He pointed out that klezmer recordings were rare, and what existed nowadays was in the hands mainly of academics or musicians so that this discovery allowed the general public to be able to hear the early music that had been recorded in the Russian Empire Amongst all the dances and songs in this discovery was one called “606 Dance”, recorded in Odessa, celebrating Preparation 606, a treatment for syphilis.
As it happens, Venereal disease has been the subject of the occasional tune, from the dirty smirk of Shel Silverstein’s ditty “Don’t give a dose to the one you love most” to the crude and outrageous Frank Zappa’s “Why does it hurt when I pee?” and onto the sad VD songs of Woodie Guthrie.It is however, not a subject that is often chosen by composers of music. Indeed songs about medical conditions tend to be rare – with such exceptions as “Double Vision” by Foreigner (inspired by concussion to a New York Rangers ice hockey goalie) and the excellent “Cardiac Arrest” by Madness.So given that illness is not a popular subject for any form of music, how come there is a Klezmer dance named after a treatment for syphilis, why was it recorded in Odessa – and what is Preparation 606, anyway.
The answer is a story about a Jewish man who creates a life-saving drug that is celebrated in a Jewish area of Old Europe by a Jewish Band.
During the 19th century medical scientists discovered more and more micro-organisms, such as staphylococci and streptococci which were causes of disease. One of these micro-organisms was a bacterium called Treponema pallidum, which causes sleeping sickness
Erlich was at the forefront of this research. He was working on the identification of micro-organisms by staining them, and reasoned that if he could use certain chemical agents to stain them, he could use others to attack them. He probably recalled the old superstition where bullets could be charmed to make sure that they would hit a particular person and so named these agents “magic bullets”.
So the “magic bullet” would kill the disease and leave the rest of the body unharmed. He called the process Chemotherapy (yes, he invented the term!)
He carried out research on a number of agents, and in 1909 the 606th compound that he and his associates tried worked on syphilis, which at the time was a widespread and aggressive disease throughout Europe.
The 606th compound was called Arsphenamine and was marketed under the trade name of Salvarsan in 1910 and until Penicillin came along, was the most only realistic treatment for the disease.
It also marked a change in immunology, which from now on in was to attempt to attack the disease itself, rather try to alleviate the symptoms.
In 1940 a fim called “Dr Erlich’s Magic Bullet” ws made with Edward G Robinson as Erlich. This film is notable for the fact that although Paul Erlich was Jewish, no mention was made of that.
This was during the era in the late thirties when the studios, although they may have made films that were obviously anti-Nazi – such as Warner’s “Confession of a Nazi Spy”, didn’t like mentioning the J-word. In “The Life of Emile Zola”, the Dreyfus affair is acted out without mentioning the fact that Dreyfus was Jewish. Many reasons have been put forward for this strange behaviour, some vitriolic; it is likely that the studio bosses were conflicted – not wishing to appear too Jewish in an era of great anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, according to Wikipedia, the film's story writer Norman Burnside declared "There isn't a man or woman alive who isn't afraid of syphilis, and let them know that a little kike named Ehrlich tamed the scourge. And maybe they can persuade their hoodlum (i.e. Nazi) friends to keep their fists off Erhlich's coreligionists."
At the turn of the 20th century it was a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan port, and home to a large Jewish community that had survived despite several pogroms.
It was, alas, not a nice place to be - very far from the rural shtetls or the cultured Vienna of our forefathers. It was known as the City of Rogues and Schnorrers.
In his book “Russian Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa”, Jarrod Tanny talks about how traditional Judaism was challenged and overturned. He talks about it as a city of life, of humour, and yes, of sin, in the same way that cities like Shanghai and New Orleans had their sinners.
It was also one of the birthplaces of the Russian Revolution, and of Jewish self-determination
Writers such as Sholem Abramovich and Sholem Aleichem were also captivated by Odessa and magnified the stories about Odessa”. Tanny tells of Abramovich’s pauper hero Fishke the Lame, who believed Odessa was everything the shtetl was not: vibrant, cosmopolitan, sexy, and fun. Odessa was tempting in a Vegas-like way: it was a playground free of restrictions, where “you can see the flames of hell.”
Tanny, in a pilpulish way notes that just because there was a myth about Odessa, doesn’t mean to say it wasn’t true! A large proportion of the Jews of Odessa lived in one of the worst areas, called Moldavanka. This was the industrial part of Odessa, where the plants and factories were located, and there were many in the community who were “Rogues or Schnorrers”.
That Jews were involved with crime should not shock. In a time of grinding poverty, people turned to whatever way that they could feed their families, in a similar way that gangsters such as Bugsy Seigel and Meyer Lansky came from the poverty of the immigrant families of the USA.
As we will see, many of the brothels in Odessa were owned by Jews, and therein lies a story.
Perhaps best known for playing at weddings, they would, according to YIVO , go wherever they were paid, which could include Christian functions, and they often played with Romani musicians (hence the fact that much Klezmer music has gypsy overtones) The Rabbinical establishment looked down on them because of their secular lifestyle (although many of their tunes were based on Cantorial music according to YIVO).
Of course, as said, they would go wherever the money was so it was quite natural that they would play in brothels should there be paid opportunities to do so.
What I found surprising was that music was played in brothels. I had read about the Parisian brothels during the period of La Belle Epoque, and how many dancers in the Montmartre area were also prostitutes –but I had never understood there might be music in those places.
However, in the case of Buenos Aires it was certainly the case that while the punter waited to be ‘hooked up’, there were people employed to entertain them, and play music. It was logical that those musicians would play the Tango, as that was the music of the poor.
Thus it must have been true that many Tango musicians who later on became famous first plied their trade in the brothels of Buenos Aires.
In New Orleans ‘customers’ will have heard the jazz or ragtime piano in the Red Light district, known as Storyville, where many jazz musicians played in brothels, as well as in cafes and bars.
Many jazz musicians from the African-American community were hired to perform live music in brothels and bars. They were known as ‘professors’.
These including many early jazz pioneers such as Jelly Roll Morton, who later went on to write jazz classics such as the “King Porter Stomp”.
Morton was a piano player in brothels from the age of 14 against the express wishes of his family. According to Wiki and other sources “while working there, he was living with his religious, church-going great-grandmother; he had her convinced that he worked as a night watchman in a barrel factory. After Morton's grandmother found out that he was playing jazz in a local brothel, she kicked him out of her house.”
So now we come to Odessa – and as I said the red light district was slap bang in the centre of Moldavanka, so it should be of little surprise that thirty of the 36 licensed brothels in the Odessa were owned by Jews. Jarod Tanny pointed out that the city’s klezmer musicians were a focal point of the culture of seedy underground taverns in Odessa. So, just as one would get the tango in brothels in Buenos Aires, and jazz in New Orleans – what would you expect brothel owners in Odessa to employ, given that they were largely Jewish? Klezmorim, of course!
Sometimes these songs would reflect the goings on of the day, or current issues.
Unsurprisingly, then, when a treatment for Syphilis (preparation 606) was found , a tune was written to celebrate the fact. Hence klezmorim with a loud trumpet or cornet played the 606 Dance in the brothels of Odessa, and although the 606 Dance is not perhaps the best known of all klezmer tunes, it has a backstory that crosses continents, takes us into the highest reaches of scientific research, and tells us a bit more about the Jews in a small corner of pre-Revolutionary Eastern Europe.
Note
Coincidentally, there is the “El 606” Tango, written by Francisco Lomuto around 1916. Lomuto came from Buenos Aires. Why am I not surprised?
References
1.http://drs.library.yale.edu/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=med:pam.0005&query=&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&big=&adv=&filter=&hitPageStart=&sortFields=&view=c01_3#ref1285
2. http://forward.com/culture/music/323779/excavating-lost-pre-war-klezmer-recordings-from-the-emi-archive/#ixzz436jeJin8
3.http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/music/traditional_and_instrumental_music
4. Zonophone X-2-100908 (3303 ae); (Edmund J. Pearse); Odessa, 10 February 1912
5. http://forward.com/culture/music/323779/excavating-lost-pre-war-klezmer-recordings-from-the-emi-archive/#ixzz3qifAb5jb
6.http://www.hektoeninternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1888:tango-impressions-with-medical-overtones&catid=77&Itemid=631
7. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/beyond/jazz.html
These books are available from Amazon:
Kosher Foxtrot
Jews and the Sea
The Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia
The answer is a story about a Jewish man who creates a life-saving drug that is celebrated in a Jewish area of Old Europe by a Jewish Band.
Preparation 606
It all begins in with Dr Paul Erlich. He was a scientist around the turn of the century whose work on immunology was absolutely ground breaking. Indeed so ground breaking that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1908.During the 19th century medical scientists discovered more and more micro-organisms, such as staphylococci and streptococci which were causes of disease. One of these micro-organisms was a bacterium called Treponema pallidum, which causes sleeping sickness
Erlich was at the forefront of this research. He was working on the identification of micro-organisms by staining them, and reasoned that if he could use certain chemical agents to stain them, he could use others to attack them. He probably recalled the old superstition where bullets could be charmed to make sure that they would hit a particular person and so named these agents “magic bullets”.
So the “magic bullet” would kill the disease and leave the rest of the body unharmed. He called the process Chemotherapy (yes, he invented the term!)
He carried out research on a number of agents, and in 1909 the 606th compound that he and his associates tried worked on syphilis, which at the time was a widespread and aggressive disease throughout Europe.
The 606th compound was called Arsphenamine and was marketed under the trade name of Salvarsan in 1910 and until Penicillin came along, was the most only realistic treatment for the disease.
It also marked a change in immunology, which from now on in was to attempt to attack the disease itself, rather try to alleviate the symptoms.
In 1940 a fim called “Dr Erlich’s Magic Bullet” ws made with Edward G Robinson as Erlich. This film is notable for the fact that although Paul Erlich was Jewish, no mention was made of that.
This was during the era in the late thirties when the studios, although they may have made films that were obviously anti-Nazi – such as Warner’s “Confession of a Nazi Spy”, didn’t like mentioning the J-word. In “The Life of Emile Zola”, the Dreyfus affair is acted out without mentioning the fact that Dreyfus was Jewish. Many reasons have been put forward for this strange behaviour, some vitriolic; it is likely that the studio bosses were conflicted – not wishing to appear too Jewish in an era of great anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, according to Wikipedia, the film's story writer Norman Burnside declared "There isn't a man or woman alive who isn't afraid of syphilis, and let them know that a little kike named Ehrlich tamed the scourge. And maybe they can persuade their hoodlum (i.e. Nazi) friends to keep their fists off Erhlich's coreligionists."
Odessa
Odessa is a port in the Ukraine. It is known for the 142-metre-long Potemkin Stairs made famous by Sergei Eisenstein in his movie The Battleship Potemkin (1925).At the turn of the 20th century it was a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan port, and home to a large Jewish community that had survived despite several pogroms.
It was, alas, not a nice place to be - very far from the rural shtetls or the cultured Vienna of our forefathers. It was known as the City of Rogues and Schnorrers.
In his book “Russian Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa”, Jarrod Tanny talks about how traditional Judaism was challenged and overturned. He talks about it as a city of life, of humour, and yes, of sin, in the same way that cities like Shanghai and New Orleans had their sinners.
It was also one of the birthplaces of the Russian Revolution, and of Jewish self-determination
Writers such as Sholem Abramovich and Sholem Aleichem were also captivated by Odessa and magnified the stories about Odessa”. Tanny tells of Abramovich’s pauper hero Fishke the Lame, who believed Odessa was everything the shtetl was not: vibrant, cosmopolitan, sexy, and fun. Odessa was tempting in a Vegas-like way: it was a playground free of restrictions, where “you can see the flames of hell.”
Tanny, in a pilpulish way notes that just because there was a myth about Odessa, doesn’t mean to say it wasn’t true! A large proportion of the Jews of Odessa lived in one of the worst areas, called Moldavanka. This was the industrial part of Odessa, where the plants and factories were located, and there were many in the community who were “Rogues or Schnorrers”.
That Jews were involved with crime should not shock. In a time of grinding poverty, people turned to whatever way that they could feed their families, in a similar way that gangsters such as Bugsy Seigel and Meyer Lansky came from the poverty of the immigrant families of the USA.
As we will see, many of the brothels in Odessa were owned by Jews, and therein lies a story.
Klezmer Bands
Klezmorim did not occupy a very high social status . Largely secular, and according to sources, largely illiterate, they travelled Eastern Europe in search of the buck.Perhaps best known for playing at weddings, they would, according to YIVO , go wherever they were paid, which could include Christian functions, and they often played with Romani musicians (hence the fact that much Klezmer music has gypsy overtones) The Rabbinical establishment looked down on them because of their secular lifestyle (although many of their tunes were based on Cantorial music according to YIVO).
Of course, as said, they would go wherever the money was so it was quite natural that they would play in brothels should there be paid opportunities to do so.
A Tale of Three Cities
Three cities. Three port cities. Buenos Aires, New Orleans, and Odessa. Each of these had poor areas with grinding poverty, from which the only way to survive for some women was prostitution, and there were plenty of people ready to take advantage of them. Each of these three cities had a great number of brothels.What I found surprising was that music was played in brothels. I had read about the Parisian brothels during the period of La Belle Epoque, and how many dancers in the Montmartre area were also prostitutes –but I had never understood there might be music in those places.
However, in the case of Buenos Aires it was certainly the case that while the punter waited to be ‘hooked up’, there were people employed to entertain them, and play music. It was logical that those musicians would play the Tango, as that was the music of the poor.
Thus it must have been true that many Tango musicians who later on became famous first plied their trade in the brothels of Buenos Aires.
In New Orleans ‘customers’ will have heard the jazz or ragtime piano in the Red Light district, known as Storyville, where many jazz musicians played in brothels, as well as in cafes and bars.
Many jazz musicians from the African-American community were hired to perform live music in brothels and bars. They were known as ‘professors’.
These including many early jazz pioneers such as Jelly Roll Morton, who later went on to write jazz classics such as the “King Porter Stomp”.
Morton was a piano player in brothels from the age of 14 against the express wishes of his family. According to Wiki and other sources “while working there, he was living with his religious, church-going great-grandmother; he had her convinced that he worked as a night watchman in a barrel factory. After Morton's grandmother found out that he was playing jazz in a local brothel, she kicked him out of her house.”
So now we come to Odessa – and as I said the red light district was slap bang in the centre of Moldavanka, so it should be of little surprise that thirty of the 36 licensed brothels in the Odessa were owned by Jews. Jarod Tanny pointed out that the city’s klezmer musicians were a focal point of the culture of seedy underground taverns in Odessa. So, just as one would get the tango in brothels in Buenos Aires, and jazz in New Orleans – what would you expect brothel owners in Odessa to employ, given that they were largely Jewish? Klezmorim, of course!
Klezmer songs and the 606 dance
There is a huge variety of Klezmer and Yiddish songs and dances, but it is likely that the old, sad songs and the lullabies such as Es Brent and Oyfn Pripitchik would not have figured in the tunes played in the brothels. More likely would be those happy drinking songs such as Rabbi Elimelekh and Noch a gleyzl vayn (Another glass of wine).Sometimes these songs would reflect the goings on of the day, or current issues.
Unsurprisingly, then, when a treatment for Syphilis (preparation 606) was found , a tune was written to celebrate the fact. Hence klezmorim with a loud trumpet or cornet played the 606 Dance in the brothels of Odessa, and although the 606 Dance is not perhaps the best known of all klezmer tunes, it has a backstory that crosses continents, takes us into the highest reaches of scientific research, and tells us a bit more about the Jews in a small corner of pre-Revolutionary Eastern Europe.
Note
Coincidentally, there is the “El 606” Tango, written by Francisco Lomuto around 1916. Lomuto came from Buenos Aires. Why am I not surprised?
References
1.http://drs.library.yale.edu/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=med:pam.0005&query=&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes&hlon=yes&big=&adv=&filter=&hitPageStart=&sortFields=&view=c01_3#ref1285
2. http://forward.com/culture/music/323779/excavating-lost-pre-war-klezmer-recordings-from-the-emi-archive/#ixzz436jeJin8
3.http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/music/traditional_and_instrumental_music
4. Zonophone X-2-100908 (3303 ae); (Edmund J. Pearse); Odessa, 10 February 1912
5. http://forward.com/culture/music/323779/excavating-lost-pre-war-klezmer-recordings-from-the-emi-archive/#ixzz3qifAb5jb
6.http://www.hektoeninternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1888:tango-impressions-with-medical-overtones&catid=77&Itemid=631
7. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/beyond/jazz.html
These books are available from Amazon:
Kosher Foxtrot
Jews and the Sea
The Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia
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