Klezmer routes: three Jewish musicians from Poland - Carl Frydman, Leo Rosner, Ben Bazyler

Judaism, Spring, 2002 by Hankus Netsky

IN JOSEPH GREEN'S POPULAR 1936 YIDDISH FILM, YIDL Mitn Fidi (Yidl With His Fiddle), we meet a group of itinerant Polish-Jewish klezmorim (1) straight out of a Sholem Aleykhem story. (2) In the film they ply their trade throughout the Polish countryside, and eventually find their way to Warsaw. Here, one of them decides to trade in the klezmer life for a more domestic existence, another finds a prominent role in a theater orchestra, a third becomes an overnight theatrical sensation, and the last one (accompanying his daughter, the overnight theatrical sensation) heads for a comfortable retirement in America. Thus, in the very era when Polish Jewry had arrived at its cultural peak, the klezmer life is symbolically abandoned, a vestige of a world that is no longer valid.

In fact, Poland's klezmer tradition did weather the assimilation of the 1930s and, even more miraculously, survived the Holocaust. As proof, let me tell the stories of three dance musicians, from professional Jewish musical families in Poland in the early twentieth century.

The eldest of the three, Carl Frydman, son of the celebrated badkhan, (3) Yosef Frydman (known professionally as Yosl Marshalik), was born in the small western Polish town of Chmielnik (near the sacred Catholic city of Czestochowa) in 1907. Like many nineteenth century badkhonim, his father came from a religious background (basing much of his folk poetry on religious texts), and also worked as a tailor. Carl studied violin and mandolin, classically and with klezmorim, and took a serious interest in all aspects of Jewish and ethnic music at an early age, performing at local celebrations, for Hassidic gatherings, and for the local Jewish theater, while supplementing his income as a furrier. His father and several of his siblings emigrated to Boston in 1927; he and the rest of his family joined them in 1934, and soon after that he married a Jewish singer from a small town in the Ukraine. Once settled in his new home in the USA, he worked as a magazine distributor and as a WPA-subsidized music copyist, and conti nued his performing career in the dwindling Jewish and Hassidic music trade that had been largely abandoned by the local wedding musicians. Because of his wide knowledge of the European repertoire, he also became a favorite entertainer at Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, and other non-Jewish ethnic celebrations in the Boston and New York areas. While he was adept at all aspects of the violin repertoire, he never became a truly "modern" player, and in the eyes of his fellow Bostonians, remained a "klezmer" until his death in 1979.

Although I never met Carl Frydman, I have been able to piece together information about his career by talking with other musicians and family members and looking at the legacy of musical manuscripts that he left behind. Because Frydman was meticulous about dating his music, I have been able to ascertain that while in Europe he performed Jewish operettas, Hassidic melodies, and Jewish dance tunes of all types, that he picked up the latest Yiddish theater hits shortly after his arrival in America, and that he continued to add both popular and Jewish music to his repertoire throughout his career.

Paradoxically, even Frydman's klezmer repertoire, which he learned in a small Polish town, was an anomaly in Boston where Jewish patrons were used to the music of klezmorim from Lazaslav, a town in the southern Ukraine. (4) In the absence of a community that shared his origins and as a relatively late immigrant, he stood out among Boston's far more acculturated Jewish musicians. Regardless, he found himself a fulfilling niche, playing and teaching violin, mandolin, and eventually electric guitar, and continued to adapt his repertoire to what he perceived as popular tastes well into the 1970s. He lived to perform, and never lost his positive attitude toward his life, his heritage, and his music. His death from cancer in 1979 came precisely at the brink of the revival of klezmer and Yiddish music.

I met Carl's wife, Sally, shortly after her husband's death. "The Hassidim killed my husband.... Stay away from them--they'll suck your blood," she said bitterly. As a Ukrainian Jew with a non-religious orientation, she had little tolerance for the rigorous observance and tenacity of the Hassidim who figured so prominently in her husband's background. Regardless, Carl Frydman had dedicated his life to performing not only for the Bostoner Hassidim, but also for the local Talners, Lubavitchers, and Zhvillers, whose music he meticulously transcribed as he had been trained to do in small-town Poland. Their melodies remained in his dance folios alongside those of the Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose tunes subsidized the career of this unheralded and undecorated scholar-performer.

The career of accordionist-singer Leo Rosner provides us with a narrative from the next generation. Born in Krakow in 1918, Leo picked up music at an early age and soon began performing professionally with his father, self-taught violinist Khayim Rosner, at local Jewish celebrations. At age sixteen he began playing in nightclubs, and learned the popular tangos and fox-trots of his time. His eldest brother Henry studied classical violin, and employed several members of his family (eventually including Leo) in his "Krakow Salon Orchestra" beginning in the early 1920s. Leo's parents and four of his eight brothers and sisters were killed by the Nazis (and their Ukrainian accomplices) shortly after they occupied Krakow. Three of the four Rosner brothers who survived World War II owe their lives to Oscar Schindler who took them in as his "house" musicians (Leo figures prominently in the book Schindler's Ark, and is the accordionist depicted in the movie Schindler's List). The fourth brother, George, found his way to the U.S. just before the war with a traveling popular music ensemble. Already well established as a "tango" composer in Poland, he achieved great success here as a solo pianist with a large international repertoire. Several of his melodies are still popular standards. In 1949, he emigrated to Melbourne, Australia and became well established there as a Jewish and society entertainer. His three surviving brothers moved to western Europe and the U.S. where they worked for many years as popular and classical musicians. (5)