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: Until recently I was very disappointed that nobody was picking up on these fascinating songs. But three years after I wrote this blog post, Daniel Kahn and Sveta Kundish did a bangup job on this one! Have a listen: Mentshn-fresser (1916 Yiddish Pandemic Ballad) Sveta Kundish & Daniel Kahn.

And now back to the original post:

Wow, it's been three months since I put up a song. There was a time I was putting one up almost every day. Truth is, since the election I have been so disheartened I hardly ever talk, let alone sing. There are times I think music is over for me. I just can't bear the world right now. So I sound rusty but it will have to do.

This song has been in the "to-do folder" for a long time. Mark Slobin discussed it in his book, Tenement Songs, thirty-odd years ago. I recorded three of the four verses today: the first about tuberculosis, the second about polio, and the last is about war. All these things are devourers of mankind. Fresn is greedy, insatiable eating - gobbling or hoovering when it comes to food.

Solomon Smulewitz published this song, spelled Menshen-fresser, in 1916. I've given the transliteration used in the sheet music on the video because I think it's important for Yiddish students to know what wide varieties of orthography we have to endure when searching for songs. There was a word here I did not know, laykhes or leykhes. I asked on Facebook and the only two people who answered me both suggested it is a typo for laybes, so that's what I went with. Enjoy the sprinkling of Germanic words used in Yiddish songs around the turn of the century.



Words and translation after the jump

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Labels: disaster, history, morality, politics, travails, war, World War I

UPDATE: In Lider magazin I found another Yiddish text written to this melody. Ikh hob moyre tsu shlofn aleyn, by Louis Gilrod. Click for a larger view.

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The specified melody was "I'm Afraid to Come Home in the Dark," a very annoying song from 1908 you can hear sung by May Irwin at Youtube. The words were by Harry Williams and the tune is by Egbert Van Alstyne.

The Yiddish words were written by Hyman Altman who wrote quite a few of the songs in the American Yiddish Penny Song collection.

Click the youtube button below to hear the recording I made today in my living room of Altman's version. I left out the middle verse but you can find it below.


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Labels: battle between the sexes, mores, sarcasm, travails, workers

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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Labels: travails

Here's our recording of Ven ikh volt gevezn prezident, from the cd Yiddish Ragtime.Randy Kloko is singing, Glenn Mehrbach is playing keyboard.


Isidore Lillien (Isidor Lilien etc) later had a very respectable career writing for the Yiddish theater, but here he put his hand to the work of writing Yiddish lyrics for currently popular American songs, in this case a gentle ragtime number by J. B. Mullen, published in 1902.

The original song is about a little maid in Florida's sunny clime. The parody is a fantasy based on complaints about life, problems that would be remedied by the speaker if he were to become president.

Lilien was born in Rzeszow (Reyshe), Galicia in 1882. He came to America with his family at the age of ten, joined a dramatic union at 16 and at 17 was working at a vaudeville house. Of interest to me: Zylbercweig wrote that Lillian's comedy "Gimpel Beynish der Shadkhn" was staged in 1911. I hadn't thought Gimpel was even invented until a year later.

The lyrics here give a rich detailed overview of immigrant life on the lower east side.

Oddly, the fourth verse is about Nicholas II and the pogroms. The song was long already so we decided to skip that verse.

Transliteration of the yiddish and translation after the jump.

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Labels: humor, immigration, sarcasm, travails, workers, yiddish ragtime

UPDATED because I recently learned (at Trip to Yiddishland) that geblibn mit di noz means very disappointed, left with nothing, deceived. But I don't know why!

I love when I can find historical evidence of the events described in the Penny Songs. I'm pretty sure this lyric is referring to the Cloakmaker's Strike of 1910, known as the 'Great Revolt,' carried out by more than 50,000 workers in New York, which was preceded in November 1909 by the "Shirtwaist Strike," also known as the Uprising of 20,000, mostly young Jewish women in their teens and early twenties. The Jewish Women's Archive notes:

The young strikers' courage, tenacity, and solidarity forced the predominantly male leadership in the needle trades and the American Federation of Labor to revise their entrenched prejudices against organizing women.

Both strikes were bitterly fought by the garment companies but the second strike ended with the bosses capitulating. Click the great picture for a larger view and see the end of the article for the sheet music cover with a fine, fine picture of Morris Rund the lyricist for so many of the Penny Songs. He was a proud Union man himself, a member of Local 100, the Kosher Bakers' Union.

Here's my version of the song, recorded today, click to hear it on youtube:



Here is the cover of the Yiddish song broadside, click for a larger view:


And here is the cover of "Take a Car," the specified melody. You can find it on line and you can also find a cute period recording of it on Youtube.



Morris Rund used the same tune for a very similar strike song. I believe he could churn these out by the dozens. The second one is "The Tailors' strike" - here is the first verse and chorus, if you want more let me know.

Der shnayder strayk

Toyzender shnayder oy kempfn yetst laydn
Tsu lib a shtikl broyt
Farlaykhtn dos lebn iz yetst zeyer shtrebn
nit laydn zo fil noyt
Es kumt yetst di ende fun di boses bande
Genug shoyn geshklaft far zey
Genug shoyn gelitn fun di parazitn
Yo, endlekh vet ir vern Fray

Yo der strayk, yo der strayk!
Der groyser shnayder strayk
Kempfn atsinder darf a yeder glaykh
Genug shoyn gezoygn oy dos blut fun aykh
Yo der strayk, yo der strayk!
Oy arbeter makht nit keyn shvayg
Shteyt nit fun vayter
Tsu shmetert di kaytn
Gefrayt aykh fun der shklaferay!

Transliteration from the Yiddish and translation of Der zig after the jump

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Labels: history, labor union, New York, travails, union

The original song, Ain't Dat A Shame, published in 1901 by John Queen and Walter Wilson, was probably inspired by Frankie Baker, who in 1899 shot her man for going to a dance with another woman. She became the star of "Frankie and Johnny" and there are strains of the famous melody within this one. (In Ain't Dat A Shame, though, the philandering man thinks better of it and goes home, only to find she's locked the door, so nobody dies.)

The Yiddish parody written by Louis Gilrod probably began as just the title, which fit so nicely against the English language original. In the first verse a woman sends her suitor home; in the second verse a wife sends her gambling husband home; in the third verse a boarder sends his lovelorn landlady home.

Barb Coffman played the keyboard and Randy Kloko joined me on this song for our album Yiddish Ragtime

Here's our recording:


Transliteration and translation after the jump.


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Labels: battle between the sexes, humor, mores, sarcasm, travails, wedding, yiddish ragtime

Isidore Lillian (left) (also spelled Isidor Lillien or any combination) was born in 1882 in Galicia. He came to New York in 1892 and was 22 when he wrote this parody for the Katsenelenbogen music publishing company.

I've been chewing away on the parodies printed in the Lider magazin found at YIVO (but sent to me by the superlative Vivi Lachs in London). It seems to me that Yiddish vaudeville ragtime is a genre ready for revival!

A problem is that the underlying songs often had racist lyrics; nobody in their right mind would sing them any more. I'm hoping it's ok to bring the melodies back without the baggage. In this case, unusually, the Yiddish lyric has the same theme as the original: that it's not a good career choice to go into show business. Back, Back Back To Baltimore, melody by Egbert Van Alstyne and original lyrics by Harry H. Williams, was published in 1904.

It was my great fortune to have pianist Glenn Mehrbach play the accompaniment and Randy Kloko sang on the chorus. Here's the track from our cd Yiddish Ragtime:


Transliteration and translation from the Yiddish after the jump.


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Labels: disaster, history, humor, travails

UPDATE: Reposting because of a conversation this past weekend in Chicago, where I had a little residency presenting the Yiddish Penny Songs to a rowdy congregation, Workmens Circle Chicago, and YIVO Chicago.

My host pointed out a cynical view of this song which I had never considered: the text says that after the anti-semites have come ravaging through, ripping everything to shreds and destroying everything we have --  even the tallit -- the mezuzah is still there to protect us. "What kind of protection is it providing," he asked rhetorically, "if it allowed all that ravaging to happen in the first place, and everything is destroyed?"

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Click for a larger view of this lovely sheet music.

I bet this song was written in response to the popularity of "Dos talesl" At first I hated the tune but then I gave it the English country dance treatment and now I like it.

Hyman Altman was the composer / performer of quite a few of the American Yiddish Penny Songs, put his name in the search box to find them.

So here is me on vocals, piano, and four somewhat out of tune fiddle overdubs.


For students: don't be perplexed as I was. Di mezuze is feminine, but the diminutive, dos mezuzele, is neutral. I read carelessly and my mind became snarled.

The letter shin appears on mezuzot and stands for Shaddai, one of the more warlike expressions of the Almighty. As an acrostic its three letters (shin, dalet, and yod) stand for shomer (watching), daltot (doors), Yisra’el - watching the doors of Israel. Hence the role of the mezuzah in guarding the door of the Jewish home. [I don't know why the yod does not appear at the end of the word Shaddai on the lyric sheet!]

Text and translation after the jump.

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Labels: anti-semitism, disaster, history, mores, nostalgia, politics, religion, travails, zionism

This song is transliterated at the Florida Atlantic University website as S'Vet Zich Shoin Auspressen, translated "It Will Be Ironed By Itself." The sheet music has 'Svet sich shon auspresin' on the cover and 'S'wet sach shoin aus presin' on the first page. It was the hit of the 1919 play by Zalmon Libin, "Dem Schneiders Techter" (Dem shnayders tekhter) (The tailor's daughters) performed in Joseph Edelstein's Second Avenue Theater.

Libin (right) was born in 1872 in Imperial Russia, his birth name was Yisrael-Zalman Hurvits. He emigrated to England in 1891 and worked as a furrier. 6 months later he left for America. He wrote short stories and plays and was sometimes called "The O. Henry of the East Side" One of his pieces, Gebrokhene Hertzer (Broken Hearts) written in 1903 was filmed in 1926, starring Maurice Schwartz.


The star, Ludwig Satz, wrote the words of the songs. Joseph Rumshinsky claimed the melody. We've had several of Satz's later songs on my other blog, http://PolishJewishCabaret.com. This was one of his earliest hits.
Leo Yitzhok Satz was born in 1895 in Lemberg, Galicia. His father was a tailor. When he was seven he sang in the children's chorus for the local Polish opera and then, with his father's consent, he started touring in Przemysl. In 1912 he moved to London and married Lili Feinman. At the start of the first World War he moved to America and made a name as an actor and composer. He died in 1944.

Here's the song as pianist Aviva Enoch and I recorded it earlier this week:



This song starts literally with a tailor who hasn't done a good job pressing a garment. In the second verse (which I left out) there is the obligatory undesirable wife. The third verse tells us oppressed workers can vote for the Socialist party and throw out politicans who take bribes, so it's quite topical. (A wonderful word I never heard before, khabar, bribe.) The fourth verse talks about world affairs - if you want the full text get in touch. Words and translation after the jump.

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Labels: battle between the sexes, disaster, history, humor, mores, politics, sarcasm, travails, zion

This is a dull melody but the lyrics are vivid.

I found the tune so dull and the accompaniment so boiler-plate I just sang it a capella this morning.




Words and translation after the jump.


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Labels: disaster, history, immigration, New York, politics, travails

This song is transliterated as Zores is kain daige nit and Zores is kain dauge nit and, horrendously in the 1903 edition, Zures is kein dange nit.

The show it's from: the "Professor" Moses Horowitz opera יציאת מצרים (Exodus) is transliterated Yzias Mizrajum and Yzias mizrajim.

I had an edition which said the show was staged in 1920, but it must have been a revival, because the original music was printed in 1903 and Horwitz died in 1910.

On the front cover of the 1921 edition it says the words are by Professor Horowitz and the music is by Perlmutter and Wohl, but inside it says "by Anshel Shor."

There is a third verse but as it is 100% knee-jerk misogyny, I omitted it. If you must sing about wives with big noses and no money, go find the sheet music at the Library of Congress site and sing it yourself.

Here is the version I did today:


Translation and transliteration after the jump.

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Labels: disaster, humor, passover, sarcasm, travails

Early last year I recorded a parody based on this melody, Vos hot men tsu mir? In fact it was the title song of my cd by the same name.

Yesterday I got around to recording the original song (using the same piano track from before).

The 1905 Boris Thomasefsky show was "The Yiddish Yankee Doodle," Di yidisher yenki dudl. Louis Friedsel wrote the words and music.

The song, like many others, seeks to explain an English word to Jewish immigrants eager to understand the "Golden Land's" prevailing language. In this case, the first verse shows that any old Yankl with a soda stand can call himself a company. In the second verse, "keeping company" leads to adverse consequences for a loose young woman. In the third verse, bedbugs comprise an unwelcome kind of company.

Here's yesterday's recording:



Transliteration and translation after the jump.

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Labels: battle between the sexes, disaster, humor, immigration, morality, New York, sarcasm, travails

Huh, another song I posted to youtube quite a while ago and forgot to put on this blog.

Written by Perlmutter, Wohl and Tomashefsky, it was published in 1911 along with three other songs from the show Dos darfs meydl (Country Girl) it is transliterated variously as Dus Bisele Erd and Das Bissele Erd and Das Bissle Erd (see label)

One of those other three songs: As du kenst nit un veyst nit, nemt men zikh nit unter which I recorded a few days ago.

This one gloomily reminds us that in the end all that remains to us is the bit of dirt we're buried in.

A bit of earth from the grave.
People, don't remove it
It's a part of the limbs
People, don't forget.

This is what remains to you from all the fruits of your labor,
This is what remains to you from all your strength,
This is what remains to you from your riches:
the bit of earth that covers you.

People, don't forget your father, mother, friends,
People, don't forget the worth of a human being.
While you live, tomorrow and today,
Remember the grave and that bit of earth.

You seek to enjoy the world, riches and high living,
But people, you should know what's waiting for you
You think you'll live forever
You don't want to think about it
You'll have to give an accounting of yourself
When you come to your eternal home

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

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Labels: religion, travails

The song was published in 1922. The lyrics were written by Aaron Lebedeff and Isidore Lash, music by Herman Wohl.

On the front cover, the song is called "Gefonfet." Inside, it is "Nit gefonfet."

Fonfen (fonfn) is a great word. The verb’s basic (onomatopoeic) meaning is to speak nasally: a  fonfer is someone who talks through his nose or as if his nose were stuffed. But there are countless other uses. Leo Rosten says a fonfer is:

1. 1. Somebody who talks through his nose, as if he has a bad cold.
   
2. Double-talker
   
3. One who is lazy, slow, goofs off
   
4. One who does not deliver what he promises
   
5. A shady, petty deceiver.
   
6. One who cheats
   
7. Oone who goes through the motions of a thing without intending to perform to his capacity or your proper expectations
   
8. A boaster, full of bravado
   
9. A specialist in hot air, baloney — a trumpeter of hollow promises.

Ruth Rubin translated the folksong title Oy di meydelekh, di fonferonkes! as "Oh those young girls, those show-offs!" In British slang "fonfen" is a con man’s spiel!

Philologos of the Forward found fonfe in the 1928 edition of Alexander Harkavy’s Yiddish-Hebrew-English Dictionary: A lighted paper cone for blowing smoke into a person’s nose. (A trick.) From The Forward's article about the verb fonfen:

Harkavy was confused. The paper cone was for blowing smoke not into the nose (it was fonfen’s meaning of “to nasalize” that led him astray), but into the ear, and what he was talking about ... was the old custom of ear coning or ear candling that was once practiced in Eastern Europe ... having inserted into one’s ear the tip of a candle, or a wax-coated paper cone, that is then lit at its other end and slowly burns down toward the ear [creating a vacuum that] sucks out wax, dirt and other unwanted matter and cleans out the nasal and sinus cavities. ... many of the Jews of Eastern Europe regarded ear coning as a hoax, the kind of thimblerig practiced by quacks and tricksters.

 Here's the dishy Julian Nathanson singing the song:



Yiddish transliterated and translated after the jump (including the second verse, which Nathanson did not sing).

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Labels: battle between the sexes, humor, male chauvinism, marriage, morality, sarcasm, travails

I picked this song because I loved the title. I wasn't able to find a period recording (or any recording) so I sang it myself this morning.

I don't know much about it. The music was written by Perlmutter & Wohl, the words by Hyman Altman, and it was sung by Mr Bernstein.

The transliteration they use is: As du kenst nit un weist nit, nemt men sich nit unter.


A second published music cover says it is from the "Latest Comedydrama played with great success at the Peoples Theatre" - the show being Dos Darfs Meydl (The Village Girl or The Country Girl).

Here's my recording:


Words after the jump.


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Labels: battle between the sexes, humor, immigration, love, male chauvinism, marriage, morality, mores, sarcasm, travails

Somebody was listening to Dem Bekers Laydn, a parody written to the melody of this song, and they wrote me asking for the original song. It is not the (much more famous) folk song Iz geven a mol a pastukhl.

I couldn't find it anywhere (maybe it's hiding under a strange spelling) so I did my own today.

As Shalom Goldman said, this is all five books of the Pentateuch mapped out onto five short verses. It's also a reflection of romantic Zionism. Abraham Goldfaden wrote Bar Kochba, about the early hero whose rebellion failed, following Russian pogroms in 1881.

The first verse and chorus in the video are a sample of transliteration of the period. The rhymes were a challenge, because they do not rhyme in klal Yiddish and in fact I suspect them of being inconsistent in any dialect.


Text and translation after the jump.

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Labels: anti-semitism, history, religion, travails, zion, zionism

This one has been in my to-do folder for years. A delightful collection of lebns-bilder!

I adapted a Sam Zagat cartoon to adorn it: this is from the day in 1916 when he came back to work after having been away from the newspaper for several months. For more of his work see GimpelBeynish.com



There's a lot of Yinglish here and some other interesting words. Couldn't figure out what "weik" (veyk) was. I liked pinke. Paul Wexler in Jewish and non-Jewish Creators of "Jewish Languages" (find it on google books) says pinke is, in Czech and Hungarian, "a box for money paid by cardplayers to the innkeeper" and that it stems from Judeo-Aramaic and perhaps Greek before that. Evidently the landlady was profiting by her association with her connected boarder until he cleaned her out.



I only recorded five of the seven verses but you can see them all after the jump.



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Labels: battle between the sexes, food, humor, immigration, love, male chauvinism, marriage, morality, mores, New York, sarcasm, travails

UPDATE: The ever helpful Anonymous has pointed me to published music for this song, crediting L. Korelman, or as Anonymous says, Louis Kopelman. The sheet music title is transcribed "Dos ziferblatt" and was published in 1921. A puzzle. I thought the notebook into which Solomonescu wrote these lyrics was begun in 1895 (the end date was not given). There was a lot of thievery back then. Who knows?

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I found this handwritten manuscript of the Tsiferblat lyrics at Harvard; the song itself can be heard available at the FAU website sung by Kalman Juvelier. Reading unfamiliar Yiddish cursive is not easy and I guessed a lot. Notice that on the record label, in Yiddish it says "Der tsifer blat" and in the transcription on the next line it says "Das Zifferblatt." Did two typesetters work on the same label?

Frank Seiden recorded this song as "Das zifferblatt von chochmes nuschem" (aka Chochmas Noshim) and Michael Aylward tells me the operetta was by Professor Hurwitz. The flip side of the recording is Mener, mener, also written by Solomonescu for Pepi Litman.

The song starts as a general bewailing of the evils of man, then visits the Spanish Inquisition, and finally points out that Dreyfus is currently being sentenced for the second time "because he is a Jew." This dates the lyrics accurately. Only the first verse appears on the recording. Look after the jump for the whole song and translation.

So click below for the Youtube video, including my translation. Kalman sang only the first verse. I think the second and third are more interesting.


Pepi Litman was born Pesha Kahane in Tarnopol, Eastern Galicia, in 1874. She was one of the female performers who performed in men's clothing. She made quite a few recordings. She died in Vienna in 1930.

An actor born in 1871 in Romania, Osias or Oskar Solomonescu is found in the 1905 Manhattan census as Osias Solomonesky,  listed as an actor with a first wife, Esther. He became a citizen in Brooklyn in 1906. Later he remarried and became a milliner: I found him, as Osias Solomonescu, in the 1920 Queens NY census with wife Fanny, son Louis and daughters Esther and Rose (the kids modernized the name to Solomon). He was buried as Oscar Solomonescu in Mount Hebron, the actors' cemetery, in 1939. Interestingly, he was known for playing women's roles. Perhaps he and Pepi played opposite each other this way.


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Labels: anti-semitism, history, morality, travails

Here are a couple songs I wouldn't be bothering with if I weren't in a sort of "collect all 200" frame of mind. They are on very familiar subjects and use very familiar rhymes - and a familiar tune, too, Di blumenkrants

A previous song to this melody was Di Terkishe Bulgarishe Milkhome (The Turkish-Bulgarian War).

I was going to record the first one, On a kind (Without a Child), but when I went to fit the lyrics to the melody, it would have taken a hammer and a shoe-horn. Without a recording to reference, I don't think it's worth doing.

If you want to try, take the words as I give them here and fit them to the melody above.

Many Yiddish songs bewail the disaster of childlessness. Partially it was a social problem: in an America before social security, it was adult children who took care of aging parents. Partially it was a religious problem: you depended on your sons to say kaddish for you after death. I imagine this theme is also popular as it points out: a poor person with children is better off than a rich person without. Poor parents with lots of kids may have found this idea reassuring.

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Labels: disaster, history, immigration, love, New York, religion, travails

It took a while to find the historic figures of this song. Yarmulovski the elder is Alexander (Sender) Jarmulowsky. Ordained as a rabbi, he married the daughter of a wealthy merchant and established a shipping firm in Germany, then emigrated in the early 1870s to New York City, where he founded the S. Jarmulowsky bank on the Lower East Side.

He was known as the "East Side J.P. Morgan" and his bank was the area's first skyscraper. He died, however, within weeks of the building's completion. His sons inherited it, made bad investments, and a few years later went bust.

Most of its depositors were poor and counted on being able to withdraw their savings to send to European relatives when World War I was beginning. In August 1914 5,000 depositors gathered in front of the skyscraper and demanded their savings. They then paraded to City Hall, where some were clubbed and arrested (see New York Times article from August 30, 1914 at the bottom of this post). The bank was closed in 1917 and many of the depositors were left with nothing.

Here's our recording of the song Max Zavodnik wrote about their misery:


The song's full title is Dos lid fun Yarmolovski, Max Kobre un Mandel di 3 bankirer un zeyere korbones. (The Song about Jarmulowsky, Max Kobre and Mandel, the Three Bankers, and Their Victims.) These culprits were Sender's two sons, Meyer and Louis Jarmulowsky, Max Kobre, and Adolf Mandel. The final words of the song ring true today:


This text is written to the melody of a song called Troymende shlefer, also the underlying melody for the workers' song Vos vet zayn der sof?. I still had the bass accompaniment from that recording that song, so here it is again, and thanks again to Jim Baird the bassist!

Transliteration and translation after the jump.

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Labels: disaster, history, New York, travails, workers