Yiddish Curiosities: a library of wonderful but forgotten Yiddish songs from the late 1920s and after (includes Polish Jewish Cabaret). Have a listen!

UPDATE: I made a new video with the lyrics transliterated and the translation. Maybe somebody besides me would enjoy singing this song!



Miriam Isaacs, who's been researching the Stonehill Collection at the Holocaust Museum, told me most of the dirty songs Ben Stonehill recorded at the Hotel Marsellaise were about rebbes. And here is one. It was written by Ludwig Satz, I found the recording at the Harvard Judaica Collection. Zhelonek, however, transcribed a recording of the song by Herman Fenigstein, I've never seen or heard that recording.

So there were three sets of words: the words Satz scrawled on a cocktail napkin or whatever and sent to the U.S. Copyright Office; the words he recorded; and the words Zhelonek transcribed. It seems to have been the rule that when somebody took somebody else's song into their own repertoire, they would re-write the words. So I chose the bits I liked best from those three versions and that's what I recorded yesterday. The song will be going on Nervez!, the last Itzik Zhelonek cd.

Here's our version. Roger Lynn Spears is playing piano, Randy Kloko is singing on the chorus.

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And here is a video from one of our concerts:

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The picture is of Ludwig Satz and Lucy Levine in the show called His Wife's Lover.

Below, my translation of what I sang.

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Labels: der rebbe, fun, humor & satire, klezmer, nostalgia, religion, songs for sale

UPDATE: Reposted to add a full-length youtube video I made with text and translation, because I hope other people will sing these songs!



You can buy it at bandcamp: Oy vey me shoklt zikh on "In Odess".

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This is another of those great songs which start out in the synagogue and leave by the back door. From Wikipedia:

Shuckling (also written as shokeling), from the Yiddish word meaning "to shake", is the ritual swaying of worshipers during Jewish prayer, usually forward and back but also from side to side. This practice can be traced back to at least the eighth century, and possibly as far back as Talmudic times. It is believed to increase concentration and emotional intensity. In Chassidic lore, shuckeling is seen as an expression of the soul's desire to abandon the body and reunite itself with its source, similar to a flame's shaking back and forth as if to free itself from the wick.

Boris Rosenthal wrote this song in 1923 and he called it Men Schokelt Sich but on his own recording it's spelled Mi Shokelt Sich. The lyrics are by Jacob Jacobs. The song was featured in the Joseph Rumshinsky operetta "Mazel Tov" but Zhelonek heard it in Nellie Casman's hit show "Der Khasndl."

Ken Bloom played guitar on this cut and gave it a nice French gypsy beat.

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My translation of the Yiddish text:

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Labels: battle between the sexes, fun, humor & satire, klezmer, love, songs for sale, vaudeville

UPDATE: Six years after I last posted this song, Arye Menachem has found a recording of Aaron Lebedeff singing Es Tyokhket (which was at the time transliterated by the record company as Oy Vie iz Tchurckit) and has posted it on youtube with the lyrics and a rhyming version in English: "Es tyokhket." Enjoy!

Six years ago I re-upped this post with a (now obsolete but funny) Instagram 60-second video excerpt:



Or click the album cover to hear and/or buy this track from our cd Nervez!




The Yiddish word yeytser is sometimes translated mildly denotes lust or desire for - something and yeytser hore is the scolding terminology for wanting sex.

Itzik Zhelonek cited a Pinkhus Sapir recording of this song, noting that it was from the show Der eybiker nar (The Eternal Fool) but I couldn't find that recording.

My transcription is from the singing of the "Betty Koenig / Kenig from her Syrena Grand Records 5286 Es tiochket. Obviously she sang the song from a woman's point of view and, as I am a woman, I chose her lyrics over Sapir's.

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My translation from the Yiddish:
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Labels: battle between the sexes, fun, humor & satire, klezmer, love, modernity, nostalgia, songs for sale

UPDATE:Reposted to add (on the right) a brand new singalong version (I hadn't thought of that back in 2016 when I last posted this song). On the left, a live version from the very first time pianist Aviva Enoch and I performed the song. Maybe 2011? Ah, time flies.

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Yosele Kolodny, composer of this song, died in the Holocaust. Little is known about him. He was composer of another song in the Itzik Zhelonek collection - Dem Rebns Shirayim - which I have not been able to find (it's possible it was sung to a tune very much like this one, the scansion is similar). In the book The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941 Yosele Kolodni is mentioned as a young actor, a Pinsker, married to Ulia Rabinowitsch, performing in a comedy called Dolarn in 1923.

Zhelonek sold (and transcribed) a 78 made by Yossele Kolodni himself, but I haven't found it. Ben Bonus sang the song - as a cheery tango - and that's what I transcribed (download his version here). It's at the Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive. At the Freedman catalogue you can find mention of quite few recordings of the song, which is sometimes called Khasidemlekh Tantsn and sometimes Khasidemlekh Zingen. These include a performance by Ben and Florence Belfer available online in the Florida Atlantic University collection: Khasidimlakh. Chava Kramer sent me the link.

Click the album cover below to hear and/or buy this track and all the others from our cd Nervez!

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The slippers and socks mentioned here are cited in Wikipedia:

Hasidim in the mid-19th century show a far more Levantine outfit (i.e. a kaftan lacking lapels or buttons) that differs little from the classical oriental outfit consisting of the kaftan, white undershirt, sash, knee-breeches (halbe-hoyzn), white socks and slippers (shtibblat). This outfit allegedly had a Babylonian origin before its later adoption by Jews, Persians and lastly the Turks, who brought it to Europe.

Here's my translation:
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Labels: booze, der rebbe, fun, humor & satire, nostalgia, religion, songs for sale, tango

This song is in the Kemmen Folio of Famous Jewish Theatre Songs I bought on eBay. It's from the show Fishel der gerotener. Gerotener means a well-made, all round class A type of person, but Menashe Skulnik played the hapless trolleyman so you know the nickname was sarcastic. The lyrics are by Isidore Lillian and the music is by Joseph Rumshinsky.

It could be "Dir a nikl mir a nikl," but the correct way to spell nickel in Yiddish is problematic, since at the time the Jews were cramming English into their vocabularies as fast as possible. You'll also find it as Fishl der Konduktor. Fishel is enjoying the shmirn (smears, bribes) that come his way.

The idea was stolen from a previous (1917) Yiddish theater hit, Fifty-fifty, in which we see:

Mayn bruder iz arumgegangen gebrokhn a lange tsayt.
Keyn zakh iz im nit gelungen, vos er hot getrayt.
Af eyn mol kumt er aheym mit gelt un zogt tsu mir; you see,
Ikh bin conductor af a kar un teyl zikh mit der company—

Fifty-fifty, Fifty-fifty, oy oy oy, fifty!
Ikh kling di bel gor on a shier.
A nickel far zey un a nickel far mir;
Fifty-fifty! es geyt bay mir af stim.
A tsi dos shtrikl, s'iz do a nickel
Mit fifty-fifty-skem!

My brother's been going around broke for a long time. Nothing he's tried has been a success. Once he came home with money and told me: "You see, I'm conductor of a trolleycar and share with the company: Fifty-fifty! I ring the bell endlessly, a nickel for them and a nickel for me! It's going gangbusters. A tug on the string, there's a nickel, with the fifty-fifty scheme!"

I hadn't intended to make a video of this song because Bruce Adler did a great one, with subtitles, and an orchestra! His version is featured at the Milken Archive where you can read the plot of Fishl der gerotener. (I have special interest in this show because Ola Lilith played one of the love interests.)

But then my friend Aviva Enoch and I ended up doing a version one afternoon just for fun and I forgot about it until I started trying to figure out why the song "Fifty-fifty" sounded so familiar... Anyway, the file lay in my computer for six years. Here it is.


If you want the sheet music with lyrics, translation, chords, etc., here it is:

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My translation:

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Labels: fun, humor & satire, klezmer, making a living (poverty), modernity, vaudeville

Today I got yet another request for this song, one of the most popular songs in the Yiddish theater song repertoire. Oy, mame, bin ikh farlibt was written by Abe Ellstein for Joseph Green’s 1936 film Yidl mitn fidl. Joseph Green's films are priceless because they were shot in Poland just before the holocaust. A lot of the crowd scenes were shot with locals and passers-by.

The film Yidl mitn fidl is about a fiddler, Molly Picon, and her bass-playing dad, Ari, who take to the road as a traveling duo. Out of fear for her safety Molly calls herself Yidl and dresses as a man. On the road they meet another duo and they join forces. Yidl falls in love with young Froim. When he pats her cheek she's besotted and later sings this song. For the full plot watch the movie or read this fine summary of Oy Mame bin ikh farlibt by Neil Levin for the Milken Archive:


My band Mappamundi recorded this in 1994, before I had ever decided to study Yiddish. Bassist Robbie Link plays the solo.



Here is the sheet music if you want it, with transliteration, chords, translation etc:

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Labels: fun, klezmer, love, mother, nostalgia

UPDATE: I just found this song (without the catchy chorus, though) in a 1920 book put out by Y. L. Cahan called Yudishe Folkslieder (Yidishe folkslider) or in English "Yiddish Folksongs with Their Original Airs Collected from Oral Tradition" - the sheet music is at the bottom of this post, after the jump. And it turns out this original folksong is from a woman's point of view!

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You'll find this song spelled: Wus hob gewalt, hob ich oysgefirt and it was recorded by Aaron Lebedeff, with the Abe Schwartz Orchestra, as Ay, ay, vos kh'hob gevolt, hob ikh oysgefirt. written by Herman Wohl and Louis Gilrod, the song was in Israel Rosenberg's show Yankele Litvak in 1924.

David Medoff recorded it in 1923 as Vos Ich Hob Gevolt Hob Ich Ausgefirt, translated there as "What I Wanted, I Found."

I heard the Lebedeff recording when I was at Florida Atlantic University. The words were hard to make out, but I didn't try very hard because it was all about a wife, so I decided to take snatches of what I heard and incorporate them into a new version suitable for a women's klezmer band. I couldn't do it justice as I was alone and didn't have a klezmer band with me - it deserves the whole nine yards. And drums.

If you want to write your own words too, I suggest you get a copy of Stutchkoff's Yiddish thesaurus and his Yiddish rhyming dictionary (Yidisher gramen-lexicon) and then have at it!

Continuing experiment with green screen. The glasses I wore today had a lot of glare. You live and learn.



Here's the English translation of the Yiddish lyrics I sang:

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Labels: fun, gangsters, humor & satire, klezmer, modernity, nostalgia, vaudeville

UPDATE: Reposting because somebody just emailed me and asked for a sing-along version of this song.

The video has our track from the cd I Can't Complain But Sometimes I Still Do with the Yiddish words in transliteration and the translation.

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I don't know if Benzion Witler (pictured) wrote this song or if he just made the most famous old recording of it, it's on youtube here.

I heard this sung by Betty Reichart at the Intensive Yiddish Summer Course at the Medem Bibliotheque in Paris. I later got the words from Hilda Bronstein, who recorded it on her Yiddish Songs Old and New cd.

In klal Yiddish this would be "Zing, bruder, zing" or "Zingt, brider, zingt" (plural) but Wittler sings with the theater dialect that pronounces bruder as brider.

You can get the sheet music from me:

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Labels: fun, klezmer, nostalgia, yiddish performers

UPDATE: Reposted to add the new Instagram video.

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This is one of my favorites among the Zhelonek songs: great melody and great lyrics. I fault its cynical fin de siecle tone for its being wiped off the face of the earth.

Roger Lynn Spears played the piano; if you listen closely you may hear my donkey Jethro braying in the background, it was his supper time when I recorded the vocals. Here's our version:



The video's an Instagram 60-second excerpt; find the whole song on Nervez! Yiddish Songs from Warsaw Volume III.
In 2012 I found grumpy, misogynistic Morris Rund credited as lyricist (his songs comprise a large portion of my other blog, YiddishPennySongs.com). In 2014 I found the melody at the Harvard Hollis library site as Dos vos du zesṭ ḳeyn gliḳ hob ikh dir niṭ tsugezogṭ with the alternate title Zay niṭ broygez Sheyndele, melody credited to Peretz Sandler. In 2021 I found that a 1925 Dora Weissman recording, under the name Dus wus di sehst, ken glicken hob ich der nit zigesught, credited the lyrics and tune to Louis Gilrod. I don't know what to think.

Often Zhelonek's songs are hiding in plain sight, under titles other than the ones Zhelonek used.  I was at the Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish Sound Archive and, free-associating, discovered it under this name: Dos vos du zest, keyn glikn.  Aaron Lebedeff also recorded it, spelling the title Dos Vos du Sehst, Kein Gliken hob ich dir nit Zogesoght. and also Dos Vos Du Sehst, Kein Gliken Hob Ich Dir Nit Zugesogt

Here's my English translation of the Yiddish:

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Labels: battle between the sexes, fun, humor & satire, love, making a living (poverty), modernity, songs for sale, warsaw

UPDATE: I'm reposting to add the 60-second video I just made for Instagram, my new social media addiction. Only about a dozen people on Instagram seem interested in Yiddish but it's so much fun to make square videos I'll probably do more. So here it is, go ahead, click:


Many artists in the Yiddish theater called themselves "coupletists" - this meant they prided themselves for improvising brief verses, usually funny or topical, on the spot - though I'm sure they often repeated their verses at show after show, pretending to be extemporaneous...

Evidently even in mit'n drinen (right in the middle of things), even during a serious or sad operetta, these performers came right up to the front of the stage and started to sing about whatever struck their fancy: they'd sometimes mock audience members, sometimes make daring rhymes about politics and politicious of the day...

Pesach Burstein (1896–1986) was a coupletist and his song "Nu, a Daygeh," is a lovely example of the form. It doesn't have, shall we say, a coherent narrative, but it's funny.

Click this picture to listen to and/or buy our recording of the song:


Burstein (pictured), born in Warsaw but known as the Vilner Komiker, in this song makes up ridiculous verses about people around town, then says, Nu, a daygeh!? which I've translated for the video as "what, me worry?" but which might more properly be "What, you think I should worry about this?" or "How is this my problem?"

The rest of the band, a Greek chorus, answers: Staytsh vos heyst!? which I translate as "What's the meaning of this? What're you talking about!?"

If you buy the digital album it comes with all the texts and translations for the songs.

Labels: fun, humor & satire, klezmer, making a living (poverty), modernity, nostalgia, yiddish theater song

Reposting for Passover!

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This song is found in Irene Heskes Yiddish American Popular Songs as Meh meynt nit di hagodoh, nur di kneydlakh translated in the index as "Attention is paid, not to the ritual [of Passover festive meal], but to the dumplings [food that is served]" or "People concentrate on the pleasures, but do not think about the responsibilities."

I got the sheet music from the Library of Congress, which has an amazing collection (and an extremely helpful and nice Judaica librarian, Sharon Horowitz.)

It was copyrighted in 1922 by composer Abe Schwartz, who spelled it thus: "Mi Meint Nit Di Agudi Nor Di Kneidlach"

I inveigled Mappamundi's wonderful bass player Jim Baird into playing this with me cold yesterday (neither of us had done it before) before a concert rehearsal. By the time I realized I was holding my paper in front of my head, the rehearsal was over and everybody was gone. Oh well.

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So here is our version, click to see and hear it:

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Here's my English translation of the Yiddish lyrics:

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Labels: battle between the sexes, fun, humor & satire, modernity, nostalgia, yiddish song

This photo by Bill Brandt shows a girl from the Cockney (and also Jewish) part of London, doing a dance created to the song "The Lambeth Walk" from the 1937 musical Me and My Girl (about a Cockney barrow boy who inherits an earldom but almost loses his Lambeth girlfriend). On Youtube you can find the original star, Lupino Lane, dancing and singing the song.

In 1942, Charles Ridley made Lambeth Walk – Nazi Style, which offered footage of Hitler and his soldiers marching to the song. From Public Domain Review:

A member of the Nazi Party achieved attention in 1939 by declaring The Lambeth Walk (which was becoming popular in Berlin) to be "Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping." ... The film so enraged Joseph Goebbels that reportedly he ran out of the screening room kicking chairs and screaming profanities.

You can find the wonderful little Ridley film on youtube.

Now we come to the Yiddish version: Lambeth Walk at the Stonehill Jewish Song Collection, sung beautifully by George Kessler. Since Miriam Isaacs provides the lyrics, we can revive this charming (but too short) piece of the past. (George did not sing the verse, only the chorus.)

Here is the version I recorded today (click to hear it)


I have the sheet music and the original illustrated instructions for doing the dance - email me if you are interested.

Labels: fun, humor & satire, modernity, nostalgia

I haven't been lucky enough to find a recording of Moyshe Oysher and his wife Florence Weiss singing this adorable song, but there is a charming (if rather slipshod) version available by Benzion Witler and Shifra Lerer (he credited Jacobs/Olshanetsky). Their recording was done when musicians cut their records live onto aluminum disks. If they screwed up and stopped, the disk was ruined, and that was very expensive, so they often issued imperfect cuts. But full of life!

Here's our only video of this song, from the first time we sang it in public. I wish we'd known it better!


It sounds better on the recording, have a listen for free! Cabaret Warsaw cd, you can listen (or even buy it for less than a buck: Mappamundi plays Vokh tyokh tyokh on the Cabaret Warsaw cd

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Somebody told me the Marx brothers used "vokh tyokh tyokh" as a catch phrase. The Barry Sisters recorded this song as Vyoch Tyoch Tyoch. I've been told Benny Goodman (!) also recorded it, as Voch. Tioch. Tioch., giving composer credit to Seymour Rechtzeit.

The song is addictive! It would be great for a klezmer band. I made sheet music for our version, if you want it contact me: jane@mappamundi.com

Labels: fun, humor & satire, klezmer, love, nostalgia

UPDATE: I found the written lyrics to this song in a Shlomo Lindenfeld booklet called Der kupletist (The couplet maker) which is at Stanford University. The facsimiles of the original song are now at the end of this post.

I'm kind of embarrassed that I like this song so much because it is old-school, as misogynistic as they come. I dedicate this performance to discographer Michael Aylward, who loves the song as much as I do. I heard it on his cd Wandering Stars: The Lemberg Yiddish Theatre 1906-10.

The song is earlier than the ones I've generally been posting and was sung by Norbert Glimer, about whom little is known other than that he performed with Gimpels' Lemberg Yiddish Theater. Aylward calls him "riotously ebullient" and you should buy the cd to hear him.

Miriam Isaacs was able to decipher the first verse and a half of what Glimer sang and then it just was impossible. The recording is a sort of wild crooning, shouting polemic against the narrator's upcoming betrothal to Yente. (Isaacs told me in those days red-heads were often considered ugly.) One can hardly even hear a tune in the chorus so I kind of made one up.

I also made up the second half of the second verse and the entire third verse, so poor Yente would not be left mute in the face of this slander.

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Here's a translation from the Yiddish of my version:
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Labels: battle between the sexes, fun, humor & satire, klezmer, love, yiddish performers

UPDATE: The song was being offered on eBay. Here is the label, from which we see that it was sung in the show Dem tsadiks mishpokhe. Click for a larger view:



Sharon Horowitz, research librarian at the Library of Congress African and Middle Eastern Division: Hebraic Section, sent me the manuscript below, a 1923 copyright submission. Click on the images to see them larger.


On the title page it says "A mensh ken machen a mol a toes" and on the next page it says "Nu is vos a mensh ken machen a toes." The words are by: Ludwig Satz and the music is by Joseph Brody

Quite some time later, I was in Boca Raton and the archivist at the Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University let me browse his database. He actually had the recording of Ludwig Satz singing this song and I was sort of shocked by the eerily whining, squeaking quality of Satz's rendition. That was comic singing, I guess.

Aviva and I did the song straight off the sheet music. Here's the video:

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In standard YIVO Yiddish the recurring motif is not nearly as amusing as in Satz's dialect - he sings "Noo iz vooiz, noo iz vooiz, a mentsh ken dokh makhn a mul a tooiz."

Translation:

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Labels: fun, humor & satire, religion, vaudeville

I wouldn't ordinarily post a novelty song in English but Professor Shalom Goldman asked me to sing this at his book talk next Tuesday and since I was having to look it up anyway I thought I would share it with you. Even if only for the magnificent sheet music cover!

Written in 1920 by Con Conrad and J. Russell Robinson of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, "Palesteena" (sometimes "Lina from Palestina") is a hoary chestnut of the klezmer band repertoire, probably because the bands are desperate for songs in English.

Here's my favorite rendition on Youtube: Lina from Palestina sung by vaudevile star Frank Crumit

Here's the Original Dixieland Jazz Band instrumental rendition of Lena

Here's Eddie Cantor's version of Palesteena

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Labels: fun, humor & satire, klezmer, vaudeville

We had fun discussing this song in my Yiddish class. Shtek arayn (shtekt arayn for plural or formal) literally means "stick it in" and so we all jumped to the obvious conclusion before reading the song's lyrics.

However, turns out it means more like "stick out your hand for a handshake" though in the second verse Sheva opined that perhaps Itzik's friend is suggesting the husband, had he tried a little harder, might not have lost his wife, and perhaps he should be exerting himself currently in order to turn things around.

You can hear Pesach Burstein singing "Shtek arein" - that's how he spelled it - at the Florida Atlantic University Archive. (Click the link to go to the page where you can here Burstein singing the song.)

Here's the version I recorded this afternoon, just me and the electric piano, though the song is crying out for full klezmer band treatment. If you want to sing it yourself, I wrote out the sheet music for you:

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My translation after the break.

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Labels: battle between the sexes, fun, humor & satire, klezmer, love, nostalgia