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Juan Calle and His Latin Lantzmen - MAZEL TOV, MIS AMIGOS - CD
In 1961, Latin and Jazz star RAY BARRETTO, WILLIE RODRIGUEZ, CHARLIE PALMIERI, CLARK TERRY AND DOC CHEATHAM entered a New York City studio and recorded a legendary album, MAZEL TOV, MIS AMIGOS, under the fictitious band name, JUAN CALLE AND HIS LATIN LANZTMEN. The album magically resounded Jewish standards in Latin time, translating somber, traditional Yiddish and Hebrew melodies into the energy-laden Latin rumbas, cha-chas, and meringues the whole world was rocking to.
Digitally remastered for the first time by Fantasy Studio engineer Joe Tarantino, this album opens a time capsule to one of New York musical history’s great lost stories, the story of the Jewish Latin craze. When the entire country caught Mambo-mania in 1948, Jews religiously became the genre’s earliest adopters. Humorist Harry Golden once said that the history of Jews in America is the history of “sha sha” (Yiddish for hush hush) becoming “cha cha.” And he was onto something. This album comes on the heels of comic Irving Kaufman unleashing “Moe the Schmo Takes a Rhumba Lesson,” Irving Fields attacking with his “Havana Nagila,” bawdy balladeer Ruth Wallis declaring “It’s A Scream How Levine Does The Rhumba,” and Tito Rodriguez and Tito Puente capturing the Jewish musical imagination at the Palladium, Grossinger’s and the Concord.
According to co-founder Courtney Holt, "the track ‘O Momme’ sounds like a a comparsa conga band setting out on a parade that turns into a Jewish wedding march."
Among the other startling revelations on MAZEL TOV, MIS AMIGOS is “Papirossen,” Herman Yablokoff’s classic Yiddish Theater ode to an orphaned cigarette peddler, done here in pure dance floor frolic as a blazing, quick-step mambo. Says Idelsohn co-founder Josh Kun, “It’s a dramatic example of how Jewish and Latin musical traditions spoke to each other in the mix-up of American culture. This is the sound of the secret musical history that shows that the boundaries between communities we think are so rigid are actually porous.”
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The Barry Sisters - OUR WAY - CD
“We take a tune that’s sweet and low, and rock it solid and make it gold.” And rock it solid they did, on Our Way, the Barry Sisters’ eleventh, and last, full-length studio recording. Throughout their career, they consistently drew from the wells of Yiddish and English popular song, everything from “Without a Song” and “Cry Me a River” to “Hava Nagila” and “Chiribim Chiribom”. If adapting Jewish music to the rhythms and contours of the American pop landscape can be considered one of the dominant aesthetics of early twentieth century popular music, then the Barry Sisters ought to be considered crucial bi-cultural pioneers, part of the same treasured artistic genealogy that usually starts and stops with the Tin Pan Alley likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Harold Arlen. They didn’t turn America Jewish, they made Jewish sound more American.
On Our Way, the Barry Sisters choose the elegant tradition of popular song itself. They took on the 20s pop chestnut “Tea For Two,” used Yiddish to return the vanilla Perry Como smash “It’s Impossible” to its Mexican bolero roots, raided Hollywood for “Love Story” (imagine Ryan O’Neal crooning in Yiddish at the bedside of a dying Kelly McGraw), raided Broadway for “Cabaret” and “Alice Blue Gown,” and turned out what just might be-- second only to the one Cuban audio priestess La Lupe did just three years earlier-- the most liberating version ever of the Sinatra staple, “My Way.”
Fred Katz - FOLK SONGS FOR FAR OUT FOLK - CD
Folk Songs For Far Out Folk is the long-coveted 1959 gem from the eclectic jazz pioneer, Kabbalist, magic man, and eternal left-winger Fred Katz. Katz is best known for introducing cello to jazz, which he perfected in the 1950s with his famous stint with west coast jazz legends, the Chico Hamilton Quintet.
Katz has had an extraordinary career, from his early days as a cello student of Pablo Casals to his work in Hollywood scoring Roger Corman films like Little Shop of Horrors and A Bucket of Blood, from his anti-Vietnam War piece for solo cello "The Soldier Puppet" to his late 50’s stint as an A&R man for Decca Records where he created the experimental Jazz Moods series; from solo jazz cello albums like Fred Katz and His Jammers to his conducting jazz arrangements for Sidney Poitier (the forgotten Sidney Poitier Reads Plato) and Harpo Marx (the almost forgotten Harpo in Hi-Fi) and his 1980s stint teaching jazz in a Benedictine monastery with a bongo-playing nun and a sax-playing priest.
Folk Songs for Far Out Folk is a musical triptych of orchestrated jazz based on Hebraic, African, and American folk songs. "Those were the three cultures that were most important to me at the time," Katz says. "The American culture I was very interested in but mostly as a radical guy who had to learn about folk music and protest songs. And the African element just followed because of my belief in the oneness of man. The reason for the Jewish stuff was the mystery. It's impossible to ever know what God is. The trillion-faced God!"
Various Artisits - JEWFACE - CD
The trick with this release, Jewface, is mentioning it to loved ones and not getting smacked. In the event of such a reaction, quickly explain that Jewface is the world's first and only anthology of Jewish minstrel songs, featuring works from Irving Berlin, Gus Kahn, Fanny Brice, Billy Murray, and other vaudeville greats from the turn of the 20 th century. Jewface brings together such rare old-school gems as "Cohen Owes me 97 Dollars," "Under the Matzos Tree," and "I'm a Yiddish Cowboy." You could make these up, but we haven't. The songs are unbelievably real. They predate irony, and yourself.
Jewface curator Jody Rosen spent over 12 years traveling the country, hunting down the original wax cylinders and seventy-eight disc recordings. His hard work has not only yielded a treasure-trove of re-mastered original recordings from 1903-1924, but also has unmasked a forgotten dirty secret of pop music history; that some of the first hit records ever made were fiendishly catchy musical lampoons, created by Jews, for Jews, and actually loaded with anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Irving Fields - BAGELS & BONGOS - CD
PLEASE NOTE: All of the Idelsohn Society's albums are repressed on a limited run. The legendary Bagels and Bongos sold out and until we can raise the money to repress it, we are reselling the promos here. The promo copies come with the full-color cover but only a print out of the detailed liner notes.Your Miami-bound snowbird grandparents weren't the first Jews to embrace the mambo pace. Neither was Irving Fields, incidentally, though he's probably the first person to lay down a fusion of Jewish rhythm and Cuban and Puerto Rican stylistics on wax. Idelsohn Society's first release is a re-mastered version of the 1959 ground-breaking release, Bagels and Bongos, by the Irving Fields Trio. Using Latin music as an idiom of Jewish expression, a new language of a hybridized, flexible Jewish identity was born—and no one's heard from the old language of hybridized, flexible Jewish identity since. Bagels and Bongos features classic reinterpretations of numbers like "My Yiddishe Momme" and "Bei Mir Bist Du Shon," as well as the transformation of "Hava Negillah" into "Havannah Negillah," bound to shake some tuchuses enough to seriously throw off a game of shuffleboard.
Rocking Hanukkah Cards
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Have a Jewish Christmas...? - Card
On the cover: Ray Brenner and Barry E. Blitzer, Have a Jewish Christmas...?, 1967. This classic album includes such seasonal favorites as "Tanta and the Tree," "Christmas Machers," and, our personal pick, "Shut Up, Irving."
One the inside: Have a Rocking Hanukkah!
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Moishe Oysher Chanukah Party - Card
On the cover: The Moishe Oysher Chaunkah Party. Yiddish film star and cantor giant, Moishe Oysher, released a series of albums in the 1940s celebrating the holidays with his signature energetic sound. The liner notes suggest that with Oysher's "blood [lies] the compressed yearnings of a forgotten forbear."
On the inside: Have a Rocking Hanukkah!
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Chanukah Carols - Card
On the cover: Stanley Adams, Chanukah Carols, c. 1960. Adams was an American actor and writer who played Cyrano Jones in Star Trek: The Original Series, but for us, this album is his finest moment.
On the inside: Have a Rocking Hanukkah!
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Rocking Idelsohn Cards
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Steve Fortgang and His Entertaining Orchestra - Card
On the cover: Steve Fortgang and His Entertaining Orchestra, c. 1979. The No. 1 Bar Mitzvah Band in south Florida. This 7" single has both "Everybody Hora" and "Macho Man" on the A-side.
On the inside: Have a Rocking Bar Mitzvah!
Mazeltov, Wedding Songs of Our People - Card
On the cover: Mazeltov, Wedding Songs of Our People c. 1950. For my beloved by the wonderfully name Dukes of Freilachland. The liner notes promise "with these dances, all grief, toil and poverty was forgotten."
On the inside: Mazeltov/ Wishing You a Lifetime of Health and Happiness
Paul Pincus, Music for Happy Occassions - Card
On the cover: Paul Pincus, Music for Happy Occassions, c. 1960. Master of the clarinet Pincus packs this album with polkas, tanzes, freilachs and horas.
On the inside: To Life! To Life! Cha Cha Cha.
Mrs. Portnoy's Retort (A Mother Strikes Back) - Card
On the cover: Harvey Jacobs, D. J. Martin and Victor Goldring, Mrs. Portnoy's Retort (A Mother Strikes Back), 1969. A complaint by complaint retort to the protagonist in the Philip Roth book, voiced by the legendary Mae Questel, the original Betty Boop and Olive Oyl.
On the inside: blankOut Of Print
Gershon Kingsley - GOD IS A MOOG - CD
For those few suffering music fans who don't immediately think of Kraftwerk-esque electronica when they hear melodic Jewish liturgy, treatment is now available by mail-order. God Is a Moog is a double album featuring recordings from 1968 to 1974, in which pioneering musician, and Moog keyboard innovator, Gershon Kingsley attempted to fuse the machine and the divine. Using his creativity, the Moog, and a few choice Proverbs, Kingsley recorded everything from meditations on identity and freedom, to a rock opera for the Sabbath (written to include a gospel choir). Be warned, the album is as infectious as it is intelligent, which is to say, it just might blow your mind. In addition, you, who have previously been described as "endearingly awkward and strangely moving," might be interested to know that the very same words were used by Time Out New York to describe God Is a Moog. Though, Time Out also called it an example of "radical Jewish culture decades before John Zorn coined the term," and that bit doesn't sound like you at all.Download a pdf with more information about this CD