Comments (0)

By Recorded Sound Archives, September 14, 2015 2:25 pm

In years past, the Recorded Sound Archives Judaic collection or the Judaica Sound Archives as most know it has highlighted the music of Leibele Waldman, Gershon Sirota and Moishe Oysher for the High Holy Days along with some of today’s finest cantors.

This year the Recorded Sound Archives has created a High Holy Days collection for you to  share and enjoy with your family. Included in this collection is a mixture of cantors, and other musicians such as Shimon and Ilana Gewirtz, Ramon Tasat and Cindy Paley.

Click here to view this collection.

Click here to view past blog posts on the High Holy Days.

Comments (0)

By RSA Guest Blogger, August 24, 2015 6:53 pm

Theodore Bikel on stage as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

With his grey beard, clear voice, and room filling performance, Theodore Bikel had so much in common with Tevye the Milkman. He was the fiddler on the roof, a versatile man.

Theodore Bikel, actor, activist and folk singer, passed away at the age of 91 last month on July 21, 2015 in Los Angeles. He played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof onstage in thousands of performances, created the role of Baron von Trapp in the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music, recorded as a singer and guitarist for many albums in different languages, and was involved in civil rights causes.

Bikel was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, and named after Zionist Theodore Herzl. They fled to Palestine in 1938. and according to his mother in his autobiography, he sang before he could talk. Theodore started acting at a young age and performed in the Habimah Theatre in Tel Aviv in 1943. Bikel moved to London in 1945 and next to the United States in 1954, where he started his acting career on Broadway.

Bikel released thirteen albums between 1955 to 1965. The most popular recordings were: Theodore Bikel Sings Jewish Folk Songs (1958), Songs of a Russian Gypsy (1958), Theodore Bikel Sings More Jewish Folk Songs (1959), A Harvest of Israel Folk Songs (1961), and Theodore Bikel Sings Yiddish Theatre and Folk Songs (1965). With this repertoire, he paved the way for a renewed interest in Yiddish folk songs, and ultimately for the klezmer revival in the late seventies.

Along with folk singer Pete Seeger, Bikel became one of the founders of the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. This festival is known for the performances of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in 1963 and played a crucial role in the American folk music revival of the sixties.

Just recently, a documentary film was released about the intertwining of Theodore Bikel’s life with writer Sholom Aleichem, the great storyteller of Jewish life in Eastern Europe: Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem. In March this year, Record Sound Archives’ Alethea Perez wrote a blog about this portrait. click here to read more.

Listed below are some of his popular tunes.

 Dona Dona

Di Mame Iz Gegangen

Az Der Rebbe Zingt

Dodi Li

 Click here for more Theodore Bikel recordings.

Due to copyright concerns only snippets can be heard on the RSA public website. Full versions are available to users of the RSA Research Station.

If you enjoyed this guest blog post you may enjoy Gone but not forgotten – the Barry Sisters.

RSA Guest Blogger, Niels Falch, is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and is currently writing a dissertation on the influence of Jewish music in American popular songs.

Comments (0)

By Recorded Sound Archives, March 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Introduced in 1930 and discontinued in 1932, these records were made from a flexible synthetic resin (Durium) coated on brown paper.

What are sound recordings made of?

Initially sound was recorded on wax cylinders. By the end of the 1920s, however, recordings were made of a heavy, fragile shellac compound.

Producers began looking for better options and started experimenting with materials that were lighter, flexible and less fragile.

One of these experiments, Hit of the Week records, were actually made of resin coated brown paper! This lightweight, flexible, “unbreakable” composition was unique and provided a 78 rpm recording with sound equal to or better than ordinary shellac.

Beginning in February 1930 a new recording featuring a current “hit” song was released each week. They were sold at newsstands, likemagazines, with past issues being available by mail order. They were recorded on one side only and sold for 15 to 20 cents per recording. The unrecorded side was often printed with advertising or the performer’s portrait. They had a tendency to curl up over time and came in flimsy rice paper sleeves.

The unrecorded paper side of Hit of the Week recordings were sometimes printed with advertising a performer’s portrait, in this case Morton Downey.

These recordings were a big hit with the public in the early days of the Great Depression and provided easy, cheap entertainment to the masses. However, as the depression wore on sales slumped. the last Hit of the Week issue was released in June 1932.

The Recorded Sound Archives at FAU Libraries is pleased to share 39 of these original recordings with our website users. Due to US Copyright laws only 45-second snippets are available on our public website.  Full recordings are available to RSA Research Station users.

Click here to see and hear the Hit of the Week collection.

Comments (1)

By RSA Guest Blogger, January 5, 2015 8:50 pm

Bagelman Sisters/Barry Sisters early photo with Claire Barry on the right.

Yiddish music icons, Merna and Claire Barry, entertained generations of Jewish Americans with their jazzy versions of Yiddish songs.

For over 40 years the Bagelman Sisters, later known as the Barry Sisters, were the darlings of Jewish entertainment. Their recordings could be found in almost every Jewish household in the 1950s and 60s. The younger of the two sisters, Merna, passed away in 1976. The older sister, Claire Barry, died on November 22, 2014 in Hollywood, FL at 94. Click here for full NY Times obituary.

Who were the Barry Sisters?

Two beautiful girls, dressed in the latest fashion, hair  perfectly coiffed, singing with sultry voices that could make your heart leap.

Born in New York, the two sisters were originally known as the Bagelman Sisters. Many saw them as the Yiddish answer to the popular Andrews Sisters in the 1940s. They combined old Jewish folk songs and Yiddish Theater ditties with swing arrangements and perfect harmony. When Clara and Minnie changed their names to Claire and Merna The Bagelman Sisters became The Barry Sisters. They have often been credited with creating Yiddish Swing, a music genre which did not exist previously.

The glamorous Barry Sisters were regular guests at Yiddish radio programs like Yiddish Melodies in Swing. They toured with the Ed Sullivan Show to the Soviet Union and performed in Israel in October 1962.

The popularity of their catchy and jazzy tunes may have paved the way for the Broadway hit, Fiddler on the Roof, and the klezmer revival of the late 70s.

Listed below are some of their most popular tunes. The Judaica Sound Archives has 41 recordings by this dynamic duo of Yiddish music.

Abi Gezunt (Stay healthy)

In Meine Oigen Bistie Shain (To me you are beautiful)

Channah from Havannah (A Gala Concert with Moishe Oysher album, no. 3).

Bublitchki (About the last bagel)

Dem Neyem Sher (At Home With album, no. 2).

Roumania

Click here for more Barry Sisters recordings. Due to copyright concerns only snippets can be heard on our public website.  Full versions are available to users of the RSA Research Station.

RSA guest blogger, Niels Falch, is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and is currently writing a dissertation on the influence of Jewish music in American popular songs.

Comments (0)

By Recorded Sound Archives, November 5, 2014 6:17 pm

Cantor Todros Greenberg’s great-granddaughter wanted her son to hear his great-great- grandfather sing, but all she had was a tangle of tapes from dozens of reel-to-reel recordings. What could she do?

After locating a box full of tapes belonging to her great-grandfather, Cheryl Silver reached out to the JSA. With her son Noah’s Bar Mitzvah only a few months away she wanted to preserve the music on the tapes as part of Noah’s Mitzvah Project.

Although most of the tapes seemed to be in fairly good condition they were in total disarray. The home-made tapes were not clearly identified. We had no idea who was singing what on which tape.

A bit of good luck: As it happened, Cantor Joseph Gross, friend of the JSA, remembered Cantor Greenberg and could identify his voice. Hour after hour after hour, Cantor Gross sat with ear phones listening to tapes and making notes.  JSA sound technician, Ben Roth-Aroni meticulously digitized the tapes, created separate tracks and organized the songs on CDs for the family.

Well-known among Cantors for his talents as an educator and composer,  Cantor Greenberg’s 40 year collaboration with  Cantor Sholom Kalib resulted in the critically acclaimed book, Heichal Han’gina V’hatfila. Vol.1, published in 1961 by the Cantor’s Assembly.

His compositions have been included in the Milken Archive’s CD: The First S’lihot by Benzion Miller and  in The Milken Archive’s 50 CD boxed set.  They were also featured as part of the 8-program WFMT (Chicago) radio series, The Art of the Cantor, hosted by Cantor Alberto Mizrahi. But, recordings of this great Cantor’s voice have been rare …..until now.

The Judaica Sound Archives is proud of its role in preserving the recorded music legacy of Cantor Todros Greenberg.The digitized music in this collection was lovingly and painstakingly created from Cantor Greenberg’s personal reel-to-reel tapes which were donated to the Judaica Sound Archives by Cantor Greenberg’s family in honor of the Bar Mitzvah of his great-great-grandson, Noah Johnson.

 Click here to read more about Cantor Greenberg and to hear his recordings.

Comments (0)

By Recorded Sound Archives, June 25, 2014 9:26 am

Alma Gluck and Efrem Zimbalist

Before there was Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt…before there was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall…before there was Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton…There was Efrem Zimbalist and Alma Gluck.

A little over100 years ago, a nice Jewish boy who happened to be a violin genius  met a lovely Jewish young woman who was making a name for herself as a singer. I guess you could say that when these two Jewish superstars of classical music fell in love they were destined to make beautiful music together.

The Zimbalist-Gluck romance provided lots of material for the gossips of their day. While the idea of such a wonderful pairing of talents was thrilling, there were those who pointed out that Gluck was six years older, as well as a divorcee with a daughter. Scandalous!

Read more about Alma Gluck’s relationship with Efrem Zimbalist.

Read more about Efrem Zimbalist.

Browse 40 recordings the talented couple made together.

Comments (0)

By Recorded Sound Archives, May 28, 2014 11:56 am

Growing up in a family of Hazzans and Klezmer musicians, Cantor Elias Rosemberg may have been born to perform.

From his early days as a wedding singer in Buenos Aires to his present position as the Cantor for Temple Emanuel in Newton, MA. (the largest Conservative synagogue in New England)  his talent and energy have made him a stand-out performer. No stranger to radio, television, and the recording industry, he won the “Argentina Sings for Israel” vocal contest in 1998.

Since coming to the United States in 2000, he has continued to receive honors and recognition for his talent as a great singer and as a gifted Hazzan. His repertoire includes Cantorial, Israeli, Yiddish, and Ladino, as well as opera and Broadway selections. True to his Argentinean roots, he also enjoys singing Tango. At the Cantors Assembly Convention in 2002 he was asked to sing the memorial prayer at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.

You can visit his YouTube channel to see live performances.

The Judaica Sound Archives is proud to include these four  wonderful recordings by Cantor Rosemberg. Click album cover to play.

Comments (0)

By Recorded Sound Archives, April 28, 2014 1:40 pm

Israel is 66 years old! Celebrate by revisiting the early years.

Listen to the authentic recordings from the Vistas of Israel radio series.

Historic radio broadcast of the Israel Broadcasting Company celebrating the millionth immigrant to Israel (8/29/61). Click on label to play.

From the  late 1950s, through the 1960s, and into the early 1970s the State of Israel sought to inform Americans and others about their young country’s culture and accomplishments through a series of radio broadcasts in English.

These programs featured popular Israeli performers, topical discussions, and interviews with prominent Israelis and others. These original radio broadcasts were aired on local stations throughout the USA.

The Judaica Sound Archives has an extensive collection of these  historic “Vistas of Israel” radio programs. There are over 400 recorded broadcasts in the collection and about 250 of them have been digitized so far.

Click here for more about Vistas of Israel radio broadcasts.

You may also be interested in:

JSA celebrates Israel’s Statehood (5/5/2011)

JoAmar: A pioneer of Israeli Music

Israeli Performer: Shosaha Damari

Selected Israeli Songs

Comments (3)

By Recorded Sound Archives, April 1, 2014 8:57 am

Why is this holiday different from all others?

On this holiday, we celebrate the gift of freedom, we remember Jewish history through special Seder foods and  we teach the lessons of the haggadah to the next generation. The Judaica Sound Archives invites you to  add music and song to  your family’s Passover traditions.

The Judaica Sound Archives has compiled a mix of Passover songs that the whole family can enjoy.  From Cantorial splendor to children’s play-songs, music expresses the heart of the Jewish people. Give Jewish music a special place in your home for the  holidays. All the songs  in this compilation can be heard all year long on the JSA website.

You may also enjoy the following albums:

• Passover Seder Songs – Cantor Deborah Katchko Gray
• Passover in Song and Story – Gold and Wertheim
• Canciones de Pesah – Cantor Bogomolni
• Passover Music Box – Cohen and Gamliel
• Passover Collection – Safam
• Passover Medley – Jan Peerce
• Passover Sing-A-Long – Children’s Village
• Let My People Sing—Cantor Elias Rosemberg

Comments (0)

By Recorded Sound Archives, March 10, 2014 11:41 am

Cantor Joseph Gross is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge about Jewish liturgy, Cantorial music, Cantorial voices and the history of the Cantorate in North America.

A delightful gentleman who has stored  a lifetime of learning into his diminutive frame, Cantor Joseph Gross showed up at the Judaica Sound Archives a little over three years ago wondering if he could be of any help. His warmth and his big smile took us in immediately.  But what captivated us was his encyclopedic knowledge of all things Cantorial and liturgical.

As he spoke I could not help but think that he has probably forgotten more than most of us will ever know on the topic. But as he continued, I realized that he is blessed with almost perfect recall.  Not much seems to have been forgotten at all. You may have heard of people with photographic memories, but Cantor Gross is the only person I have ever met with “phonographic  memory,” i.e. he can recall voice and music impeccably.

A master cantor and composer, Joseph Gross has been a regular volunteer at the JSA for over three years now. Several of our Cantorial music restoration projects have been possible only with his guidance and help.

The JSA has created three albums from the original tape recordings of Cantor Gross.  These recordings are not available anywhere else and have never been commercially released.  They were restored under the vigilant supervision of the Cantor himself.

Listen to the voice of Cantor Joseph Gross.