Abe Schwartz

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Abe Schwartz was born in 1881 near Bucharest in Romania and was a klezmer violinist, composer and bandleader. Around 1900 he emigrated with his parents to the United States. His father, a tinsmith, tried to talk him out of a musician's life. In New York in the 1900s and 1910s he led dance bands. During the First World War he played in the restaurant Little Bessarabia. In 1917 Columbia Records hired him to record instrumental music by immigrant groups and to find new Jewish talent.

Music and breakthrough

In those years Schwartz led dozens of recordings, with musicians he hired for the session. Among them were the clarinettists Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras, two of the greatest klezmer musicians of the last century. He often worked without written arrangements, so that the playing sounded free, spontaneous and a little untidy. In 1919 he published his first song and also made records under pseudonyms. In 1920 he had about thirty-five pieces registered with the Library of Congress. His best-known melody, Di Grine Kuzine, is still played today. Ikh bin a Boarder bay mayn vayb followed in 1941. He died in 1963.

Influence

For the history of pop, Schwartz matters because he made sure that klezmer, the dance music of Eastern European Jews, was captured on record. His recordings are an important source for the klezmer revival of later decades.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1987Master of Klezmer Music Volume One - The First Recordings 1917