2nd April 2021 – Shabbat is almost here
And today we’ll listen to a suite of two klezmer styles, the slow and highly ornamented doina, which allows the melodic instrumentalist to show his resources and expressiveness, and the lively skotchna, which will invite us to dance.
Hello, how are you? I hope you are enjoying these holy days for so many places in the world. In Spain today it is Good Friday and in a normal year there would be many crowded processions. For the second year, they have been cancelled or done just by a small handful of the worshippers, and some are streamed on the Internet.
We will always have music to travel to a world of beauty. I hope you like the piece chosen for today!
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About Hymie Jacobson and his Orchestra
Hymie (also known as Hy) Jacobson was born in Chicago (USA) in 1894 (or 1893 or 1895, there are discrepancies in the various sources), and died in Miami (USA) in 1952. He was a Yiddish actor and playwright. He graduated from elementary and high school. He played his first child role at the age of 4 in a theatre in Cincinnati, USA.
? The picture is of public domain and I got it from Wikipedia.
The whole family was involved with theatre in some way. Until the age of 15, Jacobson continued to act with his parents.
According to Jewniverse, in 1912, Jacobson went to Europe, where he stayed for about a year. During this time he even managed to become the owner of a laundry in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary). This info seems a bit weird. If any of the readers had any information about this, I would be really thankful. I have not found anything about his stay in Budapest in any other source.
From 1917 he had adult roles. His wife, Miriam Kressyn, was also an actress and they performed together. Kressyn is a personality herself. Feel free to learn more about her, on this page of Jewish Women’s Archive. And listen her singing in Yiddish, here.
Hymie and his brother Irving owned some of the key venues for Yiddish theater in New York City.
You may find interesting this little interview from 1935 with the two brothers after their respective tours in Argentina (Hymie) and in Europe (Irving), including several cities of Poland and anecdotes related to what would come later. It is available in the website of the Museum of Yiddish Theatre.
In the 1940s he organized his own orchestra in which Paul Pincus (another of our protagonists of today) and the Ellstein brothers played.
Hymie died in Miami on January 10th, 1952, of a stroke.
The sources for Jacobson’s bio have been:
- http://yiddishmusic.jewniverse.info/jacobsonhymie/index.html
- https://www.1540brewster.com/artists/SCTaoOnsvtc2
- https://www.jta.org/1952/01/10/archive/hymie-jacobson-jewish-actor-and-playwright-dies-in-miami
- http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yt/lex/J/jacobson-hymie.htm
About Paul Pincus (or Pinkus)
The difference in age with Jacobson (over 20 years younger) and the bigger longevity of Paul Pincus means that we have fairly recent recordings of him. For example, this one from 2002 in New Yersey.
Pincus died in 2005, at the age of 87. Klezmershack made a tribute to him, with words by Henry Sapoznik (who was with is in MBS, in a previous edition) and more friends.
Paul Pincus was born in 1917 in Bayonne (New Yersey), a city with many descendants of Italian, Irish and Polish migrants. He began playing the clarinet at the age of 9 and attended the Juilliard School in New York on a scholarship.
This is the cover of Pincus’ album Music for Happy Occasions and this picture is available in several websites ?
About the song!
The recording was done for De Luxe label, from New Yersey, and it seems it was recorded in 1947 (according to the website of A King Records Discography), so Paul Pincus was just 30 years old.
Doina in Romanian is a folk song. In klezmer, it is a slow, solemn and very expressive style. There is much written about the doina, but I haven’t found much about the skotchna, beyond being a Jewish folk dance. So let’s stop talking and experience the music itself. Enjoy!