
A week ago I got this email from a guy at the Library of Congress:
As you may know, the National Recording Registry is an annual list from the Library of Congress... Each of these recordings has been chosen by the Librarian of Congress, with input from the National Recording Preservation Board. Each of these recordings have been deemed so vital to the history of America—aesthetically, culturally or historically—that they demand permanent archiving in the nation’s library... Currently, those of us who work on the Registry are attempting to build out the above website with a variety of scholarly essays on each of the 525 titles on the Registry. I was wondering if you might be able write something for us on the topic of: "Yiddish Cylinders from the Standard Phonograph and Thomas Lambert Co."? Unfortunately, we are not able to pay you at this time.
The song he was referencing was this one,
Dos Biselle Mashke (A little booze), written and sung by Solomon Smulewitz sometime around 1903. (I recently put him into Wikipedia if you're interested:
Solomon Smulewitz). Here it is:
The Lambert Yiddish cylinders are among the oldest Yiddish recordings ever made and the only reason they are now widely available is that Henry Sapoznik, whom I met back in the late 1980s at his seminal retreat for Jewish musicians called
KlezKamp, put together the Attractive Hebrews compilation for Archeophone Records (and
received an award for it). (The cd's cover image is from a song called
A Boychik up-to-date by Louis Gilrod and David Meyerowitz, both frequently seen on this blog. It's a great sheet music cover but, sadly, the lyrics are too annoying to sing.)
If I seem to be linking more than usual, it's because Sapoznik is a legendary character in all senses of the word (read about his long history in klezmer and American old-time music at
Wikipedia).Yet the Library of Congress guy - who took the recording from this cd and who has the extensive liner notes - hadn't even bothered to contact him.
Sapoznik always has an interesting project underway. At his website (
Henry Sapoznik) you can read about the most recent ones, and he says he'll soon be posting more of his work on Yiddish radio.
He's issued a number of cds of the oldest, rarest Yiddish recordings. Look them up and buy them. Read about the Lambert cylinders project and sample the tracks:
Attractive Hebrews at the Archeophone website or at
Amazon.
The word
mashke is sometimes translated as whisky rather than generic liquor.
You can listen to and read about a "folk-processed" version of this song, called by the singer
Tsu dir, tsu dir dos glezele vayn, at Itzik Gottesman's Yiddish Song of the Week blog. It often happened that theater songs escaped out into the wild and became thought of as "folk" songs. If you think about it, every folk song was written by somebody - we just don't know who.
Sapoznik's transcription of the words and my translation from the Yiddish after the jump. I'm also including the singable translation he made!
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