Re: "Those were the days" (recordings, etc.)

[Robert A. Rothstein <rar...>]

Robert Cohen wrote:

> First, I'm grateful to Bob Rothstein for his extensive information about
> "Those Were the Days"--it confirms and amplifies the lesser data I had--and
> am only puzzled how, if its music can so clearly be attributed to Boris
> Fomin (which was also my information), it appeared in the Gypsy/maybe
> klezmer repertoire, if I read some other posts correctly, decades before he
> wrote it!  Am I not following something--or is there some inconsistency in
> the information that's been shared with us?

    I, in return, am grateful to Robert Cohen for his additions to the biography
of "Those Were the Days."  Raskin also contributed another song to Bikel's
repertoire, namely, that wonderful parody of Russian soul, "The Kretchma."
(Speaking of Russian soul, does anyone know who wrote "I Went Shootin' with
Rasputin"?)
    Although it's possible that Fomin borrowed an earlier melody, just as Raskin
borrowed his, I haven't seen any evidence that the melody was in fact part of
the 19th-century Gypsy repertoire.  There was a whole Russian Tin Pan Alley, of
which Fomin was a part, producing pseudo-Gypsy songs from the last decades of
the 19th century until the end of the 1920s.
    Since the question about "Those Were the Days" originally arose in response
to Trudi Goodman's search for music to be used in a production of Chekhov's _The
Cherry Orchard_, I should add to my earlier comments that "In the Hills of
Manchuria," proposed in an earlier posting, would be slightly anachronistic
since it dates from 1905 and the Russo-Japanese War, while the play is from
1904.
            Bob Rothstein

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