Sweet Early Years
1. S'iz Freilach Bei Yidn (By Us it's Happy)/Odessa Bulgar 2. Beit Mich A Bissele (Tease Me, Boyfriend!) 3. Rumanian Rhapsody 4. Zisse Kinder Yorn (Sweet Early Years) 5 Kadril 6 Abi Gezunt! (Be Glad if You're Healthy!) 7 Russian-Jewish Wedding 8 Wisstosky's Tea 9 Tosca Po Rodine (Russian March: Longing for the Homeland) 10 Ocho Kandelikas (Eight Little Candles) 11 Baym Rebn in Palestina (With the Rabbi in Palestine) 12 Papriosn (Buy my Cigarettes) 13 L'Shmoa (Hear Our Prayers, a Jazz Interpretation) 14 Chassidic in America

158 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1995
Alex Lubet, Ph. D.
Morse Alumni/Graduate & Professional Distinguished Teaching Professor
Music/Jewish Studies/American Studies
Head, Division of Music Composition and Theory
University of Minnesota

Sweet Early Years: The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band. 1991.
Produced by Benji Kanter and Shelley Yoelin. Engineered by Benji Kanter and Andrew Burr, Studio Media, Evanston, Illinois.
One compact disc (52'33" duration). Booklet (4 pp.) in English, with English translations of song texts.

Maxwell Street, on Chicago's South Side, once a major thoroughfare for one of the Windy City's largest Jewish communities, is now in an African-American neighborhood. It is virtually synonymous with an outdoor market famed for performances by outstanding blues artists. The combination of Jewish and musical notoriety apparently inspired the name of Chicago's best-known klezmer band. Led by Lori Lippitz, Cantorial Soloist of Evanston's Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, this is their second CD.

While personnel and instrumentation of the band varies from selection to selection, the group is bigger than most. Typically, a rhythm section of piano, bass or tuba, drums, and sometimes Lippitz's guitar, is augmented by violin(s),horns, and boyan, a button accordion . Eight of fifteen selections have vocals, including several duets between Lippitz and violinist Marcia Sterling, in the manner of the Bagelman (later Barry) and Andrews Sisters. Repertoire consists principally of "both the Eastern European dance repertoire" and "the folk and theater music from Europe and America," typical fare for contemporary klezmorim, mostly played in the big (though not necessarily jazz) band-influenced manner of American groups of the 1930s-50s: rhythmically aggressive (though not always swinging), with elaborate arrangements that emphasize section playing, and the consistent use of drum set.

At times, the band leans toward an older, more European flavor as well, as in "Tosca Po Rodine" ("Longing for Home"), a march, with the more stratified rhythmic feel of classical music and "percussion" (that is, wood- block), for emphasis and delineation of form--its role in the symphony orchestra--rather than "drumming." Woodblock, because of technological limitations, replaced snare drum on early klezmer records, although it was rarely used in live performance (Dave Tarras, quoted in Sapoznik 1992). The practice is recalled here. Several band members of the group are from the former Soviet Union; their contributions on boyan and two vocals--refreshingly untrained and in beautiful Yiddish-contribute much to this "old country" sound.

There are a few surprises as well. They include an arrangement of Enesco's "Rumanian Rhapsody," "Wissotsky's Tea," a contemporary Yiddish song by Josh Waletsky, Ladino songwriter Flory Jagoda's Hanukkah song Recording Reviews 159 "Ocho Kandelikas" ("Eight Little Candles for Me"), done as a Latin dance number, and "L'shmoa" ("Let Our Prayers Be Heard"), an original work for clarinet and percussion, with a Middle Eastern feeling, by the band's clarinetist, Shelley Yoelin.

The group has much to commend it. They are quite klezmer-literate, their repertoire combining standards like "Rumania" and "Papirosn" with lesser-known items. Liner notes are brief but informative. Performances are extremely polished, although their rendition of "Chasidic in America" is neither as clean nor as spritely as the original 1938 version by Moishe Oysher and Florence Weiss (available on Dave Tarras: Yiddish-American Klezmer Music, 1925-56, Yazoo 7001). Although klezmer is characterized by both regional variation and stylistic evolution (and even radical innovation), there are features which, when much altered, transform the genre.... While, for example, the swing-era "Jewish crossover" (Sapoznick 1992) of Lou Lockett's Orchestra still "sounds Jewish"--one hears the melodic conventions of klezmer, even with rhythm and texture transformed--the bop-to-cool harmonies/voicings of "Beit Mich a Bissele" and "Papirosn" owe more to 52nd Street than to the Lower East Side. The one selection where jazz style is contemporaneous with the composition, Molly Picon's "Abi Gezunt," is stunning.

The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band is formidable in many ways. They are excellent technicians and their breadth of repertoire and range of styles are impressive. The latter quality is precisely what is needed in live performance atJewish life cycle events like wedding receptions and b'nai mitzvot, where the age range--and thus the variety of tastes--of participants can be vast. I have seen the group thoroughly captivate an audience in such a venue. Still, such eclecticism can be disconcerting on an album-a venue in which, since the late 60s, we have come to expect a more unified "concept"-and even more on a single selection like "Papirosn." Still, in klezmer, an essentially revivalist genre which is prone to orthodoxies, the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band is to be applauded for its willingness to stretch a bit in both repertoire and interpretation. The performances are tight and often inspired. This recording is recommended to anyone wishing to sample the breadth of klezmer and "post-klezmer" styles.