<\/p>\n
Sid Beckerman<\/a> was a living legend of klez clarinet.<\/strong><\/span> I followed him around KlezKamp — the music conference — a lot.\u00a0 And you know what, he talked to me.<\/p>\n Big deal?<\/p>\n It was.\u00a0 Sid was paid staff.\u00a0 I was “payer,” as in student\/customer\/ fawner.\u00a0 Paid staff was hard to corner.\u00a0 They had a lot of demands on their time.<\/p>\n Sid was different than many staffers. \u00a0Sid had no ego, according to Washington clarinetist Rodney Brooks,<\/a> another student. “Sid was never a star,” Rodney explained.<\/p>\n Sid was “discovered” by klez revivalists,<\/strong><\/span> and made his first record at 70. \u00a0\u00a0(He died in 2007 at 88.)<\/p>\n Sid had a handwritten tune book called “the sheets,”<\/span> as in sheets of paper. \u00a0Sid’s unarmed guard of “the sheets” was pianist Pete Sokolow<\/a>, who had transcribed the tunes for Sid.<\/p>\n The most popular tune in the collection was “SB7,” which stood for “Sid Beckerman tune #7.”\u00a0 [Yiddishe Cup plays it on Klezmer Guy<\/em>. We call it “40A”<\/a> — the page it’s on in our book.\u00a0 Dave Tarras<\/a> recorded it as “Di Zilberne Chasene” (The Silver Wedding).\u00a0 Don’t know what page Tarras had it on.]<\/p>\n At KlezKamp I had a strategy for obtaining<\/strong><\/span> the sheets from Pete Sokolow.\u00a0 First, I gave Pete an obscure 1938 magazine article about “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn” (By Me You Look Grand), hoping to get in Pete’s good graces.<\/p>\n Sokolow, stuffing the magazine article in his pocket, said, “The sheets<\/em>?\u00a0 What sheets?\u00a0 I’m so busy now.\u00a0 I’m working up an arrangement for fifteen people.\u00a0 What did Sid say?”<\/p>\n I hadn’t thought of asking Sid.<\/p>\n So I went to Sid and offered him $20 <\/strong><\/span>for the sheets. \u00a0\u00a0Sid said, “For what?\u00a0 What<\/em> transcriptions?”<\/p>\n Interestingly, all the clarinetists from D.C.<\/strong><\/span> knew the SB tunes. So I badgered Rodney from D.C. some more. \u00a0I hocked<\/em> him.\u00a0 He had learned most of his freylekhs<\/em> (horas) from the sheets, he told me.<\/p>\n He admitted he had the sheets.\u00a0 “You can xerox them,” he said.\u00a0 “But don’t say you got them from me.\u00a0 Somebody might take umbrage.”<\/p>\n