Researching Yiddish penny songs (tenement song broadsides of theater and variety show songs, 1895-1925)
Index of songs on this site
Link to comprehensive index and research notes
Youtube: all the Penny Songs I've recorded so far (with subtitles)
About this project ♦ ♦ About Jane Peppler
List of the still-lost songs: do you know any of them?
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I collected the last 36 penny songs and put them on two digital-only albums for only $7 each. They come with a pdf file to download with all the lyrics and translations. These are my casual living-room renditions (no reverb or EQ or real mixing efforts made). These songs are bursting with life and have worlds to share with people who are interested in the Jewish immigrant experience in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. There's gotta be a PhD student interested in this! Click on the images to listen and/or order. Thanks.

Yiddish Tin Pan Alley Volume 1
Ven ales iz farbay 03:27
A Yenki lidl 02:47
Af di felder fun Virginia 04:15
All kets look alike to me 03:20
Der blumengarten 03:49
Di gantse velt iz mayn 03:58
Di naye velt 03:13
Yetst muz ikh im rufn tate 03:02
Mame, koyf mir a shvester 03:08
Ikh lib dikh beser als befor 02:10
Mayn herr proletarier 03:25
Kolumbus's medine 02:11
In di sup 02:10
Di opgeflikte blumen 02:25
Ikh bin a geler 02:38
Ikh bin a lady 03:59
Geborn in Kentoki 03:31
Nor eyn meydl in der velt far mir 03:36

 

Yiddish Tin Pan Alley Volume 2
Zumer bay nakht af a stoop 02:55
Vinter tsayt 02:41
Zumer bay nakht af dem ayz krim parler 03:44
Azoy farvelkt a blum 03:33
Gute brider 04:11
Di letste blum fun zumer 02:24
Vey vet dir shoyn zayn 04:40
Dos iberike farshteyt aleyn 03:01
Vayl ikh lib dikh 02:39
Khone 02:32
Imer di zelbe vert nimes 02:43
Pak dayn tronk un gey 03:37
Shik dos vayb in kontri 03:23
Khonine 04:51
A foygl in a golden shtayg 03:13
Rum to let 03:13
Es kumen on besere teg 02:53
Di brenenden ekskorshion ship General Slocum 04:00

The one I put my heart and soul into was the previous album (which also exists in physical form for people who still have cd players). I actually took it to a real studio to be mixed... : 

Yiddish Ragtime
Tsurik in shnayder shop (Back, back, back to Baltimore) 04:42
A bisele fun oybn (A Little Bit Off The Top) 02:31
Af katoves (Teasing) 04:10
Ven ikh volt gevezn prezident (Pretty Little Dinah Jones) 03:41
Di muzik shpilt (The Band Played On) 04:48
In a shtiler zumer nakht (Under the Bamboo Tree) 03:17
Rayst arop di shleser (Give My Regards to Broadway) 03:32
Yidishe fish (The Yiddisha Rag) 03:29
Di matbeye (Money) 03:48
Vi gefelt aykh aza boarder? (How'd You LIke To Be The Iceman?) 02:52
Bizi bay cloaks (Down On The Brandywine) 03:36
Nit ales iz gold vos shaynt (Johnny My Old Friend John) 03:12
Ven ikh ze dikh farbay geyn (Congo Love Song) 03:55
Gey shnel aheym (Ain't Dat a Shame) 04:24
Cheap! (Gone, Gone, Gone) 03:35
Der man mit der nodl (Good Bye Little Girl Good Bye) 03:03
Svit Rose O'Greydi (Sweet Rosie O'Grady) 04:05
 

 

 

 

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For sheet music and/or performances contact me: jane@mappamundi.com

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UPDATE: Reposted to include the video I just made of me singing the same song, but with the lyrics (mostly) as printed on a broadside songsheet in the Morris Rund Penny Songs collection. This version has lovely Yinglish in it, like "ven zi hot di bar-room geklint" (she cleaned the bar room), which Pepi Littman eliminated in her version. Also, it didn't occur to me until I was singing the song myself that the oylem habe the poor girl in the second verse achieves is a baby.


The title Oylem Habe is spelled Ojlom Habu on the recording issued by Frau Pepi Litman. (Aka olam habah, the Next World, the World to Come, heaven.) You can find it on volume 3 of Cantors, Klezmorim And Crooners 1905-1953, a great collection curated by Henry Sapoznik. Her singing is accompanied by flute. Archive.org notes:

Yiddish song recorded by Pepi Littman 1913, issued on 78rpm disc as "Ojlom Habu" by "Frau Pepi Littmann with violin and flute" on Victor record label, catalog number 657185, originally issued on Parlophone record label, catalog number 702. Possibly recorded in Budapest or Lemberg (Polish: Lwow, Yiddish: Lviv), possibly with musicians from Gimpel's Lemberg Yiddish Theatre, exact date and location unknown; date of 1913? is attributed by YIVO music archive in New York.

Pepi lived and performed mainly in Europe, but she made several records in New York. She is a famous darling now for being a cross-dresser: she liked to wear men's clothing when she performed. Read more about her here.

The lyrics (including the first verse, which she did not sing) are found in the Morris Rund Penny Songs collection and it's wonderful to reunite them with their melody. Comparing what Pepi sang to the broadside, we see a number of differences. I believe this is not the first song where Pepi removed the Yinglishisms and substituted proper Yiddish words. Also, on the Warsaw songsheet we have Dos meydl hot keyn shies gemakht [שהיות ‪= delays] while the American songsheet has Dos meydl hot keyn yeshues gemakht [ישהות = Salvation] - let's lay it on the line, the "heaven" the boss achieves is the kind that gives girls like this one a "heaven" that needs diapers.

 Here's a recording:

No composer is given.

Miriam Isaacs says that most theater songs mentioning rebbes are dirty, and this one is no exception. The Forward writes:

Her famous oylem habo ditty brought sex to the staid and the holy in the shtetl where a rabbi decides to ‘help’ a barren woman conceive — so he can enjoy a piece of the ‘world to come.’ With Littman’s help it becomes a term for, well, lightning in your pants.

 Transliteration of the songsheet and translation after the jump.

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Found in Forverts Jan 1 1926, thanks to Steven Lasky of the Museum of Family History: 

The lyrics in comedies very often had an unclean character, and in the melodramas they rarely stuck to the script. Every year the Forverts carried out a vigorous campaign against the dirty words and the unclean "between the lines" [style] the songs possessed.

As a gullible and naive modern person, I'm afraid I sometimes miss these secondary meanings and hope those of you with a, erm, broader background will enlighten me when necessary.

Hakt, hakt, hakt
Tsu zingen mit englisher melodiye -- Next--Next--Next

Click for a larger view

I've looked year in and year out for an American or English tune from the turn of the century (probably not earlier than 1890 or later than 1911), probably a vaudeville or music hall song, called Next--Next--Next. I think it's also possible the song has a different title, but certainly the chorus begins "Next! Next! Next!" I've queried around with no success. Maybe some day.

The Yiddish is more suggestive and double-entendre stuffed than usual, also full of folksy expressions I don't know. Hakn has a lot of meanings which can be dirty: Chop, cut, mince, break, bang, knock, hit, even "down a drink."

I asked the Yiddish research group on Facebook for help with the first chorus, containing a word I'd never seen, tshok. Two suggestions were put forward, both Yinglish: the first was "chuck," a cut of meat. The other was "chalk," referring to an account of someone's debt to the butcher chalked onto the wall. I'm not very good at ferreting out double entendre. I'm sure you could do a better job of translating this than I did.

Translation and transliteration of the Yiddish after the jump. If you come across the original English language song please let me know! 

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Thanks to Arye Mechachem who transcribed the lyrics of this song about the cruelty of US immigration policy (sound familiar?) 

 Here is one of my favorite pictures of Lebedeff in his youth.

Per a reader request, I made a video with lyrics and translations on screen:

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At Ellis Island, behind bars, stands an old woman, wasting away,
Dressed in rags, her face yellowed and dark as night.
The old mother traveled to the children, full of joy,
And here, the quota (ay no!) says she must go back again.
Without pity, so many victims left to fall there by the door
No heart, no ears, there by the gateway…
Ah, golden land, what is with you?

Let them in, let them in, oy
Don’t have hearts of stone
Open the gates of the Golden Land
When you see people fall, stretch out your hand to them
Let them in, let them in, don’t break any hearts
The world, people, will bless you --
Open the gates and let them in.

An old father, his head bent, in Ellis Island, full of sorrow,
He raised two little children, they were both orphans.
They lost their mother and came here, so tired.
The gates are locked against them,
They aren’t allowed to join their father.
Torn away so recently, dependent
Hearts dependent by the door.
Oy, come listen to him brought to tears
The whole world cries out to you now:

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For sheet music and/or performances contact me: jane@mappamundi.com

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Sung with the greatest success by the famous coupletist
Mr. Morris Seidman
Distributed by Sani Shapiro 120 Delancey Street

I've pretty much given up on finding any more of the melodies in the Morris Rund Penny Song collection but every once in a while I give the orphans a whirl. Yesterday I was lucky at the Sound Archives of the National Library of Israel - they have the song printed by Sani Shapiro on a broadside as "Shmaysn" but recorded as Schmasen wet men dich. - and not by Max Zaydman (Seidman) who is named on the Shapiro songsheet, but by comic singer Max Streng (1874-1928).

Max Streng was born in 1874 in Lemberg, Galicia. He was a chorus boy in Gimpel's theatre and started to act in 1891 on the Polish stage, soon after on the Yiddish stage. He toured England, France, Romania, Poland and Germany and then staged theater for for many years in Vienna.

I found this recording of great interest because it is the first I've found of a Yiddish parody set to an American tune! In this case it's "I'm Goin' To Live Anyhow Till I Die," by Shep Edmonds, a tune also used for a parody I recorded called Ven ales iz farbay (check there for a longer discussion). On today's songsheet the original melody is not cited (perhaps because there are minor tweaks to make the Yiddish fit better) and the parodist is anonymous.

There is a strong flavor of the original in the contrafactum. In each version we have a non-religious, good-time-loving hero. In the original English chorus he sings:

I’m goin’ to live anyhow, till I die
I knows ma’ kind of a life ain’t very high
With sticks and stones a you can break a ma bones [note in the Yiddish he is a "treyf bone"]
You may talk all you want to ’bout me when I’m gone
But I’m goin’ to live anyhow, till I die

I love Max Streng's voice, it is so joyous! Have a listen.




Transliteration of all three verses (Streng sang only two) and translation from the Yiddish after the jump. I had to face the fact that I don't know how to use smote and smitten.

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The rest, you yourself understand
by Isaac Reingold
To sing with the melody from the English song Oh! Ebenezer!



I had another song with this exact theme, by Solomon Smulewitz, called Shtoys Zikh On ("Figure It Out"), but it's disappeared off the blog so I'll have to dig it up and repost it.

Vaudeville audiences must have enjoyed feeling superior guessing the barely-hidden double or single entendres behind these verses.

The original song was by Dave Reed Jr.

This was one of the rare cases where the lyrics in Lider magazin were not nigh unreadable, so I used them in the video; I want folks to see what the songs look like in the original.

Here's my recording from this morning:



Transliteration from the Yiddish and translation after the jump. >>>>>READ MORE >>>>>