{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/bc3st7ff3t/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Blackman, Julius and Nathan Katzman (2 of 2)"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","metadata":[],"provider":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/112/009/small/BlackmanandKatzman.jpg?1621429232","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - L3325_MA_2005_Oral_History_Blackman_Katzman_Master_2017_Logo.mp4"]},"duration":4328.59733,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/112/009/small/BlackmanandKatzman.jpg?1621429232","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/112/009/original/L3325_MA_2005_Oral_History_Blackman_Katzman_Master_2017_Logo.mp4?1619862965","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4328.59733,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Julius Blackman and Nathan Katzman_second interview [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Cantor Blackman...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: That’s me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: and Cantor Katzman, we’re here talking about your careers, which are individual, but meshed in many ways in the history of Jewish music, and really were instrumental in the history of Jewish music nationally and even more particularly, here on the West Coast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: And in Chicago, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And Chicago, too, which is what I want.... I just discovered recently that you and I, Cantor Blackman, are landsman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: You were from Plonsk?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, the second lands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Isn’t that Ben-Gurion was from ‑‑ Plonsk?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: That lands he wasn’t. Porsk, my father comes from.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But I didn’t know that you were born in Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you have a whole connection with Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I just came from there two weeks ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I was there. You see, if you had called me there, two weeks ago I was in Chicago. I could have called you in Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: I would have invited you over for a cup of coffee.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I was going to call you, as a matter of fact. I had your phone number from somebody. My cousin, Sarah Cohen, you know Sarah Cohen?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=15.0,74.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: You mean the Sarah Cohen who’s a do-gooder?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You don’t mean Benny Cohen’s wife?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: There’s a Sarah Cohen who’s a professional do-gooder, she gets awards from all sorts of organizations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: She’s my cousin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: For the gemillas chesed that she performs...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, I have to remember, because I need some doing good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: She’s involved in Yiddish a lot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I know. She gave me a Marie Samuel book. I was there.\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, so you started your hazzanas in Chicago?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Sort of. Should I tell him Nate?\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tell him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=74.0,99.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BLACKMAN: I sang in his choir, at B’nai Zion, when he was at B’nai Zion in Chicago. Ben Pollock conducted and I was the baritone soloist. I remember when he came, when he first came from Detroit, my wife and I were astonished. We saw this hazzan who was unshaven. That was the first time I’d seen a hazzan unshaven.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This was your father?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: That was you, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It was you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: That’s right. I was in the choir, Ben Pollock was the conductor, and I sang in his quartet. Sextet. Oh they had some volunteers. There were women there, too. I was a professional.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=99.0,132.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: You were, were you a west-sider?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Northwest side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Northwest side. A little...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I was at Humboldt Park, and then I moved to Albany Park, and then I moved to... got married and I lived near Sheridan Road and Wilson, and then we moved to Oak Park, and then I moved to California.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did you sing in Humboldt Park, in the shul?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Humboldt Boulevard Temple?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Logan Square Temple.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s right, the Logan...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: On Fullerton.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Is that gone now?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: It’s an empty lot now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: They tore the building down?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Tore the building down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Is that the one where, at the end, what’s his name from, you know, Weintraub...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Weintraub, yes, yes. When you sang in Logan Square, who was the hazzan?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: They didn’t have a hazzan. We had a quartet. I was the baritone solo, I did the solos for the kiddish and the V’shamru and stuff. And they had a... I forget, the soprano, a very lovely soprano, Marilyn something. And a tenor that became a psychiatrist. And the alto I don’t even remember.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=132.0,187.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: So you had a mixed quartet without a cantor?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: And you did a Friday night service without a cantor?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: And Shabbes morning, what would happen there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Shabbes morning, we weren’t there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: You weren’t there Shabbes morning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What was this a Reform, no?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: No, it’s a Conservative synagogue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: It’s a Conservative synagogue. But they didn’t do... we weren’t involved, they must have had a cantor, I guess.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Someone must have said Barchu.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I should hope so, but I wasn’t there to hear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I see. So now, you remember a lot of the... this was what years? Basically?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: God, it’s back in the... ‘20s, late ‘20s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That far back, okay. So you were in Chicago, in the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: 1938.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You came in ‘38, so you were both there still at a time when Chicago was kind of a known city for hazzanas, I mean, right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I sang... I remember when Rosenblatt came through, they put together a choir behind him, and he gave a concert, and I was...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Were you there? Did you hear Rosenblatt?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, what shul was that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: It was in a concert setup, I don’t remember where it was, in fact.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Who conducted?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: It was either Ben Pollock or Hy Resnick.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=187.0,254.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: It wasn’t Hy?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: It would have been Ben Pollock. Hy Resnick came a little bit…later\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Oh, yeah, so it was Ben Pollock? I sang with Ben Pollock when I was seven, eight years old.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did you ever sing in any of the West Side and Douglas Park?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, I sang with the JPI. I sang... they had concerts on the roof on the JPI I sang.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How about in the Russische Shul?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I sang at the Russische Shul.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Who conducted there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, Ben Pollock conducted it. For Slichus. Started at ten o'clock. We did the one at ten o'clock, and we went to next one, by twelve o'clock we started that one. And the next one, at one thirty and then three o'clock. Each shul advertised the Slichus service was going to be mitten chor, mitten hazzan, the whole thing. I remember the last one was Giblichman on the South Side Hebrew Congregation at 72nd Street or something.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=254.0,305.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Right. Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: So we decided, that was the last one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: 72nd and Chapell, or something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah. And that was so the... and then we divided. So for Slichus, for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, one choir, four people went to this shul, one choir of four people went to that shul, one choir of four people went to the other, and one choir of four people went to the fourth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI conducted the quartet at Giblichman. Because we had all been trained by Pollock, but I had my quartet. It was Giblichman and Chaim Yankel had it, this I don’t even remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now of course, this, you had to rehearse with several hazzanim, then.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Different ones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: From the same...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: We rehearsed with Giblichman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. But Giblichman was... but he came, that was later. ‘Cause Giblichman came... didn’t he come after the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: No, he came in the ‘20s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did he come in the ‘20s?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: In the ‘20s.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=305.0,351.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Oh, that’s right. It was in World War I, he was a radio operator or something like that, yeah. In Vienna. He came from Vienna. What was he like?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: A great hazzan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He was really a nice guy. And nusaḥ, a ba’al nusaḥ, he knew how to daven, you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: An intellectual.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He was an intelligent man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: What kind of voice did he have?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: A tenor. They were all tenors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: He was an intellectual man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You know him, too...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: A lyric dramatic tenor, kind of half-and-half.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did you ever sing with him, Cantor Katzman?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. When I was there, I was already a Cantor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But you met him?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: When I met him, in 1938.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: What kind of hazzanas did Giblichman sing?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: In what way? He was...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Well, he was a... he came from Vienna before he came, so I was wondering whether he was more Western or more Eastern.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He did a lot of the songs of Lewandowsky, but he also did Eastern style, you know, coloratura, he was a, you know, a ba’al t'filla. He was real... he was a hazzan. Not just a ba’al t'filla, but a hazzan. A hazzan with a knowledge of nusaḥ and nusaḥ hat'filla.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I have his compositions, quite a number of them. Did you ever see them?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No. I sang... they put music in front of us and we sang.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. I have a number of his choral compositions. In fact, we did it once at the Cantors Assembly Convention, I did one piece of his there on the program.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Is that right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In 19... when was it? ‘86? Something like that. ‘85. I did a history of hazzanas in Chicago, so we, but I didn’t know this much that he sang.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I was a hazzan in Chicago at Mitzpe Temple, that was a Reform Temple there, for one year.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=351.0,435.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: On Morse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah. They wanted me to do... I did kiddish, you know. I would come, and the choir was up in the back with the organ loft. There was a quartet, and then for kiddish, I would go into the front, put on a robe, and I’d make kiddish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: If I’m not mistaken, the rabbi in that temple was some sort of figure in the Jewish music field.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Singer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Singer, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Jacob Singer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah, he did some... he wrote some things. And they offered me a, if I would stay after that first year, they offered me ‑‑ I could be their hazzan, instead of standing in front with Rabbi Singer. But I moved to the West Coast. That was ‘45.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you remember Hirsch? David Hirsch?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Very vaguely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: The conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The conductor, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He conducted the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: He conducted for my father, my father davenned in the... twice, High Holiday and Passover, in the Russische Shul. And Sol Silverman was the rabbi. And Hirsch was his director.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Sol Silber. Sol Silber.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Sol Silber.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, Sol Silber, the rabbi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah, you said Silverman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, Sol Silber, the rabbi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And your recollection of Hirsch is also...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Vague.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I’ll tell you why I’m asking ‑‑ because he, I’m always trying to find out if he had any family, any heirs, because... you don’t know, do you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=435.0,503.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BLACKMAN: Well, there’s a Hirsch family in San Francisco that’s very religious, a Jacob Hirsch, who was a...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s a common name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Sam Hirsch, who acted as rabbi where Wilkomirsky was the cantor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Because he wrote a lot of music, Hirsch, that’s interesting. I’m looking for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I believe that there was a family that, in my congregation here, at Beth El. Hollywood. And they told me at one time, either he was the father or an uncle, so I can find out for you if you wish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: All right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I will. Remind me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Please. Because it’s interesting music. It’s similar to Joshua Lind, and that type of style, you know, the Hirsch. In fact, Tevela Cohn used to do a lot of it, and Jordan Cohn, his son... do you remember Tevela Cohn?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yeah, sure, he lived in Albany Park, on Wilson. We lived three blocks away from there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did you sing in a choir in Albany Park?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No. I sang in Anshe Emet, with the Sonnenclar (?). As a matter of fact, I used to be in the choir loft, and for Kol Nidre, I came down and sang duets with the hazzan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s with Solomon Goldman. Solomon Goldman was the rabbi?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Solomon Goldman was the rabbi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: They had their building already on Pine Grove, or they were still on Patterson and Grace?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, Pine Grove.... but they had an organ loft and an organ. I was there a couple of shabbosim. I went back to see what Anshe Eemet looks like. Mizrahi is there, now, you know. Their hazzan. But the organ loft is gone, and the...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=503.0,580.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: No, they still have the organ loft. The organ is in the balcony, actually, now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: In the back?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In the back, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Because it used to be above the pulpit. It isn’t any more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh. Did you know that? I didn’t know that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: That’s right. And someone told me a story that at one time... did you tell me the story, about Silverman Friday night? Why don’t you tell us...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Well, very quickly, I took off on a Friday night because I heard about Mo Silverman, and naturally Goldman, who was an international figure. And if you didn’t get in there by 5, 10 minutes of 8, you just couldn’t get in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I was a little disillusioned, because Silverman, he was the cantor in that organ loft, and there was like a metal filigree that you couldn’t see him. And that’s where he conducted the entire... and the choir around him. And that’s where he conducted the entire service, except for kiddush, he came down on the pulpit. That was the only thing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=580.0,633.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Silverman?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Oh, yes. That’s how it was until Goldman passed on, apparently. Then Silverman was on his own.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Then Mordechai Kaplan’s son-in-law came. Eisner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: I once heard a recording of Silverman singing Hamelech on the radio, with choir. So I presume that if you sing Hamelech on the radio with choir, this is what you do in shul. So I called him up and I said, “You know, usually Hamelech is part of Shacharis, the Ba’al Shacharis service. Why would you prepare it for choir?” He says, “I used to daven Shacharis and Musaf, because we had such an abbreviated service, it didn’t pay for them to hire a ba’al Shacharis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Well, that’s what I do to this day. I sing, I chant every year at the High Holy Days at the Jewish Home up there in San Francisco. And I start from Hamelech. But of course, it’s such an abbreviated service. You better know your nusaḥ, though, because you’re in trouble.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: When you were singing at Anshe Emet, that was just with Sonenclar?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: And what years was that, roughly?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: God. It must have been, till my voice changed, you know. So it was ‘28 to ‘30-something, I forget.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You were soprano or alto?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I was both.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Both?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I sang soprano and alto. I conducted his children. But Ben Pollock conducted the whole choir, but we had 12 kids and six men. So we rehearsed together. I would, after we learned the music, then I would rehearse with the kids and...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=633.0,719.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: So, where did you learn your nusaḥ?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: From Ben Pollock, from hazzanim, from... then I studied with Cykowsky, you know, when I became a cantor. And I learned a little from this guy. I learned, you know, listening to him and davenning with him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then I studied with... when I decided to become a cantor ‑‑ I had come out to San Francisco State, it’s a whole story. But I decided to become a cantor, and I... at that time, there was no School of Sacred Music. So I studied with Cykowsky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then I took my first pulpit was the V.J. Fruptein (?) pulpit, was the VJCC, where Paul Discount, olav hasholem, had been the cantor, and he was the sweetest man you ever met. And I learned, you know, he polished me a little bit on stuff. History of hazzanas, and so on. But my main teachers were Cykowsky and Discount.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And that was already well after you had already had some pulpit... had already davenned...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I had already had a lot of exposure. I davenned with Pollock, I sang in Nate’s choir with B’nai Zion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And then you went for formal music training as well?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah, I went to L.A. City and State College.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Before that, you went to, in Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I went to Northwestern, I studied at Northwestern, I went to Chicago Conservatory, I studied privately, composition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I just want to... who were some of the teachers? Because I knew, I mean this is all my world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Well, there’s a... I don’t know if you knew a composer by the name of Ernest Ring in Chicago.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=719.0,796.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: No. Ring?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Ring. R-i-n-g. He, I learned, studied with him, I studied with... a little bit harmony, counterpoint with David Sheinfeld. You know David Sheinfeld?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That name I know, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He’s up in San Francisco, he’s 90 years old. He did a number of symphonies with the... that they did at the Symphony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you studied the violin as well?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I studied the violin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who’d you study violin with there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: A fellow by the name of... what the heck was his name? My cousin was in the Chicago Symphony. Izzy Shapiro. He was the union representative for the Musician’s Union, and when he retired after 43 years in the Symphony, and so...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That was when Cesar Petrillo...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: In those days, yeah. He just recently retired, five years ago. I just saw him when I was in Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: My cousin Izzy. And he and Dave Schneider ‑‑ Sheinfeld ‑‑ played quartets together. And my brother Abe, olav hasholem, used to turn pages, and I used to go and they would chase me out because I was a pest. But that’s how I got exposed to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did you know George Perlman?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Met him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I was just going to ask about... I thought that’s who you’re going to tell me you studied violin with. And piano, you studied piano as well?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I studied two years of piano...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who’d you study piano with?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I don’t even remember?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Buckhalter?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Heard of that name ‑‑ Buckhalter? Or there was another one ‑‑ Schnei, Vitali Schnei.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Vitali Schnei. I studied a little bit with him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You did?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah, and then I studied with... I forget, there was another, it was a woman.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=796.0,876.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Well, it depends how far back. What years are we talking? This is before Rudolf Ganz was there? No, he was there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: It was after. I think Ganz was there already. And I went to the Chicago Conservatory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did you study voice at that time?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, my voice hadn’t changed yet. When my voice changed, I studied with a fellow by the name of Alexander Karado. Then I coached with Alexander Kipness, you know, who’s the boss. Karado and Kipness went to the same school in Germany.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: When you were a child, which you say was in the ‘20s, and Chicago was in some ways the number one city for opera in America. I mean, the Chicago Opera Company was the premiere...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: The Chicago Opera Company, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did you go to the opera, did you...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Sure did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did you pick up...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I sang in the Chicago Opera Chorus, I want you to know. After my voice changed. Because the conductor of the Chicago Opera Chorus, or the union manager, was a guy who was also the manager of the Hebrew Singers Union. I was a member of the Hebrew Singers Union. And he was the manager of the Hebrew Singers Union...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=876.0,942.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: A little guy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Little guy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you remember his name?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I’ve forgotten his name. I’ll think of it. But I remember, we got into the opera chorus. The whole opera, the male section of the opera chorus was Jewish, because we were all members of the Hebrew Singers Union.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’ll never forget, we did a performance of Lohengrin, and Elsa was coming in, you know, and the choir is lined up in an angle like this, by size, you know, the taller ones in the back. And Fischel Bernstein, remember Phil Bernstein?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He became a hazzan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He was a high tenor... he did? He had a magnificent tenor, he was about five foot tall, you know. He was the first one near the audience. So ‑‑ and the gal who was playing Elsa was a convert, she was a... Greta Stuckhold, I think, was her name. She is coming in, big, buxom blonde, and she’s coming in, and I see people’s shoulders are shaking. I couldn’t figure out what’s going on. But when I got there ‑‑ I was about the middle. When we got to me, everybody knew why she was coming. It was a Friday night.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=942.0,1000.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BLACKMAN: She’s coming in, this stately, Nordic blonde, she’s coming, “Good Shabbes. Good Shabbes.” Friday night. So by the time they got to Phil Bernstein, we were ready to bust. And Phil let out a cackle you could hear all over the opera house. And we all burst out, we couldn’t hold back any longer. So they pulled the curtain. The conductor came back, and he gave us a hell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This was a performance or a dress rehearsal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: It was a performance of Lohengrin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s extraordinary.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: They pulled the whole, the curtain down, he came, he bawled us, bawled the daylights out of us. Nobody said a word about why it happened, and nobody gave her away, but she was the one who did it. It was a wonderful experience. Fischel was the one who said...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1000.0,1041.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: Did you know Jack Werblin?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah, I met him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Wait. Before we go on, I want to... these were the days, I mean, in the opera house...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: In the ‘30s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This was when Mary Garden was the director?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Frankly, I don’t even remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So you picked up... in other words, you were exposed to...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I was exposed to...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: ...to serious music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Oh, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: From the beginning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Serengeti and Yascha Heifetz, you know, and everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: We were talking about Werblin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Misha Yellman, and all the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Jack Werblin, the conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: A conductor, yeah. He was also involved in the Hebrew Singers Union.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Oh, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you remember, Cantor Katzman?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He used Goldman, too. I think he changed his name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: That’s the same guy. What was his name originally?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Goldman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Goldman. He used both names.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He was a chemical engineer or something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now this Hebrew Singers Union was for primarily for shul choir singers or also the Yiddish theater people singing, or choral or...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Some.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1041.0,1098.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BLACKMAN: Some. But basically, it was shul singers and they branched out to the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It was a regular union? Was it affiliated with the labor movement, or just really kind of a separate...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I don’t know. I think it was... it depended, but I really don’t know. I was just a young punk, I was making a little money singing. You figure, you had to get into a choir, you had to join the Hebrew Singers Union, so I joined the Hebrew Singers Union.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, Cantor Katzman, you came to Chicago from somewhere else. I mean, you didn’t, you weren’t...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: From Montreal, Canada.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And Montreal, wasn’t your first... that wasn’t your home town either ‑‑ you were born in Europe, yes?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where were you born?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: The Ukraine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: A little hamlet that you wish you wouldn’t know. Because I was one year old when we went to Odessa. And it happened that my father had a grandfather. And he took my father along to Odessa ‑‑ my father had already two children at the age of 22. And with a red beard. And my grandfather was anxious for my father to become a hazzan. So he said, “You know, I have Yahrzeit in some synagogue. But I’d like my son to officiate.” And he soon did, maybe ‑‑ “my grandson.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1098.0,1174.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKATZMAN:\u003c/strong\u003e And he did officiate, and they hired him right on the spot. And eventually, he began to study there. And seriously. With voice, with Midyaev(?), who was supposed to be the Russian Caruso. And also, he was a convert. And he wrote the Ner Tamid (sings), he wrote that. And he was, and thereafter... I don’t know how many years he was there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd they came from a city also on the Black Sea, Nikolayev, because it was named after the Tsar. And as a matter of fact, the Tsar had just put a foundation stone there. And my father became the cantor there ‑‑ he was there for quite a while.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd eventually, I imagine ‑‑ I was very young ‑‑ I imagine it was after the Nu Shu (?) that my father decided to go elsewhere. And we crossed the border into Poland. And there, you know, he tarried for about a couple of weeks, in Brode. And after that, you know, somebody heard him from Lemberg, or Lvov, it was Poland, also Germany. And he became the Lemberg Gershtothazzan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1174.0,1246.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKATZMAN:\u003c/strong\u003e And eventually ‑‑ I’m going very fast ‑‑ eventually, he... somebody heard him from Vilna, Vilna, Lithuania. And he came there after Hirschmann. And he was there ‑‑ as a matter of fact, I still retain a contract in Hebrew. In lovely Hebrew. That they... not me. My father’s. They wrote with my father when he came to Vilna.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was there a year, after which he lost... they brought him to Bialystok, and he was there three years. Bialystok was a matter of fact, you have a picture if you want to. It shows there are about at least 40 in the choir. And about ten, 12, boys, and sopranos and altos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAre you interested? Maybe, tell me to stop it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1246.0,1295.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: This is wonderful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Okay. And in each section, there were two alto soloists and two soprano soloists. Then they had four men, but tops, tops. Four men ‑‑ two were soloists, and the other was baritone. Two were profundo bassos. And two tenors. One of the tenors especially was a high tenor, like some of the Russians.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’m not... forgive me, I don’t know whether you know that there’s a V’Shamru (sings in Hebrew).... No? So on top, you can hear, (sings in Hebrew), anyhow, they were noted. Now, you... they were all professionals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Who was the conductor there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: At that time, a man the name of Coolidge, I don’t know, as I remember. I began actually at the age of six, perhaps, not to sing. You had to go and to rehearsals twice a week. And they would rehearse on their ceremony, and listen, audit. Then, when it came about I guess about seven-and-a-half, eight, I was permitted to go up, they call it “Altar,” a-l-t-a-r.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause it... and a tremendous pulpit, I guess. And the two boys would come out in pairs, from beneath that, yes? Like that, stand up. Stand up. And then the boys wore, in the evening, white collars like the nuns. And in the morning, little talleisim, and full regalia like a cantor.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1295.0,1388.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He was there, and after that, you know, he was called to... I told you Brode, then in Lemberg, and from Lemberg, and after Bialystok, my father went to... Yeah, and I sang with my father all the time. I had it ‑‑ I’m not bragging, I had a very powerful alto. And I was one of the soloists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd also, each section had a park leader. Like for instance, like in the orchestra, the symphony orchestra. Oh, yes. You’d, if you took him out, the boys couldn’t follow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMay I... I’m reminded of an anecdote?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Absolutely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Okay. There’s a...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Only if you tell a story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: It’s a story. A very interesting anecdote. The story is told about a Jewish man, maybe. Who passed a pet shop. And he heard a very lovely sound of a canary. And he ran in ‑‑ he was a man of means ‑‑ and he said, “I’ve got to have this bird.” So the man says, “Oh, it’s a very expensive bird.” He said, “That’s all right. I’ll take.” And he says, “Wrap him up.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo then he says, “You have to have the other bird.” And he looks at the other bird, a disheveled, you know, a old bird, he’s decrepit, and he says, “Why do I have to have it?” He says, “I tell you, you’ve got to have the other bird.” And this goes on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinally, he comes home, and lo and behold, not a sound. One day, two days. So he runs back to the pet shop, and he says, “Say, what did you sell me?” He says, “Listen. I says, I warned you that you had to have the other bird.” He said, “Why?” “He’s his arranger,” he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnyhow. What else? So then...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1388.0,1483.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Let me just clarify. This setup that you’re talking about, with the boys and the collars and the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This was all in Bialystok?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. This was in Nikolayev. In Bialystok, you have a picture, so you’ll see. Then, there was ‑‑ I don’t know if you’re familiar ‑‑ in Vilna he had the Dormashkin ‑‑ Dormashkin was very well known.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Akiva Dormashkin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Akiva Dormashkin, that’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who was...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: The conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: And is also a Kapellmeister, you know, in the Army.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: I think Dormashkin came from a very musical family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Oh, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: And there were other members in the family, there were singers and pianists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Very musical.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This was in the... which synagogue of Vilna? The...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: The Di Shul. The Shtot-Shul.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: the Shtot-Shul.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: The Shtot-Shul, which they said had about 5, 6,000 seating capacity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Five, 6,000?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This is the same or different from what was known as the Vilna Chor Shul?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: The Chor Shul ‑‑ yes, that was different.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Different, that’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That was... Chor Shul indicated that this was a bit more modern. You see? And the Chor Shul would have specifically Lewandowsky, Sulzer, you know. And Nonberg, all of that was there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eZelikovsky was at the... if you know, Zelikovsky was at that time the cantor in the Chor Shul when my father was in Vilna. And then, as I said, from Vilna, my father was taken to Bialystok. He was there, tarried there three years, and then he was asked to come to Montreal’s B’nai Jacob, which at that time...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1483.0,1568.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Okay. So let me just go back, and we’ll come to Montreal. In Vilna...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You were singing in the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. No. At that time, cantors were singing only either festivals and High Holiday or, at best...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Shabbes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: on Rosh Chodesh, etc., etc. So that’s... my father, we lived in Lemberg, continued to stay in Lemberg, and he would travel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEventually, also, when he was in Vilna, and maybe that’s important, there was an Ignatz Mann. I don’t know whether that’s familiar to you. I’m not exaggerating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: He was an opera singer?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. One of the greatest. I mean, Jewish.... And he and my father paired up and they would tour when my father was in, was doing the Rosh Chodesh, and then they davenned, they use to, they went all over Europe. Vienna and Warsaw. My father davenned, by the way, in the (SOUNDS LIKE Lematzgev) Synagogue. Auditioned when Seratto (?) was in the United States. After Seratto.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But in the Vilna Shtot-Shul you never sang in the choir?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. I never sang with my father, I stopped singing with my father, in Lemberg. And then, when my father traveled to Montreal, then I joined choruses with itinerant cantors. And I would travel, I was with Stanislav (?) abroad, you know, and made all those...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1568.0,1644.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: But in... how old were you, about when he was in the Vilna Shtot Shul? About?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. Well, I would say, perhaps, 11.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So why didn’t you sing with him there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Because he...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: They lived in, he lived in Lemberg.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But he could have taken him with him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: He lived in Lemberg. And he didn’t direct the... he had a large family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So he had a choir, though, in the Vilna Shot Shul, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Oh, yes, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How did the repertoire... do you know, since you weren’t there, how that kind of music differed from what was done in the Chor Shul in Vilna?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Not very much. There were some... for instance, that were... first of all, throughout Europe, I’m sure you’re familiar ‑‑ most of the repertoire was Lewandowsky, Sulzer, Nonberg, you know, and various others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Garovich?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Garovich, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Donayevsky?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Donayevsky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What about Boruch Schorr, from Lemberg?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Boruch Schorr, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But when you say this was, this is very interesting. It’s very important. You say throughout Europe, you mean even throughout Poland and...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Not even. Yes. Poland, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sulzer and ‑‑ I want to pin this down ‑‑ Sulzer and Lewandowsky were performed regularly in Poland?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1644.0,1706.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: Absolutely. And I tell you, exclusively, there was in Lemberg, there was an outstanding temple. A gorgeous edifice. And had outstanding choir. As a matter of fact, members of that choir sang also in the opera, in the Polish opera. And they had to be good. Because Jewish people, you know, were not welcome.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd as a matter of fact, I want... if I may say about Ignatz Mann...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Please.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: He was outstanding. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have kept him there. He was the tenor. All right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: What happened to Ignatz Mann?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Ignatz Mann later on decided to become a cantor, and he studied with my father, and he went to Brun. Brun in Czechoslovakia. He was there for a while, and eventually wound up in Haifa. In Haifa. And when I visited Israel, they spoke very highly of him there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1706.0,1757.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: Hazzan Yitzhak Mann.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yitzhak Mann.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: And you know who his choir director was in Haifa?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Heilman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Heilman, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Who?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA and LEVIN: Heilman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Oh. Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, so your father was in quite a number of places.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you got exposure. In Odessa, you were very young when he went to Odessa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Oh, no, I was about two, three years old.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So you don’t have any recollection of Odessa?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes, a little bit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tell me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Some. I have a recollection of the... one of the big shuls that my father was... he didn’t stay long, because he was very good. So they’d take him. And that there was a big mikveh. Not in the midst of the shul, that I remember. They on Shabbes would come in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s funny you remember that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Do you know what shul he was in?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I don’t know, I don’t know. Oh, yeah. No, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It wasn’t the Brodish Synagogue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Or there there’s another... or Richlieu Street. Not the one where Donayevsky was associated, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And then, now you went to Montreal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yeah, in Montreal I sang. I continued to sing there, in my father’s choir. And thereafter, when he went, he was, he left a life contract. A very lucrative life contract with B’nai Jacob. B’nai Jacob was one of the top synagogues in the country, in Montreal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1757.0,1832.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: Who was his conductor there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Two. Can I go back there later on? And I’ll think of it. Okay. Kronick was one. Kronick was one, later on. And before him was another one, who was also the hazzan, Shade.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He was a chronic conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: And then, when he... everybody wanted to go to Ohab Zedek on 95th Street in New York to replace Joseph Rosenblatt when he went to Israel and died. And it so happens that my father was the one that they accepted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd there was an interesting thing during that time when he was in Ohab Zedek. When he was in Ohab Zedek there was a friend of my father’s, from the little shtetl, who prospered. He was the... had the Federal Star Dyers. His name was Bescher. And he was friends with Fox, from Fox Studios, the original Fox.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe invited Fox to come and listen to my father at mincha. It was... at that time, it was customary to do mincha and maariv.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1832.0,1901.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: And Fox arranged for my father to do recordings with RCA and with Columbia. I have the letters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHowever, he was extremely religious ‑‑ my father was very, very religious. I would say, perhaps, a fanatic. And when finally, at his end of days when he was in Israel, I came to visit him, and he wept. He cried, and I said, “Pa, why are you crying?” He said, “I leave nothing.” ‘Cause at that time, he regretted why he didn’t do it. Now, why didn’t he want to do them? Because he said it was a hillul hashem, that it was not proper to put, you know, prayers on record.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And he wasn’t the only one. Minkovsky, you know about him?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I’m glad you mentioned him. Yes. You know how I know? Because father mentioned it. Minkovsky was a favorite of my father’s. As a matter of fact, I think my father patterned himself off him. There’s some compositions which he did that Minkovsky used to do. Of course, you know about Minkovsky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you have any Minkovsky music? Manuscripts?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. But I remember a very beautiful Vayechulu that my father used to do which was Minkovsky’s, some other things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1901.0,1966.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: But look, you see, the choral... the trouble with Minkovsky... there are one or two – Vinaver has one, but who’s going to do De Alte of Dalta (?)? I mean, who’s going to do a big composition for this synagogue nowadays? Tremendous composition, and you have to have the boys.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Cykowsky did it at Beth Israel, when he was at Beth Israel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Alf? Really? De Alte of Dalta?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I have a copy of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: (Sings) You have a copy of the score?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I think so, yeah. I conducted for Cykowsky...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The score you have is from the Vinaver Anthology, though?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah. I... Cykowsky did it at Beth Israel. And it happened the year I left as a full-time cantor, and I became Executive Director of the Hebrew Free Loan, the Hebrew Free Loan didn’t want me to... be, you know, like between engagements, so... I said I wouldn’t daven. And so Cykowsky got me to conduct this choir. And he did the Alta of Dalta. He had a professional choir, all from the San Francisco Opera.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The whole thing?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: The whole thing ‑‑ and gorgeous.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: That’s rather unusual.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=1966.0,2022.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: It’s very unusual, because I’ll tell you, I tried to do just a cutting of it once. Even... one minute, just that section, beginning, not even beginning at the beginning and not ending at the end, you know, but the... just that section where they... and people said, are you crazy? \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He did the whole thing. He did the whole thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s interesting. So, if it was done here, we know...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Well, he almost the equivalent of a European style service, at that time. He had 12 singers from the San Francisco Opera. And there Serenghetti gave a concert like. I was amazed. I haven’t before or since in America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Of course, I would love to find the manuscript. The only thing I have is...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He may have it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, no, he may have done it from the Vinaver Anthology. No, when was that printed?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: In the ‘50s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. So... but then, that’s only one piece. And there are a few other pieces, too, of Minkovsky. But above... there must be a lot more that Minkovsky wrote, and I’m wondering where we could ever find it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I want to tell you one thing about his father. I came to visit him once, to visit Nate in Burbank, you were living in Burbank, remember? I came on a Sunday morning. We were going someplace, I forget. And I hear a gorgeous tenor singing up there. And I couldn’t understand. And I said, “Gee, Nate, you got somebody in your building who has a gorgeous tenor.” He says, “It’s my father.” He must have been in his 70s at the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, he was closer to 80.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Magnificent tenor. Clear, nice, lyric. It was a mechiya to hear. I couldn’t get over it. He was vocalizing. It was his father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: He was very careful about his voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah. He had reason.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2022.0,2106.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: He would write ‑‑ I’m not exaggerating ‑‑ write notes and not open his mouth a week before a concert, a week before... you couldn’t talk to him. He was very dedicated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Um...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: With Minkovsky, we were talking, I had asked you something. Oh, if you knew Mink-... if, what was the connection with Minkovsky?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yeah, you just asked about...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Your father patterned himself after Minkovsky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Oh, yes, yes. Except my father was more, you know, traditional. Meaning like Yiddishe. Like, you know. Minkovsky was more of a...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Secular Jew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: A choral, what they called a choral hazzan. You know, not, I would say, a Conservative, I would say. And Minkovsky was also, as you know, a great intellectual. Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In Hebrew, even in scholarly Hebrew, he published...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Hebrew, Talmud, and yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did your father ever talk to you about Minkovsky? Did he...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. Yes, we talked, you know, yeah. That’s how I know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He was a friend of...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: And when... I could mention something, perhaps you’re familiar. Minkovsky was the type of a cantor and his chorus was the type of a choir, you know, that again, a lot... many of the singers that sang in the Odessa Opera, they were that good. That the ‑‑ this is not exaggeration ‑‑ that the grande dames, you know, the even non-Jews, generals, you know, the military, used to come on a Friday night, to audit, to listen.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2106.0,2195.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: In Odessa?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: In Odessa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Broder Shul.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: To service, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And of course, you know, we know who the conductor was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. Nabakovsky, yes, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Whose grandson lives here in Los Angeles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. Yes. Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: His grandson, David Milner... David?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: I think so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Jack, Jack, Jack.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: He wanted to honor his father with the piece, also.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s right. His grandfather. This is Nabakovsky’s grandson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That lives here, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: His grandson, you’re right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, the reason I mentioned Minkovsky, is because you said your father didn’t want to record.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And he felt it was zispashnisht.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: More than just zispashnisht.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Well, Minkovsky was not because of religiosity. Minkovsky was not because of religiosity. My father was because of religiosity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s what I’m saying. But Minkovsky also claimed that he felt that...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, esthetically.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Esthetically, too, but when the prayer is... hazzanas is prayer...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Exactly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And prayer doesn’t belong in a recording, and there were others who felt that way, but changed their minds. I mean, Max Wohlberg felt that way originally.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2195.0,2252.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: Who?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Originally. Wohlberg. Max Wohlberg. And then he changed his mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Well, we know that...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And Putterman originally said that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, but he also...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: What did Putterman say originally?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That he didn’t think it was proper for a hazzan to be on a recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: So why did he make recordings when he was 21?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did he admit it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: We know he made recordings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did he admit it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: That he made recordings?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: It’s a matter of public knowledge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But didn’t he claim, that at one point...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: I never...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He said, “Don’t do like I do, do like I say do.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: I was told that when Minkovsky davenned, he didn’t repeat any words.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Correct.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: And he davenned Rosh Hashanah, Shachris, and Musaf, but it was a highly choral service, and he sang the cantor’s solos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That’s correct.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Could he sing a recitative?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. He was a great... first of all, he was great... as I pointed out, he was a great intellectual, and he knew, certainly if he knew Talmud, and the other, then he knew Gottes Sel Mulich. So had he wanted, yes. Had he wanted.... But that was his style.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I think what Barry’s asking is could he also put the kind of improvisatory feeling...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Into which...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That’s what I’m saying. But it was... I would say that he did a lot of Lewandowsky, a lot of Donayevsky, and then, who was very popular, there was another one that went from Mipne Hatoyeinu the... Brunde...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Brunde, Betzalel Brunde.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2252.0,2333.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: And others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: The reason I ask is because Minkovsky was hazzan in America twice...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Pinya Minkovsky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Pinya.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: There was a Minkovsky, there was a Pinya Minkovsky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Pinya Minkovsky was hazzan in America twice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: He was in America in the Attorney Street Synagogue...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: In the 1880s. He was not successful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I was going to tell you, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Then he was in Odessa, where he was a great success. And after the Revolution, he came back to America, and he had a very hard time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: So I was just wondering whether he had that which was going to be appealing to that type of congregation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2333.0,2365.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: He, well, one could... perhaps, you know, the thing that he couldn’t... one could rationalize that he couldn’t, but I don’t believe it. Now, to my personal opinion, I may be wrong, that he could have. Having had his musicianship and as I pointed out, the intellect, et cetera, he was probably... had he wanted. But that was what was his style. That’s what he made up his mind, that’s what he’s going to do, and that synagogue lent itself to that kind of a service. Which is a Chor Shul service.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: When your father was in Vilna...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: My father, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: In the Chor Shul, I would imagine, in addition to all the music that you spoke about, of Sulzer and Lewandowsky, in the Chor Shul, they probably performed a lot of music by Bernstein.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I was going to tell you, yes. Bernstein. And there was a Berman who was the conductor there, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Bernstein today is known to ‑‑ when I say “known to,” us, it’s still the smallest, most elite club in the world, whoever knows this stuff. But for basically for things like the Shem Hashem, probably is the best-known composition...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2365.0,2431.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I guess, to date, it’s still done.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Also, the Zanu Shtern.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, no, but I’m talking about hazzanas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Hazzanas?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. I’m talking about shul music, in other words.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Shul music? No, to my knowledge ‑‑ I mean, I sang quite a bit of music, and I don’t recall that he was that popular.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: How was he... was he popular in Vilna? In other words...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: In his own shul, he obviously performed a lot of his own music...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That’s where he was popular, in that sphere. I might add, amongst the intellectuals. You know, in Vilna there were many, many intellectuals. There, yes. And Zolotkovsky was there, I repeat again, was the cantor there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, I want to ask you a question. You know, you sang as a boy alto?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you sang alto and soprano? You sang only in America, but in Eastern European immigrant kind of settings, and you sang in both.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Well, he also was in a temple, in a Reform temple.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Plus the temple, but that of course, has nothing to do with that. One of the most famous, one of the most indispensable, maybe the most indispensable part of the Eastern European immigrant community here in terms of shul music on the High Holy Days is a boy alto singing an extended, repetitive solo in Haben Yakel Ephraim.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2431.0,2506.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BLACKMAN: I was just going to say that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: And duets. I sang many duets with my dad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I want to know ‑‑ in Europe also?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: In Europe. And because, in Montreal, I didn’t sing with my dad, because he was gone, and I was there... but all throughout Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The reason I ask you this, I have yet to find any manuscript, let alone printed music, from Eastern Europe, from the composers ‑‑ whether it’s Bernstein, or Minkovsky, or Nabakovsky or Donayevsky ‑‑ I’m talking about Eastern Europe now. Or even Ragima, even Zeidel Rovner, where there is any such extended solo for Haben Yackele written down. Which leads... had led me to believe that it was more prevalent in the American transplantation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. As I recall, when my dad left, I traveled, as I pointed out before, I traveled with itinerant cantors. They were not very great cantors vocally, and they depended mostly on the choir. And very much on alto, soprano, sometimes a tenor, you know, to do the... actually even cantor solos, which were written the way they.... So, I think that at that time, they... each cantor had sometimes a repertoire of his own. And some of them were not able to possibly even to do the repertoire of Lewandowsky, Nonberg, et cetera, and so on. What they did I don’t remember. I remember some music, what it sounded like, but what they did, I cannot tell you whose music it was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you remember some of those itinerant hazzanim that you were with?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2506.0,2601.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: Yes. For instance, with Zeidel Rovner I sang. I sang with Zeidel Rovner, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You sang with Zeidel Rovner?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Zeidel Rovner, yes, in Montreal, et cetera. May I say something interesting incident? Zeidel Rovner came to Montreal, and of course, there were a lot of cantors who knew him, who sang for him, and they revered him. And lo and behold, you wouldn’t believe this, that we sang ‑‑ and I was at that time already a tenor ‑‑ we sang Handel’s Hallelujah in Hebrew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: With Zeidel?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. And full with people, Slepak, you know others, with Zeidel Rovner. He did other things, we did it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You did The Hallelujah Chorus?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In Hebrew?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: In Hebrew?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What kind of words?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I don’t remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where would the manuscripts be from that? Think it’s in Zeidel’s...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Maybe at Yeshiva.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: At Yeshiva University, where they had...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I don’t know, I don’t know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2601.0,2647.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: So Rovner you sang with in Europe, too?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, that’s only in Montreal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: In Montreal, and in New York. New York once. They give, all cantors gave a concert...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The concert at the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome, is that right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: It’s a hippie cantor..\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. And you were in that concert?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It must have been the early ‘30s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. Probably ‘30... I was at that time at Juilliard, which was in ‘33 or ‘34, something like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s right. He died in ‘37, I think, right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: No, he died in the ‘40s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: ‘40.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: ‘43 or ‘44.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The year Edelson died, wasn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Around the same time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Same time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: His son, as a matter of fact, came to the concert, to hear the song.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Elias.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And any other itinerant cantors?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: They were inconsequential. I mean inconsequential.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Just names that you remember? That you used to travel with?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I’ll try.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In Europe, I’m talking about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: In Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: All right, if you think of it. Now Chicago ‑‑ did Rovner come to Chicago more than once?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Wasn’t that Hyman who arranged something or...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: I’m sure Rovner was in Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. Do you ever remember Zeidel Rovner coming to Chicago?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I remember the name, but I don’t remember his singing. I sang with Pinchik, I sang with Rosenblatt, but I...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You did sing with Pinchik?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Who conducted?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I don’t remember, frankly. I was a kid.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2647.0,2726.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: I do recall that at Montreal’s largest synagogue, B’nai Jacob, Pinchik came, as did many other cantors, such as Hirschmann, Roitmann, Krechmer, Lund, and Kapov-Kagan. So but Pinchik was I guess appreciated more than any of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough my personal choice was Roitman, who in my estimation, was a great, great poet. I couldn’t get enough of him. The voice, as you know, was not the greatest. But...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In Montreal, you got a kind of a break, a lucky break, when somebody who was the cola man...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Oh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What was his name? Do you remember his name?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. The name of the man I don’t, but I remember, it was called the Kick, and there was a large bottle, and it was the same as Coca-Cola. And with a football. A football player. And he heard me ‑‑ at that time, I sang for Shleppich in the Romanishe Shul. And I sang already tenor, was 17 or 18.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd this man heard me do... it was customary at that time for someone to sing at a wedding, Oh Promise Me, I Love You Truly, Because, and one of the things, which was “Ah, sweet mystery of life...” I sang that. And then after the wedding, he called me. And... he happened to be at the wedding. And he said, “I’d like to arrange for you for an audition for a program, a radio program.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd that happened to be CKAC, which was a D Station, the French station, the largest station. And it was French. And apparently, it was better not to say that you were Nathan Katzman, so he says, “You change your name.” So I changed my name to Norton Kaye. Norton Kaye, K-a-y-e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I did for about eight, nine months, before I went to New York, every Sunday. So I sang arias, mostly. Arias, Italian songs, you know, things like that. As a matter of fact, I never touched Yiddish songs until later, when I heard Belarsky.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2726.0,2866.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Back to Montreal, to your days in Montreal. You wanted to...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: When we were going off to Palm Springs...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: You were telling me a story where you were, as part of a choir...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Singing with a man who was well-known at that time ‑‑ Dovidl Gold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: All right, you mentioned his name, all right, so I feel free, and you can do whatever it is. Yeah, Dovidl Gold, who incidentally, outside of his voice, which is very throaty, like a... he was a good hazzan, he was an improviser. But didn’t know any music at all. And very attractive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut also, when he came one time, and he was supposed to daven in B’nai Yehuda, which was... all the great cantors would come there. Vigoda, Kapov-Kagan ‑‑ I sang for Vigoda, I sang for Kapov-Kagan, and a few others who were there. And he came. So there was a quartet. Sometimes a choir, also a quartet, a standing quartet. Whenever somebody came, we sang with that cantor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd at that time, we were rehearsing, and with Rosmarin...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Jacob Rosmarin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Jacob Rosmarin, who was the conductor. And he told us, “Well, this is a famous cantor who is coming here.” And so we came to the rehearsal, we rehearsed, and the cantor is not there. And then the next rehearsal, he wasn’t there ‑‑ only we rehearsed, the quartet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEventually, he did show up. And I guess he talked to the director, and the director came back and he said, “Look. He says he doesn’t he read. He says somebody will have to sing his cantor solos,” so I sang his cantor solos. And he says, “I will tell you what it consists of.” And I’m not exaggerating. All you have to do is just to do mmmm-mmmm-mmm. All right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo it came to Slichos. So he got a little excited. Yes. So before we went up on the pulpit, so he says to us, “Listen, boys. You make a mistake, I make a mistake, no one need know. You see, the public doesn’t know. All right?” So we said, “All right.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2866.0,2970.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKATZMAN:\u003c/strong\u003e So he is supposed to begin (Sings in Hebrew), and one of us was the conductor – Schlepoch (?) son. And he goes on, waiting, waiting, finally he says, (sings in Hebrew). So he starts up. So we start laughing. We started laughing. So he turned around, and he made it like we are to blame, and the president was a lawyer, we got chased off the pulpit, and we never got paid for Rosh Hashanah or anything like that. That was enough.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe story that you’re talking about ‑‑ he was a very energetic man. And when he sang, you know, he leaned over the pulpit, you know. And suddenly, it was very warm. And lo and behold, a black, what-do-you-call-it? Paint came down. One cheek, black paint on this side, a streak on this cheek, and so we burst out laughing again. That was the end of our singing for David Gold.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=2970.0,3046.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: You mentioned Schlepoch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Schlepoch. Schlepoch was a... first of all, a great talmudist, and also an intellectual. And every cantor, without exception, who visited... I’m talking about the big cantors in the city, came to him. Because he was also a very, very funny man. You know? And he had anecdotes, like I don’t know how many, in the hundreds. But clean, you know?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he was a man of about, I would 6’3”, and a red beard, you know? And when he sang, the beard would go up. And also, he was called Froyke Fiddle, Froyke Fiddle, unless you know. And why? Because when he davenned, let’s say he said, (Sings in Hebrew), so that’s why they called him Froyke Fiddle. And all...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: He wrote a lot of music, didn’t he?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. He did not write music. I doubt if he wrote any, but he was a good musician. And well, people really, the greatest of the cantors. Hirschmann, you name it, came and would come to his house.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3046.0,3124.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Now, you were, we were talking about Chicago, and your time in Chicago...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You were there, and Cantor Blackman was born in Chicago, and okay, he had a lot of activity there from childhood. You came to Chicago, you were already...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: In ‘38.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So you were already...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yeah, because I came from Montreal. I had to wait for my own visa when my father came to New York, to Ohab Zedek.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you served in Chicago at B’nai Zion?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I was at B’nai Zion, I did a lot of operettas. I also did something at JPI’s, I studied at the Weinbergs...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, wait, wait, what Weinbergs?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Weinberg the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Not the Hallatzim?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Huh?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Not HeHalutz?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. I did the aria from the HeHalutz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, just the aria, the whole opera wasn’t produced...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Oh, no, no, no. It was performed. With Ben Pollock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: With orchestra or piano?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That I can’t, I don’t remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But when you say the aria from Hehalutz, what do you mean? What aria?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: The aria is (sings in Yiddish)....\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Okay, I know it, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: You did highlights, huh?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: (Still singing)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But, wait a second. Is that out there in Hebrew?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: It’s published in three languages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: This is Yiddish he’s singing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: There’s a Yiddish version, a Russian and a Hebrew version.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I did it in Yiddish, because that’s what Ben Pollock wanted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And do you remember, was there a soprano who sang the Shir Hashirim?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. I think I was the only one.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3124.0,3214.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: So, in terms of singing outside the shul, you did concerts? You did programs?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNATHAN KATZMAN: No, I sang quite a bit. I sang quite a bit during the Russian Relief, you know, that we had. Russia was at that time a partner of the United States.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, when the Na--... you mean during the War?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: During the war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I sang quite a bit. I sang at Marigold Gardens, I sang in many other places, and as a matter of fact, at one of the... but I, as I said, I sang only English.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Not Jewish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Nothing, there’s an interesting anecdote to that. And... but not Yiddish, I stayed away from Yiddish. I was brought up on Hebrew. And the Gymnasium in Lemberg. Everything we did was in Hebrew ‑‑ was mathematics, geometry, physics.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3214.0,3266.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: You didn’t tell me this. This is very important. In other words, your father who was a hazzan sent you to the Gymnasium in...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But that was a pretty forward-looking... I mean that was almost...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Would you say...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: We even studied the Bible without a yarmulke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So this was a... would you say it was Haskalah-oriented?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. It was a tarbut...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I say Haskalah, I was going to mention tarbut, yeah. Because when I say Haskalah, I mean this in the positive, there is no negative sense. It’s a positive sense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes, yes. Everything, even Latin. Latin we translated in Hebrew. Except German, because Lemberg was at one time under Austria. Except German, Polish, Polish history. Other than that, everything was in Hebrew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, was it Ashkenazi Hebrew? The Bialik conversations?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, Sephardic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Selected tarbut.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Very high-class Hebrew. Why? Because when I came eventually, when I grew up later, I was visiting in 1958, in Israel, and I spoke to people, they said, “Where did you learn your Hebrew?” Because, you know, it wasn’t as colloquial as they would have known it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But this is very...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, it was very classical. Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Uh huh. So you had a thorough grounding...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. Then I went to Yeshiva in Lemberg. I went to Yeshiva in Chicago to Bais HaMidrash L’Torah. I went also to the College of Jewish Studies, I studied there for a while.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3266.0,3345.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: That was the one that was on the West Side?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: On 11th Street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, College of Jewish Studies... the Bais HaMidrash L’Torah was on the West Side. But the College of Jewish Studies was in the Loop, I think.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: On 11th Street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Pardon me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Eleventh Street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Possibly. I forget.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: I went down there, 220 S. State.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, that’s right, yeah. Spalding and Division, wasn’t it, at one time?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: No, that was a Hebrew school on the West Side. Not far from the Crystal Street Shul. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But all right. So Chicago, now, Chicago had an active Jewish musical life, then. Not just, aside from shuls and choirs, you had...You had the chorus of the you mentioned before... Malick’s ‑‑ what was it called? The Yiddish...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: The (SOUNDS LIKE Freiheit Gezoncs Ferein).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Freiheit Gezoncs Ferein.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: The HaLevi Choir that Ben Pollock...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Ben Pollock...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, HaLevi was Resnick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, that’s reversed, I think. HaLevi was Resnick. And the Freiheit and the other was Malick.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3345.0,3401.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: It was Malick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, Pollock did the Arbeter Ring, I think..\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, Ben Pollock conducted the Arbeter Ring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, we didn’t mention the Arbeter Ring. That was something else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Ganchoff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: And the Jewish Center had a chorus. I forget what the name of it was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Who conducted that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: That was, I think Ben conducted it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That makes more sense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: He was Music Director for the Jewish Center.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And HaShomar HaDati? Do you remember such an organization?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I don’t know who... I remember hearing the name, but I don’t remember who conducted it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you remember HaShomar HaDati?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I have something else to tell you. I was supposed to do a program at the Grant Park, which was very prestigious. And everything was done, a friend...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who secured the engagement for you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: An agent. And what happened...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who was the agent?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Benny Newman. And what happened was, I didn’t realize that it was on the eve of Tisha B’Av. And I was frum, so I had to... with Tayvu, Tayvu’s band.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tayvu (?)? Samuel Tayvu?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Tayvu? Yes. The conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: With him, and so I had to give it up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He taught at Northwestern, later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Huh?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He taught at Northwestern... he must have been young, then.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I was very young.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You were young, but so was Tayvu.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I was young.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Because at my time, Tayvu was on the faculty at Northwestern.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Tayvu... how young are you? I’m not asking you exactly. But I wouldn’t... I went to Northwestern.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Plus 4.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Four, well that’s good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And I mean the big one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Well, what were you going to sing at Grant Park?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I just... I like to Una Fortiva Lagrima from L’elisir d’amore.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3401.0,3495.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Every hazzan loves that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I did the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: That’s a lovely aria.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I did the La Juive... you know, I used to do...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Excellent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That was my audition in front of Wagner ‑‑ does the name mean anything to you? At Juilliard?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: When I auditioned at Juilliard. I sang it...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Not the same Wagner who conducted the Wagner Chorale. No, Roger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No, no. Oscar Wagner. He was the assistant to Rogers...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, this was Roger over there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Anyhow, yes. But...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: No, we were talking about ‑‑ did you sing the aria from the Profishers?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Pardon me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s the other Jewish aria. The hazzanishe aria.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes, yes, yes. I liked that. I used to do that. And all, Hebrew yes, Violai, I was supposed to do Violai. At that time it was a novelty...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Of course. Yes. In Zionist circles and stuff like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Who were your other colleagues in Chicago during those years ‑‑ between ‘38 and ’45, That you had any musical associations with. Did you ever sing in a program with Hazzan Orshtein?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3495.0,3553.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: No. But I heard Hazzan Orshtein.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Where was he hazzan at the time?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: At that time, at the Anshe Amet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Was he there a long time?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: No. He went to Austin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: To where?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Austin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Out in West, West, West, yeah, to Austin Boulevard Temple.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: My wife grew up in Austin Boulevard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You did?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: My wife did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, your wife did, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I came to Albany Park.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s a forgotten word, even.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Huh?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Even just the mention... nowadays, if you just mention...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Austin?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Even just, Austin, there’s a deja vu, but it’s... you know what I mean? You don’t hear that even...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: My wife took a bus trip. We went for a visit. And she wanted to see the old neighborhood. And she went alone, ‘cause I was going to visit somebody. She took a bus and went down. She says, “It looked exactly the same.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFirst, she went down, going out, going west. The first seven or eight blocks the houses were shuttered. You know, the windows didn’t have windows, they had boards. Then as you got west, the trees were hanging over, and everything was the same, only the color of the people was different. The faces were black now. It wasn’t the Austin she remembered when she went out there. It was a very interesting visit.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3553.0,3620.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: I understand that Orshtein came to Chicago from Israel, from Palestine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That’s correct.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did he perform music that would have originated in the Palestine of that era?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Are you referring to liturgical or...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: No, I’m... say, folk music, art music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Art music? Yes. Some. Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did you ever hear him give a concert?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. Kimball Hall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I know where Kimball Hall is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I gave a concert at Kimball Hall. Schubert, Brahms.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I don’t think there’s a Kimball Hall anymore, but I don’t know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Is that right? Sure there is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s part of the university, though.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: It’s part of De Paul, and it’s used for concerts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s still used?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah. That’s where I studied with (INAUDIBLE).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Even I gave a concert at Kimball Hall. Seriously, no, that’s... in among these various groups of choruses, you had, you have everybody represented there ‑‑ you have the Centers...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: The Center Associations...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: ...the Zionists...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: The Zionists...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Yiddishistes, you had the Communists, practically, right? I don’t know if you would call Malick’s group there...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That’s Malick’s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I don’t know if you would call Malick’s group, but the Freit, it’s a pretty left-wing... and you had the non-Communists, the songs, the Arbeter Ring, who conducted the Arbeter Ring Chorus there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3620.0,3688.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: I think Malick also conducted...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I think Malick...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: It couldn’t be, because the groups were so antagonistic to each other...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I know, but at one... not simultaneously.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Might have been Pollock. Ben Pollock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: After all, you had cases in New York where... didn’t Weiner first conduct one group that became...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Weiner went in one Friday night, and he left. And he couldn’t go back and forth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I didn’t say he went back and forth, but at one time...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Didn’t Max Helfmann conduct the Freiheit...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Max taught at the... again, I’m sorry. I’m interrupting your flow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, no, no, that’s fine. I’m talking about the... then of course, Resnick’s group, which was non-politically affiliated. I mean, they became the HaLevi Choral Society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: The Halevi Society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: They sang in big concerts... did they sing at Orchestra Hall in those days?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Did I sing, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, the HaLevi.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3688.0,3731.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: Possibly. I don’t recall. I don’t recall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Resnick’s nephew sang in my choir at VJCC.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, yeah?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah. He had a stationery supply store.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, both of you wound up in...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: In Chicago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In California, right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah, that’s right. But I went to Chicago first.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right. Chicago, and we...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I sang in the... they had a Jewish Day at the World’s Fair in ‘31. Didn’t even mention that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tell me about that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Oh, that was a tremendous...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In ‘31 or ‘33?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Maybe in ‘33.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: ‘33, ‘33.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: ‘33. There was a Jewish Day at the World’s Fair where they had 100,000 people at Soldier’s Field. It was a mob. And they had all the Chicago cultural groups combined. They had a whole... I still remember somebody saying, “Princess, upon the...” you know, from Tisha B’Av. “Solitary lay of the city, she that was full of people, she that was great among nations. Princess...” I still remember that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd we had a choir of about 150 voices. Boys and girls and men and women. I forget who was conducting that day, I think was Ben Pollock.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3731.0,3793.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: Leo Kopf.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes, I think you’re right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, I think it was Ben.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It was Leo Kopf?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This was at Soldier’s Field?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: At Soldier’s Field, 150 voices and dancers and a mass choir ‑‑ it was a magnificent spectacle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Wasn’t it Reinhardt?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Huh?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: That was the director? I mean, not musical...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Well, the overall director, the producer, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And what kind of music did you do there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: We did some liturgical music, did some folk music, we did some... all kinds of styles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Were there one or two star hazzanim that sang, real hazzanas there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I don’t remember any.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What about The Lind Brothers?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I don’t remember them in that context. I remember them being in Chicago ‑‑ they were in Albany Park, you know. But I don’t remember them in that context.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3793.0,3834.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Did you ever have any dealings with the Lind Brothers?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I heard them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Or the family?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Actually, they were... it was on Wilson Avenue, wasn’t it, their shul?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, Lawndale and Wilson you mean? You mean the Albany Park Hebrew Congregation?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, they were on Drake Street. I’m trying to remember the streets, but it was... my father, olav hashalom, was active in an Orthodox Shul on Monticello. He was a baal kriya there, my father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: On Monticello?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: It’s the Nusach Ari, on Monticello.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Nusach Ari, he was the treasurer of the...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: It’s still there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Is it still? I have to go back next time. He was treasurer for 25 years, they wanted him to be president, he says, “No. Let somebody else be president, I’ll be the treasurer.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut... and I should have mentioned, that’s where I learned a lot of my nusaḥ. Because he was a... I was amazed, I have to insert a story. You talk about your father, I have to talk about my father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was not a hazzan. His father was a hazzan. But he, he had such a knowledge... I’ll never forget, I went to visit him in Los Angeles, here. He was in a shul on Robertson, south of Pico, a couple of blocks south of Pico, I forget who the rabbi is. The rabbi had died, and his son was going to Yeshiva, and they were holding the position for him. And my father was there, he read the Torah there at 98 and 99. He died at 100, he read the Torah half a year before he died.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3834.0,3907.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBLACKMAN:\u003c/strong\u003e So I’m sitting at services, and every time I go down, I’d go to visit with him. I’m sitting at services, and the guy who teaches the B’nai Mitzvah of the congregation, comes up to my father, and he starts talking to him about cantillations. You know, you’re got to know about the cantillation of Ruth and Esther, you know. And here’s my father ‑‑ I knew what he was a knowledgeable man, he was a very pious, devout, learned man. But this guy’s asking him questions about cantillation, and my father’s explaining to him, “Shir Hashirim is this way, and the Book of Ruth is this way, and the Megillas Esther is this way.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I’m looking at my father, I had a whole new vision of my father. I hadn’t known, he was such a quiet man. He was very knowledgeable about... about this nusaḥ, about davenning. I had learned... you know, I learned how to daven just by going to shul with my father. A remarkable man.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3907.0,3958.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: So how did you get to California? Why did you come to California? Why did you come to California?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Well, I had a... I was working, this was damn near the end of the War, and I had been working in a war plant. I was worn out. I went for a visit in January 1945, to visit my father and my mother, and they had a place out here in Los Angeles. And the whole month we were here, it didn’t rain a single day and the sun was shining. It was a michaya. I said, “That’s where I’m going to go.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI went back a half year later, and we moved out. And then I went to... that’s when I finished school, at...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You came to Los Angeles first.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: To Los Angeles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: To Los Angeles. And how did you...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I came directly to Los Angeles because of hay fever and asthma. And the rest of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So you’re in Los Angeles, and the reality is that from what I’ve heard and studied, it seems to me that the two of you kind of individually as well as jointly played an important role in the development, in the direction of Jewish music in Los Angeles ‑‑ let’s start with Los Angeles here, before you went to San Francisco.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=3958.0,4026.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BLACKMAN: Oh, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Also the role of the cantor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Cantor, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, the role of the cantor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Our primary, original...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: First of all, I want to ask you about the Farband. About the Hazzanim Farband.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Fascinating. We both joined about the same time, huh, Nate? I think it was around 1945, ‘46. We... I was thinking of becoming a hazzan. I was running out of money, and I was... and like I said, I was studying with Cykowsky and Discount. And then a position opened up, and I auditioned with, along with 12, 15 other VJCC. So I got the position.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I was... I remember, I was writing music for every Friday night, I had to write... because I had an organ, and all the music that was written was written for tenor cantors. So I had to write myself three or four verses of Lecha Dodi every Friday night. And give it to the organist. Stay one step ahead of the game, cause I wanted... I didn’t want to sing the same music every week.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo I learned on the job, I did a lot of on the job training, to get ready at that time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=4026.0,4090.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: There wasn’t anything printed? For baritone and accompanist?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: There were a lot of things printed, but not baritone, mostly it was tenor stuff. And I was a baritone. I had a quartet, and an organist, and I had to do the stuff with the... mostly with an organist, they did away with the quartet except for the holidays.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Hazzanim Farband had been in existence here quite a while when you got here, right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Oh, yes. Cykowsky was... put together a choir of the cantors at one time, and he was music director...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Weinstock. Weinstock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Jacob Weinstock was involved. But he was, but Cykowsky conducted them. And Cykowsky was, got them to sing in an ensemble. You know, he was a great ensemble...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Weinstock ‑‑ are you talking now about the Farband Four?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah. The Farband...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Hazzanim Farband.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And Weinstock was the same Weinstock who wrote some Yiddish songs, published some Yiddish songs?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yes. I have his book, with the whole business. Jacob Weinstock. He was a good friend of Cykowsky’s. They had a group of close friends ‑‑ Cykowsky, Weinstock, Yitzgol Schiff...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Allbeck.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Allbeck. Who was the other one? Ancis was here at the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did you ever meet Ancis?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I met Ancis one time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tell me about Ancis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I just met him once, Cykowsky introduced me to him. I drove Cykowsky to a gathering at which he was going to see Ancis and Discount and a number of other people. So I drove him there, I dropped him off, and he says, “Come in. I’ll introduce you to some hazzanim.” I went in there, and I met Ancis. And Discount, and Schiff, and...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=4090.0,4182.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: That’s it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: That was my association with Ancis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You don’t know if Ancis had any family here, do you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: I met Ancis. A couple of times. I was asked to sing in City of Hope. He was at that time a kol bo there, I don’t know. And he made a very great impression of me, because he was a gentleman...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: A nice guy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKATZMAN: Yes. We spoke a little bit about music. And at that time, I hadn’t sung any of his music. Eventually, I did. And it was very good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Wonderful music, yeah. But the problem is this, with Ancis. I think I talked to you about it already, once. I don’t remember. The problem is, to keep in mind, and that’s why I’m asking you now, if you can recall, did Ancis... whatever happened to Ancis’ music? Because we only have a... probably a fraction of what he wrote, and the manuscripts are....\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn order to find out, the first question is, does he have any heirs? Did he have any family? Do you have any....","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=4182.0,4239.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KATZMAN: I don’t believe so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Cykowsky would know, because he was...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Didn’t know. We asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: You asked?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, we’ve been asking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: I have a book of Ancis’, you know, just some selections, that’s all. But...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But that’s it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Slichas, I think it was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Slichas was printed by Bloch Publishing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah, that’s what I have.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right. But Ancis apparently died in the City of Hope, we found his grave at the cemetery...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But, and then something interesting was pointed out ‑‑ that there are some little stones on the grave, which would of course indicated that somebody has visited that grave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Somebody came to visit him, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But you don’t... outside of that...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No, I know very little.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: ...what might happened, or who he was associated with that might have his music?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: No. These five guys, they played pinochle regularly, but this club ‑‑ Plotkin, Dan Plotkin, and Discount, but Weinstock and Ancis...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=4239.0,4280.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009/transcript/28164/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: I had a volume of Psalm Settings, edited by Plotkin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: You know what that is?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Tell me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBLACKMAN: Plotkin was a, you know, was a hazzan, not really a hazzan, he was a hazzan just for a Yontiff. He was a businessman, but he loved hazzanas, and he loved to daven. He got Paul Discount ‑‑ and I tell you, I don’t know why Paul did it, he was a sweet guy ‑‑ Paul took a lot of Lewandowsky’s music and he rearranged it for Plotkin. So Plotkin published it under “Compiled by the Reverend Dan Plotkin,” and I think he gave thanks to assistance with Paul Discount. That’s those psalms. That’s Lewandowsky, I think, almost entirely Lewandowsky. Paul rearranged it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40376/file/112009#t=4280.0,4328.59733"}]}]}]}