Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

J RAPPER

by Bert Stratton

I’m a J rapper — a Jewish rapper. I like hiphop, klezmer and all that stuff. Weird, because I’m 70. I go to rap-offs and win. I can rhyme Yiddish, like balebos with ball of fuzz, and mishegas with lift up the gas. People like it.

hypno klezThere used to be another old Jewish rapper — Murray Saul. (Yeah, I know there are young Jewish rappers, like Matisyahu and Ari Lesser.) Anyway, old Murray Saul would go on WMMS radio — this was in the 1970s — and screech about the exciting, impending weekend. Saul was Cleveland’s answer to Allen Ginsberg but without the talent. Saul would just yell a lot. He was also a salesman; he sold radio ads.

I have a half hour’s worth of material.

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4 comments

1 Ken Goldberg { 11.21.18 at 10:05 am }

Half hour? You should have put at least another five minutes into this post, Bert. Cheesh!….

2 Ken Goldberg { 11.21.18 at 7:34 pm }

P.S. I see the clarinet makes you buggy eyed….

3 Dave Rowe { 11.26.18 at 8:11 pm }

If Murray Saul was Cleveland’s Allen Ginsberg Don Webster was its Dick Clark – for many the Upbeat Show was a staple.

4 Joe { 05.31.19 at 3:17 pm }

Murray Saul was not a poet like Allen Ginsberg, but he was a politically involved, caring person. Recall his “Jabberwocky” program on WMMS Sunday mornings.

Murray Saul with his rants indirectly touched on the oppression of an Industrial system on human nature (and Cleveland was very industrial.) Murray Saul contradicted the rational world that weighed heavily on us.

In different decades, Murray Saul and Ghoulardi came from the same place, the counterculture.

@Dave Rowe. In the late 90s, Don Webster hosted a charity golf tournament with my father’s name attached. My brother asked him about Jeff Kutash and the Upbeat dancers, the Grasshoppers, and the Tula Babies. Don remarked, “I can’t believe you guys remember that stuff.” I said, “How could we not remember it.”

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