Arts & Entertainment

Jews In The Grooves

A massive archive of rare records spins a compelling tale of our Jewish past.

BAGELSaBONGOS agat

IffiViAle FIELDS

KUM sin I Imolmilfacti-,

rAvo

Shmulik Fischer and Fraidele
Lifschitz - Kum Sitz! A
Jewish House Party (Menorah

Records, circa 1960): "With its
portrait of sedate, domestic,
feminine, Americanized
bliss, [this album] depicts

Irving Fields Trio - Bagels
and Bongos (Decca, 1959):

"We like to think of it as
the White Album of the

a celebration of achieving
the trappings of a suburban
lounge in which you can host
friends and show off a record
collection."

NW tit a WINO* MOM 1 WI
ts141% fiqk
WriVili Wit

Jewish-Latin craze."

Belle Barth - The
Customer Comes First
(Lobo, 1960s): "Hers was
the heyday of a bawdy,
raspy-voiced crew of

Jewish female comics who
only played blue, mixed

Yiddish and English, and
chased cigarettes with

Hanna Haroni - Songs of
Israel (Decca, 1962): "A bevy
of beautiful Israeli songbirds
arrived to tempt young males

"I can blow
,lte whole
-*work, with

to move to a promised that
appeared to be overpopulated
by the 1950s equivalent of the

e wowiLa- V1.
n outrageous\
a Mum of

Hooters girl - swarthy, chesty
feminine pioneers who toiled in
the fields but were ready and

recorded live!!

FOR AM II: (Au

1101

willing to be known in a biblical
way during the lunch break."

martinis."

Eric Herschthal
New York Jewish Week

W

hile in cantorial school in
the early 1960s, Sol Zim set
his sights high. His idols
were Richard Tucker and Jan Peerce, titan
American cantors who also sang in the
world's best opera houses. Zim was on a
similar track: Not long after graduating, he
had lined up a Yom Kippur gig at a large
Chicago synagogue and had a contract
with the Vienna State Opera waiting to be
signed.
Then his wife caught wind of it.
"She said to me, `You wanna go?"' Zim
recalled. "Here, take your bags!'
There went the opera, but hardly the
rest of his career. In fact, turning down the
opera was probably the best thing for his
career.
By the late-1950s and early-'60s, the tra-
dition of American cantors moonlighting

as opera stars waned while a newer gen-
eration of Jewish singers embraced pop
music. Irving Fields sold 2 million copies
of his album Bagels and Bongos in 1959,
which blended Yiddish and Latin genres.
Fred Katz combined klezmer with jazz.
Sophie Tucker sang the blues.
And by the early-'70s, Zim crossed over
to rock. His two children were big Kiss
fans, and they asked their dad to make
an album they might like, too. "That was
David Superstar," Zim said of his 1974
rock LP, which was recorded live at the
Hollis Hills Jewish Center in Queens.
Even the most ardent Jewish music fan
might not have heard of David Superstar.
But a new book about hundreds of these
lost Jewish-American records makes the
case that one should. In 239 glossy, pic-
tured-packed pages, And You Shall Know
Us By the Trail Of Our Vinyl: The Jewish
Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved
and Lost (Crown Publishers; $24.95)

argues for an alternative narrative to
the traditional story of American Jewish
assimilation.
"Jews {were] eager to maintain tradition
and preserve memory amid the unprec-
edented freedoms of the United States:'
write the authors Roger Bennett and Josh
Kun. And they were not willing, as the tra-
ditional narrative holds, to sacrifice their
own heritage.
The 400 album covers — culled from
thrift shops across the country, the sole
archive of Jewish LPs at the Florida Atlantic
University in Boca Raton, Fla., and card-
board boxes brimming with unwanted
albums shipped to Bennett and Kun
through word on the Internet — tell the tale
with wit, humor and fastidious research.
"We're all in our 30s and asking the
same question: Why haven't we ever heard
of this stuff?" said Bennett. He, along with
Kun, heads the not-for-profit label Reboot
Stereophonic, which re-issues long lost

Jewish albums and which helped produce
the new book. To coincide with the book's
release, a pub hosted a concert with some
of the artists last month. And a new Web
site, www.idelsounds.com, has replaced
Reboot Stereophonic's old one, streaming
many of the songs from the book's albums
and selling all of Reboot's products online.
In a sense then, And You Shall
Remember Us By the Trail Of Our Vinyl
marks both the end and a new beginning
for Reboot Stereophonic. The label began
after Bennett and Kun met at a summit for
the umbrella Reboot organization, a group
geared toward redefining Jewish identity
for the post-baby-boomer set.
Bennett, a lawyer raised in Britain, and
Kun, a musicologist from California, both
connected over the guilty delight they
took in albums that often embarrassed
their parents. Though records by Barbra

Jews in the Grooves on page C13

N

January 8 • 2009