landmark jewish music

There are a great many people who will point to the a record and say "This was the first _______ record", and they likely have a point of some sort.

"Joe & Paul", while by no means really the first of anything, is the unofficial shot heard round the world. Years of working up close with used records -- whether in used record stores, thrift stores, swap meats etc -- give you a true indication what a million selling record really is. And "Joe & Paul" was.

The Barton Bros were a workday Jewish comedy duo popular in the midforties in and around New York. Unlike Molly Picon, they didn't make it into the movies. Similarly, they never had the profile on radio that Seymour Rechzeit or the Barry (nee Bagelman) Sisters enjoyed. And they weren't stage stars calibre of Lebedeff, Satz, or Adler, so, um... What's so big about this record?

The Yiddish Radio Project website explains it well:

Paul Kofsky opened his first clothing store in Brooklyn in 1912. He called it Joe and Paul – inventing an imaginary cohort, Joe, because he thought people would trust him more if they thought he had a partner. By the early '30s, Kofsky, a dapper man with a penchant for paper neckties, held sway over a successful chain, with new locations in Manhattan and the Bronx. Sartorial success aside, Kofsky had a greater ambition: to rub shoulders with the Yiddish stars of the day.

He made his dream come true in 1936 by walking into WLTH's studio and hiring the station's musical director, Yiddish theater composer Sholom Secunda, to write a song advertising his store. As for the singing, Kofsky would handle that himself.

For the next decade, Kofsky spent most of his days shuttling between stations to perform his jingle live on the air and to talk theater shop with his fellow performers. The ad became more than ubiquitous; to many listeners, "Joe and Paul" was Yiddish radio.

So it happened that a young comedian named Aaron Chwatt (who later became Red Buttons) used "Joe and Paul" as the basis for an extended Borscht Belt parody of Yiddish radio. His routine centered on the fictitious station WBVD, whose programming consisted of commercials interrupted by more commercials, each sillier than the last. For listeners of Yiddish radio, the send-up hit home.

Called to service in World War Two, Red Buttons left the hugely successful skit in the Catskills, where the Barton Brothers comedy team picked it up from hotel staff who had learned it by heart. The Bartons recorded the bit in 1947 for the fledgling Apollo label and soon found themselves proud progenitors of the biggest Yiddish party record ever.

But there's another consideration, and Hankus Netsky (who runs the Klezmer Conservatory Band) brought it to my attention, and everyone I have spoken to who was of that generation has mentioned it: It was Yiddish comedy doing something really new and fresh. The archetypes of Jewish comedy routines at that point had been longstanding. Fun got poked at the provincial stuff famous to immigrant culture. The greenhorn immigrant cousin, the mother bragging about the son who would be a doctor, etc. Very My Big Fat Greek Wedding stuff.

But "Joe & Paul" was up to the minute. These commericials were in fact on the air at the time, on the popular Yiddish station WEVD, changed to WBVD by the Barton's for this record.

Here finally was a Yiddish comedy record using the musical style with which Jewish listeners were at home, with risque jokes, contemporary pop culture references, and a decidedly non-old fashioned tone. And it was huge wherever there was a sizable Jewish population.

Mickey Katz, then in Spike Jones' City Slickers and unsatisfied with his salary, heard this record, and saw his own future. He said so in his autobiography. I don't doubt it. Mickey barely mentions Benny Goodman -- his avowed idol -- but goes into it about "Joe & Paul".

Not the first, not the best, but a delight, and a record that made a lot of stuff happen in its wake.