KLEZ CZARS

Klezmer bands are often run like dictatorships because klezmer music originated in Eastern Europe — a part of the world notorious for autocrats.  Or so hypothesized Walt Mahovlich, the leader of the renowned gypsy-style band Harmonia.  Walt is an expert on Eastern Europe. His full name is Waltipedia.  Maybe.

Walt used to be in Yiddishe Cup. Technically he still is.  He is on a leave of absence, which he requested 13 years ago.  Walt likes to keep his options open.

If you run a band as a democracy, you’ll be in total disarray on the bandstand, Walt said.  I had a musician who liked to call tunes for me.  Drove me nuts.  Luckily he moved out of town 19 years ago.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, occasionally requests songs.  More often, he requests not to play a certain song.  For instance, he does not like playing “balls out” (hard-driving) music during guests’ meals.  Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes not.  These folks — at bar mitzvah luncheons — are comatose from a three-hour shabbat service followed by a 30-minute kiddush (post-service schmooze).  Sometimes they need a bracing shot of high-proof klez.

Some musicians have trouble with bandleaders’ czar-like behavior. My guys — not so much.  Yiddishe Cup’s musicians are the best in Cleveland; they get paid the most; and they generally cooperate.  If I have a problem with a guy, I’ll talk to him alone, not in front of the others.

Craig Woodson, a veteran drummer, taught me not to air private grievances in public.  Craig, too, believed in the benevolent monarch thing.  He had worked with a king — Elvis.  (Check Craig out in the movie Clambake.)

Craig was Yiddishe Cup’s second drummer. He was good — and in California too often on his own gigs.  Yiddishe Cup went through a ton of drummers.  Our current drummer, Don Friedman — who has been with us 13 years — knows how to keep time and add tasteful fills.  So does our alternate drummer, a yingl (boy) named Diddle.

Diddle, 21, started “playing out” (gigging) when he was 13.  I hate that — that start-out-as-young as-Mozart-or-you’re-toast mentality.  Diddle’s father hangs around our gigs, kind of like Venus and Serena’s dad.

Cleveland’s jazz king Ernie Krivda played in his dad’s polka band at 13.  Clarinetist Ken Peplowski played in a polka band at 13.  Joe Lovano started the sax at 5.  “At 16 the young Joe Lovano got his driver’s license and no longer needed his father, Big T, to drive
him . . .” blah, blah.

My father was a “Big T” too.  Toby.  Why didn’t he have a band?  Or at least a decent record player.
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1 of 2 posts for 9/2/09.  Please see post below too.
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Yiddishe Cup concert 7:15 p.m. Sun., Sept. 6, Orange Village (Ohio) gazebo.

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