Category — Klezmer

My basement — where Yiddishe Cup rehearses — smelled like a skunk.

The skunk was under the stoop by my front door, next to the basement.

I could hardly breathe in the basement.  How was I supposed to play clarinet?

Skunks are bad people.  The city won’t deal with them.  So I hired a private company, Critter Control.

The Critter Control  “technician” liked my collection of Jewish-star necklaces — Purim bling — in my basement.  He said he was Jewish. (I run into Jewish handymen more often than most people, I think.)  He said, “I don’t know much about the ritual and all that, but my mother was Jewish.”

“If you say you’re Jewish, that’s good enough for me,” I said.  And get rid of the skunk, please. He set a trap under the stoop.

And he sold me a can of Odor Assassin for $15.  Just three squirts of the spray got rid of the skunk smell in the basement.

When the Yiddishe Cup musicians came over for rehearsal that night, the basement smelled tangy and lemon-lime fresh, courtesy of the Odor Assassin.

But the skunk decided to spray, counterattacking during rehearsal. I thought Yiddishe Cup would disband.  I said, “Let me get out my Odor Assassin.  It’ll only take five years off our lives, at most.”

The guys agreed to the chemical battle.

Odor Assassin saved Yiddishe Cup’s rehearsal.  (No small thing. Some Yiddishe Cup musicians drive up to 35 minutes to rehearsal.)

Yiddishe Cup rarely endorses products.  To date: Golden Herring and all sardines.  Add Odor Assassin.

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1. My father had a game idea Let’s Blow Up the World.  I apportioned the megaton bomb ratings to various countries.  What kind of bomb did Paraguay deserve?  An M-80 firecracker?  Let’s Blow Up the World never made it past “high concept.”

2. Alan Douglass, Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, was a klezmer-revival pioneer.  He could have called klezmer “anchovy pear music” in Cleveland in the 1980s and people would have believed him. Alan let other musicians start the klez bands.  These others musicians got the extra money for being bandleaders.  What can a gentile do?  It wouldn’t have looked right for a goy — Alan — to lead a klez band.

3. Len Gold, a Cleveland ad man, wanted to make a Yiddishe Cup exercise video, Stretch ‘n’ Kvetch, to sell at temple gift shops.  Never happened.

4. Don Friedman, Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, was on What’s My Line in 1966. Don’s line (job) was testing drums for the Rogers Drum Co. in Cleveland.  (He was a drum tester, not a rum tester.)  Don probably could have had several more minutes of fame if he had asked Bennett Cerf to explain his name.

Don Friedman (L) with host John Daly

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5. Yiddishe Cup had a gig lined up for Fuerth, Germany, but the klezmer festival organizers there changed directors, or something, and we got canned.  I heard years later, through the klez grapevine, that Yiddishe Cup will never play Fuerth.  “They don’t like you!”  That’s the word on K Street.

Why don’t they like us? Maybe because I wrote the festival committee: “For three years we think — with good reason — we will be playing a concert in Germany.  Then, boom, it all goes kaput!”  I ended with a string of rage: “unscrupulous,” “shameful” and “dirty.”  I did not play the race card.  I did not call the klez-festival organizers anti-Semites.

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I had a custodian who enjoyed the Weather Channel and thought the end of the world was coming every day, via hurricanes or snowstorms. I don’t think she ever went outside.

Another employee was also fixated on the weather. He did a lot of indoor apartment painting and wanted every day to be 74 degrees like Costa Rica, so he wouldn’t sweat.

A neighbor of mine asked if I had a winter place in Florida.

I was surprised. I’m not there yet — retirement in Florida.

But I know a klezmer musician — a bushy-haired baby-boomer clarinetist — who is moving to Florida and taking up golf.  So anything is possible.

Maybe my friend will play a freylekhs (hora) by the water fountain on the 16^th hole.  (Mickey Katz did that.  His band got paid to surprise a golfer on his birthday.)

Some Clevelanders complain about the cold. Arizona versus Florida.  That is the discussion.

My wife, Alice, and I went to a wedding in Florida last spring, and a guest asked Alice, “Are you still in Cleveland?” Meaning “Are you nuts?  Do you like gray skies, slush and potholes?”

Another Cleveland woman at the wedding said, “The day I hit sixty-two I had to leave.”  She spends the winters in Scottsdale, Ariz.  A third Clevelander, originally from South Africa, preferred Florida over Arizona.  “I like the ocean,” she said.

Last month at a gig in Florida, I ran into a waiter who had lived in Florida and Arizona.  He said summer in Arizona is unbearable. Florida is bearable.

What about Ohio?  Ohio-with-layers in the winter and pleasant the rest of the year.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s new.   And check out this  video, “Albert Stratton Practicing his Comeback.” The clip is  an Ann Arbor song, taped at The Ark this month.

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“Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” by Louis Armstrong is probably the best song title.  It has action, smell and humor.

The worst title is “Rise Up to New Jewish Music.” A couple Jewish bands go for that sort of thing.  They are not playing klezmer — which peaked a while ago.  They are playing “New Jewish Music.”

Anything new is old.

Several newer klezmer bands don’t use klezmer in their names.  Like Shtreiml, Golem and the Kosher Spears.  (That last band is made up.)

“Yiddishe Cup,” the name, gets the job done around town, but doesn’t get us any gigs at Ashkenaz or other mohel’s-edge international music festivals.  “Yiddishe Cup” is bubbe’s procus (grandma’s stuffed cabbage.).

Before Yiddishe Cup released its latest CD, Klezmer Guy, I test-drove several album titles.  One was Jammin’ with the Salmon.

Smokin' salmon

Nobody understood it.  “Nobody” was my wife, Alice.  I didn’t run the title by anybody else.  I didn’t want the aggravation of more artistic input.  I’m not running a democracy.  I settled on Klezmer Guy. It gets the job done.

— Bert Struttin’

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Klezmer violinists often don’t get along with klezmer clarinetists. The animosity goes back to the late Chagall era.

In the early 1900s, recording engineers favored the piercing clarinet over the murky violin.  Studios had big acoustic horns the musicians played into.  The clarinet’s sound picked up better than the violin’s.  The clarinet’s ascendancy was quick, and the violin became passé and alter heym (old country).

Violinists are sensitive about this.

Violinists don’t like playing second fiddle.   They ask for “more violin” in the monitor mix and the house mix.  (The “monitor mix” is what the band hears on stage.  The “house mix” is what the audience hears.)

Truce time . . .

Let’s just forget about mikes. You don’t see them at New Orleans parades.  You don’t see them at bluegrass jam sessions.  Ban mikes.  Let lungs rule.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, likes to get to concerts early to talk about mikes with the sound mixologists.  Alan is Yiddishe Cup’s spokesman to the sound guys; if I would let the other band members chime in, we would spend the entire sound check saying, “more clarinet,” “more violin” and “more vocal.”  Every musician has a focus — himself.

I tell the sound techs, “Can you turn my moish up?”  (I like moish better than mike.  As for mic, that is totally absurd.  Fiction alert.)

Before Yiddishe Cup goes on stage, the sound guys — for no apparent reason — spin all the dreidels on the mixing board, and we sound like soup.

Throw away the mikes, musicians.  If you can’t hear yourself, so what? You shouldn’t have taken up violin.

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January is the big month for wedding planning.  Yiddishe Cup usually advertises in the Cleveland Jewish News “Weddings” supplement, which comes out next week.

Women ponder dresses, make-up and plastic surgery.  There are also ads for face lifts.  The face lift ads are for mothers of the brides, presumably.

There isn’t much talk about music in the wedding mag supplement.  It’s more about dresses, flowers, rings and gifts for the bridal party.  Destination weddings are another major topic.

The wedding bands in the CJN supplement are usually of a certain type: sexy female lead singer, black male singer, plus a lot of horns and guitars.

Then there’s Yiddishe Cup (we place a small ad): no females, no blacks and a lot of Jews.

A lot of Jews can’t stand a lot of Jews.  The majority of Jews want just a few minutes of “Hava Nagila” at a wedding.  They want half a Nagila.

A prospect asked for a five-minute hora.  I told her a Yiddishe Cup hora has to be at least 10 minutes.

She said, “In that case, I’ll give my DJ a CD for a five-minute hora.”

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Not all musicians have gigs on New Year’s Eve.

A lot of would-be partiers stay home for a quiet evening, or they go to the movies. There aren’t that many gigs.  The era of the fraternal organization New Year’s Eve dinner dance is long gone.

Sometimes people eat special New Year’s Eve foods.  I know a family that eats lobster.  My family eats oatmeal on New Year’s Eve.  We learned that habit in Akron, Ohio.

Yiddishe Cup had a gig at First Night Akron for 12 years in a row, and occasionally my family stayed overnight at the Quaker Square hotel, which was in a remodeled Quaker Oats grain silo.  The hotel’s New Year’s Eve dish was oatmeal, served at midnight.

Yiddishe Cup didn’t play First Night Akron last year.  The event coordinator called and said, “We’re reducing our footprint.”

My wife, Alice, plus a Yiddishe Cup musician and his wife, made a small dinner and then we went to the movies.  Not memorable, except for the oatmeal.

Klezmer musicians around the country lamented the downsizing of First Nights. This kvetching started a couple years ago on a Jewish-music listserv. First Nights had been the rage in the 1990s but had become part of the scenery.  (Similar to klezmer music’s popularity arc.)  In the 1990s, the director of First Night Akron told me she had just been to a national First Night conference in Boston and the word was “get a klezmer band.”

Yiddishe Cup worked up to playing First Night Akron. We played Warren, Ohio, First Night a couple times prior.  (A good event.)

Last year I checked out First Night Akron’s program online. I looked to see if another klezmer band was playing. There was a Beatles tribute band, a blues band and a couple generic American acts.   That was gratifying.

Yiddishe Cup is back at First Night Akron this year.  “Raisins and Oatmeal.”  That will be our opening song. No, it won’t. The tune doesn’t exist. We’ll open with
“Shalom Aleichem” — the version made popular by  Shmuel Brazil and Regesh.

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Yiddishe Cup plays First Night Akron this Friday., 7:30 p.m.
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Sports fans, please see the post below too.

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The highest paid Jewish communal worker in America is Steve Hoffman, president of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland — a united charities for Jews. Hoffman makes $687,000 a year.

He makes more than double the Atlanta federation president’s salary; 86 percent more than the Detroit chief; 56 percent more than the Chicago president; and more than the boys in New York.  [Source: Forward]

This gives Cleveland Jews another excuse not to give tzedakah (charity).  Donors want reasons not to give.

“That’s disgusting. He should be in private industry,” said a friend of mine.

Another friend stopped giving to the federation because a volunteer called and asked my buddy to up his pledge. My friend didn’t like the personal touch; he stopped giving altogether.

I asked the federation to switch my pledge solicitor.  I was in the federation’s real estate division — where the heavy-hitters are — and I didn’t want a phone call from an owner of a “lifestyle” shopping center, on principle. Now I have a friend who solicits me.  And with email, it’s all pretty painless.

I give.

But when I read in the Forward last week that Steve Hoffman is making two cents for every dollar the Cleveland campaign raises, I had second thoughts on Hoffman’s two cents.  A sizable chunk of the federation’s annual $28.8 million campaign is going to Hoffman.

On the other hand, Hoffman is no doubt a capable executive, dealing with very finicky donors around the clock. He also oversees the federation’s enormous endowment and philanthropic funds. He was offered $687,000 a year and took it.  That’s not a crime. He’s probably a good guy. Just an overpaid good guy.

In my father’s day, the federation published an annual blue book that listed everybody’s contributions.  My dad was proud he was “anonymous.”  My former rabbi, Michael Hecht, differed.  Rabbi Hecht said it was best to attach your name to your contribution so peers would be embarrassed and/or motivated to give more.  (The bell rings . . . Rabbi Hecht vs. Maimonides.)

The best place to give — at least in the non-Jewish realm — is to the Salvation Army.  The Salvation Army is a religion.  The Sallies — the troops — are almost like nuns. The Sallies don’t spend much on overhead.  They are in the streets, doling out food.  And don’t forget about their brass bands.

Every year I write on my Salvation Army donation: “I’m Jewish.”  I got a call from the major once.  He didn’t mention the Jewish part.

The most ardent fund-raising drive ever, surprisingly, was at Klezkamp — the artsy klezmer convention.  A spirited 80-something New Yorker took center stage and asked for pledges.  He announced the pledges and checks . . . $18, $25, $36, $50.  A musician gave $5,000.  That was Gates-ian.  When all the pledges were counted, the speaker said: “Here’s something I learned from our Irish friends.  It’s called the waving o’ the green.”  He took a dollar from his wallet and waved it. Klezkamp volunteers with buckets circulated through the crowd to collect bills the audience waved back.

It was good theater, somewhat creepy, and somewhat effective.  A buck goes into the bucket. “Transparency” in action.  Nobody at Klezkamp was making $687,000 from that bucket.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s fresh paint.
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And win a free CD — One Ring Zero’s Planets — by entering Zeek‘s First Klezmer Liner Note Contest. Zeek is a Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. I wrote the rules for the Zeek contest. Click here to enter, or just to read the nutty rules.
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Yiddishe Cup plays First Night Akron (Ohio) 7:30  Fri. , Dec. 31.

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Walt Mahovlich, the leader of the Gypsy-style band Harmonia, had hundreds of cassette tapes in his living room. He had custom-made bookshelves lined with tapes. There were Yugoslavian field recording from the 1970s and commercial ethnic tapes from the 1980s and 1990s.  And he had dubbed some LPs to tape.

Walt’s wall o’ tapes was organized by nationality: Albanian, Croatian, Hungarian, Jewish, Macedonian, Romanian, Rusyn, Serbian, Slovak and Turkish.

A tape — a brand-new chrome tape with Dolby — often sounded as good as the original LP.  But few dubbers bought chrome.  Even the commercial tapes released in the 1980s weren’t always chrome.

One big downside to tape: the tape player would occasionally eat the skinny tape, and you’d have to splice it back to health.

The cassettes, with their cases, were compact.  Give them that.

I bought a Sony Walkman cassette player in 1981, just prior to my first son’s birth.   My wife, Alice, went through three 24-hour shifts of obstetricians before she delivered.  I had the cassette tapes (dubbed jazz LPs) and two corned beef sandwiches from Irv’s Deli.  I was set.  My wife had complications.

The doctors wanted to check it out. Not the complications. The Walkman. They had never seen one.

Three years ago I bought a Chinese Walkman knock-off for $40 at Radio Shack.  I thought the Walkman might disappear.

Sony recently announced the end of Walkman cassette player production.

Two words:  Stock up.

Teddy Stratton, 1 month

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Walt Mahovlich’s wall o’ tapes still exists in the same West Side living room.

Last week Walt said, “I should transfer my tapes to digital.  Who knows how long they’ll last — the tapes.  But what I really need to do is record a 78 — something that will really last!”

“You want to record a 78 RPM?”

“Yes.  Alan [Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player] has a 78-making machine.  I saw it years ago.  I want to record a tune, then prematurely age the disc — the 78 — and place it in strategic places for people to find.”

“Like at Goodwill stores?”

“Maybe.  It’ll be a hoax, like Piltdown Man.”

“An original tune?”

“No, a clarinet piece I learned years ago.  I’ll call it ‘Der Freylekher Bulgar’ for the Jewish market and ‘Lerinsko Narodno Oro” for the Macedonians. It’ll be the same tune, two markets.  Like Tarras.” *

“Do you have a Walkman?”

“No, I’ve never had one.”

“You should get one.”

“I have a tape deck. I’m set.”

Walt, on accordion, had an aura. 1983

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* Dave Tarras, klezmer clarinetist, sometimes “re-gifted” his Jewish tunes to fit the Greek market, and vice versa.

“Der Freylekher Bulgar” is Yiddish for “The Happy Dance.”  “Lerinsko Narodno Oro” is Macedonian for “Lerin Region Folk Dance.”

Thanks to Lori Cahan-Simon, musician and Yiddishist, for the  correct spelling on “Der Freylekher Bulgar.”

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Yiddishe Cup occasionally plays mirrored halls.

Take La Vera.  Or Casa di Borally.  Or La Malfa (no mirrors but still heavy Italian).

Our latest mirrored hall gig was Armenian.  Yiddishe Cup knows two Armenian tunes, which gets us through the night. We mix them with klezmer, jazz and pop.

I’m not bad on “Cold Duck Time” by Eddie Harris.  Not good either.

I thought there were 300 people at the La Vera gig, because of the mirrors.  There were about 150 people.

A guest asked if Yiddishe Cup is available July 11, 2011, for his daughter’s wedding at La Malfa.  Yes, La Coppa Yiddishe is available, and call soon.  July 11 is “tomorrow” in the band biz.

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The premier mirrored hall in Ohio is the Hall of Mirrors at the Hilton Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati.  That mirrored hall, built in 1931, is modeled after the Palace of Versailles.

Yiddishe Cup played a wedding in the Cincy hall for the great-grandchild of Arnold Schoenberg.  A guest even sang a medley of Schoenberg art songs midway through the reception.  That was a bigger party-killer than benching (post-meal prayers).

Yiddishe Cup is playing a Cincy wedding tomorrow night at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. We’ve never played there.   Mirror situation, per favore?

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Illustration by Ralph Solonitz.

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When the mother of the bride says you’re on for the wedding, you’re not always on.  The bride, not the mother, makes all final decisions.  The bride can — and will — override Mom.

I once negotiated a Thanksgiving Day wedding.   The mom thought Thanksgiving would be the perfect wedding day, because nobody would come.  The groom’s side was from New York, so flights to Cleveland would be expensive.  Terrific.  And the locals would pass on the wedding to eat Thanksgiving dinner at home with their kids, who wouldn’t be invited to the wedding.  Also, terrific.

I listened to this for three phone calls.

Then the mom hired Yiddishe Cup.

Yes!

The band members rescheduled their own Thanksgiving dinners.  Not an easy task.

The mom called a fourth time and said the bride wanted a different band.  I didn’t even ask who.  I usually ask, but  I was so mad — mostly at myself because I had forgotten the rule “it’s all about the bride.”

[Exception: A mom booked us for a Cleveland wedding, and the bride — from Seattle — ran up to the bandstand and said, “I hate klezmer music!  How could my mother do this to me!”]

After Ms. Thanksgiving Turkey hung up, I called a second client — a bat mitzvah mom — who was late with her contract and deposit.

She said she wanted to talk more.  I had already talked to her several times.  I said, “Yiddishe Cup has been around over twenty years.  You’ve seen us.  Everybody has seen us.  You know what we’re all about.”

She said her husband was sick.

Pause.  Sick in the band biz means very ill.  It sometimes means dying.  I’ve played simchas (celebrations) for sick people; these affairs are the most poignant.   I’ve seen dads roll down the aisle in wheelchairs.  Dads who couldn’t talk because of strokes.  Guys with half a brain left.

Yiddishe Cup has played for dead people; we played a bat mitzvah luncheon where the bat mitzvah girl’s mom died the day before.  The funeral was the next day.  We played in the family room instead of at the party center.  Two or three people tried a hora.

The woman with the sick husband came to my house to further discuss the bat mitzvah.  I asked what her husband’s illness was.  She said he was depressed.   Her husband — a doctor — had lost a patient that week.

He wasn’t sick!  Doctors lose patients all the time!  She just wanted to change the date, the number of musicians, and a few other things.   Which she did.

The gig — on a new date, with fewer musicians — was surprisingly fun.  Everybody was upbeat, and nobody bugged the band, except the good-natured grandfather, who said to our pianist, “Do you know your fly is down.”

Our pianist, not missing a beat, answered, “No, can you hum a few bars?”

Nobody was sick.  That was something to be thankful for.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s fresh.
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Yiddishe Cup plays Columbus, Ohio, 6 p.m. Sun., Dec. 5.  Chanukah.  Please contact Tifereth Israel Congregation for details.
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Illustration by Ralph Solonitz.

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Bass player Esther Isenstadt ran classified ads in the back of the Cleveland Jewish News in the 1970s and 1980s: “Sophisticated music for discriminating people” . . . “Leave your records at home and bring LIFE to your party” . . . “From ‘The Hora’ to ‘Beat It.'”

Esther was gigging regularly when Yiddishe Cup started in 1988.   I didn’t run into her.  She was working the senior-adult circuit, while Yiddishe Cup was doing the glam jobs: bar mitzvahs and weddings.  Esther was not a klezmer musician.  She played mostly classical and pop — and some Jewish.

When I eventually met Esther, she was in The Weils assisted living facility. She was 86 (2003).  She approached me after a Yiddishe Cup senior-adult program to say hello.  I told her I knew of her.  She smiled. I had one of her songbooks; I said I bought it used at the Cleveland Music School Settlement.  She smiled again.  Then she didn’t smile. She said, “I never thought I’d end up here!”

Ed Preisler — another Weils resident — chimed in, “I came out here to die.” (Ed died six months later.)  Ed was the 1946 Ohio Amateur Golf Champion.

Ted Bonda, the former owner of the Cleveland Indians, was also there.  I switched gears; I asked Ted, Ed and Esther — and the other people schmoozing after the program — if they knew Mickey Katz.  One resident knew Mickey from Yale Avenue, Cleveland; another, from Berkshire Road, Cleveland Heights.

I asked the group if they were familiar with the word kile (hernia).  Nobody knew it.  That was surprising.   Kile is the punch line in Mickey Katz’s song “16 Tons [of Hard Salami]” . . .  “The balebus (boss) promised me a real gedile (glory), instead of geldile I catched me a kile (hernia).”  The Weils was apparently not heavy-duty Yiddishists.

Esther Isenstadt teaching ESL, 2000

Esther Isendstadt had played in four suburban orchestras, raised a family, taught elementary school, led party bands and taught ESL in “retirement.” She was a Glenville High graduate, as were Bonda and Preisler. Glenville High was where Jewish overachievers went to high school in the 1930s. [John Adams High students — like my parents — would have disagreed with that. John Adams, in the Kinsman neighborhood, was more proste (working-class) than Glenville, but equally proud.]

I learned “Shir Lashalom” (A Song of Peace) from Esther’s book.  That tune was a must-play in 1995 — the year Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.  The lyrics were in Rabin’s pocket when he got shot.

Esther had rubber-stamped Esther Isenstadt Orchestras on every other page of the used song book.  A Jewish bandleader with a rubber stamp.

I got a rubber stamp.

Esther died last month at 93.

There weren’t many bands with names like the Esther Isenstadt Orchestra in the 1970s.  There still aren’t.

CJN 1984

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Illustration by Ralph Solonitz.

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From klezmer violinist Steven Greenman‘s “lawyer”:

Postscript: Galitzianers, please note, Greenman’s class begins Thursday (Nov. 18) in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

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Vid-loathers, here’s pretty much the same thing as the video, in text:

Klezmer violinist Steve Greenman asked my help in translating a Spanish contract. He thought he had a gig in Spain but wasn’t sure.

The contract wasn’t in Spanish. It was in Catalan, I guessed. Terceiro for tercero, for example.

We looked at an atlas. Verdict: Steve was going to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, where he would teach master violin classes. The Spaniards probably had some local language up there. [Yes. Galician/Gallego.]

I said to Steve, “I saw a movie about a guy in a wheelchair filmed there. Can’t remember the name. It’s exotic. It’s nowheresville.” [The Sea Inside, 2007.]

Steven Greenman with Yiddishe Cup, 1992

Just another day for Greenman, who expects to get gigs in faraway places. He thinks the world will come to him because he has never made a mistake on violin. A klezmer gig in northwest Spain . . .

I was glad to be a part of it, even if my role was just to say “I have no idea what this contract says.”

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My nephew visits Big League baseball stadiums around the country as a hobby.

I visit Big League klezmer towns in the Midwest as a hobby. My remarks (below) are challah-to-challah comparisons.  I’m not comparing Milwaukee to Paris.

The best Midwest klezmer towns:

1. Pittsburgh . . .  Squirrel Hill, Shadyside. Everything you need. (Pittsburgh is not in the Midwest, but so what.  It is west of the Alleghenies.)

Hebrew clock. Pittsburgh JCC

2. Chicago. The Midwest klez capital. Maxwell Street Klezmer Band is the band in the Midwest. A Cleveland boy — a Northwestern student — worked in the Maxwell Street office; I had that kid wired. Yes, a klez band with office help. Chi is that big. Powerful klezmer forces prevail in Chi. Max Street does not allow Ohio bands within 80 miles of The Loop.  Yiddishe Cup played Rockford, Ill., once.

3. Detroit. West Bloomfield, a Motown suburb, has Temple Israel, a very attractive modern temple. There is such a thing.  At concerts, the Temple Israel ark is curtained off by a striking yarmulke mandala.

Yiddishe Cup at Temple Israel, 2010

4. Kansas City — as marvelously tough as Cleveland. KC’s Country Club Plaza is like Shaker Square but bigger and older.

5. St. Louis. Yiddishe Cup played there twice, then it all died out — the gigs. My Cleveland rabbi, who is from St. Louis, has a couple seats from the old Busch stadium. He should install the seats on our shul’s bima (altar) and invite Enos  Slaughter to give the d’var torah (torah lesson/sermon). Good custard — Ted Drewes — in St. Louis.  Similar to Cleveland’s East Coast Original Frozen Custard.

6. Milwaukee. Its claim to fame: songwriter Sigmund Snopek III, who wrote “Thank God This isn’t Cleveland.”

7. Minneapolis. There are a lot of klez bands up there: Prairie Heym Klezmorim, Klezmerica, etc. Too much klez in Minnie.  Yiddishe Cup will never play there.

8. Cincinnati. The Plum Street Temple, where Stephen Wise officiated, is the most rakish and Moorish synagogue in the country. Check it out.

Plum Street Temple

9. Buffalo. Terrific art museum. Underrated.

10. Indianapolis. Overrated. A suburb of Atlanta.

Cleveland isn’t ranked. That wouldn’t be fair. But off the record, Cleveland is number one.

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At a candy-theme bar mitzvah, the dessert table is tortes and truffles, and the kids’ table  is do-it-yourself ice cream sundaes and candy bars.

The bar mitzvah boy — the candy man–  has a custom-printed candy bar named after him. The nutrition data reads: “Serving size — 1 young man. Ingredients — charm, wits, humor . . .”

Yiddishe Cup wants its own candy bar.  It’ll be dark chocolate with slivers of old clarinet reeds. We’ll put these treats in the goodie bags for the bar mitzvah kids.

Any leftovers, we’ll take to Yiddishe Cup’s haunted house.  This year our torture chamber features Don Friedman, our drummer, telling nonstop Internet musicians’ jokes like  “What is the definition of an optimist? A trombonist with a beeper.”

Any leftover chocolates from the haunted house, we’ll give to our keyboard player, Alan Douglass, who is good for a candy bar and diet pop many mornings.  Repeat at bedtime.  I bought him a Snickers at a gas station and he refused it.  It has to be MilkyWay or Three Musketeers.

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The candy expert is Steve Almond, author of Candy Freak.

I, too, did some candy reporting, but I didn’t have the name for a career in it.  In the 1980s I interviewed a chocolate factory owner who claimed dark chocolate was a Jewish thing.  Maybe because of kashrut?  [Jewish dietary laws]

Yes, a lot of Jews prefer dark chocolate.  For one thing, it is a health food.

This year Yiddishe Cup is trick-or-treating as klezmer musicians.   Yes, again.  But with a twist: we’re ditching the Tevye vests and caps, and going as chocolate fountains with silver-foil Frank Gehry antlers dripping Hershey’s syrup onto our faces.

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1 of 2 posts for 10/27/10.  Please see the post below too.

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A Yiddishe Cup musician, loading in at a country club, said, “I do not like rich people.”

You talkin’ to me?

What’s the median household income in the United States — $50,000?

I had access to Alan Dershowitz’s cell phone number.  He did the Electric Slide at a bar mitzvah party. (I wasn’t playing; I was a guest.) I could have posted Dershy’s dorky disco on YouTube, but why embarrass a landsman – and maybe get sued.  [“Landsman” means paisan.]

Dershowitz has a place on the Vineyard, I learned.  Dershy is rich.  “Rich” is pronounced “well-off.”

Maybe my band mate, at the country club, was upset because the club’s manager, Kim, wouldn’t let us in the buffet line, and had told us to drink only lemonade, not even pop.  And we couldn’t go into the kids’ buffet line, even with all the fried junk there. [Kim is not her real name.]

We got cold-cut sandwiches around 2:30 p.m.  This, for lunch?

I’ll eat anything.  The video guy wouldn’t.  (Later, he would.)  He said, “It is truly a disgrace to serve this to professionals.”  He said that to the musicians, not the manager.

I do not like rich people . . .

Photographer Herb Ascherman got a decent meal. No wraps for Herb.   In his contracts, Herb has the line “client will provide a hot meal.”  Herb knows how to deal with rich people and Kim, who is rich, but not well off.
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2 of 2 posts for 10/6/10

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Two-thirds of the art in my house is by Irwin Weinberger, Yiddishe Cup’s singer.  Irwin is also a painter and middle-school art teacher.

He did a portrait of my kids 19 years ago.  I thought the kids — those pipsqueaks — were cute.  But their pipsqueak phase dragged on for years; I would stare at that painting and say, “Grow up already!”  Schlepping kids crosstown to gymnastics meets was not fun.  Schlepping the youngest child to an 8 a.m. hockey game in Parma Heights was not fun.  Sitting through my daughter’s swim meets was not entirely pleasant.  (The diving part was pleasant, but the swimming races — which she had nothing to do with — weren’t fun.)

As it turned out, the whole thing — childrearing — lasted about two weeks.

Yiddishe Cup has been in existence 21 years, and that, too, has felt like two weeks. One day — back in 1989 — we were playing a Cleveland Heights street fair, and the next day– 21 years later– we were playing a Cleveland Heights street fair.*  What’s with that?

We — the Yiddishe Cup musicians — enjoy the short drive to work.  We are in our own backyard, kind of  like the working musicians in Las Vegas or Branson, Mo.  The downside to playing Cleveland a lot is everybody has heard us a million times.

Make it new.  Or go nuts.

The newest Yiddishe Cup recruit, our drummer, has been with us 12 years.  We have new music, but not new guys.

I rarely put the musicians’ names front and center.  It’s all about Team Yiddishe Cup.  What if a Yiddishe Cup “star” leaves? That would mess up the band’s publicity.

The band’s PR photos are like my family portrait.  Same guys, basically.  Why change the photos?  We look the same as we did in the 1990s.  I think so.  It’s the same guys.

Yiddishe Cup, 1998. An outtake. The arrow in Irwin's head messed up this shot. (Photo by Charles J. Mintz)

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* Footnote: Yiddishe Cup did not play a Cleveland Heights street fair in 2010. However, the band did play Parade the Circle in University Circle — close to, but not in, Cleveland Heights. And last year the band played for the outdoor movie/concert night at Coventry (Cleveland Heights).

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2 of 2 posts for 9/8/10.

L’shana tovah. (Happy New Year.)

Yiddishe Cup is at Fairmount Temple  Wed. Sept 29 and Park Synagogue Thurs. Sept. 30 for Simchat Torah.  Cleveland.

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When the Kleveland Klezmorim disbanded in 1990, bandleader Greg Selker said, “I’ll miss the bliss but not the arguing with bookers and musicians.”

He became an executive headhunter.

“I’ll Miss the Bliss.” Somebody should write that tune.

My musical bliss happens most often when I hear a new instrument with Yiddishe Cup — like when Steve Ostrow first played trombone with us; or Walt Mahovlich added accordion; or Gerald Ross, Hawaiian guitar; or Shawn Fink sang “Joe and Paul.”

Or when I had Donato’s pizza with pineapple.

Selker didn’t like arguing with band mates.  Who does? Luckily I haven’t had that many arguments.  The worst was when a musician told me to get lost, or words to that effect, when I wanted him to commit to additional Yiddishe Cup rehearsals.

Professional musicians — guys who do only music — get very annoyed if they perceive the bandleader is trying to own them.  (“Own” is a sideman’s word.  Bandleaders say “hire.”)

Career musicians demand their independence and right to follow the dollar.  The bandleader can only request first call, which means the sideman has to check with the bandleader before taking a gig with band number two.  That sometimes gets tricky.  For instance, when Yiddishe Cup’s first call is a nursing home and the sideman’s second call is the Ancona (Italy) Jewish festival.

Selker quit too early.  He could have played Ancona and other exotic festivals; the Kleveland Klezmorim were one of the first klez revival, klez-fusion bands.  Selker slept at Frank London’s New York apartment, which in klezmer terms is equal to the Lincoln bedroom.  (London is a founder of the Klezmatics.)

Kleveland Klezmorim, 1985

Another guest at London’s apartment was Yiddishe Cup’s keyboardist, Alan Douglass, an original member of the Kleveland Klezmorim.  Alan slept at London’s when the Kleveland Klezmorim played Carnegie Hall . . . Carnegie Hall Cinema.  The Kleveland Klezmorim accompanied silent Laurel and Hardy shorts in New York in 1985.

(A former Yiddishe Cup drummer played the Hollywood Bowl . . . parking lot.  Yiddishe Cup played Severance Hall
. . . lobby.)

I took private lessons from Selker in 1987, which was a hassle because Selker was so footloose back then: It’s spring, Bert.  I need to reschedule. I’m going for a walk in the Metroparks. I had arranged for babysitting for my kids. (Selker eventually had three boys and settled down big-time.)

Greg “I’ll Miss the Bliss” Selker . . .

At Yiddishe Cup concerts our first several years, I often thanked Selker from the bandstand.  He told me to give it up. It was hard.  No Selker, no Yiddishe Cup.

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Alan Douglass sent me an email a year ago containing “cool ancient [klezmer] history,” as he called it.

Alan said the Kleveland Klezmorim drove all night from Cleveland to New York for the Carnegie Hall gig, winding up in a filthy New Jersey hotel. “Beer bottles on the window sills inside the room,” Alan said.

The band reconnoitered the next day on the steps of the Museum of Modern Art.  “We played on the sidewalk,” Alan said. “Greg got a comeuppance from a local marimbist playing down the street.  She was a Philharmonic percussionist and a monster — barely five feet.”

The band played three shows on Saturday and four on Sunday at the Carnegie Hall Cinema.  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired,” Alan said.  “We drove back home on Monday. I made $50.”
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Yiddishe Cup is in Motown this Sat. night, Sept. 4.  Temple Israel, W. Bloomfield, Mich.  8:30 p.m.  Free.

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Bert Stratton is a pianist and singer on the Caribbean Princess cruise ship.

A man phoned and said, “Bert, this is Joe.  I’m upstairs.”

I was in the basement.  Joe was upstairs.  Creepy.

Joe was upstairs at the other Bert Stratton’s house.

A friend of mine saw Bert perform.  Bert knew me — knew of me — he told my friend.

I know Bert, sort of.  The imposter always tops me on Google.

I wouldn’t mind playing a cruise ship like Bert Stratton.  I know a retired rabbi — Bernard Ducoff, the father of Yiddishe Cup’s dance leader Daniel Ducoff — who does cruise ship gigs.  He’s the boat rabbi for a week or so.  Yiddishe Cup could do a Caribbean klezmer cruise.  There already is a Caribbean cantors cruise on Kosherica lines.  (Not fiction.)

I could not see doing a klezmer bus tour.  No thanks to blowing clarinet on a moving vehicle.  Bad for the teeth.  I was asked to play on Lolly the Trolley and said no.

I could play klezmer on an elevator.  I did.  Yiddishe Cup played elevator music at the opening of Stone Garden Center for Adult Living.  We have played at Stone Garden many times since, but not in the elevator.  We call our Stone Garden gigs “playing the Garden,” as in Madison Square Garden.

Has Bert Stratton ever played the Garden?
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2 of 2 posts for 8/25/10

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1. A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA MAYBE FALL

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player doesn’t like to play in direct sunlight.  He wants our contract to say “We will not play in direct sunlight.”

I ignore him.  At summer concerts, I try to set up outside.  This has cost the band one loudspeaker, damaged by heavy rain.

Yiddishe Cup has played on the Wiley Middle School lawn, University Heights, Ohio, for 16 years and has moved inside the school three times.  (Thus, there is a 19 percent chance we’ll get rained out in Cleveland on an August night.)

At private parties, clients sometimes rent backyard tents just so they can have something extra thing to worry about — whether the tent will blow down or not.  Some Jews will pay extra for another worry.

Yiddishe Cup played a tent in Dayton, Ohio, where it rained so hard, busboys poked holes in the canopy to collect rain into garbage cans.  I thought the band might get electrocuted, the floor was so damp.

At a Shaker Heights tent, the air was so hot and humid, my clarinet slid apart at the cork joints.  Biloxi, Miss., had nothing on Shaker that night.

Yiddishe Cup played poolside in a Shaker backyard.  We were like Catskill mambo kings.  At the Akron (Ohio) JCC, we also played poolside, and the kids tried to splash us with belly slams and cannonballs.  That was Family Fun Day, a.k.a. Let’s Destroy Professional Musical Instruments Day.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player doesn’t like it when I vacillate between indoors and outdoors.  Mr. Keyboard Player, who are you going to trust, AccuWeather or your leader?

I avoid indoors if possible.  Granted, outdoor sound is mediocre, but the breeze is good and the kids get to run on the grass, and summer is so brief.

Last summer at University Heights, we moved the band’s equipment indoors at the last minute.  The storm knocked down a chain-link fence and several trees.  That was one of my better calls.

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Here’s a video clip from last year’s concert.  (The stage patter at the end of the song, at 1:58 min., is amusing.)

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2. ELI, ELI

Eli “Paperboy” Reed played at University Heights with Yiddishe Cup the night the power went out throughout Ohio, then Michigan, Ontario, and the entire Northeast.  Maybe Eli caused the Northeast Blackout of August 2003.  Eli, not FirstEnergy.  We continued the concert with a battery-powered amp.

Eli “Paperboy” Reed doesn’t need, or probably want, a middle-aged klezmer guy saying nice things about his new album, Come and Get It. (Klezmer Old Dude = Kiss of Death.)  I’ll keep it low-key. Ta-da . . .

Eli “Paperboy” Reed sings and writes original, yet classic-sounding, R&B/soul.  No, “Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed” is not a pseudonym for my son the drummer.  My son-the-drummer’s pseudonym is DJ Paradiddle.

Reed, 26, is big in Europe.  Like on The Ed Sullivan Show (the modern-day Brit equivalent) and the cover of Rolling Stone (the Brit equivalent).  Look for Come and Get It on Capitol Records and for Eli everywhere.  He was on NPR “Weekend Edition” [hear] several days ago.   He’ll probably be on late-night American TV soon.

I know a couple klezmer guys who are big, too, who played with Yiddishe Cup.  Years ago the bass player for the Klezmatics did a gig with us in Toledo.

Ipso facto, there is no such thing as “big” in klezmer.

Eli Reed doesn’t play klezmer, though.  When he performed with Yiddishe Cup, he did soul/R&B.

Reed and his band, the True Loves, have a gutsy Stax-like sound, which provides the core support to Reed’s emotive lyrics, which are rabbit punches to the solar plexus of young love.  Example: “You went from name calling to calling my name. You went from school-yard teasing to all night pleasing.”  That is clear-cut sawing in the coming-of-age forest.

Eli — they love him in España and France.  I hope Eli “Paperboy” Reed becomes huge in America, and says in passing, “Yiddishe Cup is all right,” and Yiddishe Cup gets more gigs.

When you buy Eli “Paperboy” Reed’s Come and Get It, tell them — Reed, Capitol, iTunes, et al. — Yiddishe Cup sent you.

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1 of 2 posts for 8/18/10.  Please see the post below too.

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See Yiddishe Cup 7 p.m. tomorrow (Thurs. Aug. 19) at Wiley Middle School, 2155 Miramar Blvd., University Hts., Ohio.  Free.  Indoors if raining.

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