Mazel Tov

My brother bought this album a couple weeks ago, and shared with me while over at his spot.  I got a kick right out off the title, and I’m sure the rest of my RH fam will too…RubyHornet is quite possibly the best collaboration between members of the Jewish and Latin communities…ever…just saying…Anyway, to Mazel Tov Mis Amigos, which consists of popular Yiddish theater songs through popular Latin styles of the 50’s and 60’s.  Juan Calle, who was actually an Italian-American John Cali, formed the Lantzmen and recorded this album in 1961.  The Latin Lantzmen included legends such as Ray Barretto, timbales guru Wilie Rodriguez, pianist Charlie Palmieri, as well as African-American jazz greats Clark Terry, Doc Cheatham, Lou Oles, and Wendell Marshall.  The album came at the height of what has been deemed the “Jewish Latin craze”.  It has been fully remastered and re-released on August 11th by the Idelshon Society for Music Preservation, and has reached the top 10 on Amazon.com.  

I got sent the liner notes this morning, and they are a really good read.  The notes were penned by Josh Kun, who observedly remarks, 

“It’s become something of a truism that the history of Jews in American popular music is a history of masquerade. From Leiber and Stoller writing songs as if they were black men and women to Bob Dylan’s Woody Guthrie and born-again-Christian masks, from black-face minstresly to gentile- face minstresly, from Milton Mesirow becoming Mezz Mezzrow to Alfred Levy becoming Alfredito, from Irving Berlin and George Gershwin dreaming up plantation fantasies of a mythical South or urban romance on Catfish Row, passing and disguise have long been key aesthetic weapons of the Jewish musical arsenal. It’s safe to be like the others,” Woody Allen’s big screen uber-chameleon Leonard Zelig famously said on his therapist’s couch, “I want to be liked.” Without Jews playing non-Jewish music, without Jews assimilating into the sound cultures of Latino and African-American life, without Jews becoming musical Zeligs, it’s hard to imagine what American pop would sound like….

Which is why Mazel Tov Mis Amigos is such an anomaly. On this session, it was African-Americans and Latinos masquerading as Jews, coming together at New York’s Plaza Sound Studios in the name of an only-in-America brand of Yiddish fusion, eleven “Yiddish favorites in Latin tempo.” If you believe the original liner notes, the impetus was purely economic, the Yiddish-Latin fusion album as guaranteed hit-maker.”