ear.<\/p>\n That’s why pop musicians sometimes<\/strong><\/span> disdain singers.\u00a0 They just sing.\u00a0 They don’t play anything.\u00a0 Many of them never locked themselves in rooms to practice.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Vis-a-vis my band, we’ve had some mentors:<\/p>\n (1.) Greg Selker<\/a>, who reacquainted Cleveland with klezmer in the early 1980s.\u00a0 Greg learned about klezmer from Hankus Netsky<\/a> at the New England Conservatory in Boston.\u00a0 Greg gave me lessons in 1987.<\/p>\n (2.) Jack Saul (1923-2009), a Jewish record collector.\u00a0 You couldn’t find a seat in his house unless he moved a ton of records for you.<\/p>\n Every time Jack played a record he’d clean it<\/strong><\/span> with Windex. \u00a0No scratches. \u00a0Smooth-h-h.<\/p>\n He didn’t throw anything out — since day one. \u00a0He even had a John McGraw baseball card.<\/p>\n A couple years ago I sold my baseball cards — for a few grand — and he said, “Why’d you do that?” \u00a0I wasn’t looking at them and my kids didn’t want them. \u00a0My kids didn’t know who Harmon Killebrew was. “Why’d you do that?” Jack repeated, semi-stunned.<\/p>\n The Cleveland Jewish music scene was synonymous with Jack Saul. The Kleveland Klezmorim<\/a> musicians went to Jack’s house in the early 1980s to record 78s.\u00a0 Those 78s were pristine.\u00a0 When Boston public radio did a radio show in 2000 about clarinetist\/parodist Mickey Katz<\/a>, they came to Jack for clean recordings.<\/p>\n Jack never let a record out of his house. \u00a0You had to sit there for an hour or two, and have him dub the records onto tape.<\/p>\n The first time I went there, in 1988, <\/strong><\/span>I recorded cuts from Music For Happy Occasions<\/em>, Paul Pincus<\/a>; Jay Chernow and his Hi-Hat Ensemble<\/em>; Dukes of Freilachland<\/em>, Max Epstein<\/a>; Jewish Wedding Dances<\/em>, Sam Musiker<\/a>; Twisting the Freilachs<\/em>; and Casamiento<\/em> Judio<\/em>, Sam Lieberman — a freaking klezmer musician from Latin America!<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Several months after Jack died,<\/strong><\/span> Nathan Tinanoff,<\/a> the founder of the Judaica Sound Archives<\/a> at Florida Atlantic University, went into Jack’s basement and came out with 4,000 Jewish LPs in one day.\u00a0 And he didn’t even get to the 78s.\u00a0 By comparison, the National Yiddish Book Center<\/a> in Amherst, Mass., had 3,000 records, which the center eventually \u00a0turned over to Florida Atlantic University.<\/p>\n Jack Saul liked Yiddishe Cup a lot. \u00a0(He also liked Steven Greenman<\/a>, Lori Cahan-Simon<\/a>, Cantor Kathyrn Wolfe Sebo<\/a> — all Cleveland Jewish musicians.)\u00a0 At one community meeting, he said, “We’ve got talent in this town. \u00a0We don’t have to always run to New York for entertainers.”<\/p>\n That meant a lot to us locals. \u00a0Go Tribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everybody needs a mentor. Trouble is I’ve only found semi-mentors. For music, I’ve basically taught myself.\u00a0 My clarinet teacher showed me the notes and fingerings but he couldn’t improvise.\u00a0 And he never recommended music to listen to.\u00a0 \u00a0He thought clarinet was like typing. That was OK with me. I liked typing.\u00a0 I practiced a lot.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739","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=739"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8597,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739\/revisions\/8597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}