to include a link to the Olga Mieleszczuk I just found on youtube: And here is my singalong video (with the transliterated Yiddish text and translation): Or click on the long-suffering mother (right) to listen to and/or buy this track from our In Itzik Zhelonek's collection he references this song as being from BenZion Witler's show "Bandit Gentleman" - I couldn't find the recording by Benzion Witler until I wrote to , who has recorded the song as "Ver ken di libe," and he kindly pointed me to the Witler 78 - it's hiding on Youtube under the name Since I hadn't been able to find that version ..read more

Reposting to add the animated video I did today. Nobody ever listens to the automatic videos created by Routenote of the songs from our cds so I thought I'd make one today and see if it gets some listeners: Here's something very interesting about the fellow I called here (in the second verse) "Vayzote" but who, it seems, is called in Yiddish and whose name is also used for "idiot." He was Haman's youngest son. You can read a great blog article about him, from the Mayrent Institute blog, here: . And there is a wonderful recording from way back in 1901 made by Dave Franklin, "the king of comic s ..read more

UPDATE to add video from our May 2022 concert at the Shadowbox. We just did the first two verses and went out with a bass solo. This is Kasriel Broydo's send-up of Fanny Gordon's tango .That's Fanny in the picture. She was the only female composer I know of working successfully in the Polish cabarets and nightclubs between the World Wars. This Yiddish version was sung in Europe by Mina Bern and Joseph Widetzky. I love how the loving couple displays behavior that must have been so aggravating to the singers: they sneak into the theater for free, they snap and crunch sunflower seeds and cookies ..read more

UPDATED to add a video made from our May 8 2022 concert.  When my band Mappamundi was making the , we were looking for songs from the 1920s and 1930s which had both a Polish and a Yiddish version, and this song was one of them. We wondered which came first until I found, at YIVO, 's copy of this published sheet music for Nikodem with his own handwritten lyrics, in Yiddish, tucked inside. In my later research I've found several Polish songs which he re-wrote for his own repertoire. The Polish version is about an obnoxious guy who thinks he's hot stuff. Witler's version is more interesting ..read more

We recently got a rare opportunity to sing this song, at the Shadowbox Studio. Paul Deblinger filmed it and Mark Sidell ran sound off the board and so here is a new video. Way back in 2010, Beth Holmgren and I were very taken by a video we heard on Youtube of Ola Lilith and Willy Godik singing together, - "(Text Moses Brodersohn, Musik H. Kohn) - Ola Lilith u. Wł. Godik aus jüdischen Revue-Theater, mit Orchester Begleitung, Homocord Pl.29078, Wyrób Polski (Polish) c. 1928" In standard transliteration that would be I wasn't satisfied with my ability to transcribe the words and, besides, it was ..read more

UPDATED so I can post the video we made last month at the Shadowbox Studio, thanks to Mark Sidell for the audio and Paul Deblinger for the video. This was one of the first songs Beth and I found that existed in both a Polish version, lyric is by Ludwik Starski (see the iconic performance by Eugeniusz Bodo singing "Sex appeal" in drag ) and a Yiddish version, written by Igor S. Korn-Teurer, more famous for serious Holocaust poetry. ( Menasze Oppenheim singing "Sex Appeal" in 1938 If you want the words write me ..read more

The first mention I found of them was in a newspaper listed their show on radio station WEAF, January 1933.  The show "Bagels and Yox" opened in NYC in September 1951.  Two Bilingual Revues Visit Broadway Looking for 'Family Trade' By JOHN CHAPMAN  After long, persistent and tiresome publicity campaigns, two Yiddish-English or American-Yiddish revues have come to occupy theatres which might otherwise be unoccupied at the moment. They have the appalling titles of "Bagles and Yox" and "Borscht Capades."  A bagel is a plaster doughnut. Borscht, the dictionary says, is "a Littl ..read more

because the songs I've worked on have expanded to later times and other places. "Yiddish Curiosities" is the directory I store them in on my computer so that's the name I'm going with. Kind of like Facebook changing its name to Meta ..read more

There is a wonderful guy known online as Arye Menachem but, in the real world, as Len Misikoff. He has a skill few have (and fewer still are willing to share with the world): he can listen to Yiddish songs and tease out the lyrics! I asked him to help me with Cockeyed Jenny and he graciously did so, but then it turned out the words were horrendously misogynistic, which was typical of Yiddish comedians of the time... ... so I wrote a version from a woman's point of view and Len and I batted it back and forth until the Yiddish was more or less correct. And then I recorded it with my buddies Jim ..read more

Six years after I last posted this song, Arye Menachem has found a recording of Aaron Lebedeff singing (which was at the time transliterated by the record company as ) and has posted it on youtube with the lyrics and a rhyming version in English: " Six years ago I re-upped this post with a (now obsolete but funny) Instagram 60-second video excerpt: Or click the album cover to hear and/or buy this track from our cd is sometimes translated mildly denotes lust or desire for - something and is the scolding terminology for wanting sex. Itzik Zhelonek cited a Pinkhus Sapir recording of this song, no ..read more