Brooks Arthur knows what he's getting everyone on his Hanukkah list this year. Usually, everyone gets knishes, but there will be a little something extra this year.
"This year, you will have some knishes and lots of The Jewish Songbook and that's going to be my Hanukkah mailing and gift to people," says Arthur, speaking by phone from the studio during a break supervising the music for Adam Sandler's new film, Bedtime Stories.
Of course, Arthur is a little prejudiced in his gift giving, having worked on the CD, he says, for nearly a decade. He'd seen artists drop in and out, song choices change, and struggled to find a label before Shout Factory stepped up. Arthur knew time was wasting, and he wanted to preserve songs he heard on Yiddish radio stations like WEVD in New York as a kid. He says the project is "a lifelong dream."
"It was just something I had to get out of my system," says Arthur. "I knew that the art of the Yiddish language and the Yiddish theater and the Hebrew and Yiddish songs and even the American songs sung in English seems to be kind of like evaporating."
Songbook boasts an eclectic roster of artists singing a wide range of Jewish standards and favorites, covering the serious and the silly. "I wanted to go to Yiddish theater," says Arthur, "I wanted to go to liturgical Hebrew, I wanted to go to Yiddish radio favorites and Borscht Belt kind of favorites -- stuff that was engrained in our brains and made us viscerally respond in a joyous sort of remembrance."
Arthur had a repertoire in mind, and found different songs resonated with different artists, and everybody had different memories they brought to the music. "Everybody had a family favorite, you know?" says Arthur. "Grandma sang to them, mom sang to them, grandpas, the zadies, the bubas, you know? The mothers and the fathers. We could have made the album six songs deeper."
On the silly side, Rob Schneider shows he has a fluid, Broadway-ready voice (I know -- I'm just as surprised as you are) on the snappy, goofy "Bagel & Lox." Paul Shaffer and Richard Belzer ham it up on the once-risqué "Joe and Paul," as does Jason Alexander on "Shake Hands with Your Uncle Max." Not to be outdone, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, joined by Conan O'Brien bandleader Max Weinberg, offers a slightly "blue" take on "Mahzel (Means Good Luck)."
On the more serious, traditional side are Barbra Streisand's "Avinu Malkeinu" and Theodore Bikel and Betsy Hammer's "Sabbath Prayer." Arthur reports that Neil Sedaka and Dave Koz brought memories of their recently passed mothers to their recordings of "My Yiddishe Momme" and "Raisins and Almonds," respectively.
Adam Sandler, whom Arthur has worked with since 1993 on projects like "The Hanukkah Song" and Eight Crazy Nights, offers the most startling contribution -- a soaring, beautiful, and completely straight "Hine Ma Tov." You keep expecting Canteen Boy to leap from the shadows grunting a catch phrase. But it never happens. Sandler's voice is solemn and clear, matched by a sparse guitar arrangement, and creates a wonderful moment.
"There wasn't a dry eye in the vocal booth nor was there a dry eye in the control room," says Arthur of the recording session.
Arthur says some of the bigger names have helped the album to draw a younger crowd that might have otherwise ignored it. "A lot of the youth that's gravitating to the album is gravitating towards it from and because of Adam Sandler and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog," he says.
If the album sells well, look for a second volume this time next year.
