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

UPDATE: Reposting because the brilliant Jean Hessel just found another contrafactum (another text set to this same melody) on Youtube! Dos is nicht mein arbeit (Dos iz nisht mayn arbet), sung by Leo Fuchs in 1930! Thanks, Jean! Anybody want to take a whack at taking down the words? If I get them I'll post them here!

You can hear (and buy, if you like) our recording of Di Firme Boymvol here:


One of my lost Zhelonek songs, Di firme Boymvol, had the intriguing direction: "To be sung to the melody of Poktsro Katinge." I asked Yiddishists and Slavic professors, and all protested that these were not real words in any language. Stymied.

One night I remembered that P and F are virtually interchangeable and flashed on FOXTROT - I looked online for foxtrots called "Katinge," no luck, then flashed: KATINKA. Bingo! On the sheet music, Katinka is subtitled A Russian Fox Trot-Sky.

The 1926 song, which in typical American fashion makes ignorant fun of Russia, sailed east across the Atlantic and became very popular there; on youtube you can find translations of this song in Finnish and Greek. But here is the original American version, George Olsen's 1926 recording of Katinka Foxtrot. I hope you enjoy the lyrics and the Russian scat singing later in the song. Around my place we now have a terrible earworm and are going around singing: "But she went nutsky for the hey, hey, oy, vey,"
So FYI here's the recording I transcribed:



Here's the animated video I did of this ridiculous song.

Here's the link to the sheet music - and I'll throw in "Katinka a Fox-Trotsky" for free on request in case you want to sing it in English:

The first thing I did after I heard Katinka was order the sheet music (see above). Then I started to wonder about this composer Henry Tobias. The first question I ask myself, was he Jewish? This book, which I also just ordered, answers that question: Music in My Heart and Borscht in My Blood: An Autobiography by Henry Tobias. He was a tumler (fool, noisemaker) and social director at the famous Jewish Catskill resorts.

And curiously, Tobias had two brothers, Harry and Charlie, and they were composers too. Here is the lovely cover of a song co-written by Henry and Charles Tobias, Girl of my Dreams.

Getting back to the song that started this serendipitously successful treasure hunt: Di firme Boymvol was a Warsaw clothing store. This song is a two verse long advertisement for its wares, including shirts, collars, cravats, socks for ladies, etc. It would be fun to know if Boymvol paid for this song to be sung in the cabaret (and inserted into the book) or if it was done as a lark, or if Boymvol and Zhelonek were buddies.

Here are the original lyrics to Katinka, a Fox Trot-sky. Note that the poor old-fashioned sap singing about his love fleeing with her dancing teacher doesn't even know the proper name of the dance, "It was that Charlesburg I know" (heh):

Labels: humor & satire, klezmer, love, modernity