🕵️old klezmers🎻May 13
hearty salute to the guy (David Wieder) who went and took photos of the graves of dozens of old klezmer musicians at Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens in the last few months and posted them on FindAGrave. I got notifications about a few but I didn't realize he has maybe done about 2/3 of the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society section.🕵️
Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 13

a violinist and NY theatre musician possibly born in Bulgaria or Egypt in the mid 1880s, not sure about the klezmer connection aside from him being a member of a klezmers' burial society. love TO KNOW HIM WAS TO LOVE HIM

#Graves #MusicHistory #klezmer

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 13

I'm not sure what the name is of this type of grave marker but I absolutely love them, you don't see many of them up here in Vancouver. also love the inset portraits which maybe 1/4 of these graves have and are often the only photo I've seen of these old musicians. Mr. Chabinsky here was a cornetist/trumpeter born in the Russian Empire in the 1870s, played on steamboats and owned a music store in NY, not sure about the klezmer connection for him either.

#graves #MusicHistory #BasRelief

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 13

there are several members of this family buried here going back a century, but here's one of the longest living ones, love the design for a bassist. only passed away 20 years ago so I'll have to ask some people if they knew him

#graves #BassPlayer #MusicHistory

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 13

that's actually his brother who died of Pneumonia 70 years before him😢actually similar set of dates to my grandmother who lost her brother to Polio; she herself lived into the 2010s. I never even heard of him from the family except she told me when I interviewed her once that she thought of him regularly.

#graves

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 14

Another new photo, I think this guy was the founder of the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society (he's identified as such on one of the archways) but I know basically nothing about him. A cornet/trumpet player born in the Russian Empire. Such a common name that would be hard to search...🤔

#klezmer #MusicHistory #graves

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 14
sad to slightly put down a guy who did me a big favour but I'm starting to get the feeling (by searching PMBS names one by one) that he photographed almost exclusively mens' graves and passed over all the women🕵️
Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 27

salute to Dave Levitt for going to the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society plot at Beth Israel cemetery and taking about 150 photos for me, getting most of the ones I didn't have. (His parents' graves are in that section, so it was a courtesy to me while he was making a visit.) lots of fascinating details when you see the actual gravestones. (this is their other plot from my thread above)

#graves #cemeteries #klezmer #MusicHistory

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 27

the graves in this PMBS plot are newer than the ones at Mt Hebron so fewer of them have old fashioned (100 year old) flourishes, but there are still many interesting ones. like this one of Isidore Friedenthal, who somehow was not on my list of PMBS members at all till now, so I'm not sure who he is!

#graves #cemetery #MusicHistory

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 27
bit of a strange historical note, but Abraham Rapfogel was a violinist from a Galician klezmer family, one of several in NY, who happened to be jaywalking with the former klez recording artist Israel J. Hochman in Manhattan who was struck and killed in 1940. I posted about him before, there are some yet unrequested klezmer compositions of his in the library of congress still ...
Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻May 27

I was posting about him a while back👇 and he had a brief mention in my PMBS presentation in Montreal. a vaudeville drummer and local 802 clerk born in Bucovina. the nickname Jayzee is new to me though 🤓
https://klezmor.im/@carkner/115194743561397792

#graves #cemetery #klezmer #MusicHistory

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻
this was Jack's sister Tilly who was a conservatory trained cellist. the height of her fame was in the late 1910s and early 20s when she was touring with her sis + various pianists as the Zimbler Trio. I also mentioned her in my presentation because she was the only female professional musician I'd found so far in the PMBS membership. Not to say there weren't other women who could play music, but she was the only one I found who was a local 802 member during the interwar years I'm looking at.
May 27 at 1:28pmWeb
Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻2d ago

still working my way through these photos over morning coffee some days when I feel like it, here Nathan Reichel was a Kyiv-born theatre & vaudeville trombone player who seems to have toured in the 1920s with Nat Kornspan, another apparent vaudeville/klezmer crossover guy. 🤔

#graves #cemetery #MusicHistory

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻2d ago

There are about 16 Kaplans I've found so far in the P.M.B.S., not sure how they are all related yet (if at all). This Nathan was also born in Kyiv, was a trumpeter, not sure much about his career just yet.

Sarah's dad was called Motl Bernstein which now I'm thinking of A Bit Fruity 😅🍑אַ ביסל פרוכטיק

#graves #cemetery #MusicHistory

Show thread🕵️old klezmers🎻2d ago

I should remember to search obits for all the ones who died in more recent decades. (this one from the Philadelphia Inquirer, 1995). plenty of great info in them that is otherwise not documented anywhere, and gives leads on the names of living relatives

#MusicHistory #graves #cemetery