Remembering Neil Sedaka - Singer, Songwriter, and Pianist

The musical world lost one of its brightest stars last week with the death at 86 of Neil Sedaka, famous for his writing and performing many popular hits including Breaking Up is Hard to Do and Calendar Girl.

Sedaka was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Mordechai "Mac" Sedaka, was a taxi driver of Sephardi Jewish descent from Turkey. Sedaka's paternal grandparents came to the United States from Istanbul in 1910. 

Sedaka's mother, Eleanor (née Appel), was an Ashkenazi Jew of Polish and Russian descent. He grew up in Brighton Beach. Sedaka (the name is a variant of the Hebrew word Tzedaka - charity) was a cousin of singer Eydie Gorme.

Here are videos of his greatest hits. Enjoy!

 

Throwback Thursday Musical Showcase: Ed Ames and the Four Lads Sing "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane"

Ed Ames (Edmund Urick) (1927-2023) was a pop singer and actor. He was also part of the popular 1950s singing group with his siblings, the Ames Brothers.

Best known for his singing career with three of his brothers as The Ames Brothers, and his acting in the role of Mingo, a Cherokee tribesman in the TV series Daniel Boone, Ames was a committed Zionist and president of the California chapter of the Zionist Organization of America.

In a 2007 TV special, "My Music: 50s Pop Parade" Ed Ames joined The Four Lads in a rendition of the Ames Brothers' 1954 hit song The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane.

The lyrics suggest that this "naughty lady" driving the whole town crazy is an attractive young woman who "throws those come-hither glances at every Tom, Dick and Joe" and "when offered some liquid refreshment never says no"; but the last line reveals her to be an infant "nine days old" 

Enjoy!

  

 #Throwback Thursday      #TBT

Throwback Thursday Musical Showcase: Neil Sedaka Sings Medley on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963

Today we're going back 62 years to watch Neil Sedaka sing a medley of songs that were popular in 1963 on The Ed Sullivan Show. The medley includes Blame It On The Bossa Nova, Slightly Out Of Tune (Desafinado), Fly Me To The Moon and A Felicidade.

Sedaka was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939. His father, Mordechai "Mac" Sedaka, was a taxi driver of Sephardi Jewish descent from Turkey. Sedaka's paternal grandparents came to the United States from Istanbul in 1910. 

Sedaka's mother, Eleanor (née Appel), was an Ashkenazi Jew of Polish and Russian descent. He grew up in Brighton Beach. Sedaka (the name is a variant of the Hebrew word Tzedaka - charity) is a cousin of singer Eydie Gorme.

Enjoy!

  

 #Throwback Thursday     #TBT

American Pop in Yiddish: Lea Kalisch Sings Elvis Presley's Hit "Can't Help Falling in Love"

Today we're sharing a Yiddish version of Elvis Presley's big hit "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You". It's sung by Lea Kalisch and with Rabbi Tobias Moss on guitar.

Lea Kalisch is a multi-genre multi-lingual singer, actor, dancer, skater, and producer. Some know her as the Eshet Chayil of Hip Hop. Tobias Moss is a rabbi at Temple Israel in Minneapolis, a musician on YouTube and busking on the streets, and a creator of digital content known as Rabbi T.

Enjoy!

Remembering Steve Lawrence, Nightclub, TV, Recording Star and Actor for More Than 50 Years

Steve Lawrence, who was born Sidney Liebowitz on July 8, 1935 and enjoyed a 50 year performing career, died on March 7 in Los Angeles of complications of Alzheimer's disease.

The son of a cantor at the Brooklyn synagogue Beth Sholom Tomchei Harav, he was best known as a member of the pop vocal duo "Steve and Eydie" with his wife Eydie Gormé, and for his performance as Maury Sline, the manager and friend of the main characters in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Steve and Eydie first appeared together as regulars on Tonight Starring Steve Allen in 1954 and continued performing as a duo until Gormé's retirement in 2009.

As Robert D. McFadden wrote in The New York Times,

The Liebowitz boys were all musically gifted. By 8, Sidney was singing in a synagogue choir, and by 12 he was composing songs. He dropped out of Thomas Jefferson High School before graduation to sing in bars and nightclubs.

He began calling himself Steve Lawrence, the given names of two nephews. He won “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” at 15 and sang for a week on Godfrey’s morning radio show.

Billed as “Steve and Eydie” in Carnegie Hall concerts, on television and at glitzy hotels in Las Vegas, the remarkably durable couple remained steadfast to their pop style as rock ’n’ roll took America by storm in the 1950s and ’60s.

Long after the millennium, they were still rendering songs like “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” “Just in Time” and “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” for audiences that seemed to grow old with them.Record sales put him in the top ranks of America’s pop singers in the early 1960s, and despite competition from rock groups, his club and concert dates with Ms. Gorme remained enormously popular.

As a tribute to the class act of Steve and Eydie, we're sharing a long medley of music by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Lorenz Hart or Oscar Hammerstein. Songs: The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, Falling In Love With Love, A Wonderful Guy, I Married An Angel, Where Or When, My Heart Stood Still, Blue Moon, Manhattan, Isn't It Romantic, Glad To Be Unhappy, It Might As Well Be Spring, Spring Is Here, It Never Entered My Mind, Bewitched Bothered And Bewildered, My Romance, My Funny Valentine, With A Song In My Heart.

With special thanks to Buzz Stephens for posting this video on YouTube.

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO. 

Neil Diamond Surprises Opening Night Broadway Audience and Sings His Hit "Sweet Caroline"

Last Sunday night, A Beautiful Noise, the musical biography of Neil Diamond opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway. Diamond gave the audience a special treat by singing his hit song Sweet Caroline from his box seat after the cast took a bow.

As Ingrid Vasquez wrote in People Magazine, 

Neil Diamond made theatergoers at opening night of Broadway's A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical feel so good, so good!

The New York native surprised fans and audience members at the Broadhurst Theatre — where the new musical about his life opened Sunday night — with an impromptu performance of his hit song "Sweet Caroline."

It marks the first time Diamond, 81, has performed in his hometown since 2017 and was a rare appearance for the music icon, who announced in 2018 that he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and would be retiring from concert touring.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.

Remembering Jay Black of "Jay and the Americans", Teen Idol of the 1960s and 1970s

On October 22 the world of pop music lost one of its biggest stars, Jay Black, lead singer of the group Jay and the Americans, who died at 82.

Black was born as David Blatt in Astoria, Queens and grew up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park. In his later career, he was known for touring New York State and Florida, singing, mainly solo, and preceding his singing with a stand-up comedy routine. 

Jay and his brother spoke Yiddish fluently. In 1966, he recorded a Yiddish song "Where Is My Village" about the Holocaust. In an interview with The Forward, he admitted being tossed out of three yeshivas as well as New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn.

As Ron Kampeas wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,

He was selling shoes in 1962 or 1963 at Thom McAn when a buddy, Marty Kupersmith, who knew Blatt from the Jewish doo-wop circuit, asked him to take the place of Jay Traynor, who had quit Jay and the Americans, a group that had scored a single hit in 1962.

There was a condition: Blatt had to take on the first name Jay.

There are differing accounts of how he got the name Black; there’s evidence he was using it professionally before he joined Jay and the Americans, but he insisted he muttered “Jay Blatt” when Mike Douglas, the daytime talk show host, asked him his name, and Douglas repeated “Black” and it stuck.

Black, raised in an Orthodox family, had sung as a youngster with the choir of Cantor Moshe Koussevitzky. He became known for his powerful reach-for-the-rafters voice and his dramatic delivery. Bandmates dubbed him “The Voice” and it stuck.

With his dark good looks and his operatic delivery, he affected a Latin persona; one of the band’s most popular numbers was “Cara Mia,” in which he pledges to his presumably Italian object of adoration that “I will be your love until the end of time,” escalating into a heart-stopping falsetto. The song peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

There were other hits: “Come a Little Bit Closer” (which peaked at #3 on the charts), about an encounter with a seductress in a Mexican border town that ends badly; and their cover of the Drifters’ “This Magic Moment” (peaked at #6). The group was big enough to open for the Beatles in 1964, at the Fab Four’s very first U.S. concert.

In this video of a performance in 1978, Black sings four of his most popular hits, Cara Mia, This Magic Moment, She Cried, and Come a Little Bit Closer, as he is touched and hugged by screaming fans in the audience who follow him onstage.

We're also sharing a video of him singingin Yiddish Vi Is Dus Gesele that was posted on YouTube by Albert Diner.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO. 

 

 

Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places: South Korea Includes Hava Nagila in Pop Music Concert

Pop music has always been popular in South Korea. They have a TV station (Korea Broadcasting System) specializing in this music. There are boy bands, girl bands, soloists, and songs that feature a wide variety of musical styles.

This week they broadcast an "open concert" that included many Korean songs and songs from Broadway shows and American pop music.

How Hava Nagila found its way into the mix we can't figure out, but somehow it did, in a lively production number featuring popular singers Kim Na-Young and Kim Dong-Kyu.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THEPLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO. 

Yiddish Music Hall is Alive and Well in Paris

 

The tradition of international popular music standards sung in Yiddish was alive and well in Paris last December with the production Yiddish Music Hall in Farandole.

 

The show featured lively performances of My Way, Tea For Two, Summertime, Fever!, Over the Rainbow, Do Not Leave Me, Blowing in the Wind and Dancing to the End of Love.

The cast included eight singers and singers (Isabelle Georges, Jacinta, Betty Reicher, Michele Tauber, Laurent d'Aumale, Jean Birenbaum, Bursztein David, Lionel Miller), the best of the Yiddish song in Paris, under the musical direction of Fred Manoukian. 

 

Enjoy!

 

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.