“Ikh hob gevolt a meylekh zan” Performed by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman

Ikh hob gevolt a meylekh zan / I wanted to be king
Sung by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman
Recorded in Bronx, NY by Leybl Kahn 1954

Commentary by Itzik Gottesman

This is our 153 posting on the Yiddish Song of the Week blog. Upon reflection, it has given us great satisfaction to see the effects of the blog. Songs from YSW have been recorded; choral leaders have introduced these songs to their groups; and in concerts and around dining room tables many singers around the world perform songs learned from YSW. It has also inspired some to look for Yiddish song recordings in their own families and contribute.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Pete Rushefsky, Executive Director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York who is the webmaster of the blog and has done an outstanding job.

After each post we receive some comments about the translations, misspellings and corrections, additional information on the songs and we appreciate all of them. We do not have the time or staff to sit down and change the original posts, but will some day we hope. Therefore it is important for the readers of the blog to also read the comments. Now onto this week’s post…

Lifshe Schaechter-Widman (LSW) rarely sings dance tunes such as this in 2/4 time. Perhaps this is based on a sher (square dance) from her hometown of Zvinyetshke, Bukovina? Versions of the lyrics, verses and refrain, are better known with a different, slower melody. For example, Feygl Sultan sings it and calls it Hob ikh mir a shpan on Ruth Rubin’s recording Jewish Life: The Old Country. Menachem Kipnis includes this song with the slower melody in his collection of 60 folksongs and calls it Zol ikh vern a rov. Others call it A bal-agole lid or Der bal-agole (The Coachman). That version has been recorded many times by cantors in particular.

Lifshe with her second husband Isaac Widman, 1950s NY

Though LSW only sings two verses, a creative singer could take lyrics from these other recordings and printings to extend the song. The song begs for contemporary lyrics – “ikh hob gevolt a president zayn….” etc. In almost all the other versions the rhyme with “vilt zikh” is “shilt zikh” (my wife is always cursing) which seems right.

TRANSLITERATION
Ikh hob gevolt a meylekh zan,
hob ikh nisht keyn malke.
Kh’o gevolt a hitsl zan,
hob ekh nisht keyn palke.

Kh’o gevolt a melamed zan,
ken ekh nisht keyn Toyre.
Kh’o gevolt a soykher zan,
hob ekh nisht keyn skhoyre.

Refrain:
In in leybn vilt zekh
un mayn vayb krigt zekh.
Zey ikh mir a shteyn,
zets ekh zekh in veyn.

TRANSLATION
I wanted to be king
but I have no queen.
I wanted to be a dogcatcher,
but I have no club.

I wanted to be a melamed [teacher of children]
but I don’t know any Torah.
I wanted to be a merchant
but I have no merchandise.

Refrain:
l want to enjoy life
but my wife argues.
So I see a rock
and I sit myself down.

“Mayn tayer mimele” Performed by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman

Mayn tayer mimele / My Dear Auntie
Sung by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman [LSW], recorded by Leybl Kahn, NYC 1954.

Commentary by Itzik Gottesman

This is a timely song for Elul (beginning August 11-12) since it is mentioned in the first line. Elul leads up to the high holidays and is a serious time of reflection. Mimele (Auntie), it is implied, takes advantage of this charity giving time to rake in some charity for herself.

After the recording of the song, in the brief dialogue with the interviewer Kahn, LSW says she heard it about 50 years ago (around the turn of the 20th century) from older women – her mother or her aunts. She adds that it is not a children’s song and not a theater song. “In our town we hadn’t yet heard about the theater.”

Lifshe Schaechter-Widman’s shtetl Zvinyetshke in the Bukovina

The Galician songwriter Nokhem Sternheim (1879 – 1942) wrote a popular song Mayn tayere Malkele which was recorded by Miriam Kressyn, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Salomon Klezmorim, Jane Peppler and Noel Akchote. The story behind the Sternheim song is told in Norman Salsitz’s memoirs Three Homelands: Memoirs of Jewish Life in Poland, Israel and America.

The melody also is similar to Dos kishinever shtikele made famous by Moyshe Oysher and recorded by others. The first part of the melody was also played by klezmorim. Dave Tarras includes it in his medley called Kishinev on the CD Dave Tarras: Master of the Jewish Clarinet produced by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance.

But in terms of folksong, a version of the Tayer mimele entitled Tayer Yankele with a similar melody and storyline (Yankl is a thief) appears in Menachem Kipnis’ collection 70 folkslider, Warsaw, 1920. A scan of that is attached; evidence that Sternheim based his song on the earlier folksong.

TRANSLITERATION:

Ver fleyg geyn rosh-khoydesh Elul mit di pishkes?
Mayn tayer mimele.
Ver fleyg bam katsev ganvenen di kishkes?
Mayn tayer mimele.

Eyn mul hot zi der tate gekhapt.
Mayn tayer Mimele.
Oy hot er geshlugn, oy hot er geklapt!
Mayn tayer Mimele.

TRANSLATION:

Who used to go around the first day of Elul with a charity box (pushke)?
My dear auntie.
Who used to steal the cow’s intestines from the butcher?
My dear auntie.

Once her father caught her.
My dear auntie.
Oy did he beat her, oy did he hit her.
My dear auntie.


Tayer Yankele in Menachem Kipnis’ collection 70 folkslider, Warsaw, 1920:

“Avreymele melamed” Performed by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman

Commentary by Itzik Gottesman.

The amusing children’s song Avreymele melamed (Little Abraham, the Jewish Elementary School Teacher) tells the story of the shlimazl (bearer of poor luck) of the shtetl. This week’s posting features a performance of Avreymele by Lifshe Schaechter Widman in the Bronx in 1954 (recording by Leybl Kahn):

The song became popular thanks to numerous cantors who included it into their repertory. The transformation from LSW’s folksong to the cantorial version is notable. LSW’s verses rhyme and have a distinct melody throughout. She playfully sings “shirem hashirem” instead of “shir hashirem”, turning the “Song of Songs” into the “Umbrella of Umbrellas.”

The much longer cantorial versions feature a recitative style with no rhyming verses. For an example of the cantorial version, see this video featuring the Cantor Simon Spiro, complete with chorus and orchestra, arranged by Maurice Goldman and produced by the Milken Archive:

Many Yiddish folksongs entered the cantorial repertoire thanks to Menachem Kipnis’ successful Yiddish songbooks and performances throughout Poland between the world wars. Kipnis (1878 – 1942)  was a singer, cantor, folklorist, journalist and photographer. It is clear that his version, which has many more verses than LSW’s, was the basis for the cantorial versions. Attached at the end of this post are scans of Kipnis’ “Avremele Melamed”. The version of the song in A. Z. Idelsohn’s Thesaurus of Oriental Hebrew Melodies (Vol. 9)  is also taken from Kipnis’ collection.

Cantor David Kossovitsky, Oberkantor Boas Bischofwerder, Mike Burstyn (in Hebrew) and Gojim (Austria) among other cantors and singers have had a lot of fun with this song. Though cantors have taken the song far from its folksong roots, the playful call-and-response – implied in LSW’s and heard in Spiro’s version –  was not lost along the way.

When the song was translated into Hebrew and performed in the Israeli musical איש חסיד היה [Ish khasid haya] by Dan Almagor (1968) it attained a new and wide audience.

Here is a recent performance of the song in the Israeli musical:

The nature of the song almost invites singers to create new verses about a shlimazl. One of my favorites is performed by the Columbia University Jewish vocal group Pizmon, who sing in Yiddish but add a verse in English at the end:

And who do you think it was
who came late to shul
and his cell phone went ringing
right in the middle of the rebbe’s dvar toyre?

Thanks this week to David Braun for help with the transcription. 

Transliteration / Translation:

Spoken by LSW: Dus is a kinderlidl: Avreymele melamed.

Avreymele melamed
Avreymele melamed.
Oy! Ze’ mir gegangen zikh budn –
Avreymele melamed.
Gehat hob ikh a shudn.
Avreymele melamed.
Oy! Tsulib dem shirem-hashirem,
Avreymele melamed,
makhn di yidn pirem.
Avreymele melamed.
Oy! Avreymele melamed.
Bist Avreymele!

Spoken by LSW: This is a children’s song: Avreymele melamed [Avreymele the Elementary Schoolteacher]

Avreymele melamed.
Oy! We went bathing
Avreymele melamed,
and suffered a loss –
Avreymele melamed.
Oy! Because of the “umbrella of umbrellas”,
Avreymele melamed,
Jews celebrate Purim,
Avremele melamed.
Oy! Avreymele melamed.
You’re indeed Avreymele.

From Kipnis, Akhtsik folks-lider (Warsaw, 1925):

“Gabe! Vos vil der rebbe?” Performed by Dora Libson

Notes by Itzik Gottesman

Thanks to Bob Freedman, we were able to contact Dora Libson‘s son Aaron Libson in Philadelphia, and he told us the following about singer Dora Libson.

Dora Libson was born in the village of Sasovo, in the Western Ukraine, officially in 1908, but he believes 1906 or 1907. She died in Philadelphia in 1985. Her father departed for America in 1913 and they were supposed to follow a year later, but the first World War broke out, and they only came to the US in 1924, after a year in Cuba. During those years they also lived in Mekarev (Yiddish name) and Kiev (the USSR).  In Kiev at the Evreiski Bazaar (Jewish market), Dora heard many street singers and learned a number of songs and “kupletn” in a number of languages.  Much of her repertoire is from her home in Sasovo. 

In Philadelphia she joined several choirs including the Freiheit Gesang Verein in the 1930s. When that choir was rejuvenated in the 1960s in Philadelphia her son Aaron also participated along with her. The family once had a recording of Dora singing songs in a number of languages – Russian, Spanish, Yiddish – but it was lost. The recording of Gabe! Vos vil der gabe? was recorded by Bob Freedman in the 1970s.

Gabe! Vos vil der rebbe? (Gabe! What Does the Rebbe Want?) is one of those Yiddish songs that, it seems, was very popular but was almost never recorded. I could only find a version on the field recordings done by Joel Engel in the 1920s produced recently by the Vernadsky Library in Kiev.  

Menachem Kipnis‘s collection 80 folkslider, Warsaw, n.d. (you can find it on line at the National Yiddish Book Center‘s catalog) contains three similar songs: Lekoved dem Heylikn Bim Bom (page 63), Gabe, Vos vil der rebe? (page 65) and Lekoved dem heylikn shabes (page 67). 

Libson‘s version of the song pokes fun at the rebbe and his khasidim, but the Kipnis version of Gabe! (which is the closest to Libson‘s song) is a playful song but without the mockery. Just a change of a few words is all that‘s needed to turn a khasidic song into an anti-khasidic song.

Ethel Raim, Artistic Director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, adds this comment about Libson‘s singing:

Dora’s singing is easy going, subtle in nuance and character, and right on target in terms of traditional singing!”

Gabe!
Vos vil der rebe?
Der rebe vil me zol derlangen di fish.
Tsu vos darf men di fish?
Kedey di khsidimlekh zoln zikh zetsn tsum tish.

 REFRAIN:
Oyneg leshabes, bim-bom-bom
Taynig  leyontif, bim-bom-bom.

Gabe!
What does the rebbe want?
Der rebe wants us to give out the fish.
Why do we need the fish?
So that the Hasidim will sit down at the table.

REFRAIN:
The joy of Sabbath, bim-bom-bom
The pleasure of holiday, bim-bom-bom

Gabe!
Vos vil der rebe?
Der rebe vil, me zol derlangen di lokshn.
Tsu vos darf men di lokshn?
Keday di khsidimlekh zoln esn vi di poylishe oksn.

Gabe!
What does the rebbe want?
The rebbe wants us to give out the noodles.
Why do we need the noodles?
So that the Hasidim will eat like Polish oxen.

Gabe!
Vos vil der rebe?
Der rebe vil, me zol derlangen dem kompot.
Tsu vos darf men dem kompot?
Kedey di khsidimlkeh zoln hobn klopot. 

Gabe! 
What does the rebbe want?
The rebbe wants us to give out the fruit dessert.
Why do we need the fruit dessert?
So that the Hasidim will have something to do.