Researching Yiddish penny songs (tenement song broadsides of theater and variety show songs, 1895-1925)
About this project ♦ ♦ About Jane Peppler
List of the still-lost songs: do you know any of them?
Search the blog:

Since I ran out of penny songs (the ones I could find, anyway) I've gone into the Library of Congress Yiddish sheet music collection and found a few good songs by Solomon Small (was Solomon Smulewitz).

The first one, "Cruel Fate" (or Atrocious Destiny, which I like better) was a downer. This one is just fun.

I continue to do these alone in my living room. I wanted to point up the syncopation in the chorus and I thought plectrum instruments would be best for that, but I don't play any. However, I do own a guitar and a mandolin. So I've made a library file for each of them by turning on the mic and playing the same note over and over until I got a good sound for it. Then I saved that note on a track. I copy-and-paste the parts note by note. Jerry Brown, a great musician and owner / recording engineer at the Rubber Room, laughed his head off at this approach (he actually plays guitar and mandolin).

I spent a lot of time copy-and-pasting the transliteration of this song as well. Usually I try to wrestle the written texts, which are for us modern people pretty peculiar transliterations, back into klal yidish. Sometimes the oysyes are provided but often (as in this case) they aren't. I want people who are interested in this period to see what the spelling looked like back then, because if you search for something using our modern transliteration, you will often be frustrated. You have to be imaginative. For instance, I would never have looked for "Der Auf Sein a Nakht."

I realized when I was making the video that I sang some bloopers. Sorry. When you sing it yourself, you can do better! Here it is:

---

Contact me: JanePeppler@gmail.com

---