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 to add the animated video I did today. Nobody ever listens to the automatic videos created by Routenote of the songs from our cds so I thought I'd make one today and see if it gets some listeners:

 

Here's something very interesting about the fellow I called here (in the second verse) "Vayzote" but who, it seems, is called in Yiddish Vayzuse and whose name is also used for "idiot." He was Haman's youngest son. You can read a great blog article about him, from the Mayrent Institute blog, here: Vayzuso. And there is a wonderful recording from way back in 1901 made by Dave Franklin, "the king of comic singers." A great song and a great read!

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Click the picture to listen to and/or buy this track, Di naye lo lanu, from our Lebedik Yankel cd. Aviva Enoch plays the piano on the cd.

(Picture: Mordechai on his horse, as mentioned in the song!)

And here is a live concert version with Roger Lynn Spears playing piano:


This song was printed twice in the collection (once in 1929 and once in 1934) which indicates it must have been pretty popular! As with "Di Naye Al Chet" and "Me Shoklt Zikh," the song begins in a religious setting (pious Jews praying at Sukkot and waving their lulavs). It plays with the line from the Halleluja, "Lo Lanu" (not for us but for you, God) and the similar "lo eleinu" which means more or less, "let it not happen to me/us!" Having set the proper context, it then wanders off and applies the concept in a more secular context.

Aviva and Roger both do a great job of interpreting the accompaniment as heard on the Herman Fenigstein 78 found at Harvard's Judaica Collection. (Fenigstein sings the same first verse as noted in Zhelonek's book, but his second and third verses are different.) Although ordinarily I adapt lyrics to standard Yiddish (because that's what I know), in this case many of the rhymes won't work unless one sings "Lo lani" (what he sings sometimes sounds more like "Loy lani") so that's what I did.

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Labels: battle between the sexes, der rebbe, humor & satire, love, making a living (poverty), modernity, nostalgia, religion, songs for sale

UPDATE to add video from our May 2022 concert at the Shadowbox. We just did the first two verses and went out with a bass solo.

This is Kasriel Broydo's send-up of Fanny Gordon's tango Milosc cie zgubila.That's Fanny in the picture. She was the only female composer I know of working successfully in the Polish cabarets and nightclubs between the World Wars.

This Yiddish version was sung in Europe by Mina Bern and Joseph Widetzky.

I love how the loving couple displays behavior that must have been so aggravating to the singers: they sneak into the theater for free, they snap and crunch sunflower seeds and cookies in the front row and they even eat fruit compote and nudge around with their pal Velvl.


You can listen to or buy the cut from our album here: Yosl un Sore-Dvoshe on Cabaret Warsaw: Yiddish & Polish Hits of the 1920s - 1930s by Mappamundi

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Here's my translation from the Yiddish:

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

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

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

In 2014 I posted a folk song called Dos Fleshele (Chort voz'mi) which was found in the Itzik Zhelonek collection of Yiddish theater songs beloved in Warsaw between the wars. I transcribed the tune from a cassette made by Itzik Gottesman when Jacob Gorelick sang the song in his living room in the 1980s. Gorelick said the melody was borrowed from the Russian folksong карие глазки (Karie glazki).

Recently Steven Lasky, proprietor of the Museum of the Yiddish Theatre, posted this lovely issue of Joseph Feldman's "Yiddish Theatrical Magazine" on Facebook. It contained lyrics and even a few bits of written music. One of the songs is this one, Chort vozmi.

The tune is very similar to the earlier one, but different enough I suppose that Feldman felt he could copyright it. While the other song's lyrics focus on how rotten it is to be a drunk, this version focuses on how rotten it is that a woman dumps you and forces you to become an alcoholic.

Earlier today the helpful band of Facebook yids (Marek Tuszewicki, Shane Baker, Michael Alpert, Eli Rosen, and Paula Teitelbaum) helped me with the word bridiage: it means vagabond or bum in Russian. Eleanor Reissa said she loved the words and would like to hear the song, so I decided to just jump in and record it.


Here are the words as transcribed in Feldman's magazine. Once again I want you to feast your eyes on the extremely non-standard transliteration. I would not have ever guessed a spelling like TSORT WAS MIE and as I've said many times before, if you can't guess the spelling you can't find it.

Words and translation after the jump.

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Labels: battle between the sexes, booze, folksong, love, nostalgia

Somebody asked about this song recently and I'd forgotten that Aviva and I recorded it back in 2011 (?) on our album "I Can't Complain but Sometimes I Still Do" (click the picture to visit the album which would make a fine Hanukkah present).

It is a wonderful song from a show called Der Letster Tants (The Last Dance). It was produced by Michal Michalesko at his own theater, and he starred with Bella Meisel, who wrote the lyrics to the song. Alex Olshanetsky wrote the haunting melody. There was a time when I was so sad only this song would soothe me and I played it and sang it to the exclusion of all others.

You can read about the show at the Milken Archive. The fabulous notes by Neil Levin include the whole plot. Briefly, some guy is imprisoned unjustly and is going to be executed on the morrow, and some girl is slated to marry him for some reason, though they've never met before, and, during their one meeting on the eve of his execution, in the presence of the prison rabbi and others, they fall in love and sing this song together. But then he is pardoned by the governor the next day so there is a happy ending.

I didn't know this was the back story those several years ago when pianist Aviva Enoch and I recorded the song. I thought it was about meeting your true love, your bashert, when the two of you were old and about to croak. That seemed extremely sad to me.

There is a Yiddish teacher who has asked me to make videos with the Yiddish lyrics in transliteration for his students who could not read the alef beys. So here's another one for him, this time I included both. Lyrics in translation and transliteration after the jump.



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Labels: love, nostalgia, waltz

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:
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Labels: humor & satire, klezmer, love, modernity

I was just hammered by the beauty of this song when I heard it in the Yiddish movie 'On a heym," (homeless), the last Yiddish movie made in Poland before the Second World War. It was sung by a very young Wiera Gran, who had only recently learned Yiddish, playing Bessie the cabaret singer. I believe it was never recorded; I transcribed it from a dvd of the movie. Here we are performing it for the first time, at Duke University, for our Cabaret Warsaw inaugural run:


I looked for a musician credit at the start of the film and all it said was, "Shayevitsh" - not even a first name. After some hunting I figured out who this was and added him to Wikipedia. Israel "Iso" Szajewicz (1910–41) was born in Kutno to Dineh and Józef Szajewicz, Yiddish itinerant actors. He worked as a hairdresser and taught himself music.

In 1927 he moved to Warsaw and began playing violin in theatre orchestras and composing. In 1931 he became music director at the Kaminski Theatre and conducted concerts of the Jewish Music Society.

I read today that he also composed the music for Der Tunkeler's musical comedy Got's ganovim (God's thieves) produced by the Vilner Troupe in 1935. I'd like to get hold of that.

At the outbreak of World War II, Szajewicz fled to Bialystok and toured in Minsk. When German and Soviet conflict broke out he started back to Warsaw to be with his mother. Somewhere in the woods between Bialystok and Baranowicze he was killed before he was thirty years old.

Here's a transcription and the translation:

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Labels: love, modernity, yiddish performers, yiddish theater song

UPDATE: Reposted to add this youtube video (with translation and the lyrics so you can learn the song if you like):


Or click the album cover to hear and/or buy this track, Shvayg Hertsele, from our In Odess album (Roger Lynn Spears on piano).

Caraid O'Brien was in touch with me about this song and says at the Harvard Judaica Collection there's a recording of Jack's brother Seymour singing it. I hope to hear it some day. She's catalogued more than 1500 Seymour Rexite radio shows and hopes to have the work published by fall of 2016.

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Jack Rechtzeit (1903-1988) was born in Petrokove in Poland; he moved with his family to the United States in 1923. In the 1930s he did tours in South America and Europe, including Warsaw. He was an actor in the Yiddish theater for more than 60 years and was president of the Hebrew Actors Union.

He was the older brother of the better-known Seymour Rexite (Miriam Kressyn's second husband).

I don't know when or where Jack composed Shvayg, hertsele! [Be quiet, little heart] and I've not seen mention of any recordings of it.

The only trace of it I found was a stack of orchestra parts in Rechtzeit's archives at Harvard University's Judaica Collection. Often only orchestra parts for these theater songs survive - perhaps the lead singers did not need to have lead sheets, or perhaps they were afraid some other actors would steal them, or perhaps they just got "loved to death" and fell to shreds before they could get preserved in the archives. I reconstructed the song from the violin and clarinet parts (knowing that violins and clarinets often played in unison with the singers).

In Zhelonek's book, a long self-pitying monologue has also been meticulously copied out, but I didn't record it. If you want to buy the sheet music with the Yiddish words (in transliteration), translation, and a copy of the original page from the Zhelonek book (with monologue), click here:

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UPDATE: as you will see below, I heard from Jack's granddaughter. She told me in a later email that her grandmother remembers this song well, that it was part of a play, and that it was sung in the concentration camps.

I also had a chance to talk with Professor Miriam Isaacs at Yidish-Vokh yesterday, and discovered that somebody sang this song to Ben Stonehill in 1948 at the Hotel Marseilles in upper Manhattan (he recorded 1,054 songs that summer!), and that it is part of the Ben Stonehill archive she is researching. I'm looking forward to hearing that recording... She estimates that half the songs in the Ben Stonehill collection are unknown even to people who know the bulk of the Yiddish language repertoire as it's survived to our times.

Labels: love, songs for sale

UPDATE: Reposted to include this Instagram video excerpt:


To hear (or even buy) the whole song visit our cd at Bandcamp: 'Oy mame shlog mikh nisht' on Lebedik Yankel

Morris Rund copyrighted the lyrics, crediting the music to Aaron Labedoff (Lebedeff). I found this song on the Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archives site. Lebedeff's Vocalion recording is Oi Mama Shlog Mich Nit. There is also a wonderful version by Nechama Lifschitz on her "In Concert" album (see Mamme Shlog Mich Nit)

This song is about, I think, a modern fad making its way into the villages: marriages made by the young couple without benefit of matchmaker. "You, mom, are the only one who didn't know he loves me and wants to marry me." They sealed the deal in the usual way and now there is no point in getting on the girl's case - it's 'too late.' That was not the shtetl way, but there was no stopping it...

This picture is from the Facebook page of Yiddish Florilège.

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My translation of the Yiddish lyrics:

Oy mame, don't beat me, hear me out. Yankl the furrier (or
cap-maker) came in my house. I got so confused, and
meanwhile he stroked me and kissed me.

Oy mame, don't beat me, don't plague me,
You're my protection in such an hour
I said no, he said yes. Oy mame, it's too late already.

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Labels: love, modernity, mother, songs for sale

UPDATE: Reposted to add this Instagram video:



The wonderful jitterbug pictures are by William H. Johnson.
You can listen to the whole song (and even 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

Zhelonek transcribed the words of this song from the singing of Yehudah Grinhoyz, born in 1891 in Bialystok, Poland.

According to the site Russian-records.com, which is where I found the song under the sadly contorted spelling above, it was written by Yiddish dramatist Anshel Shorr around 1926. The Homocord recording is by J. Weinberg.

Here's my own living room recording from three years ago, I'd forgotten I made it:


It was also recorded by "Sem Goldberg, bewuster humorist," as A Keduschin Ringele, on Syrena Grand Record 5459.

I like the tune a lot but find the text aggravating (though I suppose the misplaced impulses it mocks are still common).

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Here's my translation of "Dos kedushin ringele"

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Labels: battle between the sexes, humor & satire, love, modernity, songs for sale

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: Reposted to add a 60-second Instagram video, click the happy couple below.

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This was the last of the Itzik Zhelonek songs I was able to find, so it some ways it completed the project.. There are twenty songs I have not yet found the melodies for, after three years [update: now five years], so mostly, this is the end.

The finding of this song was quite wonderful. I had an article about my Zhelonek project published in the superlative Yiddish journal Afn shvel - it had to be written in Yiddish, which is not easy for me. The article can be read here: Nokhgeyendik dem shpur fun fargesener yidisher teater-muzik ("Following the Trail of Forgotten Yiddish Theater Music").

When I got my copy of the magazine I pounced on it, because it was all about music in Yiddish. The first article was by Professor David Roskies and in it he described his musical mother, Masha Roskies, who had been friends with many Yiddish theater stars in Poland in her youth and who knew all their music. When David and his sister were young and the family drove each summer from their home in Canada to vacation on Cape Cod, their mother would sing the songs of her youth. In his article he wrote that their favorite song was...

... Ikh un du a porele (You and I a Pair) and he quoted the chorus.

Well, there it was, one of my lost songs right there on the page! I contacted David and he kindly pointed me to a recording of his mother singing the song unaccompanied. Although she was along in years, her voice was strong and she did a bit of scat singing to imitate the orchestral arrangement she had in her head...

My friend Glenn Mehrbach, who is very conversant with musical theater genres, helped me reconstruct the accompaniment. Here is the whole song (not a video):

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The song was taken from Nellie Casman's road show Di khasndl (The Little Cantor) in which she cutely wore cantor's clothing (see right) and, obviously, sang this song. It would have been a duet and there was nobody else around when I was recording so I sang a harmony too.

Here are the words as printed in Zhelonek.

Punkt vi a shtern in himl
Shaynstu far mir nor aleyn
Ven ikh shlof un khap mir a dreml -
Dan volt ikh nor dikh gezen.
Ven du zolst mayn harts nor tsheshnaydn
Nor libe gefinstu in dem;
Ven du vest nor tsvey hertser oysmaydn
Un dos harts filt nor mit dir!

Ikh un du a porele
Oyf undz aza yorele
Un s'iz a svorele
Az mir beyde veln zayn glaykh
Du vest zayn mayn vaybele
Shtil nor vi a taybele
Ven du vest vern a mamele
Libn dikh biz tsum toyt.

Just like a star in heaven you shine just for me
When I sleep and doze, it's only you I want to see
If you cut my heart open, you'd just fine love inside
If you'd just join two hearts and this heart would only feel with you!

You and me, a pair, good years for us
It's my thought that we both will be the same
You'll be my wife, quiet as a dove
When you become a mother, I'll love you until death

Here is the chorus as Masha Roskies sang it:

Ikh un du a porele, af undz aza yorele
Mir beyde vern gliklekh zayn,
Nit visn veln mir fun keyn noyt.
Ikh vil zayn dayn vaybele, shtil azoy vi a taybele
Biz ikh vel vern a bobele, yo!
Un libn zikh bizn toyt.

You and I, a pair, may we have good years
We'll both be happy, we won't know hardship.
I'll be your wife, peaceful as a dove
Until I'm a grandmother, yes,
And we'll love each other until death.

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From my previous post about this song, before I found the tune:

At right, a page from the 1929 book "35 letste teatr lider fun Sambatiyon un Azazel." It says:

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The hit songs from Chazndl, from the famous soubrette Nellie Casman:

1. Oy, Vey m'Shoklt Zikh
   
2. Ikh un Du a Porele
   
3. Yosl, Yosl, Yosl
   
4. Vu zaynen mayne zibn gute yor?

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From Zylbercweig's Leksikon: "Encouraged by playwright Shlomo Steinberg, whom she had married and who wrote special plays for her, [Nellie Casman] went with him in 1929 to Warsaw, where she acted... in Steinberg's play 'A khasndl oyf shabos'...

The manuscript for this play is in the Marwick collection at the Library of Congress but is "text only." Notice all the different ways everything is spelled:

Labels: home, love, nostalgia, yiddish theater song

UPDATE: Reposting to add a new Instagram video. See below!

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Click the album cover to hear and/or buy this track from our cd In Odess.

Sometime after this cd came out, my Yiddish teacher Sheva Zucker informed me that "OYF" was now rendered as "AF" in proper Yiddish transliteration. OOF! So my alphabetizing is wrong and also it's harder to find this song. Which now should be called, I guess, "Af a maskn bal."

In the 1929 collection of theater song hits from the Yiddish kleynkunst venues Azazel and Sambatiyon there are TWO songs about masked balls. I suppose the opportunities for farcical unmaskings were irresistible.

Zhelonek specified this one was to be sung to the tune of In vildn vald aleyn (a very German-sounding folk song I found published in a 1938 Yiddish folk song collection) and that Zisha Katz was the singer on a Sirena record which "you can get cheapest only at Itzok's place."

Randy sang the sneaky husband performing entrapment on his flirtatious wife; I sang the sneaky wife who gets her comeuppance. Here's a short video of the song which I made for Instagram, click the picture below.


The Polish word pokrake, which my Yiddish teacher Sheva Zucker translates as "good-for-nothing," has been translated on the web as "freak."

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Here's my translation:

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Labels: battle between the sexes, humor & satire, love, modernity, songs for sale

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