• God had a wife. Yes, that God. [Discovery News]

• Tablet Magazine contributing editor Eddy Portnoy has a children’s treasury of Yiddish fight terms. [Shtetl Montreal]

• Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is interested in a New York City satellite campus. [NYT]

• iGrogger [iTunes]

• Contributing editor Vanessa Davis’s workspace is at least as wonderful as you’d suspect. [From the desk of …]

• The doll that got a bar mitzvah. [The Daily]

According to contributor Jody Rosen, 100 years ago today Irving Berlin—one of the heroes of David Lehman’s A Fine Romance—received a copyright for “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”

In an email, Lehman reported, “‘I’ve got a feeling you’re fooling,’ I said when the guy from ASCAP called. I was sure he was mouthing little white lies. But True Blue Lou was on the level. My heart stood still, and now I’m sitting on top of the world, which I’ve got on a string.”

A Fine Romance [Nextbook Press]

That premise, which is spelled out in the otherwise excellent liner notes—as artful a combination of marketing savvy and musical scholarship as I’ve encountered—is that while much has been made of Jewish interest in black music, the converse has remained a little-known trade secret.

There is, in turn, just one thing wrong with this premise: It simply isn’t true.

Yes, much has been made of the many Jews who have played a role in black music and culture. For recent examples, look no further than the films Cadillac Records and Who Do You Love; and David Lehman’s A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, one of several books the Society recommends for further reading.

But should the performance of Jewish-themed material by black musicians really come as such a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention for the past 100 years?

“To me,” says Lehman, who teaches in the graduate writing program at the New School, “this is not news.” (When we spoke by phone, Lehman had not yet seen the disc.)

That Black Sabbath was inspired by the random discovery of an old vinyl recording of Johnny Mathis singing “Kol Nidre” suggests that the collectors behind the Society may suffer from Christopher Columbus syndrome: Having tripped over a continent, they assumed that they were the first to have discovered it. By that logic, every 13-year-old boy on earth could claim to have “discovered” the miracle of onanism.

The evidence for black investment in music that bears some relation to Jews and Judaism is all around us and has been for some time–even longer, I would guess, than all of those early 20th-century recordings of black baritones belting out Negro spirituals. And is it any wonder? Five thousand years of exile, oppression, and slavery virtually guaranteed that Jews would serve as allegorical stand-ins for African-Americans. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that “Go Down Moses” made a conveniently coded song of protest.

If this long-standing musical relationship seems at all surprising from a contemporary vantage point, that’s “only because we’ve been conditioned to imagine that Jews and blacks are in conflict with one another politically and culturally,” says Lehman—conditioning that has much to do with the rift that opened between the two groups toward the end of the civil rights era, a black-Jewish love-in the likes of which we’ll probably never see again.

One can’t deny the distance that now separates black Americans from American Jews, or the emphasis that contemporary observers tend to place on the appropriation (read: theft) of black culture by Jews and other white folk. But it seems silly to suggest, as if by extension, that any part of their long, two-way history of cultural exchange remains undiscovered country.

It’s also silly to read too much into the musical tea leaves. Is it really significant that Jimmy Scott covered the theme to Exodus in 1969–the same year that the Temptations unleashed their groovy “Fiddler on the Roof Medley”—when both Exodus and Fiddler were such huge hits that few didn’t try them on for size? Or that Mathis gave forth with “Kol Nidre” in 1958, when he already had available for study Perry Como’s 1953 version? Perry Como, ladies and gentlemen.

Josh Kun, who wrote those otherwise excellent liner notes, attributes much of this to the sense of solidarity that many blacks felt with Jews after the birth of Israel, when they saw reflected in the successful push for a Jewish homeland their own yearning for freedom. And he may have a point, at least when it comes to a tune like Lena Horne’s “Now!,” a sock-it-to-’em protest song from 1963 set to the tune of “Hava Nagila.”

But much of the music included in the compilation was simply in the air at the time–a time that was both closer to the golden era of Jewish jive exemplified by Slim Gaillard’s “Dunkin’ Bagel,” from 1945, and Cab Calloway’s “Utt Da Zay,” from 1939; and to the golden era of Jewish folk song, which owed as much to the larger folk revival of the 1950s as it did to Israeli independence. Popular entertainers draw their material from popular culture, and these Jewish-themed tunes qualified as such at the time.

This might all sound like pointy-headed quibbling, especially given how entertaining the music on Black Sabbath is (the album has justly made it onto the Billboard chart) and how poor our collective memory tends to be. Lehman contends that any reminder of the long history of positive collaboration between blacks and Jews is both welcome and salutary, and I won’t argue with him. Nor will I deny that Billie Holiday’s home recording of “My Yiddishe Momme,” from 1956—a genuine find that’s almost painful to hear, given how battle-scarred Holiday’s voice was then—“makes the point in a way that’s impossible to miss.”

But this isn’t just any old compilation CD. It’s a compilation CD with a message and a mission. And both seem needlessly muddled.

In contrast, there was nothing at all muddled about the presentation that the Bronx-born, Budapest-based fiddler and food blogger Bob Cohen recently gave on his 30 years of research into Jewish and Gypsy music in Romania.

Speaking at the Center for Jewish History as part of the New York World Festival: Music Around the Black Sea, Cohen traced the complex musical connections between the Roma and the Jews–connections that really do qualify as “secret,” if only because many of the people who once played traditional Central European Jewish and Gypsy music are now dead and the audience for such sounds has largely disappeared.

Any effort to unearth those connections, and the history of positive cultural collaboration between the Roma and the Jews–especially at a time when many European countries seem intent on subjecting the Roma to the same treatment that African-Americans received only two or three generations ago–seems both welcome and salutary, as well.

Rufus Wainwright opened the show, in the Allen Room at Lincon Center, with its wall of windows overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park, with a soulful rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.” He was backed by a 14-piece band, playing sultry nightclub arrangements of a dozen pop standards behind not just Wainwright but also Shannon McNally, Jenni Muldaur, Van Dyke Parks, and Christine Olmann, who brought the house down belting a loungey arrangement of Arlen and Koehler’s “Stormy Weather” in a flowing pink ’60s dress and a towering bouffant of blonde hair.

But even bigger names played, too. Sting proved himself a master of the songbook, delivering plaintive, moving renditions of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Love Is Here to Stay” and, later, “”Someone to Watch Over Me.” And none other than Lou Reed showed up to close the show with a hard-rocking, guitar-and-drums-heavy take on Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “One For My Baby (and One More For the Road).”

All photos by Dese’Rae Stage:

Wainwright with David Lehman, author of the Nextbook Press book A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs.

Photos from “I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues?” Music and readings from A Fine Romance, at The Allen Room, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, New York City.

“I Gotta Right To Sing the Blues?”—a concert inspired by Lehman’s book, produced by Hal Willner, and starring Rufus Wainwright and others—takes place tomorrow night at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center.

American Classics With a Yiddish Accent [Soundcheck]
A Fine Romance [Nextbook Press]

David Lehman’s Top Ten Christmas Songs Written by Jews

10. “The Christmas Waltz,” music and lyrics by Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne. “Listen to Sinatra’s version of this interestingly self-referential lyric.”

9. “Silver Bells,” music by Jay Livingston, lyrics by Ray Evans.

8. “Winter Wonderland,” music and lyrics by Felix Bernard. “Michael Feinstein was my source on this one. And I’m surprised! The lyrics involve an impromptu wedding ceremony performed by a Parson Brown. The most interesting lyrical moment is the rhyme of ‘snow man’ and ‘no, man.’”

7. “Santa Baby,” music and lyrics by Joan Ellen Javits and Philip Springer. “Very enjoyable song. The closest thing to a jazz song here. ‘Santa Baby, hurry down the chimney to me.’ It adapts the conventions of Christmas songs to become a kind of love and seduction song. Eartha Kitt sings a swell version.”

6. “Sleigh Ride,” lyrics by Mitchell Parrish. “Sometimes people encounter it as a musical backdrop. On a personal note, I remember flying between the U.S. and England in the 1970s, and at Heathrow or Gatwick or JFK, you would always hear that. I had never liked it particularly, but because of the association it is very dear to me. Parrish—born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky in Lithuania—wrote the lyrics to one of the most famous of all jazz standards, Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust.’”

5. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” music by Buck Ram, lyrics by Walter Kent. “Like ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Have Yourself,’ this song was popular during World War II, and it appeals to a certain nostalgia and homesickness, not only on the parts of the troops abroad, but the loved ones at home.”

4. “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. “This is a great song that is sometimes overlooked when people think of great Christmas songs, in part because of the other major Berlin effort in this category, and in part because it is one of the few songs on this list that can be done come snow or shine, year in and year out.”

3. “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow,” lyrics by Sammy Cahn, music by Julie Styne. “This is my own favorite of the ‘Jingle Bells’-type Christmas song. I love the way it is used as the exit music in Die Hard.”

2. “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”), music and lyrics by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells. “These first two picks are traditional Christmas songs—they mention the holiday explicitly, are full of heartfelt sentiment, and may jerk a few tears.”

1. “White Christmas,” music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. “Bing Crosby’s version is the best-selling single ever.”

Related: Lehman serves up an American songbook playlist

A Fine Romance

Brian Wilson’s New Partner: George Gershwin [NYT]

“The Lady is a Tramp,” music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart. It’s probably my favorite Rodgers and Hart song—though there’s a lot of competition, and it’s fierce. “The Lady is a Tramp” is a perfect example of Hart’s wit on the one side and Rodgers’s gift for up-tempo melodies on the other. Hart’s irony is such that not everyone who loves this great song presumes to understand it, so here’s a quick primer: the song defies the classy “lady” by listing some of the ways she defies convention and stereotype—and thus is a “tramp” in the eyes of fakes and phonies. She is a down-home gal, happy with common things—the rowing in Central Park lake, the beach at Coney Island—who disdains slumming and idle gossip: “Won’t go to Harlem in ermine and pearls, / Won’t dish the dirt with the rest of the girls.” The Frank Sinatra version from his 1957 record A Swingin’ Affair (or from the soundtrack of the 1957 movie Pal Joey) is the preferred choice here.

“Nice Work If You Can Get It,” music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin. One of two joyous Gershwin and Gershwin songs that punctuate their celebration of love with the same rhetorical question: “Who can ask for anything more?” (The other song is “I Got Rhythm.”) I have a particular affection for Mel Torme’s version, which he recorded with the Marty Paich “Dek-Tette” in November 1956. Torme sings the verse—usually given at the start of the song—in the middle, as a second bridge. It contains Ira Gershwin’s immortal couplet: “The only work that really bring enjoyment / Is the kind that is for girl and boy meant.”

“All the Things You Are,” music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. There are so many fine renditions it’s hard to know which to recommend: Helen Forrest’s voice mingling sexily with Artie Shaw’s clarinet in 1939; Sinatra reaching vocal heights on a V-disc in 1944; Beverly Sills pouring forth like Keats’s nightingale in 1973; the late John McGlinn giving it the full operatic treatment on his Broadway Showstoppers album of 1993. “Popular songs are subject to constant interpretation,” as Mel Torme has noted, and “All the Things You Are” works as a big-band tune, a pretext for bop improvisation, a ballad, an aria, or a big chorus number developing out a duet. Many consider it the all-time greatest love song. What makes it such? The soaring melody, the harmonic complexities and daring shifts of key, the marriage of the music and the words, the lyrics that express longing and epitomize the ode in praise of one’s sought-for partner. Hammerstein wasn’t very proud of “that moment divine” toward the end: “Someday I’ll know that moment divine / When all the things you are, / Are mine.” The need to rhyme forced the inversion of usual word order. Yet somehow even this poetical outburst enhances the sublime effect.

“Stormy Weather,” music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ted Koehler. When Arlen and Koehler wrote and played their songs as house musicians for the Cotton Club in Harlem, they created such standards as “Get Happy,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” In “Stormy Weather,” they came up with the signature songs of two great singers, Lena Horne and Ethel Waters. It is a lament for a lost love, but it has an unusual spiritual quality. “All I do is pray / The Lord above will let me / Walk in that sun once more.” The music manages to make you feel the sadness of the moment and the promise of that moment redeemed. “Stormy Weather” is at or near the top of meteorological love songs, a surprisingly populous category.

“Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Every time you think that you can sum up Irving Berlin—with his “simplicity” and his “common touch” and his unabashed sentimentality—along comes a song of such melodic complexity and melancholy mood that makes you understand why George Gershwin likened Berlin to Franz Schubert. “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” from 1936, is a song very much of its moment: dark days of bankruptcy and unemployment, with threatening signals of strife to come in Europe. The song is both an invitation to the dance and a variant on the theme of carpe diem: “There may be trouble ahead, / But while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance,” what else can we do but “face the music”—in a double sense—“and dance.” Fred Astaire sings it to Ginger Rogers in Follow the Fleet (1936).

“Over the Rainbow,” music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Yip Harburg. “Over the Rainbow” as sung by the teenage Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939) tops most all-time lists of favorite songs in Hollywood movies. The Technicolor vision of Oz that commences after Garland sings the song in black-and-white occurs not only as a magical answer to her vast yearning prayer but as an allegorical representation of the fantasized end of the Depression. If, following the song from the soundtrack, you listen to Judy sing “Over the Rainbow” in her famous Carnegie Hall concert of April 23, 1961, you’ll enrich your experience of this most famous of Arlen’s songs.

“There’s No Business Like Show Business,” music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Originally, Jerome Kern was commissioned to write Annie Get Your Gun. When Kern died in 1945, the producers turned to Irving Berlin, who wrote a major score in half the usual time. A peerless mix of humor and sentiment, its anthem, “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” quickly became the ultimate Broadway anthem. (Its most formidable competition is “That’s Entertainment” by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz.) Berlin’s song will always be associated with Ethel Merman, queen of the ladies who can belt to the back row without no need of artificial magnification. There’s a 1954 Hollywood movie called There’s No Business Like Show Business starring Merman, Donald O’Connor, Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor, Johnny Ray, and Dan Dailey: all Berlin songs, and when everyone assembles to do the title number, you’ll want to sing along.

“A Fine Romance,” music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Dorothy Fields. Ginger Rogers sings it to Fred Astaire, but the version I fell in love with is Billie Holiday’s from the 1930s. It’s a sarcastic love song. We may be used to the genre of the lover’s complaint, but it usually comes from the man, and this one is from the female point of view and has a top-drawer Dorothy Fields lyric, “You’re calmer than the seals in the Arctic Ocean. / At least they flap their fins to express emotion.”

“Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Leo Robin. Carol Channing performed this song from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes superbly on stage, and Channing’s remains the definitive version, though Marilyn Monroe’s seductive delivery in the movie leaves little to be desired. Jule Styne is a master of the big brassy Broadway number and Leo Robin’s lyrics are unbeatably witty and smart. The triple rhymes come at you fast: a guy may think you’re “awful nice/ but get that ‘ice’ or else no dice.” Never has the adult male aptitude for irresponsible philandering been stated with such melodious gusto: “He’s your guy / When stocks are high, / But beware when they start to descend. / It’s then that those louses / Go back to their spouses.”

“I Can’t Get Started,” music by Vernon Duke, lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It’s that evergreen story: I have conquered worlds but not, alas, your heart. The music is marvelous, and the lyric is an outstanding instance of the inventory as a lyrical form, listing the singer’s diverse accomplishments yet ruefully concluding that he (or she) is downhearted for the simple reason that “I can’t get started with you.” Ira Gershwin’s gift for polysyllabic rhyme is on heroic display: “Oh, tell me why / Am I no kick to you? / I, / Who’d always stick to you? / Fly / Through thin and thick to you? / Tell me why I’m taboo!” Frank Sinatra’s cover on the 1959 album No One Cares) wins my vote for capturing the song’s melancholy. But you might prefer the jovial duet of Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney under Billy May’s direction in August 1958.

On November 10, David Lehman will speak at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. To purchase tickets for this event, click here.