RASHI, RAMBAM and RAMALAMADINGDONG
A Quizbook of Jewish Trivia Facts & Fun
A Quizbook of Jewish Trivia Facts & Fun
Jay Black, lead singer of Jay and the Americans, died last week at the age of 82. Black, whose real name was David Blatt, was raised in an Orthodox family in Brooklyn. His first public performance was as a member of the choir at Temple Beth-El in Borough Park, singing under the leadership of the renowned Cantor Moshe Koussevitzky. But Blatt went on to be expelled from three different yeshivas and his musical interest shifted to doo-wop. He then replaced Jay Traynor, the original singer of Jay and the Americans, and he adopted the name Jay Black. He and the band went on to record such hit songs as Only in America, Cara Mia, and Come a Little Bit Closer. Yet Jay Black never lost his Jewish connections, and Jay and the Americans included what song of Jewish interest on their 1967 album Try Some of This! ?
Jay and the Americans 1963 is in the Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A. Hava Nagila, the traditional Jewish dance song, which Jay Black chose to record because he had just celebrated his own marriage to Marsha Garbowitz, his first wife.
B. Where is the Village/Vi iz dus Geseleh, a song in English and Yiddish that Jay Black sang in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
C. Dona Dona, the song about a calf being led to slaughter which was originally written in Yiddish by Sholom Secunda and Aaron Zeitlin and popularized in English by Joan Baez.
D. Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, which was recorded live at a Jay and the Americans concert in Tel Aviv.
E. Only in Jerusalem, a version of the Jay and the Americans hit song Only in America, which included the lyrics, “Only in Jerusalem/Land of milk and honey, yeah/Would a shayna maidel like you fall for a poor schmo like me.”
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