{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/sx6445j28f/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Epstein Brothers"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eEpstein, William, Max Epstein, and Julius Epstein. 1998. Interview by Neil W. Levin and Barry Serota. Milken Archive Oral History Project. March 30.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Milken Family Foundation"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e© Milken Family Foundation. Unauthorized use is prohibited. For inquiries, please contact info@milkenarchive.org.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Epstein, William (Musician)","Epstein, Max (Musician)","Epstein, Julius (Musician)","Levin, Neil W. (Interviewer)","Serota, Barry (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["1998-03-30 (recorded)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["Boca Raton, FL (Place of Recording)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (Primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history with Julius, Max, and William Epstein focuses on their lives as musicians and their rise to prominence as klezmer musicians toward the later stages of their careers. It sheds light on the origins of klezmer music, its development as a genre, and its status among different communities of Jewish people throughout the twentieth century. The interview provides insight into the nature of the Epstein Brothers' relationship with prominent musicians of their time such as Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, and Dave Tarras. A discussion of the 1996 documentary A Tickle in the Heart that is focused on the life of the Epstein Brothers is also included.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Beta SP"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Jews--Music (Topical Term)","Oral History (genre_form)","Ellstein, Abraham, 1907-1963 (Person or Corporate Body)","Shaw, Artie, 1910-2004 (Person or Corporate Body)","Goodman, Benny, 1909-1986 (Person or Corporate Body)","Cantorial music (Topical Term)","Tarras, Dave, 1897-1989 (Person or Corporate Body)","Dixieland music (Topical Term)","Sinatra, Frank, 1915-1998 (Person or Corporate Body)","Goldstein, Jackie (Person or Corporate Body)","Rumshinsky, Joseph, 1881-1956 (Person or Corporate Body)","Klezmer music (Topical Term)","Stokowski, Leopold, 1882-1977 (Person or Corporate Body)","Sholem Aleichem, 1859-1916 (Person or Corporate Body)","Secunda, Sholom, 1894-1974 (Person or Corporate Body)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["A Tickle in the Heart (1996), Abe Gubenko, Abe Nadel, Abraham Ellstein (1907-1963), accordion, acoustic instruments, Alexander Olshanetsky (1891-1946), alto saxophone, American dance music, amplified accordion, Antwerp, Artie Shaw (1910-2004), Ashkenazi, Atlantic City, Australia, ballet sequence, bass, Belgium, Ben Margulies, Benny Goodman (1909-1986), Berlin, Bessarabia, Bill Harrington (1918-2003), Black Jazz bands, Borscht Capades (1948), Broadway, Brooklyn, cabarets, California, cantorial music, Catskill Mountain Hotels, Catskill Mountains (NY), cellos, Chabad-Lubavitch, Chaim Kamentesky, Chaim Shapiro, checkerboard (accordion), Chez Vito, choirs, chordal instruments, clarinet, concentration camps, concertina, Connecticut, counterpoint, Crazy Canada (Saxophone player), cylinders, dance music, Dave Tarras (1897-1989), David Jacobs (1926-2013), Di Gojim, Dixieland music (Chicago style, New Orleans style), DJs, Doo-wop groups, Eddy Duchin (1909-1951), electronic instruments, Emmanuel Theater, Empire State Building, “Epstein,” Epstein Brothers, Klezmer Legends, Europe, Farfisa organs, Felix Slatkin (1915-1963), fiddle, Florida, flugelhorn, Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), Freilach (Fraylekh), French waltz, Germany, Greece, guitars, Gypsy music, Gypsy orchestras, Hasidic music, Hasidic, “Hava Nagila,” Hazzanim, heavy metal, Hitler era, Holland, Hopkinson Theatre, horns, Hungarian music, Hungry, Huntington Townhouse, Itinerant musicians, Itzhak Perlman (1945-Present), Jackie Goldstein, Japan, Jewish music, Jewish orchestras, Jewish Radio Station, Jewish waltz, Joe King, Joel Rubin (1955-Present), Joel Teitelbaum (1887-1979), Jonah Binder, Joseph Rumshinsky (1881-1956), Kazatskies, keyboard player, KlezKamp [Music Festival], Klezmer, Lakewood, Leo Fuchs (1911-1994), Leonard Slatkin (b. 1944), Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977), Lester Lanin (1907-2004), Lincoln Mall, FL, Lou Mason, Lou Rawls (1933-2006), Louis “Leibele” Waldman (1907-1969), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Manfred Lemm, Manhattan, Marty Dell, Menorah (music distribution company), Metropolitan Opera, Meyer Davis (1880 [?]-1976), Meyer Myron “Mickey” Katz (1909-1985), Military marches, Mishka Ziganoff (1889-1967), Molly Picon (1898-1992), “Moon Over Naples,” Moscowitz and Lupowitz, Munich, musical comedy, Naftule Brandwein (1884-1963), National Young Israel, Natural sound, New York City Opera, New Zealand, Nightclub, Nusach, one-string violin, opera, operetta, Oscar Julius (1879-1961), Paramount Hotel (New York, N. Y.), percussionists, Pete Sokolow, Philadelphia Orchestra, Piano accordion, Poland, Polka-mazurka, Polka, “Papirosn,” Princeton, Prohibition, Radio, Raleigh (Hotel), Recording industry, Rendezvous(Cabaret), Rhythm section, Rick Hirsch (b. 1970), Rock and Roll dancers, Rock and Roll, Rolland Theater, Rose Katz, Rozzie Pincus, Romanian dance, rumba, Russia, Russian sher, Samuel Kutcher (1899-1984), Samuel Sterner, Satmar Rebbe, Satmars, saxophone, Schindler’s List (1993), Second Avenue Theater, “Shalom Aleicehm,” Shloimke Beckerman (1884-1974), Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916), Sholom Secunda (1894-1974), Singing Clarinets, “Spanish Eyes,” soprano saxophone, Sorbonne, South Africa, South America, Split bass, Stan Rubin, Strolling violins, Swing bands, Switzerland, symphony, Television, Terry Gibbs (1924-Present), “The Alter Rebbe’s Niggun,” The Beatles, The Breakers (Hotel), The Chassidic Brass, The Golem, The klezmorim, The Lower East Side, “The Old Romanian,” The Riverboat (The Riverboat Restaurant), The Waldorf (Waldorf Astoria Hotel), The Zimel Brothers, trombone, trumpet, vaudeville variety, Vienna, Viennese waltz, violin, waltz, Washington, weddings, William James “Count” Basie (1904-1984), Williamsburg, wind instruments, Yiddish music, Yiddish theater, Yiddish vaudeville, Yiddish, Yiddishkeit, Young’s Gap Hotel, “Zachor.”"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history with Julius, Max, and William Epstein focuses on their lives as musicians and their rise to prominence as klezmer musicians toward the later stages of their careers. It sheds light on the origins of klezmer music, its development as a genre, and its status among different communities of Jewish people throughout the twentieth century. The interview provides insight into the nature of the Epstein Brothers' relationship with prominent musicians of their time such as Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, and Dave Tarras. A discussion of the 1996 documentary A Tickle in the Heart that is focused on the life of the Epstein Brothers is also included.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u0026copy; Milken Family Foundation. Unauthorized use is prohibited. For inquiries, please contact info@milkenarchive.org.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"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/000/098/368/small/Epstein-Brothers.jpg?1618940737","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - 1602178832_1q1q45cbge2iapmhptl21i4coe3dld0o.mp4"]},"duration":7558.76267,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/098/368/small/Epstein-Brothers.jpg?1618940737","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/098/368/original/1602178832_1q1q45cbge2iapmhptl21i4coe3dld0o.mp4?1602164600","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":7558.76267,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Epstein_Brothers_transcript_12_17_2021 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: I want to welcome the Epstein brothers to this little discussion. We’re talking here to a phenomenon in the history of Jewish music in America, a family that spelled Jewish music for so many people, on so many occasions, long before I was born, right?  And Willie, Max, and Julie. Got that right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You got it right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Got ‘em right?  Isn’t that great?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Perfect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: All right. And we want to mention that there was a fourth member of the orchestra, and that was, and that was…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They called him Chizzic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Chizzic was your older brother, right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Was the second, the second, the second child?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, Max is the oldest, Chizzic was next, and Willie and I. I’m what they comically called the baby.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: All of you were born in this country. You were born in America?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yes, sir.  You’re right.  Correct.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Oh, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And Julie, also. And of course, the obvious question is, was there music in your family, in your parents or your grandparents?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: In a professional sense?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Either professional or not professional.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Non-professional, yes; professional, nobody.  Not from Europe, that I know, and certainly not in America that I know. No one — and they all studied music. That was a, that was a must in families.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: But I think, I think — you’ll have to forgive me, but — excuse me, Julie — I think that somewhere in the background, because there were too many Epsteins came out of the area of musicians. And we were, many said we weren’t related. But I have the feeling that somewhere in the background, there was some relation. Not that it affected us in any way, that we took to music. That was something that was instilled from my grandfather. He was the one that gave us the feeling to do something, because he was very much in love with Yiddish music. He tried to play it, and so on and so forth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I would say this. The farthest, the farthest back, the farthest we can go back, as far as music is concerned, as to hearing it,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=15.0,144.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"the first time was my grandfather, my maternal grandfather. You see, he played the violin by ear. And he never took a lesson in his life. Later on in years, he decided to buy himself a saxophone. He must have been past 70, by then. And he bought this saxophone. I think I heard him play it once, only.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Horrible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The rest of the time…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He couldn’t blow it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The rest of the time, I blew it. I, I played it.  And he says — see, it comes out in some of the Yiddish, he used to say. Do we speak Yiddish here, too?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Absolutely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He says, “Gutte [komt] voys [aoys/heraus] azay shayn? Un du shpilst cosh.” I says, “Ta,” — we never called him zayde; we used to call him tate. All the grandchildren, 16 grandchildren called him tate. Never called him zayde.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Because all the aunts called him tate. It was the father. And we never heard anybody call him anything else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That’s right. Well, anyway, I says, so I told him, I says, “Zu seit?” I says, “Zi kenish mozen azay doit. Beye cin do, yechen gimmel blos.” He said, “Ziv fartig de ganzes zof.” So he used to start to laugh. But that’s where, the first time, first time, that we can go back to anybody in the family to play music, was my maternal grandfather.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I asked that question because people ask it of me a lot, because we’re, in my family, we’re three brothers, all professional musicians. And people can’t understand it. Neither of my parents or any of the grandparents, or anyone, so far as we can know, was, was a musician. Not even not professional, but not even amateur musicians.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Well, I, well…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, it’s an economical situation. To study music costs money. And if you go back far enough, the Jewish people really didn’t have money to, and in quotes, I say “waste,” on learning how to play an instrument.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=144.0,262.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The survival was to earn money so you could have a place to live and eat. And music was really, it was just not in the, it wasn’t in the framework of life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And but at the same time, at the same time, they were not smart people. Now, for instance, in my case, I was considered a child prodigy in my, in my, in my younger years, when I was, started to play music. And the moment I started to earn money — that was in 1924. That was my first real job, was in the Emmanuel Theater in Williamsburg.  So my mother said to me, “Meyn Maxl fardient a bisl (bisschen) gelt?” (INAUDIBLE) [after that no more] lessons. And that’s where this mistake happens.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Economy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I started to earn money. So, because I earned money, it meant that I was a professional, I was good already, I don’t have to study anymore. And that’s where I lost the being, the perfection of the violin. I play pretty good. I still play pretty good on the violin. But it’s not like it was. And as things went along, we, until I bought a clarinet. The saxophone first, and then I bought a clarinet. I started to play with these, with the, these, the giants, we called them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Like who? You mean…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Like Naftule Brandwein, Dave Tarras. And it became to a point where some people here said I surpassed them. Some people said I surpassed it. As far as I’m concerned, I, there was one man I could never surpass. Never. Never in a million years. He was my idol. And I’ll tell you later on, as we go along, who it was, and how we became very, very close friends.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who was it?  Was it anybody…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You really want to know now?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Dave Tarras.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The clarinetist?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That’s right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=262.0,383.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He was my buddy. And he was the one I looked up to. When he used to say to me, “I can play like, like you. You can play like me.” And he says, “But they got one thing missing. This is missing.”  He says, “I have them on technician.  But they don’t have a heart.” He played like a cold fish. We used to call that a cold fish. That’s how he used to….  But technique? Great, great.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He was a very skilled player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Skilled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, you must have studied violin somewhere along the line as a child, no?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Oh, sure. I did. I had, the teachers that I had were, were not very great teachers. My first teacher was a klezmer, or what you want to call a klezmer today. Who was, he was a lanzmann. And when my brother Willie was born, when they had the bris, so, he was invited to come to the bris.  So, he came to the bris, he says to my mother, “tsvishn tseitel mach [Max] shil ozen fromm misha spillen fiddle.” That’s when my first lesson was. After he, right after he was born.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where did you all grow up? In Brooklyn, or in…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Mostly Brooklyn. Mostly, the major part of our lives was Brooklyn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS:  My, my life was Brooklyn. He was much older, he’s 18 years older than I am.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Fourteen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Fourteen, 18.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Fourteen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Okay, you say 14.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I don’t know where you got four extra figures in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, I, I don’t, I figure how old I am.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s how he holds the stick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You’re right. Fourteen years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He holds the stick through…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He’s right. Fourteen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you heard a lot of what they today call klezmer music, klezmer bands and so forth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Oh, sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You grew up hearing it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I’ll tell you something else about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What is it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I’ll tell you something. Only recently, a couple of years ago, I was invited two years in a row, to what they call “KlezKamp.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=383.0,508.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I don’t know if you know about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: There’s a place up in the Catskills that — I think it was the Paramount Hotel. The last week in December, they used to get together. From all over the world, they came. Musicians. From all over the world.  To learn how to play klezmer music. So, I was invited two years in a row to come up there and talk to them, explain to them exactly what klezmer music…. However, a little further into our discussion here, I’ll tell you what I think of klezmer music, and where it started, and how it started, and what the people wrote about it. See? A little later on in our talk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Because you must remember that where, what they call klezmer music today, where it came from originally and naturally…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You’re stepping on my toes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …and you — I’ll step on your toes?  Move your feet away. You must remember that we went back years ago to when they came from Europe, and the itinerant musicians in Europe went from town to town, and this is where they learned, this is where they played music.  They weren’t studied musicians. They were musicians that picked up an instrument. One picked up a clarinet, another one hit a drum, another one, a perc(?), they called it, and another one played — they could, play…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They never used piano.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They never used it. They played outdoors, mostly. And then they played indoors…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you think they used accordion ever, in Europe?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I don’t think they even had it. Maybe a concertina.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Chordal instruments.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Or something like an accordion?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Chordal, yes. They played, they had…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Concertinas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know, a different kind of accordion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The checkerboard, but it was on both sides.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Or concertinas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Concertinas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Concertinas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah, this is the type of thing that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You’re talking about the piano accordion, which is a keyboard. And that’s, that’s a piano accordion. A true accordion was buttons on both sides.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=508.0,635.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And that would be the only thing. But I have yet to know anybody talk about what they saw in Europe.  Because again, economics. To, to buy an accordion…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The money.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Really, a lot of musicians became musicians because they were in the Army.  In the Army, they gave them a trumpet, they gave them a clarinet, they gave them a drum. No violin. Guitars of some sort. These things you could, you could see how they could get their hands on them, at some point.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, well, you know why?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But to go out and buy an accordion, though…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Do you know why some of those fellows learned how to play in the Army? Because they were, you know, the Jewish boys. They told him, if you want to be well off, learn how to play an instrument in the Army. You play an instrument in the Army, you’ll be well off. You’ll get, you’ll get, you’ll get to certain places, you’ll go to…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Better treatment, and so on and so forth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But that’s, that’s, that’s how some of these people learned.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But the larger klezmer bands in Europe,‘cause we got, they’re, actually they are, you’ve heard the roles that they had. On the other hand, the violin became what was very important. And many of them you hear there was more than one violin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They called it sekunde [secundus]. A sekunde [secundus], a second, second…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: First of all, first of all, we’ve got to clear up the air.  We don’t recognize — we use the word, we do not recognize klezmer music. It’s, it’s a misnomer.  Klezmer is a guy who plays an instrument. Music, when we used to play jobs in the city — and, by the way, we never knew this to be a concert form of music. And they were, nobody else did. Nobody did. It was called Jewish music. On Saturday night in June, there were 12 million weddings. From wherever you looked,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=635.0,741.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"there was a wedding. And they’d say, “Hey, you know, there’s a guy who plays an instrument.” And the question that followed was always the same. “Does he play Jewish?” Didn’t even say the word “music.” One word — Jewish. Klezmer was not in our lexicon. It didn’t, it wasn’t a word. The klezmer was the player. Whether he was a backyard player or he was a symphony player. Klezmer comes from, from a Hebrew word. And it’s not considered what we called Jewish music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This is a very important thing you’ve said.  And we can hear different opinions in a moment. But that’s, the fact of the matter is that that’s exactly — historically, I can tell you, as a historian, you, that’s exactly the words that I use. There is no such thing. It’s, it’s a misnomer. Klezmer means a musician; it doesn’t specify what kind of musician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And in the Middle Ages, the word was used. And obviously, it didn’t mean the kind of music that you heard or that we heard. Totally different from klezmer music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, about the Middle Ages. No, it really didn’t mean, mean anything. No, but it’s a Hebrew word, for us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: k‘lei zemer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That’s it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Let me go a step further. You see, the Yiddish-speaking people in the European countries — now, I’m talking in Yiddish-speaking people. In some places, like Hungary, they spoke Yiddish, and then they spoke Hungary. But in Greece, they didn’t speak Jewish — they spoke Greek. And in Italy also. Wherever they were, they spoke the language that was being used.  But a place like Russia and Poland, close, and closer by, they spoke Yiddish. The Yiddish music, for a musician, which means musician, is k’lei zemer. That’s two, two Hebrew words. Contraction of two Hebrew words. The greatest musicians that played, whether they played in the opera or in the symphony,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=741.0,857.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"they didn’t have to come to the United States. They made a living there. The poorer musician, the one who couldn’t make a living there, and the one who couldn’t play as well, he came to this country. He said, “America is di goldene [the golden] medina.” It’s a golden land. So they came here. Now, those people that were already here, who knew about the type of music being played, and they listened to these guys play. They said, “My God.  They’re awful. They’re terrible. Is this is, this is what the klezmer play?” So klezmer became a derogatory expression.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This is very true.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: A few years back, I — well, I’ll say, I’ll go, I’ll go 20 years back. If you had called me a klezmer, you were a candidate for a punch in the nose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: It’s an insult.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It, I grew up that way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That’s exactly what it was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: My parents, when somebody called me, a friend of my parents would say to me, “Oh, your son’s a klezmer,” it didn’t mean anything bad. It meant he’s a musician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They didn’t make a living.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: My parents took offense at it, just for the reason you…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I took offense to it. That’s all they did. And not only me — all the good musicians here. You call them a klezmer, it was murder. You were, like I said, a candidate for a punch in the nose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: A klezmer…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: However, the last 20 years, I will say, youngsters were looking for a root, their root of the type of music that is being played. Incidentally, klezmer music does not mean Jewish music alone.  Klezmer music means all kinds of music. There is no such a thing as klezmer music. Klezmer music is a musician that plays music. That’s what klezmer music is. So the word “klezmer” became a, a, a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They adopted it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Became…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Usage, usage made it a word.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Something useful for the people that are playing it now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What they mean today, I know what they mean, but I refuse to recognize it, too. Because what they mean is one…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Because we’re talking, you refuse to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But they…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But you can’t tell that to the lay person.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=857.0,992.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Oh, I do. I’ll tell you why. Because they’re confining it to only one very narrow type of music that klezmer…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, they don’t know, they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know what they, what it is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You played weddings, you say?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No. I didn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You didn’t play weddings?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No? Okay. But you did go to weddings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I went to weddings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Oh, you went to weddings where they played it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I don’t anymore, but I…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They played Hungarian music, they played Polish music, they played…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Romanian doinas, Gypsy…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They played all kinds of music at weddings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM:  All of these…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: All this music. That is, was klezmer music, in those days. But they didn’t say klezmer music, you see. It was a, it was a Musikanter. That’s the expression.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Klezmer music, but a guy that played in the symphony, we used to call him “er iz a musiker.” He is a musician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: A spieler, a Musikant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He was a musician. He was a player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He was a Musikant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You see, there was a, a fine line between the two. But to those who understood, it wasn’t a fine line. One was a nothing musician, comparatively…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And one was a musician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And one was a musician. That was the difference. So, when, when, when we came to play these different affairs, and so on and so forth, the caliber of music, the same people — the same people! — the circle turns. The same people that said, “I don’t want to hear any Jewish music at my daughter, Simka…”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: She’s marrying a doctor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: “My daughter’s wedding.” She’s, “I don’t want no Jewish music. I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to talk about it.” Okay. Today, the same people say, “I love klezmer music!”  The same people!  They’re 25 years older. But they’re the same people. All of a sudden, it became stylish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You know that in Europe, this is the hottest ticket going, among non-Jews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yes, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you know that in Berlin, or in Munich…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: What about Berlin? Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …or Switzerland…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Ask us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …you can fill 2,000 seats.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=992.0,1104.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Have you been to Europe?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, I’ll tell you. You know Germany…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Go talk to them. They, they know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Do you know Germany at all?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know the, the Haus der Kultur? Fourteen hundred seats. This will be our third time now, we’re coming. We just did, last year, we did a festival week. A festival. And they had all kinds of Yiddish exponents of what they call klezmer music. Guys who, with Hasidic backgrounds, playing rock and roll.  People who aren’t Jewish, playing… The first time I ever heard a band in Vienna, and the guy says to me, “Now, ladies and gentleman, we present to you the Goyim!” [Di Gojim] And my brother Willie says, “Why they hell do they call them goyim?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Goyim [Di Gojim].\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I said, “Because they’re not Jewish.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No. That’s their official name. They have a record out called…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I know who they are.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yes, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And they play good. And the girl who sings, too. Her interpretation of the words, everything was good. But they weren’t Jewish. And now, we get to the part where we say, how many people came?  We were fortunate. Every time we played, we totally sold out the house. Three days, three days before last year, three weeks before, a ticket not to be had.  Now they’ve got 15 bands there. Nobody went over 400.  Nobody. So, why? Because we are the oldest representative of this music, and they want to hear what it’s like. Now, my brother Willie and I, we look at each other, see, we played the first time, we did a radio broadcast. And it was a state, a state-sponsored thing that we, that was done.  And they sponsored this invitation for us to come and play. And Willie says to me, “Jeez, they must be sending a lot of Jewish people here. After all they, when they do they hear Jewish music in Germany?” So we talked to a guy who was responsible for us getting into this. I said, “Hey. How many Jews do you think they sent here?” “Well, five percent would be a lot.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=1104.0,1217.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I said, “Five percent? You’ve got to be kidding.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We were shocked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: “No.” Fourteen hundred people. No more than five — three, four, five percent. Their acceptance of what we do is, it’s a mystique. To me, it’s, it’s unbelievable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We can’t believe it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We, we talk among ourselves. We have other opinions. Outwardly, we’re careful what we say, because we don’t want to offend people who are spending good money to hear us do our thing, and buy our recordings, occasionally. You know, it’s, it’s nice. It’s a good feeling. We’re very careful. We’re very courteous.  And they are courteous. But I haven’t figured out yet what makes all the German people and Vienna and Switzerland — Switzerland had a place, we did 450 seats in a venue. It was a little theater, pretty little theater. They played the movie next door that we, we did a movie. I think you’re aware of it. We did this movie, and they all came from the movie into the theater.  And 450 seats, and 250 standees.  They said, “We don’t care what you, what you charge.  We must see this orchestra.” And this next day, we did it again, they had 300 standees. And again, the percentage of Jews is infinitesimal, compared to what the audience is. If you said ten percent, that wouldn’t sound like a lot. After all, we’re playing Jewish music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, it’s less than five percent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And we looked at each other, and we…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Julie, do you remember, do you remember, Julie, the first concert that we did in Berlin?  So…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The radio broadcast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No, no, no. We didn’t do the radio. Just the concert, I’m talking about. We didn’t know.  We never played there before. Who was going, German…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How long, when was it? How long ago?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: How long ago?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: About five years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. That was the festival. The, the Jewish festival.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, about five, no, was it? It wasn’t a festival.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Wasn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Just…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They hired us.\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They brought us in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They brought us in to play.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=1217.0,1331.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I want you to know, they sold out. They sold out the standing room. And they were selling tickets to people that were sitting on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: On the steps.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: On the sides. In the aisles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And that was the one, they broadcasted that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: In the aisles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They broadcasted that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, that’s right. They broadcasted that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Why? Why?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It was a European broadcast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: They broadcast everything there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And we didn’t know it at the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: This was the first time, and I want you to know that the people that came to listen, were 95%, maybe…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Maybe more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Ninety-eight percent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I don’t think it’s five percent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I don’t think it’s, there was five… I don’t even think five percent were…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: If not…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Ninety-five percent were non-Jews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And we never knew this. Nobody had told us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I’ll never forget, when we played — music has no language, you know. And you can, you don’t have to talk. They go to see an Italian opera.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No one spoke Yiddish there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No one spoke Yiddish, and we did a Yiddish song, and there were lyrics.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That was the hit, that was the hit of the program.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They understood it because it’s a simple, simple words.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: There’s a singer who’s — actually, he’s Polish, but he lives in Germany, he’s an adopted German. But he’s not Jewish. His name is Manfred Lemm. I don’t know if you came across them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Not yet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That name. He’s in Germany. He makes a career out of nothing but Yiddish songs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: ‘Cause there’s no one, there’s no Jew to sing it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The young people, they have a curiosity.  First of all, they talk to us, on a quiet side.  And they ask us, “How do you feel?” And of course, we, we’ve already encountered this more than once, and we tell them we’re apolitical. We, we really don’t want to get into discussing it, because we haven’t figured it out. It’s your problem to figure out. And then, they always invariably say, “We don’t listen to our parents anymore.” They cannot listen to their parents. They can’t believe their parents should say, “Who saw?  Who did?” They don’t buy it. And they don’t come, either, to the concert.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=1331.0,1432.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"If we look at an audience, I don’t think we go over 50.  About 50, 55, Willie?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: About that. That’s all. Nobody older. That generation that grew up in the Hitler era is not there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Two, two generations have gone by.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I like what you said. I don’t know if you realize it, how powerful a statement that is. Just, it’s not our problem, it’s your problem to figure it out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We, we, of course. We avoid…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: In fear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: There’s no discussion. What discussion?  History, we always say history will have to decide who was, who wasn’t, what is, and what isn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In a way…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And we’re just, we’re just musicians.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Invariably…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We come to entertain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Invariably…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That’s it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …every concert we do — every concert in Europe, I’m talking about — every concert we do, there is always a newspaper person, a reporter, a newspaper person asks us the same question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, one of them will ask it. They want to be controversial.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: In other words, in other words, their, their curiosity, evidently, maybe, is as much as ours.  Because I can’t understand it. And in fact, in the movie, I even make a remark about it. I said I can’t understand it. Maybe my brother Max understands it. I shifted the mike over to him.  Because I had no answer for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You should have seen us the first time they threw the question at us. Five guys, and we froze.  Just like, what do we say now? Because we, you know, we’re guests in these countries.  And we keep getting invited back, because we come with a very pleasant program, a little humor, and we play the music differently than all our contemporaries of this moment. We don’t call them contemporaries, but we’re all working, we’re all eating the same apple right now. But they play an entirely different style. When Maxie says when we went to the weddings, we played weddings, we used to play till 6:00 in the morning.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=1432.0,1540.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The rabbi came late, the ceremony went on late, they sat down to dinner at 2 A.M. We wouldn’t go home till all kinds of hours. And when, when we played the music that we’re playing now in concert form, we didn’t know from concert. It, it was dance music. Simple dance music. And it had to have a right tempo. Because if it was a fraylach or a bulgar or it was a Russian sher, a waltz, a Jewish waltz, a Viennese waltz, a polka, a polka mazurka, which is a little more hippity-hoppity. And that’s about…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: How about some…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And if we played an American song, it was a rumba.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: How about some of those fancy ones?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, I, I, we stopped playing when I started…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What’s a fancy one?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Cock of Yock(?), Pardes Pan(?), Klugishke [Klabeschke(?)]. Those are from Russians.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The piece of music the Bessarabians dance to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Or the Fotta Poppa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The Fotta Poppa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We got it on one of our recordings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Fotta Poppa.  We recorded it.  We’re the only, I’m the only one that has it, and I’m the only one that plays it. The only one that plays it. And I, I added something to it called shtekelach. What’s the shtek — my tatten’s shtekelach.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s real klezmer type of music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I found it, I found the name. So we play that.  Nobody knows it. Nobody has it. We’re the only ones that have it. And we’re going to record it. That’s what we’re going to do. So that the people know that we know that stuff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, we have it recorded it already on the, the three and four.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The Fotta Poppa…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Three and four, we recorded it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX:  We recorded it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It’s our most current CD. A double CD.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: This is, this is, you never heard music like that before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Two hours and ten minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They don’t, they don’t know, they don’t know what it is, even.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s the reason…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That adds to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s the reason for this interview. That’s why we’re here today. We’re here today,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=1540.0,1652.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"personally, my feelings about it, is that here are three guys, three pretty rough guys. And we were rough, in those days.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We’re not rough.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: A little wrinkly around the edges.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah. You know. And, and they play a type of music that’s sweet to hear, that’s beautiful to hear.  Some people cry when they hear it. It’s according to where you came from. In the movie, whenever the movie is showing, I, I watch people. And the tears are rolling down their eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They’re like, they went to see the picture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They went to see the movie and they…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: So you…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: So you must understand our feelings about this. We, we play this music, we don’t think twice about it. It’s music that we played all our lives.  Why should, all of a sudden, this type of music be accepted, not only in our immediate area, but into Europe, where it originally started and came to this country and went back to Europe again? And now, Julie gets E-mail, Japan, Australia…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: New Zealand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: New Zealand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We’re going to Holland now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Now, we’re going to Holland.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We’re going to Holland and Belgium. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We’re going to Antwerp, Belgium, we’re going to…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: … repeat Canada, different city. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We’re going to Canada again. So and so forth. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Montreal. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM:  They keep asking for us to come.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And we're only playing stuff that we played all our lives.LEVIN: …any such thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX:  The first time we did, at one concert we did in Europe, they had four musicians. Just four of us. And they came, and they came over to me after we got through with the concert. We had bands here, we had musicians here, they come like a — I don’t want to mention the other names, you know. They’re, they’re popular here.  We had those, what did they come? Ten men, 12, 12 musicians, ten musicians, nine musicians. Told me, “You guys come with the four musicians. We got more music out of the four musicians that you guys played than the whole, than all of them put together.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=1652.0,1784.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"This is what they say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Their, their feelings, you must…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And they don’t have the feeling that we have.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You must remember our background. Our background was almost European. European in the sense that my grandfather, he never spoke English to us. He spoke Yiddish. Even my parents spoke Jewish to us. So, our upbringing was almost European, in that sense. And, being in that sense, so it was natural that when we played music, it would also reflect that part of the family that came from Europe. And of course, the music that was played here, you’ve got to remember that in Europe, you weren’t allowed to play, to do Jewish shows in Europe. Not until after the turn of the century, or even after World War I.  Because, in the countries that you lived in, in those days, if you’d put a Jewish show on, it was a Jewish show, but it had to be in the language of the country that we were, that the, the thing was shown. And they’d sneak in a little word here and there. A Yiddish word. And they had policemen in the — police, in the theaters in those days, to see that they didn’t use Yiddish at all. This is the way — and this is the way we were raised. That in this country, we could play all the Jewish music we wanted, and there was no, nobody to say you’re not allowed to do it, or anything. And then, Second Avenue came into existence. Of course, a lot of it came out — you must remember that this is — the music we came from was from all over the world.  And we got the young people to thank for this. This is the important thing. They’re the ones that brought this thing back again. We didn’t. We were playing constantly, and we played our, our, our, at parties that we played, were simply…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: American dance music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …were American dance music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=1784.0,1902.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We never played, we had to learn, we had to learn to pick up the Latin, and then a little rock and roll, if we were able to, and so on and so forth. And this is what we played. Then, all of a sudden, some, some guy, somebody calls up, or sees us, and says, “You guys play klezmer music?” Klezmer music?  We didn’t know what that means.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We never heard of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We never heard, we never heard of it, in that sense. And then, he says, “You play klezmer?” “What do you mean, play klezmer music? What are you talking?” He says, “Do you play Jewish music?” “Yeah, we play Jewish music.” And this is how the thing came into existence, and that these young people, who were in the colleges and places of that type, were, were looking for something different. Something different than what they ordinarily did. And going into the background, they found this type of music. The only thing is, they didn’t understand is, how to play it. Not what it was, but how to play it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I want you to know, they play it. They play it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That they didn’t understand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And whatever they play, they play well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And better, technically…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Play well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …technically, better than we do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Than we do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know what my favorite expression is? When they asked us the difference. After all, they do talk to us. “What do you think about that, the different bands?” And I see them on T.V. once in a while, and I know the players, and they know us. And they, I say, “I’ll tell you. There’s only a very little thing to be discussed here.” I said, “They play everything they know. And we know everything we play.” And it’s a very simple statement. And you must understand that, from my point of view, all this business of Europe, with the klezmer, how much klezmer music do you really think came here, compared to when they came to America and they started writing for Yiddish shows with Yiddish songs, recordings, et cetera, et cetera?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=1902.0,2017.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"All this music went back to Europe. People went to Europe and did their shows in Europe. They played in Europe, up till the war, of course. And they went in South America. You can go to South America, and they have a whole Jewish population still asking you for the songs that were done on Second Avenue in 1930. They got more from the American side of the Yiddish musician than vice versa, based on the fact that there were more Jewish musicians in America, by a total, than there were in Europe. Because there were less people, less players, and it was not a field that was, what you call a lucrative field to make a living. In America, you’re a conductor. Where would you be a conductor in Jewish if your father wasn’t some kind of little politician, so he could get you to go to a school? It was not, you, you went to three, three years in school to learn A, B, C or something. And that was it. So, when you look at the fact that klezmer music, America produced more, by the pound, than we got from Europe. We play, because he remembers playing with these guys who were European-born, and they played some of these, you know, way-out things. But that didn’t last anywhere near as long as what is today. And my biggest shock was playing a job, 40 years ago, or something like that. And we started to play a job and we played Jewish music. And a guy walked over, he says, “Hey, do you know Hava Nagila?” And then Hava Nagila, Artze Aleinu, Sholem Aleichem, et cetera. That became the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That was the…\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …Jewish music, and it wiped out the klezmer — in quotes — music forever, till the last 15, ten, 15 years, now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Yeah. But a lot of those songs…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They didn’t even play.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2017.0,2121.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It was all Israeli. All Israeli.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: But a lot of those songs are Eastern European origin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: But you have to think another way, and something else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No. Israeli.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Like Hava Nagila is…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Israeli. To me, it’s Israeli.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Something, something else you have to think about. Naftule Brandwein had a group of things that he used to play. Repertoire. He had his repertoire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He had a following that he played for.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Shloimke Beckerman had his repertoire. Benny Margulies — these are all clarinet players — had his repertoire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Naftula [Naftali(?)] Schwarter [Schwartse/Shcwartze].\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Who?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Schwartzer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, Schwartzer was a jazz player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Naftula Schwartzer(?). Well, he was a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Dave Tarras.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Dave Tarras. I played with all of these guys.  But each one had a repertoire, and I took every one of their repertoires. I used to play things that Tarras never heard of. Because someone else played it. I can safely say I have the greatest repertoire of klezmer music that anybody can have. I even gave him a piece of music the other day, called Abrascha [Abrasche?]. I gave it the name Abrascha. Who would, would know that? I worked with a certain leader in the radio station years ago. Worked there several years. Now, I says, “Ah, I’ll write something.” His name was Abrascha, in Yiddish. His name was Abe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Abe Gubenko.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX:  Abe Gubenko.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Whose son is Terry Gibbs, the jazz marimba player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Terry Gibbs, yeah. Abe Gubenko. So I wrote this piece of music today. I mean, I wrote it then. And I says, “You know, Jule,” I says, “I got something here,” I says, “I wrote it up.” I remembered it, and I wrote it down, and I sang it to him. And he took it, he says, “Jeez, I never heard anything like it.”  And he says, “It’s great. It’s the greatest thing,” he says. “It’s great.” And I got hundreds of those things. Things that I wrote myself. I don’t even remember that I, I don’t even remember that I wrote it. Yeah. But I have, but I have it. If I ever sit down, if I ever…. I can’t write, see, so I can’t do it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2121.0,2247.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But I have things that nobody, nobody…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We got plenty to work on now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …nobody has. We can make, I can make 50 recordings without repeating myself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What was the first record you guys made together? Do you remember?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Epstein…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Over 40, over 40 years ago. Well over 40 years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Forty-some-odd years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Forty-five years ago, maybe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In the ‘50s, in the early ‘50s?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, I guess. That was 45 years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And part of that music is in our CD that’s in existence today. From that time, we still have some of that, some of the things we played in those recordings are still in our recording today that, the new CD we made.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Going back before that, did you work at all in the Yiddish theater?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He did. I didn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Any of you. Individually. Not, not as a group.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You name it, and I played it. I played Jewish theater, I played legitimate shows, I played cabarets, recordings, radio, television. I did all kinds. I played in all these mediums.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You played in the pit, in the orchestra sometimes?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: In the different venues, I played in all of these mediums.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: In the Yiddish theater, who did you work with as a conductor in theater, in Yiddish theater?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: In Yiddish theater? It was Olshanetsky, Rumshinsky, Abe Ellis, Abe Ellstein.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: [Sholom] Secunda.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Secunda.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That’s about the (INAUDIBLE), that’s top of the hill. (INAUDIBLE).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And a couple of smaller guys.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, before that, there’s Smolyevich(Smulevitz), but that’s…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They wrote some nice music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Who was the best conductor of the bunch?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: There was a fiddle player that was a conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Rumshinsky was very good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: As a conductor?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He was a fiddle player on the side, and you know, he did…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The best musician — I’m talking musician, musician. Now, I’m not talking to write melodies. The best musician of them was Abe Ellstein. He was a schooled musician. He was very, very good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He was engaged by the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He was tremendous.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He was engaged by the United States State Department…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: To write an opera. He wrote an opera.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Was that The Golem?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And unfortunately, it wasn’t successful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: But…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You know about it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Oh, okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2247.0,2378.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: New York City did, used to be City Center…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah, right. Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It was The Golem.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: But, and the things that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I never heard the opera. I don’t know it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Actually, we’re going to record a part of it now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: These, Rumshinsky was great. And if you ever wanted to find Rumshinsky, if you were looking for him, if you wanted to find him anywhere, you got to go to the 40, you had to go to the 42nd street library in New York, because that’s where he was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He’d pick out all the old…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He took, he took stuff from…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Russian songs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …from the, from operas. I’ll give you the best one. He wrote a number called Zachor. Remember, Zachor. The finish of it is (sings from Pagliacci).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Pagliacci.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He used the last phrase.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: So it’s the last, the last four measures. That’s what he’s got in there. Note for note. That’s what, he took it. He used to…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know, you know what he’s saying? Do you realize what he’s saying?  He’s telling you what we just said. More Yiddish music. And I use the words “Yiddish music,” because we had Yiddish theater. And that was Yiddish music. Was written in this country than anything we ever got from Europe, including Hasidic music. There’s a lot of Hasidic music that’s old songs. Because I spoke to leaders that I worked with. We got, we did a lot of Hasidic jobs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Twelve years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And one was a Hungarian who, we played one number, who we, the number became titled Epstein.  Because it was a very exciting number. And they, when they, when the groom came in and when they got him up in the air, and when they really wanted to go to town, we’d go into that number. And the guy who, who started to play it, and then he stopped. He didn’t play it anymore. But my brother, Chizzick, picked it up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2378.0,2482.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He liked it. And we finally found out that it was really a Hungarian song, to begin with. Now, you must understand that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We were the only ones, were the only ones that played it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …it’s very simple, and all these people who lived in Rumania, and Hungary and Bessarabia and Russia and Poland, when they wanted to write — the religious people, especially — wanted to write a song, they weren’t really musicians. So they’d pick up a melody — and they’ve done it in this country — they put lyrics to songs. Spanish Eyes was called Moon Over Naples. It, it bombed as an Italian song. But it became a big Spanish hit, didn’t it? That’s the original song — Moon Over Naples. Well, they did the same thing in Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Do you know what we had to do?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Amazing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We would come on a job with a music pad. The moment we walked in, “Hava rayan laden fraim [Ikh hob a naye nign far ir].” It means, “I’ll have a new song for you.” And I’d sit down, they sang, and I had to copy it down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The rabbi had a dream, see. He wrote a song.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I wrote it down, note for note, the way they played it. But we couldn’t make anything out of it. I had to sit down and put into meter. That was the tough job. To put it into meter, so they’d be able, be able to play it, so they can dance to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s exactly…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But it was their Rebbe. And if their Rebbe —they wanted to honor him. Because the Hasidim, each one, whatever sect they belonged to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: You could make a whole book of these types of melodies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They honor their rebbes, you know, so, to the highest degree.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The Satmar Rebbe secretary had me in her house…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Ashkenazi. Not Ashkenazi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Ashkenazi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, but it was terrible. The other guy wrote a better song.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He says, “Max, I want you to come to my house. I have a new Eshes Chayil.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, but why did he tell you to the house?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Because we…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: ‘Cause of the other guy.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2482.0,2591.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"JULIUS: The other guy wrote a song, and it’s on my, one of my CDs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He was from the East.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The second song, second cut. He wrote a very interesting song. Also a lot of meter. And they worked like dogs to put it into meter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And we had to put it back into meter again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And it became a hit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It became, it became a hit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He got so jealous, that he made him come to the house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I spent a whole day — more — I spent on, I must have spent about 20 hours there. Every time he sang it back to me, he sang it differently. I says, “You sang it differently.” He says, “No. Gezungen azoi. No.” I says, “No. You sang it this way before.” Okay. We changed it. So now, he changed it and now, we’re going ahead further. And he comes back. Now, he says, “Let me hear what it sounds like when you start again from the beginning.” We get partway down, he says, “No, that’s not the way I told you.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, but we finally, we finally got it and we played it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Finally got it, and I says…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And it wasn’t worth anything, anyway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And I says, “Rabbi,” I says, “I’m not staying here anymore.” I says, “A chumish con kuyich.” I says, “I can’t.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It was written in three different tempi, three, three different meters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It was impossible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: A 3/4 section, a 4/4 section, a 2/4 section.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I finally put it to — and we recorded it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Didn’t go anywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Because a lot of times — I, I mean, and I have to do this, every ethnomusicologist has to deal with this. The problem is that they sing, they, what they’re really doing is just retarding, or putting a fermata on it, it’s good. They don’t realize what that is, and they don’t, and it screws up the whole meter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Do you know how we became big in one, in one night? In one night, we became so big that they were waiting in line…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: A Hasidic t'filla.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …they were waiting in line to book us. And some people had their places booked already.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2591.0,2680.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"They went to change their dates, which is something that they very, they never do. We were playing what they called a Seder Siddur. That’s a commemoration of the Satmar Rebbe that came out of the, the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Concentration camp.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The camps.\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: This was during the war, that he was released.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That came out of, that came out of the camps. So now…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They bribed him out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …we’re playing and playing. Now, you picture this. You see a group, maybe two or three thousand people, in a room that can hold maybe 300 people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Three, four hundred.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where was this? In Williamsburg?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: In Williamsburg.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: In Williamsburg. They looked like this. When one moved, they all moved. They looked like wheat…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: When one head moved…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …wheat in the wind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: All the heads, all the heads had to move the same way, because there was no room there, you understand?  And this, now this is, this is gospel. This is the honest truth. Finally, the Rebbe came in. And he came in with a, with a challah, a challach(?). And it’s twice the size of this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They bake it two halves on a stone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Twice this size. So that four guys had to carry it. So, now you picture this. They brought the challach(?) in, the rabbi had to make a moetze(?). The rabbi makes a moetze, and before you knew it, everybody took a grab.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They dived on the table…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They dived on the table…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …and the table collapsed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …they, they, I, I, I don’t know how people didn’t get killed during that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The crumbs on the floor there…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Excitement, excitement beyond description.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: But the rabbi was, he always listened to the groups that they had, they used to come in with all kinds of musicians there. Well, we came in, the first time he ever heard us, we came in with five musicians, right? Sammy Kutcher played there.  Five musicians, and we played. You know what they liked to listen to? Military marches.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That’s what they liked to listen to. They always played…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And they would permit a French waltz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah. Add to this…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That was allowed. But that’s all. No, no American music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Add to this, besides that, so the rebbe…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know, it’s the Orthodox — what do you want?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2680.0,2796.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MAX: …the rebbe said, was making his speech, whatever it was…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He got a little pimple.\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And he says, “And the music klinkt azoi shayn.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: “Zizi klinkt azoi” — I heard him say it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: “The music klinkt azoi shayn.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: “Klinkt azoi vesay shayn.” He had a little high voice, a little squeaky high voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Is that Teitelbaum?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That, that particular…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, no, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That’s the Satmar Rebbe, said it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It was, the name wasn’t Teitelbaum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who was the Satmar…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No, no, no. “The music sounds so, rings so nicely.” That’s the translation. “The music klinkt azoi shayn.” From that particular moment on, we had 12 years of Hasidic music. It got to a point, already, I said, “I’m going to Florida.” And that was the end of the Hasidic music. And we came here. We found them here. But we, we…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What? There’s Satmars here?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …we shied away, we shied away from there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, all the sects are here. Lubavitcher, Chabad’s all over the place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Lubavitcher. Lubavitcher.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Chabad, yeah. But I didn’t know Satmar’s here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, they have some here. They have some here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They’re everywhere. And the rebbe used to come here for vacation. They bought him a car, and they cut the roof, so when he opened the door, he wouldn’t have to bend down to nobody. Fact.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah. That’s the Satmar Rebbe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And they would, he, when he asked about flying, he says, “Zitz git fadir ibich ich” — if God wanted me to fly, he would have given me wings. That was his attitude to flying. So he would ride. And all the way from New York to Miami, every 115, the most, I don’t know — they, he was an old man, even then. They had a place for him to stop.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How did he get to…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Orthodox, kosher, glatt kosher.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: If he didn’t, if he didn’t fly, how did he get here?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: By car.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You mean, God gave him wheels on his feet?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Nope. That was different. The car he understood. A plane was beyond his — he didn’t say you should — I have yet to meet a rabbi ever give you a no for an answer direct.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2796.0,2910.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"A rabbi’s a smart man, if he’s a good rabbi. And he says to you, “If you want to do it…. Me, if it was me, I wouldn’t do it.  But if you want to do it…”. If you’re stupid and you don’t understand what he’s saying, then do what you want to do. But I have never seen a rabbi of any kind of intelligence ever say to you, “Don’t do it.” He says, “If it was me…” or “Nice people don’t do it.” He uses a roundabout expression. Because he doesn’t want to make a mistake. Rabbis are not supposed to make mistakes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: This is, this is all part of our music business, I want you to know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, we had to learn that, too, to get in the door. He’ll tell you I’m right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: All part of our music business. WILLIAM: See. Before an affair took place, we used to go to the homes, to the different people. The brides, mostly. The bride’s home. And she would pick out, or the parents would pick out the music — which numbers we would play for the ceremonies. Sometimes, we never even knew the numbers. Most of the time, we knew most of them, after a while. And if you played for the Lubavitcher, it was only one song.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Di Alten Rebns nign.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The Alter Rebbe’s Niggun. That’s the only song. No matter who got married. Could be a… (They sing it) Right. It could be…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s the Alter Rebbe’s Niggun?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Right. That’s the Alter Rebbe’s Niggun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It had three sections.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right, right. There’s accompaniment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s not the one that passed away. But the Alter Rebbe was his father-in-law.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He wasn’t…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He wasn’t the son…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The Alter Rebbe didn’t have any sons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Any children. He had no children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He had no children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Neither one had children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Must run in the family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. It runs in the family.\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No, he had a son. He had a son. But his son wasn’t worthy. Of the position.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He said it was too much for him. He wouldn’t take it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Of the position.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=2910.0,3012.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He wasn’t worthy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I didn’t know that. Did you know that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: But his son-in-law…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That, that’s not commonly known.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What’s known is that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Maybe he wasn’t worth knowing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: His son-in-law was the rebbe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We were told.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He graduated from the Sorbonne.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He graduated from the Sorbonne.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Sorbonne. In engineering.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Everybody, everybody…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He worked, he worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Did you read that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It was in the papers. He worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, as an engineer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: During the war years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Before he was a rabbi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah, well, as you said, he graduated from the Sorbonne. In France.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But it’s an interesting way, the way they…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: When these people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …decide who should be who.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: When these people did things, they did things their way. We, being American-born, were not in that type of category. We’re not Hasidim, we’re, we’re — we believe, but we don’t believe…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Garden-variety Ashkenazi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We don’t believe like they do. I mean, we just don’t believe it. And they know it. And we know it. And they used to send us students to teach how to play instruments. As soon as they learned the songs — the Nigunim, the songs, whatever you wish to call it — as soon as they learned these songs, they didn’t use us anymore. Because, in their eyes, we weren’t even Jewish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, it wasn’t that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, that doesn’t surprise me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That wasn’t the whole reason.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They wanted their own, they wanted their own people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: They also have their own people to give it to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: For a little humor, I was giving one of these Satmar Hasidim a lift on coming home from a, one of the (INAUDIBLE). About three, four in the morning, or something like that. So he says to me, “Tracht tsitsis?” That’s the (INAUDIBLE), that’s the small tallis. The reason why I’m saying this is because I want the people who are going to view this to know what I’m talking about.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3012.0,3133.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So he says to me, “Tracht tsitsis?” I says, “You want to make a bet?” “Gay mayk a zon gon ent azoi.” So he thought, he thought I’m wearing it. ‘Cause I said, “Do you want to make a bet?”  I didn’t tell him yes or no. That was it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That’s how you make an answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That’s how you make, that’s the answer. And he says, “Oh, no. I believe it.” He says, “I think you…”.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know, what really, what really turned things around, as far as, just that we touched on this Hasidic field, which was never my favorite kind of music. I’m really American-born, and I was in, a little other things. But I love Jewish music, and I played it all my life, because when I broke in the business, it was the only job I could get, was from him. Because I couldn’t play good enough for anybody else. And he was the only one who would have me. Till I learned how to play. But we, the jobs that we played for the ultra-Orthodox people — we’re musicians. Some of the leaders were Orthodox, some weren’t. The musicians were everything, including non-Jews. It was okay. The kids wanted to learn how to play music. But the rabbis didn’t think that was a worthy profession for a guy studying in a yeshiva, who might conceivably be a, a rabbi someday, or perhaps a teacher of Orthodox literature, whatever. Till the kids revolted. The youngsters, they got married. Not everybody can be a top-shot, you know, a top guy, do a rabbi, et cetera. And they complained. They said, “Look. You want me to study, you want my children to study. I have to make a living. I play saxophone, I play clarinet, I play trumpet, and I want to play to make a living.” The rabbis accepted it. That was the end of the outside musicians as being leaders.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3133.0,3240.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And all the Hasidim, who had children who studied, they became leaders. They booked the same musicians. But they became the leaders, and they, and they booked Italians, Polish. ‘Cause I know who played for them. Because a certain instrumentality, they wanted a guy who could play sax and violin, and play well. There’s a guy named Marty Dell who they, one of the first guys to jump in. And he became a very popular guy among them. Though he knew all the material. But he was a brilliant player. And a good arranger, and everything. But I just, I have mentioned just one name — there are others. And that’s what happened with our kind of business, and that disappeared.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Ninety percent of the people that started to play the Hasidic business, 90 — maybe even more than 90% — we brought them in. Yeah, they started with us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, we brought in good musicians.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We brought in good. They used to have the worst musicians. So when we started, when we took over, we brought in good musicians, and they heard the difference right away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Which, for our first recording, our first recording that we ever did, our first album — I should say Hasidic album — was called The Hasidic [Chassidic] Brass. These people had never heard — it was an innovation on our part. They never heard three brass. They never heard three saxes. They never heard a full rhythm section. They used to get a guy who would play a little…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, the average album was five, once in a while, six men. Never bigger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And the guy would play, he would play violin, he would play a little bit of flute, maybe, or something. And it sounded it, and it was terrible music. And when we came out with that Hasidic Brass [The Chassidic Brass], you couldn’t buy it fast enough. And the answer is…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: When did you make this record?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The answer is, we never…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In the ‘50s?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Forty years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The answer is, the answer is, we never made two cents out of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3240.0,3354.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"JULIUS: Well, we, we made money, we sold the album.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We only sold the album. But we never made…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They, they knocked them off. They made knock-offs all over the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They were crooked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Who did you record for?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: At that time, Tichler.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Mr. Jacobs?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Oh, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We did it on our own.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Excuse me. Not Tichler. We couldn’t accommodate this man, for his economic concept what he should pay. Pay to make a record. It was just impossible. We got together, we put up…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: It wasn’t, it wasn’t…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …we went into the studio, we got a studio.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …Menorah, was the company.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We got our own writers, and we decided we’re going to do it. I don’t know what the hell it cost — about four, five thousand dollars, at that time. And we made it all on our own, and then we took a distributor. Which was, at that time, and still is, I guess…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Menorah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …Menorah. And we gave him the album.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And he gave us the business.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, he gave us, he paid us for the album.  He paid us for the album. We got paid properly. But we never, never got a real order.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: No royalties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Then they made cassettes out of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Thousands and thousands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And that we got nothing for.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: He licensed it from you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He didn’t license, we didn’t license him to do a cassette.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did he take it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He started to make tapes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He did it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We never gave him permission.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We never got paid for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We never gave him permission for it. But we found out about it, but we never…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: At that time…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did you play on an album with Nadel’s children, of Hasidic melodies? Abe Nadel?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Not to my knowledge. Not to my knowledge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Who remembers?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: How long ago was that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: About 35 years ago?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Not to my knowledge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Of course, that’s 35 years ago. Then there’s a record that my name appears on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No. Any time…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: And the Zimel Brothers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Any time they wanted to use…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Zimel, I know we did. Paul and, Paul Zimel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The Zimel Brothers we played.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Every time…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: From Zimmelman [Zimmerman] to Zimel to Zigman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Any time they wanted us to play individually…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I just worked with him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3354.0,3456.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MAX: …we didn’t take the job. You either took us all, or you didn’t take any. So…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Which, which, we should just talk a bit about how is it — I mean, you all, each of you were musicians. You played in orchestras and theater; you didn’t, you tell me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I did other things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And Julie, you did the other things. But how, how did it start? You’re being a family group? I mean, a brothers group.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, we always played together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Well, my, my, my reasoning behind it, my reasoning behind it was that we were playing, when we broke into the business, as far as Hasidim are concerned…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, I don’t mean Hasidim. I mean, in general, as a band. As an orchestra.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Well, we weren’t…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We always played together, you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We didn’t play together. We all played for different leaders.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, but we played jobs together, Willie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Occasionally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Family jobs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Family affairs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, how did it happen that you became the Epstein Brothers, with a capital B?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Oh, that’s what I was going to tell you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Ah, that’s all with the Satmar Rebbe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s, that all had to do, but how did it start?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That started with the Satmar Rebbe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: How did we start? When we broke into the business, my brother, my brother Chai — Chizzick — was the one that started. He started with a guy by the name of Joe King. And he played for him. Joe King liked him, and he was…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He was a Hungarian.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Now, he played for Joe King. I played for somebody else, Max played for other guys, he played for Joe King too. Julie played for other guys or he had Lazick Klipnicks (?), there were a number of leaders …\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Rudy Tapel, Lazick Kliptick (Kliptick?).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Rudy Tapel, yeah different leaders. We played for them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Joe King, there was a fiddle player what was his name? He went to Israel eventually.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We had a young guy, we had a young guy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Tanori?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We had a young fellow who at that time…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He was a symphony player, very religious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …was no more than about sixteen or seventeen and his name wasChaim Kamenetsky.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3456.0,3566.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"You know the name?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He was the President of Young Israel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Of the whole … National Young Israel. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Worldwide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He travels with the President of the United States.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He did. He has.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He has. He has clout.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He’s very well-known. Anyway, he came to us one day, in the course, just one of our conversations, says, “I don’t understand,” he says. He got friendly with us. He says, “You play for this guy, he plays for that guy. And you’re making big leaders out of all these different guys on your ability.” Because these other guys were poor musicians. They were not good musicians. The only reason we worked for them is that we were better musicians, and we could play the music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Many times, we got paid more than they got…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Than they…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …than the leaders. ‘Cause they were not bookers of, you know, large amounts of money.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: So this young man came to us one day, he says, “You know, I can’t understand it. You play for these different guys, and you make big men out of them. And you guys are just individual musicians. Why don’t you take your brothers, put the thing together as a unit, get yourself a keyboard” — well, he didn’t even realize that, but we realized it. We’d get ourselves a keyboard player, and we got a band. And this is what we did. One day, somebody asked us to, to play some music, so we booked the job. One heard us, another heard us, and before you know it, we were number one. In fact, if you saw the movie, you listened to Pete Sokolow. He says, he says, “I don’t understand it.” He says, “They must have been doing something right, because they had the best bands, the best musicians, the most amount of work, et cetera, et cetera.” He said,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3566.0,3684.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"“So they must have been doing something right.” And this is how, from that time on, generally, little by little, we got together, and we became known as the Epstein Brothers. And we printed cards, and we put our names in Hebrew on the cards. Besides in English, it was in Hebrew. And so on and so forth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, we’re talking, basically, now, Hasidic business, now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He, he printed a card one time, that you opened it up, it looked like a shtreimel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, that’s what’s — a Hasidic business. But that’s how it started. It started with the Hasidic groups. You mentioned, is that what you’re telling me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, you know, you can’t…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Really, as Epstein Brothers…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It’s too many hats.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …it started that way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You’re talking too…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: ‘Cause later on, I mean, you were playing all kinds of weddings — not just Hasidic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You’re talking too many hats, really. We were a unique, in the sense that we started in the business very humbly, playing for what we knew how to play. We played American dance music, we played with bands that read music. You know, swing bands, the Swing Band Era was big. You had Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and so all of these bands. And we played with bands that played that kind of music. Plus, we never stopped playing the Jewish music.  Because Jewish music would be on Saturday. Maybe on Sunday. On Friday, if you had a, didn’t, if you were not a shomer Shabbos, you could play at a society-type job, who ran a lot of Fridays, Thursdays, Wednesdays.  On Wednesdays and Tuesdays, you played installations. They wouldn’t take a Saturday, because what it costs for, for a guy to, for a dinner, on a Tuesday, you could get it for half the price. And the, you know, the, the organizations would look to make it as inexpensively as possible. So now, you had to play everybody’s music. Everybody’s music. I went a little different route, and then, because I, somebody introduced me to something.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3684.0,3798.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Willie had the, he was on radio, and he was at the Waldorf with — what the hell’s the name? — Frank Sinatra and a couple of other things. He did his thing. He was on the Jewish radio station for years.  And he played with all the different players. And he was a leader. He was always a leader, for about 30 years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Those things you did indiv…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: All it is, is, it’s a jigsaw puzzle…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …that you got to put together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But those things you did individually, not as the Epstein Brothers, no?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, but it was all part of, it’s a learning process for all of us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In other words, you played — you say society.  Did you play with people like Duchin, or that type of…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Oh, I played with Lester Lanin. I played for Mayer Davis. I did some jobs for Duchin. And a couple more. Bill Harrington.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I did a lot of Gypsy work. Gypsies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I played for Gypsies, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Gypsy work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Real Gypsy orchestras?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I want to hear about that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: A lot of the Jewish music we play today comes right from Gypsies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Gypsy music, I play.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I know. But you played with real Gypsies…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: From a Gypsy background.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: How about Bela Babai?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They had a problem.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How about Basha Babai, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I didn’t know him, but the Gypsies had a problem. They liked to dance fraylackhsen, kazatskies.  And they needed Jewish musicians to play it, because there weren’t enough Gypsies who played it. I only knew one name. It was Mishka.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Mishka.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: An accordion player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It was Mishka Ziganoff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, he was the Real McCoy. And they knew us.  When we’d come to a job, I recognized them, and they recognized us. The few jobs I would do. It was, and it was always a Tuesday morning or Thursday morning.  Very, very good job to play, because, when does a musician work on Thursday morning? But that’s when they, when they partied.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, that’s when, that’s when Gypsies had their parties? In the morning?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I started…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. Out by 1:00, it’s over.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I started to play a Gypsy job. I’ll never forget.  In Marcy Avenue,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3798.0,3891.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"there was a pool room there. We started there Monday morning. Wednesday, I was still playing the job.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And they paid only cash, right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You don’t play a note till they put, they pay you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: This is no lie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Before you started.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Before you played. Every time we played, another hour they had to pay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They had to pay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The cash wasn’t, wanted cash. In front.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. Because they wouldn’t have bank accounts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, they — you know why the weddings lasted so long? Because they had to come from all over the United States.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: There probably was two kings. They had kings. When I was at the Riverboat, in Manhattan, in Manhattan, at the Empire State Building, on Sunday nights, the deadest night, we just, 10:00 at night, the job was almost finished for the evening. All of a sudden, 50, 60 Gypsies would walk in. Just walk down the stairs. Set up. For whatever reason, they were having a party. They let them in. Not everybody would let them in. They were afraid. One night, we were playing a job and I hear a woman scream, “My purse!  My purse!” The kids were crawling around under the floor of the regular customers, and stealing pocketbooks. Very strange people. But there was always a king. Like a, one night, there were two kings having a party. And this side was one group, and this side was another group. Middle of everything, started a fight. “He insulted my king.”  And the guy says, “He insulted my king.” Of course, we quieted them down. And we had to tell the maitre’d.  But that’s — playing Gypsies, you never know when they came.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, there was a famous war in Connecticut, somewhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It could be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: A major, a field, a battlefield. I’m talking about in…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I wouldn’t be surprised. They defended their own groups.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In our times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Some of the Gypsies would come into a place, and they had a little bit too much to drink,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3891.0,3994.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"they used to break the bottles up. And, then, whatever fell on the floor, all that glassware used — they used to dance with all that broken glass. And they used to rub it into the, into these beautiful floors that they, the dance floors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Hasidim weren’t any better.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And they ruined, they ruined the dance floors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What did you, what did you say?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The Hasidim weren’t any better. We played in a place…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No. I’m talking about…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: There was a place…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Wild, wild.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …a place on 4th Street called The Manhattan…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Plaza. Manhattan Plaza.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …Plaza. Not Manhattan Center, on 34th Street.  It was on 4th Street, right off Second Avenue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, well, that was some big wedding.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Between Second and Third Avenue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They closed off the street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Called the Manhattan Plaza. They closed off the street. Two rebbes’ — famous rebbes’ — children got married in one, you know, son and daughter. And…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The Squaretown Rebbe. The Squaretown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I forgot who the rebbes were.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That was just one of them, I know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That was one of them. And the other one, I think was the Bobover Rebbe. I’m not sure. The, the story is, and the humor in the story is…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Twelve hundred people, or something like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …that they closed off, the called the police, and they closed off the street, from Third Avenue to Second Avenue, it was closed off. You couldn’t go out on the street. Thousands of people are standing in the street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And you couldn’t get past the horses unless you had your, your invitation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They wouldn’t let us, they wouldn’t let us go in. They had orders not to let anybody in. So we said, “Well, we’re musicians. How’s the affair going to take place without music?” So finally, the lieutenant went to talk to somebody else, and before you knew it, we were in the place. Now. This was the part of the story. The kids started to — they found fire escapes. So they climbed up on the fire escapes and they came in through the roofs, and so on and so forth. And there were so many thousands of people, and they, there were three ballrooms.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=3994.0,4101.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We had music in three ballrooms were going on at the same time. And the kids were hanging like, like, like on chandeliers — sconces and chandeliers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: There was no room.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They ripped off, they ripped off the sconces, and they ripped the chandeliers off. And they, the ground glass. And then they, they wanted to see what the rebbe was doing, so they took tables…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They were dancing. The rebbes finally were dancing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The big, you know, the big ten-seater tables, or 12-seater tables. And they piled one on top of another. And then, they would stand up on the tables.  And everything was on the tables — the glasses, the pitchers of water — everything was on top of the table. And they were standing on the table. And then the tables would go crashing down, and all the glass…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They took, you know, they took…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …would fall onto the floor, and they started dancing, and the glass was rubbing into the floor. P.S. — the next morning, the place closed down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They closed down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They went out of business.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They closed the place down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They couldn’t afford to replace the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They figured out, just to put down the dance floors in the three ballrooms would have cost so much money, they could have a built a whole building. This is just from Hasidim, you talk about…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It was an old place, you know. But it still had some life in it. They ruined it. They ruined it. Just wild.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They destroyed it. They destroyed it to pieces.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know, this is two big-shot guys who got married — their children. Two very, very big rabbis who had very, very active, militant followers. And when you get militant followers, boy, you forget about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Especially if they like music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: If they like the rebbe, they don’t care about the music. A monkey could play it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: A lot of money.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They wanted to see the rebbe. They wanted to eat the challah when he blessed it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Let’s get back to the music again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They jumped on the table and flattened it, like nothing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The music that I played, I used to take a job right after Passover, the Lent, the Lent period. What do they call that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sphera.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Sphera.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Sphera.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4101.0,4208.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, I was to take a steady job. There was no business. So I take this, this job, and that’s what I would do. So I’d go into a cabaret to play. Like the old Romanian. I played at the old Romanian. The, the guy, as long as they could get somebody to replace. So they, it must have been, Crazy Canada was the saxophone player there.\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah. Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He used to take off and he went on vacation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: His name was Phil.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: On vacation. That’s when I used to come. I used to take jobs like that. One time, I took a job in a cabaret called The Rendezvous. So, and they used to feed the musicians twice a night. But I’m not talking just a sandwich.  You got a full meal, but twice a night.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It was a long job.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Twice a night, you know. And very — it was served up nicely, and good food. The best steaks that they had used to be, they’d give us on Sunday. Sunday, that, that particular Sunday, at home, I had steak.  So I come in and I says, the waiter says to me, “What are you going to have? Which steak you want today?” I says, “I don’t want any steak. I want boiled beef.” “Boiled beef?  What are you, crazy, or something?” he says. “You got steak, and you want boiled…”. I said, “I had steak at home. I’m not going to eat another steak. Boiled beef.” So he goes into the kitchen, and he comes back after that. And he says, “I spoke to the chef, and he says he’s got two pieces of boiled beef and he needs it for the customers.” I says, “You go back, tell the chef, if I don’t get that boiled beef, I quit, right now.” So he goes in and he talks to the chef, and the chef says, “The chef says you can quit.” Fine. I go to the bandstand, I’m packing up my instrument.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4208.0,4319.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The boss of the place, who was handicapped, he comes limping over to me, he says, “Where are you going, where are you going, where are you going?” I said, “I just quit.” He says, “Quit? Why? What do you mean, you quit? You just quit? Who’s going to play the show?” I was the only wind instrument they had. They used to have a violin that used to play at the tables, and me, and a drummer…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Piano player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …and a trumpet player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No piano?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And a piano player. So he says, “You can’t quit.” I says, “Well, I just did.” And I walk out of the place, and I walked down the street. Oh, yeah — and then he runs into the kitchen, and he says, “Here’s the boiled beef. I just got it for you,” he says. I says, “Too late. I don’t want any more boiled beef.  I’m a vegetarian now.” I says, “I’m not eating beef.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: When you’re young, you can do crazy things like this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Why? Because I was in demand. That’s why I did. So I walk out from this place and I walk into the next block called, a place called Juriens. I said, “Mr. Jurien, do you want me to go to work right now?” He says, “Go to work. Go to work right now.” So I stayed there a couple of days. Of course, I got an increase in salary, and other things. Anything I wanted, I got in the place. So I walk over to the boss again, this is Mr. Jurien. I said, “You know, Mr. Julian, what I did in the Rendezvous, the Romanian Rendezvous,” I says, “I, I feel sorry. I should not have done it.” I says, “It wasn’t a very nice thing.” And so he, Mr. Jurien says, he says, “You know, you’re a nice fellow. If you can say that, and you…”. And I says, “I’d like to go back there.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4319.0,4416.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He says, “You should go back there,” he says. “I release you. Go back.” And that’s how I went back. But I didn’t, but I quit. I quit there, I says…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Over a boiled beef.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I want, I says, I says, “I don’t want anything now.” I says, “Now, I’m a vegetarian.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Where were these places located?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Huh?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Where were these places located?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The Lower East Side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The Lower East Side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: East Side, yeah?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The Lower East Side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s where they were.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Where else?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The Old Romanian. I played the Old Romanian. I was sitting there…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That was the one that was owned by…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Moscowitz and Lupowitz?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They came in, and they raided the place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Everybody knew that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They raided it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: For what?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Liquor. For selling liquor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You mean, during the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It was during Prohibition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: During Prohibition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They didn’t pay off the right cops, probably.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No, no. Here’s what it was. These, these guys were from Washington.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Ah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You couldn’t pay them off.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Federal cops.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Federals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Local police, it was a joke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They came in, they came in one night a couple of days before, and they were spending all kinds of money. They were giving the musicians all kinds of money, you know. Tip money, and things like that. So a few days later, they came back. I said, “Oh, boy, we got a good tonight again.” So, so this guy — like this, they were getting single drinks. When they came back, and they said, “Maybe you got a bottle. We don’t want to be bothered with it.” “Sure.” So they brought out the bottle. Soon as they brought out the bottle, that’s it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Blew the whistle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: “You’re all under arrest.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(BREAK) We want a break for five minutes. Just for five minutes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Oh, well, we played rock, we played everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We played everything. We made a Jewish, a Hasidic record.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I want to you ask you about…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We’re on. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[Starts here after the break] \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I want to you ask you about some musical, technical matters from my writings here. For example, the changes in instrumentation over the years, from when you first started. When you first started, you didn’t have a, use anything such as an electric piano. Probably wasn’t any such thing, was there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: No, we didn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We used amplified accordions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In the beginning?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4416.0,4525.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MAX: No, they came later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: No. When we started, there was amplified accordions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Put a microphone into an accordion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: When he started. But when I started, they didn’t have them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Actually, when you started, they were still playing out on a one-string violin. What do you want?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: A broken-down piano.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: A lute.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So let me ask you this…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: At what point are you talking about?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, from when you first started playing…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: As Epstein Brothers?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …as a group. Yes, as Epstein Brothers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They did have amplified accordions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: All the musical instrument changes have been incorporated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Amplified accordions they had.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did you use any piano in those days?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Just a regular piano.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Every catering hall had a piano, such as it was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Just regular piano.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No. They didn’t have the Farfisa organ.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And we used bass players, we used bass players.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Real bass?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: String bass.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right. And over the years, have you gone into using any electric, electronic instruments, like a keyboard…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Out of necessity. The pianos got to be so rotten in the catering hall, and, or the — everywhere.  And the guys said, “Look. We don’t play the instruments. You want to, you want it to be a good piano, why don’t you have your union come in, tune it or fix it? We don’t use it.” So what happened was, when the electronic — first of all, the accordion was first. With an amplifier in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Why did you need the amplifier in the accordion?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: ‘Cause it wasn’t loud enough.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But you don’t…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No. They were able to get basses out of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And they were able to get the bass.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The bass.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: In other words, you had to tune on it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And it was in tune.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But my question is always, what did they do in the, you know, 150 years ago, in Europe, with an orchestra?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They didn’t have any pianos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You made in your pants.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That’s easy. That’s easy. In Europe, except in the, on a great palace, an affair didn’t have 400 people, 600 people. A small affair, small people, a band walked around. It wasn’t stationary. It could play anywhere.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4525.0,4629.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"They played what they could play, to small groups of people. As things, you know, increased in size in every direction — the people increased, the rooms increased, the amount of musicians increased.  Listen, if I use ten musicians, I don’t need a piano.  I can get by with a, with a guitar and a bass. So it doesn’t make a difference. But and, and the standard instruments, the acoustical instruments, you’re talking about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Okay. Well, first of all, we ran out of acoustical instruments. They didn’t have any more to play on. So they started with accordions. And the accordion players were rotten, but they’re the only ones who had an amplifier. Piano players, if they didn’t learn the accordion, were in trouble. Then came a guy named Farfisa, who turned out an organ that a piano player could play. And boy, that changed everything. Now, all the pianos are digitalized, and you have split bass, you have mini-bass. The guy plays a bass fiddle, and he plays a right hand, and he makes an orchestra out of four men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But it doesn’t sound the same.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It sounds like what it’s supposed to sound like. I have no objection to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But I mean…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Musically, it’s nothing wrong.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But they use it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: If the guy played it well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But they use it even, you’re talking about…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I mean, if he’s a bad player, he’s a bad player, period.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You tell a large thing, with 500 people or more, about…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No. I’m talking about a four-piece band.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No. I’m talking about the party.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They have a one-piece band with 500 people too, I’ve seen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The parties? You would, the rhythm section, the rhythm section’s the same. What you will increase is, is horns.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right. But my question is, the reverse, also.  In other words, today, even if you’ve got a party for 40 people, they still use the electronic instruments.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Because there’s no piano around. There are no acoustical instruments for us to play.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Or even like the, the, if there were, you’d prefer to play the regular piano, for a small party?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4629.0,4735.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"WILLIAM: The bigger places have pianos. The small places…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, what about the bass?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They have electric pianos, today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: People use an electric bass instead of a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That sounds like a, it sounds like a real piano.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …even for a tiny, little party.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: How loud is a string bass?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, it’s loud enough for if you got a small party for 50 people, no?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Right. Okay?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But they still rely on electric bass.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But, but you take, you take an electric bass, not only does he play bass, but he goes, he gets a line to play, a musical line. He almost, he’s almost playing melody, half the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So you’re in favor of this, of the changes of the electronic…\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I’m not voting. You’re asking me to vote?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I vote in private.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: If you were voting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: If you’re asking for an opinion, my opinion is anything that makes the band sound good, as far as I’m concerned, is acceptable. Anything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You don’t have any preference for the, for a natural sound?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Oh, I would like to be able to play at a proper level of sound. But it’s, it’s not accepted.  It’s not accepted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s, you’re leading me right into my next question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It’s not accepted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What about the loudness of today?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, I’ll tell you the truth. Every musician I know is hard of hearing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: There you are.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I wear, I wear two hearing aids. Not one.\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I do better than that. I don’t go. That’s my policy. I do not go to any — why? Because I don’t want to…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, I don’t go to major rock concerts…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, I don’t even go to a wedding. That’s my excuse, that’s my out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, I…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Because, because I can’t, I can’t hear myself…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. Listen — I just went to a cousin’s bar mitzvah about two years ago — bat mitzvah. He’s a very well-to-do fellow, he’s a dentist, his wife is a, is a physician. She’s a rhino, rhinoplasty. She does, she’s a skilled…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: She’s an M.D.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: She’s all kind of things. They make a lot of money.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4735.0,4824.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He made a very large hotel bat mitzvah. Right? A little further south. We came into the place. They had a big stage with black, with two monstrous speakers. They had two or three DJs, they had six rock and roll dancers. They had nothing, commercially speaking, dance music. And these guys were hocking away. So I came over and I said to the waitress, “Would you get me some cocktail napkins?” She says, “Sure.” And I took them, and I went like this, in both ears. Okay? The host comes by and he says, “How do you like it?” I says, “Terrific, Jeffrey.” Didn’t even bother him. What can I tell you? Nobody danced, in adult age. At a bat mitzvah, they were too young to really be good rock and roll dancers. So he took, as far as I’m concerned, a lot of money, and out the window. It wasn’t good music for anybody.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I, I started with…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But what can I tell you? I went. But that’s what I did. I, I stuffed my ears.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I started with the rock and rolls right from the beginning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But in those days, they weren’t that loud.    This is more recent, that it’s gotten to be this loud.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Oh, well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Decibels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Oh. Now, they got it more modified.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It was always loud.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This loud?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It was always loud.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Now, it’s more modified.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where the walls shake?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I’ve been in rock and roll a long time.  ‘Cause I used to work — and my brother Willie used to work with them, too, once in a while. Stan Rubin — right? We went out to the, to Princeton, and they brought in, I forget what act it was. They played so hard that — they had three acts. I can’t think of the name, for the moment. It’s not important. They were major acts.  Black guy. It was a graduation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Lou Rawls was there. Lou Rawls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, this was real rock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Three drummers to play for the three acts.  Because one drummer couldn’t last. He beat the living hell out of them drums.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4824.0,4929.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He really whacked away. And it was loud. It was as loud as you could get. And this has been going on forever. Forever. Rock and roll, roll is loud.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you an example.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Can’t be helped.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We’re doing a, I’m doing a bar mitzvah on a Sunday afternoon. Out on the Island. And we were playing American dance music. Nice, had a nice group there. And a woman comes over. “Must you play so loud?  Must you play so loud?” I says, “No. I’ll try to, I’ll make it softer.” So I go over to the amplifier. I just touched it. I didn’t move it. Touched it. Just to make believe.  Says, “How do you like it now?” “Oh, it’s beautiful now. It’s beautiful.” I didn’t touch anything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You know the expression?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Now…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: der oilem iz a goilem [the masses are asses].\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We stopped, we stopped, and the rock and roll band came on. I had to leave the room. It was a tent.  I had to leave the tent. It was absolutely — and a good group. Good group. It was impossible. I go over to this woman. “How do you like this music?” “Oh,” she says, “it’s great.” I says, “You like the sound of it?” I says, “Me, you said I’m playing loud.”  I says, “What are they doing?” She says, “Well, that’s a different type of music.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: She’s correct.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It’s a different type of music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That music doesn’t make it unless it’s loud.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: See?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It just doesn’t make it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: So I said to her, “You’re satisfied?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It might even sound like it, but…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: See, now I’m the guy that played softer now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You know, I happen to like rock and roll.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: If it’s done right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I’m not against rock and roll. ‘Cause I worked with some very good groups opposite me. You know. And they weren’t that hard. They weren’t heavy metal. They call it heavy metal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But that’s what I’m saying. That’s what I was asking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But I, listen. You got, you got, the same thing in dance bands. I remember when the Black jazz bands used to play, and they used to cook up a storm.  And people didn’t like it,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=4929.0,5046.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and some did. I — and Basie could never do anything too wrong for me. You know what I mean? He just couldn’t. I don’t care how loud they played it. And I worked with him three or four times. Yeah, with, through, through my auspices. And I just stood there, I could get right in the middle of it, and you couldn’t bother me. ‘Cause he played what I liked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You get all kinds of people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: If you don’t like it. You know what I mean?  And I know rock and roll is a hundred years…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You find excuses as to why you don’t like it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: By the same token, you’ll find excuses — yeah. I got, I got to show you an example. Friday night, I went out for dinner. And we went, went up to a place.  I don’t want to mention the name of the place. We went up to a place for dinner, and it was Hal Silvers, myself, and Millie and Marian. And we went up to this place, and they had a keyboard player there. He was a very good keyboard player. He does, does, does singles. He sings very nice, he’s got a nice touch, he’s got a nice style, and he’s got good equipment, and he sounds like a full band. He’s got this minus one thing where, where the thing is playing, and he walks away from the thing, and he’s singing. Anyway, so he plays for the first two hours.  Then, the owner happens to be a musician, also. And he has a son, a musician. They work in the kitchen till after the dinner. Then, the two of them come out, and he plays. And his son plays with him. He plays trumpet and flugelhorn, he plays saxophone. The point I want to make is that the, the lady sitting with me, my friend’s wife, says to me, she says, “See?” she says, “I like this man much better than I do the other guy.” And the guy that she says she likes is a bad player,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5046.0,5156.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"comparatively. Bad player. I, I listened. The chords were all wrong, and so on and so forth. Now, Der oilem iz a goilem [the masses are asses]. She didn’t know the difference from good to bad. That’s the point.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, she, she knows what she likes. WILLIAM: The average individual does not know the difference between good and bad. That’s the point. So when you say about — reverting back, now, to what you asked — you say, what kind of combinations are they using today? What is the difference in the type of instrumentation, et cetera, et cetera? We went to Chaim Kaminetsky’s daughter’s wedding. They had a band there. First of all, they don’t use clarinets anymore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Why?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They don’t use clarinets for Hasidic music.  They use soprano saxophones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Or an alto.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Or an alto.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Why is that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s the style.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s a recent thing?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They like the instrument. They like the looks of the instrument.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, no, no. They…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Three brass…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They don’t play a fraylakh sound. It’s played like a rock fashion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They play rock and roll. Rock and roll Hasidic music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, oh, oh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Rock and roll rhythm section.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But this is recent? This thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Right now, it’s taking place all over.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: All over.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Eight, ten, and 12 men. Two, three brass. One sax, sometimes two. A drummer, a percussionist, a piano player, electric bass, one or two guitars.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Electric guitars, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. Electric bass. And…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And the brass?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …some of the guys sing. They sing the songs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: See, I brought out, I wanted to bring out a point.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And they dance the same dances.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But the band plays rock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And they play it in a rock style. And they’re dancing up a storm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: In Israel, everything is rock. Everything is rock, in Israel. Whatever they write there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: But you don’t hear clarinets anymore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And certainly no violins.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The only time you play clarinet…\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I’m surprised that you’re not aware of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …is klezmer music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No. Because I don’t go to those things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Well, all right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But now you understand why. When we say, what has changed, it has changed a lot. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You ask the question, and I didn’t even answer. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We did it on an album twenty-five years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: More than that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, about 25, 30 years ago. And it wasn't accepted. We were …\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, I’ll tell you the truth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I got a little too early. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You say I don't go. You’re surprised I'm asking. My dear friend …","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5156.0,5267.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"His daughter was getting married — and, and this was already, you know, it’s not — well, I mean, this is already a Jewish circle. It’s not…. And even there, where the music would all be so-called Jewish music, I knew how loud it was going to be. And I called them and I said, “Listen. Why do you want to waste $150 on me? I’m not going to sit in the room.  I’m going to go out and have a sandwich outside. I’m not going to eat, stay there. Let me come to the ceremony, and that’s it. Okay?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: But you talk about modern people wanting to hear the other kind of music, the Jewish music. I’m playing for, a comedian just hired me recently. And we’re playing the 2nd, whenever the 2nd is — it’s a Thursday, I think. The 2nd of, of April.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: This comedian is getting married. And he’s a very well-known comedian. And he’s getting married, and he’s marrying this singer. And she’s a very good singer. Gee, I can’t think of his name. Bar, Bar, Bar — well, what difference is it? And he calls me. He says, “Willie,” he says, “I would like you to play my wedding.” And five men. He wants klezmer music. I said, these are young people. He’s, he’s, he’s, I’d say he’s a man in his middle 40s, you know. Comparatively young people. And he says, “I want, I want klezmer music at my wedding. And I want dance music. And I want a little rock.” And so on and so forth. So, I had to put together a band that can encompass a little of each.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5267.0,5388.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He knows, he knows, he knows that, I just told him about it. And he’s, he’s doing the date with me. And I hired all these different musicians, and we’ll get through. I got a guy by the name of Hirsch, a saxophone player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But nobody uses strings anymore, for these groups.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That’s not true.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: That’s not true.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Chaim Kaminetsky had 12 strings at the table, when you came in to get your place card. And they had more wearing, in tails, playing beautiful violin music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, really?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: In the, in the lobby.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You mean like the stroll, the old strolling…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: In the lobby.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, not strolling, not strolling. They had 12 of the, all standing there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And for the ceremony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you remember, what was his name?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Are you from New York originally?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I’m getting a feel — not originally, but I’ve been in New York a long time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Well, you, you know the Huntington Townhouse?  The catering place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, sure. Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Nine ballrooms. He used all nine ballrooms.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He had them all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who was the fellow?  Felix…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That’s how big his affair was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Felix Slatkin. And his strolling violins. His son is the conductor of the, of the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, that’s something else. Strolling violins had nothing to do…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Leonard, Leonard Slatkin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But that was, it’s a certain sound, to have, they all…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, the sound is beautiful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: There was a nightclub opened up in New York once. And the feature was nine fiddle players, standing all around the room, playing. One guy stood at the mike, and they, he was the lead fiddle playing. They all — where was that restaurant where they, with all the violins? Chez, Chez Vito. Chez Vito. Vito owned the place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They used to do that in the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And it was Chez.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …in the Lantern… what was that?  Lantern something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Okay? So, it was a big, popular thing for quite a few years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Only strings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You see, when I listen to the old, there are cylinders of so-called “klezmorim” in Europe. In Romania, for example. There are some cylinders.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I never heard anything from there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. There is, I’ve heard…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I don’t know what it sounded like, but I could imagine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I’ll, well, I’ll tell you something. It has a lot of strings. It has maybe five, six violins.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5388.0,5489.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"JULIUS: Oh, well, you couldn’t hear it unless it was that many.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right. They all play a little out of tune.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Sounds like a bigger band.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And — that’s right. It gives — that’s right.  And I’ll tell you, it gives it a certain sound, which became…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: You can’t tell the sound from an acoustical recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, no, but it was. Because I’ll tell you the truth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: It’s like the French accordion players.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They were all playing a little out of tune.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Because they tune it that way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Actually, it’s almost deliberate, to, to a certain extent. Because, in a way, that’s what Stokowski, Leopold Stokowski, figured out. To get a special sound out of the Philadelphia Orchestra was, to not have them bow together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. Change the bows’ directions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And that way, there is a micro-millionth of a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But it’s enough. That’s enough to make it richer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …in the, it’s not exactly in tune, that makes it, gives it a silky kind of sound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It’s a richer sound. It’s a richer sound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And so I figured this out. And I had a, in, with the professional orchestra in London we’re — not a single Jew in the orchestra. And I said, “Try it this way. Play it, the whole violin section, but just play just ever so much, a little, tiny bit out of tune with each other.” And that sounded just like this cylinder from the Romanian klezmorim.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, the Hasidim, the Hasidim, I could — the Hasidim. Why I say that, I don’t know. The Jewish orchestra, years ago, had fiddles. One — in almost every band, we’d have a violin player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And they usually were the leaders.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And the leader. And then in the, you said they played in…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That was, yeah, we had them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …the pit for the theater. The theater had violins.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. Well, that’s something else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But no cellos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The theater is different. If you didn’t have violins, it wouldn’t sound like something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But no cellos, for some reason, right? They, they didn’t have…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Well, they didn’t have room for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Well, they didn’t have enough men. They didn’t encompass enough men to have a cello, because Rumshinsky would have loved to have a cello.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: When you played in the Second Avenue Theater…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Oh, yeah. He would have loved it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: …how many musicians did you have in the pit?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I’ll tell you a story. I’ll tell you a story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: In the Jewish theater, how many men did they use?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: When I was there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5489.0,5590.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"WILLIAM: Ten men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In a good show.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: When I was there, it was ten men. That’s how many. They had to use ten men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: When I played in the Second Avenue Theater, ten men was what they had.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did they ever have a show with 20?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They had to have ten men. That’s the story I wanted to tell you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They had to use ten men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Broadway had 24.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Minimum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Maybe more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Minimum?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Minimum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Union.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But did they ever have a hit, a big, running, Yiddish show that had more, that had 20 men in the pit?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Ten men. That was it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. But as soon as it’s a hit, they’d fire ten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Well, I, I never played with any of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Ten, ten, ten men. Ten men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Ten men was what they had.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They never had more. I’ll tell you the story now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They always had a couple of fiddles there playing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I’ll tell you the story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You know, for background, like when somebody’s talking, they’re saying something, and they need background music, so they had the fiddles playing.  They always had, they always had two trumpets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Two trumpets?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Always.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Two on the trombone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: On the trombone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. And you had, so you had two on that, and the clarinet?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Three violins. A rhythm section.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They had drums. Sometimes, they had two drummers, if they had a lot of work to do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Let’s say just one drum. That’s four.  Clarinet?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: A clarinet…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: A lot of times, a lot of times, the clarinet…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And maybe, and that leaves you what? Maybe four, four…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: A bass.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: A bass…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Three rhythm, three brass, three strings. No — three rhythm, three brass, and, and two reeds, and a couple of fiddles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you didn’t always have…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And a conductor. That’s ten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But you didn’t, you didn’t always have…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Ten, ten men, it used to be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: With a conductor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Ten — and that was a law. They had a law.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Let me tell you the story, if I — let me tell the story?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. Go ahead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Okay. Thanks. We played in the Second Avenue Theater. They used ten men. So, one season, whether the show was a lousy show I don’t recall, but they weren’t doing the business. So, Molly Picon was a partner, and the conductor, Rumshinsky, was a partner, and I think that the guy…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: David Jacobs?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …Leon, Leon…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Lebrocht.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Leon Fuchs?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: No. Leon…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Lebrocht. Leon Lebrocht?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: No, the guy that wrote the song Papirosn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, oh.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5590.0,5709.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SEROTA: Herman Yablokoff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yablokoff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yablokoff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Herman Yablokoff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Herman Yablokoff. That, they were the three partners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That’s all big names. Pretty big people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: So they went to Rummy, they went to Rummy, and they said, “Rummy, look. You know, things are tough. We have to cut down, you know, expenses, so we can run.” So he goes up. The first place they went up, they went up to the stagehands. They used to use three stagehands. So they asked them, can they please cut down to two stagehands? So, the stagehands realized that they weren’t doing business, so they cut out one stagehand. From there, they went to the box office, they cut one box office person out. Finally, it comes to the music. So, it came to the music, they, they, Rumshinsky was going to represent the theater in our union. So, he comes up before the executive board in the union, and he says, “Look,” he says, “we’re having a lot of problems in the theater, money-wise. And if we don’t cut down expenses, we may have to close the theater.” So he says, “So we went to the stagehands union, they cut out; electricians union, they cut out; and so on and so forth,” he says. “And now, I’m coming up here on the benefit, because of the musicians. We got to cut down on the musicians.” He says, “I’ve got ten, ten musicians,” he said. “So I’m telling you right now, if they ask you, you tell them you cannot cut down on the musicians.” That was the kind of guy Rumshinsky was. Ten musicians, it’s got to be ten. And that’s how they played.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Well, he wrote his arrangements that way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He wrote his arrangements, and that’s how he played. He says, “It won’t sound good, and I refuse to cut it.” Cut someplace else.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5709.0,5816.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So this is how, how he was. You ask how they cut down, or how they, how musicians played…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, the musicians had a good rabbi, that’s all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They had, they had, they had orchestras. I remember, what’s-her-name who used to play in East New York on, in East New York, there was the theater. The Rolland Theater. Olshanetsky used to play there. In the Rolland Theater. Now, he used to work with nine men. He worked with nine men. He cut down a man. The Hopkinson Theater, I think they worked with five or six men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: P.S. — they got down to four men, finally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah. Well, and finally, they couldn’t make it. The musicians’ wages were going up, and things were getting worse. Whatever the reason, that’s how it was. But Rummy was steadfast. He held onto his. And he did, he did things that nobody else could do. Musically.  He was able to take — and you say to him, “I need…”. Well, they were doing a show on Broadway called Borscht Capades. And in doing the show, the producer says, “Listen. We need a, a ballet sequence in such-and-such spot in the show.” So he took paper, without a score, and he wrote a whole ballet sequence. He was that fine a musician. A whole ballet sequence, without a score. He just wrote the parts. He wrote the parts with the harmonies, with everything, and everybody’s part.  That’s how fine a musician. In the afternoon, in the morning, is when they decided. In the evening, the performance, it was all done. So, it, so they had some talented people. That’s why, when they use the term “klezmer,” these were the kind of people that felt highly indignant, using the terminology to compare them to musicians, not the, the word “musician” would be an insult. To them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5816.0,5945.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So this is what brings out the story, when we said in the beginning, if you called somebody a “klezmer,” it was an insulting remark.  Now, all of a sudden, the same people — “I love klezmer music.” This is what it amounts to. So it’s, people, I, I use the expression der oilem iz a goilem, I don’t mean it to be insulting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The masses are the asses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They don’t understand. To a musician, this, the things they say musically, they don’t understand.  It’s stylish to say “klezmer music,” ‘cause it’s a big thing. We, we’re making a lot of money out of it. If it wasn’t for klezmer, this thing with klezmer concerts, we wouldn’t be, we’d all be retired.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Except we came down to retire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We came down to Florida to semi-retire. I came down — in the beginning, when I came down in the beginning, in the 19, 1971, ’72 — I don’t remember now — I came to Florida. I was supposed to sort of, like semi, semi-retire. I’d do a job here and there. So, I went into the Jewish theater. Before I knew it, I was the busiest retired trumpet player in South Florida. So this is what it amounted to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: What kind of Jewish theater was there in South Florida?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: There was a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Vaudeville.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: A variety, a vaudeville.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: A variety theater. A vaudeville variety.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This was what? Sixteen years ago?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah, it was a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Twenty years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Twenty years?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It was in the middle, the middle of the block.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Twenty-six years ago. 25 years ago. There was a vaudeville theater. In fact, there was, were three of them. There was the, there was, two of them were on Lincoln Mall — Lincoln Road, at that time. And there was another one on Washington Avenue, down east.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Around the corner, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: About Fifth Street, or someplace. I forgot the, I forgot the name of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Some of them showed a movie and a, and a show.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=5945.0,6063.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"WILLIAM: Well, they did in all of them. They showed a movie and a five-act vaudeville show. This is what they did. And they charged a quarter. Then they raised it. Fifty cents in the afternoon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. Fifty cents. They almost had a revolution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And 75 cents at night.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And this was, you say vaudeville — you mean Jewish vaudeville?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Of course. Yiddish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yiddish, Yiddish vaudeville?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah, it was all kinds of vaudeville. But they always had Jewish acts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yiddish language, mostly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Or a mix?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: No, no. They had…\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It depends, it depends. Dancing, you don’t have to be anything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No. But I mean…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: But they always had a Jewish act. Or somebody that did Jewish things, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Jewish-oriented.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …or Jewish-connotated things. There was always Jewish things, because it was only Jewish people that came.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now, I want to move to something else we just briefly touched on during the break, which is cantorial music, and synagogue music, hazzanim. Now, you were telling me that, do I understand that one or both of you, at one time, conducted any choirs for…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Sure, I conducted choirs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Max conducted them, and I did, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tell us all about that. That’s a different world altogether.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Well, the choirs I conducted, I never rehearsed.  ‘Cause I wouldn’t take it. First of all, they wouldn’t pay enough. That means I got to spend eight, ten rehearsals with them, and you know, you got…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Maybe more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No, I mean, we used professionals, we used singers that can read.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You would know one of them. Do you remember Rozzie Pincus?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Rozzie Pincus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Or him. Rozzie Pincus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yes. He just passed away. They, well, anyway…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They used to rehearse one big choir. Thirty people, then they would break it up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So you…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: So he would, so he would tell me, I says, I says, well — I used to pick my singers, right? ‘Cause I didn’t want to just take anybody. Well, my choirs are, my, the choirs that I conducted were better than the cantor’s own choir. And the cantor that used to put it together was Jonah Binder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: So Jonah Binder…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6063.0,6175.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MAX: So I’d, I’d come in, a rehearsal before the final, like a dress rehearsal, I’d call it. I’d come in, I’d conduct, make my corrections. Now I’m ready to do — that’s the way I conducted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where? Where did you conduct choirs like that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Well, I was out at the Young’s Gap for several years. I was at the Raleigh for a couple of years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: These are Catskill Mountain hotels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: The Breakers, you mentioned?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That used to run Pesach…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Huh?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: The Breakers in Atlantic City?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The Breakers in, in Atlantic City, with Laibele Waldman for four years. That was the best. He had, he had, what a group he had. I, I told him, I says, “Lou, if you’re going to have somebody,” I says, “I want a group.” He says, “The only ones that can’t sing from music is the kids.” I says, “Well, then, you take them and you rehearse them.” I says, “’Cause I’m not going to rehearse them.” And that’s the way. But then, I came down here, and I says…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But this is a long time ago, right?  This was…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Before, before I came to Florida. I’m down here now 24, 24, 24, 25 years. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What about, I mean, did you ever, for people like Oscar Julius?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, but we were friends with him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No. We used to play for him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We used to play for Oscar Julius.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Russels used to sing for Oscar.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I’ve got to tell you a story. Wait a minute.  This is…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I knew him very well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I’ve got to tell you a story about the big guy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Sterner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Sterner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sam Sterner? Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We did a concert one time. It was supposed to be opera singers and things like that. Do you remember that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Who the heck knows?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Opera singers. So, well, that’s who…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I know he was a Gin Rummy player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: So we go out and we get the best. We got, we got a real fine — we got them from the Metropolitan Opera, we got some of the guys, because they weren’t working.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6175.0,6285.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So we got some of the guys from there, we got from the radio station. We had a terrific group. Soon as we get on the stage, he’s going to rehearse us. So, instead of going on an upbeat, he comes down.  Everything was a downbeat, for him. So, so, we looked at, the musicians, you know, they played for the best, the, the greatest conductors in the world. They look at him like that. So he comes down again. So we started at the second note. Instead, instead of the first — there is no upbeat. He says, “Why don’t you play the upbeat? The beat isn’t…”. So, one, the horn player gets up and he says, “Why don’t you conduct it, and we’ll play it?” And he says, “You’re going down this way, you should go up this way, like that.” And he, and he, he prided himself, and he says, “When I conduct,” he says, “I conduct with an iron arm.” I says, “That’s what it is.” An iron arm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He was not a very good musician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He was a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: There was a woman that he had a relationship, for many years, he finally married her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Rose. Rose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Who was a, she was a conservatory writer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: She was in the — sure. He went to school, he went to school with him at NYU.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: His wife Rose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And she used to write and rehearse the choirs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: She was a good musician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: She put it together. Then, he would come in like a big knocher, and do the job. But without her, it wouldn’t have gone around the corner. He was not really a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: She, she used to do the rehearsing with the choir.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He had no musical ability.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And he had, and he was a, he was a mean guy, too.  I don’t care if it goes on…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He was not a nice man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I don’t care if they, they see it on the television, or what. He was a mean guy. One time, he slapped a kid there. I said to him, “You do that,” I says, I says, “If you did that to me,” I says, “you, you wouldn’t get up off the floor.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6285.0,6392.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I said, “Where do you get off to, to hit somebody, to take someone else’s child and slap them around like that?” It’s, this is the kind of a guy. He was a bully. A bully.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He was a bully. Look what he did to Rose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He’s not alive, though, anymore, is he?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He’s still alive?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, he’s still alive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: But he did, and he was a bully, but what he did to Rose. You know, the last name of Rose? Rose Katz, her name was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: His wife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Rose Katz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Rose Katz. He finally married her, after 30 years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Excellent musician. Excellent musician. Good pianist. A good pianist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Had a degree, in music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: A good singer. Everything that she did was good.  He made her a drunk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And she had a hard life with him. She finally became an alcoholic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: She became an alcoholic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Out of just, you know, frustration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Out of this…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Frustrations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Out of this guy. She finally became an alcoholic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But that’s all the inside stories that were went on with all the fighting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You’re telling stories that people don’t even know. That’s, this is part of, it’s going to be part of the Archive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But there were some…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Don’t even print it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They don’t belong in there, believe me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No. But there were some, some were good. Like Julius, did you ever, Oscar Julius was a good…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Oh, Julius, many times. A very nice man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Oscar Julius was a talented man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Very nice man. Very nice man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Now, you’re talking…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Now, now, you’re talking talent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: …talent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did you conduct him in synagogue, too?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He had very little hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah, but not, not for, not Oscar Julius.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He used to do it like this. Did you ever see him conduct?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How did you, tell me about your…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: This way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I conducted for Jackie, Jackie Goldstein.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: One finger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. That’s right. For who?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: For Jackie Goldstein. I conducted for…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, that’s — you’re right, okay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: DuBow, I conducted, I conducted for Lou Mason, I conducted. A couple of more stuff, like Ellstein already. In fact, I was in The Breakers after he got thrown out, because…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …I wound up on The Breakers. I forgot who the cantor was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That was one year before Walden came in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Chaim Shapiro?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Huh?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Did you work with Chaim Shapiro?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Chaim Shapiro, Chaim Shapiro.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah. So this, these are the guys that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He started off with Yallas(?).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: By the time we got through with Yallas,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6392.0,6507.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"he couldn’t sing after that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …and then, Jackie’s wife, Harriet, my daughter, she conducted a choir, too. And she wasn’t a musician. But she knew the nusaḥ, she knew the, the nuances that were necessary. And she conducted, and she did an excellent job.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How about the records, and then we’ll lead up to the film. You’ve got now, for example, a — is it a video, actually, isn’t it? The film and the video both.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, the video is a video which was made from a 35-milimeter movie. It wasn’t a video movie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tell me…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That was a full-length movie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This is called…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And it’s a documentary, but it’s full-length.  It’s 87 minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And what’s it called?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: A Kitsl in Harts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: A Tickle in the Heart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Tickle in the Heart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And how was this…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, that’s a very involved situation. It started out with a guy named Rubin, who’s a very, very talented clarinet player.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Joel Rubin. Joel Rubin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, I know Joel Rubin. He lives in Berlin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yeah, right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He’s a very talented clarinet, yeah. His family’s from California.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And he was an accountant, or his father was an accountant or something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right, right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No, he, he’s, in England now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: His wife…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He’s in England just getting his master’s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: His wife…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He lives in Germany.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: His wife wrote a script. She’s a writer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. She’s not Jewish, Rosemary?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No. German girl.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: She’s German.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: She wrote a, she used to do a little writing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Rita.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Rita.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: She wrote a script. And it was called The Singing Clarinets. And this was very much what you’re doing. The only difference was, it was also documentary, about all the Jewish clarinet players that are here — meaning New York. ‘Cause no place else in the United States had any amount — maybe a Mickey Katz in California, who wasn’t really a, a Jewish clarinet player. But they were in New York, and they were going to write about all of these guys, and incorporate them into one movie. So they went to everybody. They spent three, four days with us, they were in New York","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6507.0,6620.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"they were every place they could find these guys. And they took down all the interview material. Now, they come to make the film, and the, what’s-her-name, Rubin and his wife did all the, all the legwork. Now, the producers and director come in. And they want to see these guys and what they’ve got. They looked it over, they looked at it, and they studied it. They interviewed. They interviewed. They went to everybody. They got finished, they says, “You know something? We don’t need 13, 13 clarinet players.” Whatever it was. “Let’s take these three guys. There’s a storyline here.” It goes back from Pinsk, where my father lived. Why he came to the United States, how he came, and how we wound up in the music business, and how our careers developed to the stage where we are today. And that’s what wound up, A Kitsl in Harts, which is from a particular piece of music my brother sang about my, my, my grandfather in an opera. He went to see it, and he says, “How’d you like it?” “I loved it, but for me, as a Jew, I would like something epis kipach a kitsl in hart.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: A bu-bu-boi, a bu-bu-boi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: A tickle in the heart. And that became the title of the picture, and the 13 or 12 clarinet players or whatever it was, meant nothing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They’re still in it, they took them out after.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: No, we only did one scene with them. In, in Asbury Park, New York.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: That scene cost them a fortune.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Lakewood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: There was a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: In Lakewood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: In Lakewood. Where they rented a hotel. They had, they brought their wives and themselves. We had a lovely dinner that evening, honoring us. And they were all in this — not all, but quite a few of them — were in this scene, playing, the clarinet and the trumpets and the keyboards and the drums.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6620.0,6719.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And that’s, that was the only thing left from that Singing Clarinets. The movie won a similar award that was given to Schindler’s List. We were flown over to Munich, and we played onstage, a revolving stage, and they, we played after he won the award, and we played a couple of numbers. And this has created a market for Epstein Brothers, Klezmer Legends. That’s how I titled it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Which is the, that’s the CD?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, that’s the CD.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s the CD.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: That’s the movie, yeah, CD.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And the CD…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The CD has everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …is things from, from years ago on there — am I correct?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We got 45 years of music on there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Years ago, to today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Taken from other recordings?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: All kinds of things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: All kinds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: ‘Cause you couldn’t make, I couldn’t make one record today. It would cost me about $50,000. To do all that material.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I got stuff…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: It’s two hours. Two hours and ten minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: Two CDs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It’s a double CD set.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: It’s two. In a package.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And it’s got every kind of venue you can think of that we would play.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You’ve heard it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEROTA: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You should hear it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I mean, it was only certain things we could play.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I’m sorry I didn’t bring any with me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We played theater, we played weddings, we played concerts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: You want to know something?\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And we played in shuls. All the different venues. So it’s on there, and it’s, it’s not quite in balance the way I’d like it. The studio stuff is okay.  The other stuff is — not sound-wise — but, but it’s interesting, because it’s, it’s what you can’t anywhere else. If you’re really interested, those two CDs has got everything on it. I mean, everything you could imagine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They’ve got enough material, they took the movies, they got enough material to make two more albums.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Not albums. You mean, movies; not albums.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Movies. Out of what they got. They got so much material.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. It died on the cutting room floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Believe me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And they got some very, very good takes there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6719.0,6830.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I don’t know why they didn’t put it, but that’s with, they got enough material that they could make a couple of more albums.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But that really is the key to what’s going on today. That movie opened up every door you can imagine. We are, we are internationally recognized.  Because I know, from my E-mail. See, on my CDs I got all our addresses — E-mail, fax.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I told him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Addresses — I got three E-mails.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Japan. Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: South Africa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: South Africa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Let me ask you this. We only have a few more minutes to go. What are, what, if anything, would you like to make in the way of a statement, or that you’re concerned about?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: A statement?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What are you concerned about in the future? I mean, 50 years from today, is there going to be this kind of music in America?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, they say wives outlive men. Why don’t you ask my wife of 50 years?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, a hundred years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Fifty years. Let me tell you. You see, in American music, we were talking about rock and roll?  When I saw rock and roll — I’m going back quite a few years. And I was working with this jazz band. And I played at Princeton. We had a 15-piece band. He was on that date. I’ll never forget it. Nice, big band, beautiful arrangements. Very expensive arrangements. We’re playing in a gymnasium, and there’s maybe 250 people or 300 people in a place that holds 4,000. I can’t find the rest of the customers, the students.  It was their, you know, graduation. And we looked up and there was a balcony, closed in by windows. Which was the library.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Everybody was getting…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: In the library was a little four-piece band going yat-ta-ta-ta, yat-ta-ta-ta, playing old-fashioned rock and roll, R\u0026B stuff. And all the kids were up there dancing. Now, rock was in already. But when they went and they danced to this four-piece band with this beautiful 15-piece orchestra down there playing gorgeous music — they had great players in the band — I said to the guys, “You know something? You’d better crank up and learn this stuff, because it is here.” And everybody says, “It won’t last.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6830.0,6947.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Listen to it.” I said, “Don’t tell me it won’t last.” Thirty years later, when they’re out of work, they were still saying it won’t last. And this is a hundred years, it’s going to be. Because, if you listen to rock, through its developmental stages, you know, how it goes and all. Well, that’s the same thing where we are now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: No. The only ones…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We’re the same thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But who’s going to play it? Are there younger…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The only ones who were able to play it at that time were the rock players. Like in the shows, they had shows, they had rock music in the shows. The musicians that they had…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Not true, Maxie. ‘Cause all the records, before the bands became self-contained…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, but they didn’t play it like…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Before they became self-contained, they were just singers — doo-wop, doo-wop groups, they called them. And they had studio back-up bands. Then, like the Beatles came along. Four guys, they did it all themselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: We’re talking about the shows. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: What about the shows?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Legitimate shows. They had the guys come… The guys that were there originally couldn't cut the stuff. They could actually play? But that didn't sound like fun. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Maxie, Maxie. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They played it, but they didn’t sound like one. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: If you don't write a show like this guy Weber today, musical comedy type, they won’t put, put money behind it. He changed the whole Broadway show. Musical comedy is not musical comedy — it’s operetta. Everything changes, in that sense. You want to know, will young people play our music?  I’ll tell you something. They’re not going to play it as popular dance music. It’s going to be a, a, a, some kind of concert…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …venue only. Based on the fact that they don’t use that music when you go to a function to dance. We place dance music. Even the Yiddish sing-along songs that were written on these Yiddish shows, they sang them. We used to put, we, you hear it on the — we hear the German people la-la-laing with us. And the Yiddish people, of course, sing it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=6947.0,7055.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Well, let me ask you this. Are there young people today, of a generation or two younger than you, or even very young people, who have formed orchestras, who you have some confidence will carry the tradition forward?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Not in that sense. Not traditionally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I mean, there are a lot of good musicians around.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We know the groups.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And there are some groups around. Are any of them…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We see them. We see them and hear them. When I do a concert, when we go to Europe, “Oh, they were here last week, they’re coming here next week.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: They come, they go. When they go to Europe, these same guys that — I’m talking of the really good groups. They go to Europe, “Give us Epstein Brothers.”  Epstein Brothers — that’s all they want. Epstein Brothers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, because they didn’t make the movie.  Maxie, the movie, the movie…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It’s not a question of the movie. It’s the question of the Brothers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It is the movie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Yes, it is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, on the other hand, one of them is…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Without the movie, you would be sitting in a toilet someplace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, but one of those groups is in a very, also a very famous…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: With, with Itzhak Perlman?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …yeah. And yet…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: If you have Itzhak Perlman, the group is just so much wallpaper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Itzhak was what, the guy. They watched him to see him imitating, imitating. He didn’t play it, they didn’t play it, and if you’re a bit of a connoisseur or a buff, and know anything at all about that type of Jewish music, you realize that none of them played it.  They play notes. I happen to very happy that they did it. Because they can only buy them for one show. They want another band, they’ve got to buy me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Of course. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And the same thing with us. If we do a show, then they’ve got to buy another one…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So who…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …they’ve got to buy one of them, so they’re happy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …who will play the kind of music you’re talking about a hundred years from today?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Nobody.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Seventy-five, fifty years from today?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: The same cockamamie musicians…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’ll stop?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …that are playing it today, will play it a hundred years from now.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=7055.0,7156.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"JULIUS: You ever hear, do you like Dixieland music?  You like traditional Dixieland, you like Chicago-style…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …or New Orleans style? You know, there are variations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, I certainly do. That’s what I like.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: You see certain clubs, you walk in, there’s a band playing. Dixieland. You’ve got to be a buff.  You’ve got to like that. How big is that field? How much money can you play and — make playing that music?  Unless you are the best at it. How many recordings do they do? You know, the recording industry really is the key to all of this. How much Yiddish music will be recorded? What Jewish show are they going to open up on Second Avenue and sing Yiddish? Tell me where, tell me when, tell me how. And then I’ll tell you how long it’ll take for them to catch up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So, but we don’t…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It can’t be. We are living in a, a golden age…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But at the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …of the Renaissance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: A golden age of the Renaissance. And when that’s over?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: It’s too expensive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It’s not expensive. How can you take a guy who’s a third-generation American? Today, nobody lives where their parents live. You get on a plane. Where’s my son? One’s in California, and one’s in Chicago, one’s in Miami. You don’t see them, you don’t hear them. His kid goes to a school, he learns something different. My kids go to yeshiva. You know, day school. No — Jewish Center. It’s not even a yeshiva.  Jewish Center. My children, they, they went, they studied, they, they go on Saturday for services, they belong, and for the holidays they go. I’m very happy that they maintain some semblance of religion. It’ll keep them Jewish, and the kids will be Jewish. So at least something is going on Yiddishkeit. But I don’t see any hope for this, beyond the novelty of what it is. When you see a Black guy come in with a Black trombone player and a Black clarinet player, and an Irishman and a Frenchman and an Italian and two Jews, playing this music, that is a novelty.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=7156.0,7256.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s interesting. The Gojim, with that band — you, you know about it. We saw it, and I’ll never forget, I said to him, “Why do they call themselves The Gojim?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, “Because they’re not Jewish.” And we were laughing. We were laughing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And also because — no, commercially…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We laughed, when we heard that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah. Do you remember?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s right. And it provokes, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: I will never forget it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And they were good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It was fun. It was fun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And they were good. They played very well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: What they played, they played, considering that their backgrounds…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: They played it better than a lot of the klezmer bands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: …their background is not Yiddish, and yet, they, they managed to get it so it has a semblance, a form of what Yiddish music is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But novelty wears off, so…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, that’s it. So you have to, it’s like rock and roll. You’ve still got a lot to go, before that dies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The great Dave Tarras…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Thirty-five, 35, 40 years ago, they said rock and roll wouldn’t last.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: The great Dave Tarras. You know what he says to me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: (INAUDIBLE).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He says — he was passing by a store one time. And he heard the records play…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: On Broadway, they have a lot of record stores.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: One of the records that we made. And he says, he says, he sees me, and “Max! I just heard you play a record.” He says, “It’s beautiful,” he says. And he says, “I play,” he says, “I know I play good.” And he says, “But I don’t have what you have.” He says, “You, you’re an interpreter. I interpret music.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We don’t have people like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: I have, I, I can tell you, I take a look at a piece of music, I feel there’s a story behind it. And I can almost tell you the story that’s behind that piece of music. By seeing the different notes that are there. He says, “If I could play like you, put the, with the warmth,” and he says, “I’d be the greatest in the world.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Well, he was pretty damned near, anyway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: You know, he was. As far as I’m concerned…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Believe it — Joel Rubin imitates him, and plays it better. Music, you know — sound-wise.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=7256.0,7363.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"On a C clarinet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Joel Rubin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And he plays, and he plays, if — you think Naftule’s playing, you think, you think Naftule Brandwein is playing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You mean Joel Rubins?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: He’s got them down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He’s got them down to a — pat, you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And he’s got Dave Tarras down pat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: And he’s got Dave Tarras down, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You gentlemen…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He plays every — note for note, you’d swear that it’s Dave Tarras playing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: But that’s what that is — it’s notes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You gentlemen are obviously a legend in American Jewish…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: In our own minds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: …in your own minds, in your own times, in our times, and our minds. But, no. Clearly, you’re a legend, and a continuing legend, in American Jewish culture, in American Jewish life. It’s certainly…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Well, that’s why they’re doing this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: In American Jewish music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: We left a little mark. We left a little mark.  The musicians in New York…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: We left, we, you know, we did this in Florida, we did this in Florida. And we were presented…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But you, but you have made a tremendous impact on…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: The musicians in New York, we all know each other. And they all know us, and we have a lot of respect for them as people. And we use the few clarinet players left to play — ‘cause Max isn’t playing much anymore. So we use them. And they have interpreted his playing and Dave’s playing — not Naftule so much. I don’t think they were into it.  They didn’t know the nuances of his stuff. He was pretty way out on his own limb. But Dave and Maxie.  And they play, and that’s all that’s left. The young clarinet players play, they play the melody.  They play it at tempos which really were never written to be played. The argument is in concert, you can do anything. My argument is in concerts, if it’s Beethoven, if you think an adagio should be an allegro, be my guest. But I don’t understand that.  And that’s the way it’s going to be, in my mind. And as far as — like we all say, there’s nobody that we have heard.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=7363.0,7470.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368/transcript/34910/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We’ve got a young trombone player, they told us, who played like the Sammy Kutcher who we used to work with, who was one in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: One in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: One in the world. You can’t say, how could that be?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: One.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: I’ve never heard one. No one else has.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: Years ago, there were a few…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: And a young guy imitating…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …that played.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: Yeah, but not like Sammy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: But not like Sammy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: But not like him. Not like Sammy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: First of all, he started out as a drummer. So he had a great concept of time. And he did bump-da-bump…. He played fills, he played counterpoints. He knew where to put what.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: He knew where to put it in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They don’t. They only imitate that ba-ba-ba-ba.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: And the only other guy…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: They don’t know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: …the only other guy that did that was my brother Chizzick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMAX: On the saxophone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Yeah, well, he had the same, the same background.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He had the same concept like Sammy Kutcher.  You heard of the Kutcher family?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, of course. Of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: He had the same concept.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Gentlemen, it’s, we’re going to have to wrap this one up. But it’s been a real, real pleasure and an honor to have you all together…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Hope you got enough on us to make a story out of it. I don’t know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: It’s not, it’s ten hours, you wouldn’t get it all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJULIUS: Because we’d have to talk about every job that there was some comedy and some humor and something that happened that we each one felt different about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Next time. In the meantime, I thank you for coming…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWILLIAM: If you get another, if you ever get another session like this, remind me, and I’ll tell you a story about a Gypsy funeral.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/30359/file/98368#t=7470.0,7558.76267"}]}]}]}