Search - Mickey Katz :: Greatest Shticks

Viva le *glug*meister...

Eddie Landsberg | Tokyo, Japan | 08/07/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"My father had a huge stack of Mickey Katz 45's hidden away in the closet of the "office" and when I was about 9 or 10 I got to them and in due time got hooked.When Mickey Katz passed away 10 years ago, one would have thought (sadly), that would be last of him... forever forgotten. Even when I was 10 the only place you could find his records most of the times were in small Jewish gift shops, and even then it was always the same one or two albums (which probably had been sitting on the shelf since 1950's.) - - Now its the Millenium, mainstream Jazz clarinetist Don Byron is playing his stuff at the ultra hip "Knitting Factory" and, heck, Amazon is carrying his stuff... people are even trading his MP3s you know where. At this rate, Joel Grey's Daddy's may gain a posthumous popularity as that never seen of a borscht belt comedian.Mickey Katz for years was the King of The Borscht belt. He took the Spike Jones formula of song parody, added a touch of Klezmer to it and a spattering of Yiddish words (a bit more than Lenny Bruce, but not as much as the Barton Brothers) and became a legend (check out his bio "Pappa Play for Me if you can hunt it down anywhere.)Katz's outrageously elastic voice and wit, and his ability to pull together top notch studio musicians (he himself was a master clarinetist) and pull off the same formula that launched his mentor Spike Jones to fame (and later parodists like Allen Sherman and Wierd Al Yankovik) have earned him a place not just in the annals of "Jewish ethnic music", but the world of Dr. Demento and musical comedy as well.Viva le *glug*meister !"

Great for Purim -- or anytime you need a good laugh!

Rabbi Yonassan Gershom | Minnesota, USA | 03/14/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Those post-Holocaust pessimists who foretold the demise of the Yiddish culture never reckoned with the invention of the music CD. Here is yet another collection of vintage Borscht Belt, recovered from long forgotten LPs and re-released for a whole new generation of Jews to discover and enjoy. Even if you don't understand Yiddish, (Yinglish, actually, since Mickey Katz sings in a mixture of Yiddish and English), you will find these klezmerized parodies absolutely hilarious. Numbers like "Yiddish Mule Train" and "Sixteen Tons (of hard salami)" need no translation to be funny. And who knows? You might find out that you know more Yiddish than you think you do!"

Mars to Earth: "SEND MORE MICKEY KATZ"

F. J. Weiner | Philadelphia, PA USA | 03/24/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are no highlights to this CD. EVERY TRACK is great! First of all, the songs themselves are extremely enjoyable. Add the arrangements--that toe-tapping, pulse-pounding, Yiddish / Dixieland "Klezmer" sound--and then add Mickey's vocalizing and his very funny send-ups of the lyrics, and you've got a solidly satisfying shtikel of songs. If you're reading this review, then you must have had some interest in Mickey Katz to start with (or else you asked the search engine to connect you to songs containing the words BORSCHT, SMIDGICK, or SCHLEMIEL). Get this!"