Researching Yiddish penny songs (tenement song broadsides of theater and variety show songs, 1895-1925)
Index of songs on this site
Youtube: all the Penny Songs I've recorded so far (with subtitles)

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List of the still-lost songs: do you know any of them?
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Saturday, October 22, 2016

! The end of the American Yiddish Penny Songs Project !

I have a spreadsheet for this project and it appears I've pretty much run out of findable songs. As of today there are 74 Yiddish Penny Songs left for which I don't have melodies (hopefully over time the number may dwindle a bit).

There are two songs left which I could theoretically record now:

1. Dem melameds mapole - to be sung to the melody of Di troyke, a melody, written by Shimon Frug, which Morris Rund used often probably because at the time this was the most successful song Rund had ever co-written (he did the original lyrics). In this version, a teacher falls in love and goes to the khipe with his beloved, only problem, his rabbi had been slack about giving a get to his current wife/yente. The current wife shows up at the wedding and spoils everything. I decline to be involved in these goings-on.

2. Dos shterbns lid fun Yakev Gordon is to be sung to the well-known melody In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree. (In my previous project, PolishJewishCabaret.com, there was a song about a sad prostitute in a Warsaw brothel set to this melody: In a hoyz vu men veynt un men lakht.) I don't think anybody these days will be interested in singing this poorly written elegy to playwright Jacob Gordin (1853-1909). But if you are, let me know.

Anyway, I may go on now to record other obscure Yiddish theater songs songs for which I have the lyrics. If they came out before 1925 or so, I'll put them on this blog. If they came out after 1925, I'll put them on the other.

It's sort of dissatisfying there were so many songs I couldn't find.


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

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

really perfect work. thank you very much!

November 25, 2016 at 4:44 AM  

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