For five generations, the Lind Family, descended from Belzer Hassidim in Galicia, sang the songs of the synagogue. It was from this lineage that Joshua Lind (1890—1973) rose to prominence as a composer, cantor and teacher. Joining his father’s synagogue choir at the age of 5, young David Lind quickly became a Cantorial wunderkind touring the country and recording for RCA Victor.

Together with his brothers, Murray and Phil, David formed the Lind Brothers Trio in 1937. They became quite popular performing a repertoire especially created for them by their father, Cantor Joshua Lind. Read More About This…

It was the “last box packed.” Now it was the last box to be unpacked. After going through 156 boxes of Cantorial, Yiddish and English-language recordings from the collection of Chicago record producer Barry Serota we stared at this box and knew that once it was opened our job of unpacking would be complete.

However, our work organizing, describing and investigating the music was just beginning!

Barry Serota, had devoted his life to collecting great Jewish music and producing high-quality recordings. Although we knew that this was a wonderful donation to the Judaica Sound Archives, we really couldn’t be sure what treasures we would find. As it turns out, we couldn’t be more pleased!

Of the 1,513 LPs that were unpacked we found at least 100 that were still in their original cellophane wrappers. There were also a few 45 rpm records, over seven hundred 78 rpm discs, 101 digital tapes, and 1,443 audio reel-to-reel tapes.

Benedict Stambler, founder of the Collector’s Guild recording company, had been Barry Serota’s mentor and friend. We were delighted to uncover several test pressings from the Collector’s Guild Archives Limited Edition series. There were numerous other test pressings as well, a few of them acetate.

Test pressings include: an acetate pressing of a synagogue service  radio broadcast led by Cantor Dale Lind made in 1941, a live concert by Cantor David Kousevitsky that was recorded in 1968, and a concert of folk songs by Rosenblatt. Read More About This…