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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UPDATE: While sequestered at home due to the coronavirus I'm spending a little more time poking through Lider magazin and I found a song sheet for this Louis Gilrod song! Click for a larger view.

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Allen Lewis Rickman wrote and asked if I'd post this song. I couldn't have done it without the transcription skills of Sam Weiss, who volunteered out of his esteem for Mr. Rickman!

I usually have to stick to songs for which there is either a broadside or sheet music because I'm not good at teasing out the lyrics of the old-time singers.

Here is Morris Goldstein singing:


I don't know anything about Morris Goldstein (though he has been featured on this blog several times before, you can put his name in the search box and see) and I also know nothing about pinochle except that my father and his brothers used to play it.

In Yiddish I've also seen it spelled pinakl, pinakel, pinokel, etc.

As usual, lots of double entendre here. Transcription and translation after the jump.





Pinochle

Pinochle is very fashionable in saloons and also in the home
Men and women, boys and girls tear into the game!

As soon as I get home from work I very quickly eat up my supper
To hell with the theater! You don't go anywhere,
You just sit down to play.

Pinochle, a good hand of pinochle, that's a great game.
You tear into it, it's going splendidly,
In the kitchen, in the parlor, also in the bedroom...

Pinochle, a good hand of pinochle, it's more fun than all the other games.
Shabes night at 2 the wife shrieks
Because her husband lost all his pay at pinochle in the saloon.

Pinochle is often very secret, especially when a wife is left by herself
And her husband goes off to a meeting, for example,
And doesn't come home until late.

The boarder is quite the pinochle player
He understands the business quite well
The husband comes home, they both get ready to play
What do you think, do they play?

Pinochle, a good game of pinochle, a pleasure to play the game
She calls the boarder "My dear Mack,"
She melds (discloses) the Queens and he melds the Jack

Pinochle, a good hand of pinochle, you have to pay for it
She quickly says "You, husband, should be so ashamed,
The boarder plays pinochle better than you do.
He wins every time we play!"

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

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Labels: battle between the sexes, humor