Tanz! With Dave Tarras and the Musiker Brothers [Original recording remastered]

Dave Tarras | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 30, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00006640F
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #131,546 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hypnotic, Swinging, Amazing, May 9, 2002

By 

Allen Bardin (Columbia, SC United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tanz! With Dave Tarras and the Musiker Brothers (Audio CD)

What I know about klezmer, you can put in a thimble -- but this disc has not left my player in days. This is a rare recording (according to the liner notes), and is really addictive. Five stars and fabulous!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ambrosia, August 9, 2002

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tanz! With Dave Tarras and the Musiker Brothers (Audio CD)

The back cover of Tanz trumpets its 16 cuts as "simply one of the greatest klezmer recordings ever issued," a seemingly fantastic claim that also happens to be true, particularly if listeners equate clarinet-dominated orchestras--and solos--with ambrosia.

Dave Tarras (1897 to 1989) was a Klezmer clarinetist of legendary talent, schooled in classical music by his Ukrainian Jewish family, which had performed for generations. Tarras' father was a wedding poet (badkhn) and trombonist, who began teaching his son to read and write music, and to play the flute, when he only nine. At 13, dissatisfied with the flute's quality, Tarras studied clarinet with a local player for three weeks before he could "play a little," meaning he was expert enough to play at a non-Jewish wedding.

Tarras was exposed to but somewhat insulated from the brutal World War I era Ukrainian anti-Semitism; he escaped serving in the Tsar's army by playing in a military band and quickly graduating to conductor. He also conveniently played the guitar and balalaika.

By 1921, though, pogroms and the Russian Revolution had overwhelmed the family and Tarras left for New York, where his older sister had emigrated some time earlier. He started in a furrier factory at $10 a week, working up to $50 for a 50-hour week, with overtime.

After a year, he finally replaced the clarinet that had been destroyed by fumigation at Ellis Island and took a small job in a Brooklyn catering hall. He was soon playing in a band with Joseph Cherniavsky's Yiddish American Jazz Band.

One cut, Rumanian Fantasy, is also available on Tarras' Klezmer Music: 1925-1956. But otherwise, this is music I have not heard elsewhere. And every bar is brilliant, from trills and harmonies to the rich embroidery of a Middle Eastern Yemenite Tanz.

The recording was cut in 1955 at Columbia's 30th Street Studios in New York, but remastering has eliminated any tinny quality it might have had then. Distilled here is a set of remarkably colorful and vibrant quality, as if it had been produced yesterday. If notes could cry, this CD would produce a flood every time one played it.

--- Alyssa A. Lappen

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic, November 6, 2002

By 

M. Temkin "proffesional musician, yiddishist" (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tanz! With Dave Tarras and the Musiker Brothers (Audio CD)

This is one of those albums that should be on the shelf of every Jewish Music Listener. With wonderful informative updated linernotes by Henry Sapoznik, this album is put into a perfect historical perspective.