RE: Sherlock Holmes' Tsimbl

[Gifford, Paul <pgifford...>]

Elrosen (at) aol(dot)com [mailto:Elrosen (at) aol(dot)com] wrote:

>I was just watching Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, produced
in 1942, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. The >>movie opens
with a scene in a Swiss tavern and off to the side  to my amazement is
a man with a moustache playing the tsimbl. I can't recognize the tune,
but it is very Western sounding.  Anyone know anything about this?

The player was Julius Klein.  He was a Hungarian-born Jew who lived in
New York City before going to Los Angeles in the '30s,
where he appeared in quite a few movies.  I've never seen it, but I've
heard that he appeared in a musical with Paul
Whiteman's Orchestra.  The set was a large, spiral staircase, with
Whiteman's orchestra on it, and Klein was on top.
Gus Horvath, Gypsy cimbalom player of Detroit, thought that the
padding on his sticks was thick.  Someone needs to do
research on Hungarian Jewish Gypsy music in America before it's all
forgotten.  There were other Hungarian Jewish
cimbalom players in the U.S.----Joseph Kun(u) (maybe related to Laszlo
Kun, cimbalom professor at the Budapest Academy)
played with Aladar Sio's orchestra, which recorded heavily in the
1910s and 1920s, and Herschel Sacher recorded two
sides for Edison.  

Paul Gifford

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