Artist Bio:
Mickey Katz (1909–1985) was a Jewish clarinetist who did not live in New York but in Los Angeles—yet he became better known to Jews and non-Jews across the country than such New York-based klezmer artists as Naftule Brandwein, Dave Tarras and Sid Beckerman. His Jewish recordings sold more than any other at that time and were listened to by many of the klezmer revivalists and their parents in the '50s and '60s, thus helping to maintain the link (however thin) between those who came of age with pre-Holocaust klezmer music and those who came of age later.
Katz was able to play his style of music into the mid-1960s when most of the other klezmer musicians had retired a decade earlier. Many said disparagingly that Katz "only" played Jewish novelty music and it was never really klezmer. Nothing could be further from the truth. His two instrumental albums, The Family Danced and Mickey Katz Plays Music for Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and Brisses, revealed the exceptional talent Katz had as a bandleader, composer, arranger and musician. In truth, his arrangements were innovative and his lyrics were jocular and acerbic. But some klezmer purists called Katz's art shund, or "trash," because he dared to make people laugh and particularly laugh at their Jewish selves through his parodies of American popular songs sung in English, Yiddish and "Yinglish."
Katz was born in Cleveland to immigrant parents. His father was from Lithuania and his mother was from Latvia. Before he even played a note on the clarinet he used to go to the Yiddish theatre with his parents. Later on, this influenced his playing and perception of what Jewish music was and what the audience wanted to hear. He began playing the clarinet when he was 11. In order to have lessons he went to an uncle's tailor shop on Saturday afternoons and played for all his customers and earned $1.50. Katz was aware of Yiddish songs as a youngster because his sister sang professionally at lodges and other Jewish organizations. And he knew klezmer music because he played it at weddings and other Jewish events as a teenager. In high school Katz began to learn classical clarinet as well as jazz on the saxophone. This versatility would serve Katz well later in his career.
Katz loved Yiddish theater but perceived that it was vanishing as the Yiddish-speaking immigrant audiences were aging and dying and their offspring were busy assimilating. So Katz decided to combine the art of scholarly rhyme and timing of the batkhn and combine it with lively klezmer music. In 1943 he joined the band led by Spike Jones in Los Angeles. With Jones, he recorded novelty records and toured for a couple of years before leaving in 1947. Encouraged by trumpeter Manny Klein, Katz went to RCA Victor and recorded Haim Afyn Range (Home on the Range) and Yiddish Square Dance, which sold 150,000 copies in less than six months. To sell 150,000 to 200,000 Jewish records was unheard of.
In 1948, he formed a new band with Hal Zeiger called Mickey Katz and His Kosher Jammers, which played for the Yiddish musical revue show Katz created, Borscht Capades. Katz's son, the famous actor Joel Grey, got his start in showbiz by touring with the show when he was 16. From 1947 to 1957, when most of his recordings were released, Katz's work became some of the most popular Jewish music in stores and on radio. At the same time there were Jews who did not find Katz's kind of Yiddish humor funny. It was strutting his Jewishness for everyone to see, in all its finery and warts. American Jews in the 1940s through the '50s rarely proudly announced their Jewishness in public. Even a few radio shows refused play his music. Katz was well aware he was causing many in the Jewish mainstream to squirm.
Yet when the lights in the Yiddish theatres were barely visible, Katz found a new audience and drew big crowds through the 1960's. Katz played in Carnegie Hall twice and traveled to England, Australia and South Africa for concerts selling thousands of his records abroad – something that other klezmer musician was doing at that time. —Yale Strom
