Mail Archive sponsored by Chazzanut Online

jewish-music

<-- Chronological -->
Find 
<-- Thread -->

RE: Info about the song, Those were the days


Thanks to Bob Rothstein for the information on the Russian original.

Alex Shandor, a Gypsy violinist I used to know, was born in Little Hungary on 
the Lower East Side in 1920 (his father was a cimbalom player; his grandparents 
emigrated from Slovakia in the 1880s). He said he used to play that tune and 
other Russian ones like it when he and another Gypsy boy used to play for coins 
thrown down by the residents in the tenements (early '30s). 
Incidentally, he was familiar with the term 'klezmer' (this was in the late 
'70s), knew Naftule Brandwine, and played for a long time at a resort in the 
Catskills.

Paul Gifford

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+

<-- Chronological --> <-- Thread -->