Characterizing popular music as the only real American folk music, Sigmund Spaeth, the radio “tune detective,” said in an interview yesterday that the Jewish influence on such music is “tremendously strong.”
In his office at the Barbizon-Plaza, Mr. Spaeth, a non-Jew himself, declared, “A vast majority of our successful popular composers are Jews. Practically all of the song publishers are Jewish. I feel that their success here depends upon two wellknown Jewish qualities–their adaptibility and their business sense.
“Song writers such as George Gershwin, whom I consider the greatest American composer, are able to take any material and make something worth while out of it,” he said. “They are able to write Negro, oriental, novelty and sentimental numbers successively, all with the same ability.”
From a business point of view, Mr. Spaeth continued, the Jews have developed the art of plugging songs, which he considers the heart and soul of the music publishing business.
“Plugging a piece of music in Tin Pan Alley is essentially a Jewish idea,” he declared.
In the field of serious music, the Jewish musicians are extremely important too, Mr. Spaeth said. He noted such violinists as Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman and Yehudi Menuhin, and such pianists as Vladimir Horowitz.
“One of the greatest living composers,” he continued, “is Ernst Bloch, who writes his music in the purely Jewish idiom, and whose music is unmistakably Jewish.”
Sigmund Spaeth is considered one of America’s foremost popular speakers and writers on music.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
