Vos kh'hob gevolt hob ikh oysgefirt: an Aaron Lebedeff yiddish show tune made over for a girl klezmer band
UPDATE: I just found this song (without the catchy chorus, though) in a 1920 book put out by Y. L. Cahan called Yudishe Folkslieder (Yidishe folkslider) or in English "Yiddish Folksongs with Their Original Airs Collected from Oral Tradition" - the sheet music is at the bottom of this post, after the jump. And it turns out this original folksong is from a woman's point of view!
You'll find this song spelled: Wus hob gewalt, hob ich oysgefirt and it was recorded by Aaron Lebedeff, with the Abe Schwartz Orchestra, as Ay, ay, vos kh'hob gevolt, hob ikh oysgefirt. written by Herman Wohl and Louis Gilrod, the song was in Israel Rosenberg's show Yankele Litvak in 1924.
David Medoff recorded it in 1923 as Vos Ich Hob Gevolt Hob Ich Ausgefirt, translated there as "What I Wanted, I Found."
I heard the Lebedeff recording when I was at Florida Atlantic University. The words were hard to make out, but I didn't try very hard because it was all about a wife, so I decided to take snatches of what I heard and incorporate them into a new version suitable for a women's klezmer band. I couldn't do it justice as I was alone and didn't have a klezmer band with me - it deserves the whole nine yards. And drums.
If you want to write your own words too, I suggest you get a copy of Stutchkoff's Yiddish thesaurus and his Yiddish rhyming dictionary (Yidisher gramen-lexicon) and then have at it!
Continuing experiment with green screen. The glasses I wore today had a lot of glare. You live and learn.
Here's the English translation of the Yiddish lyrics I sang:
I wanted good luck and God gave it to me.
Labels: fun, gangsters, humor & satire, klezmer, modernity, nostalgia, vaudeville