Naftule Brandwein - King of the Klezmer Clarinet

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Music reviews of King of the Klezmer Clarinet

Music Review: On fire
Rating: 5 Stars

That's sad, because this rogue clarinetist known in the 1920s, 30s and 40s for inebriated antics both onstage and off, in 25 cuts reproduced here demonstrates an extraordinary talent.

Like Dave Tarras, Brandwein came from a long line of musicians. His family was the primary source of music in his region of Poland. His father Peysekhle played a violin and was (also like Tarras' father) a badkhn, or improvisational wedding poet. Brandwein had 12 siblings. His brother Moyshe played the violin, French horn and valve trombone, Mendel played the piano and Leyzer and Azriel played drums and cornet respectively. The latter was Naftule's teacher. Also like Tarras, Brandwein did not start on clarinet. His brother first taught cornet. Only later did he switch.

But unlike Tarras, Brandwein never learned to read music. His daughter recalled her father's stories of playing Poland, for Poles, Gypsies, Jews. He left Poland for America in 1908. By then the Yiddish theater had been invented and dramatists were earning their keep, and giving work to orchestras as well. But Brandwein brought the musicians out of the orchestra pits and onto the stage in their own right. Within nine years in New York, Columbia Records A&R (for artist and repertoire) man Abe Schwartz had discovered Brandwein.

The clarinet virtuoso left Schwartz in 1923, when he formed his own band and moved to the Victor label. But where Tarras' musical literacy afforded him many theater jobs, for Brandwein these fell off as the American jazz style of klezmer took hold.

He recorded 24 numbers between 1922 and 1927, nearly a third of them with his own name in the title. He did not record another until 1941. (Two of these cuts are duplicated on Music from the Yiddish Radio Project.) These were sold to the Jewish community through Ukranian, Rumanian and Russian catalogues. Brandwein composed many of the numbers, but according to the Library of Congress Copyright office he failed to copyright his work.

Brandwein may have been difficult, but he was also a musical genius. This recording is brilliant. Alyssa A. Lappen

Description of King of the Klezmer Clarinet

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