Mickey Katz (June 15, 1909 – April 30, 1985) was an American
comedian and musician who specialized in Jewish humour. He was the father of
actor Joel Grey and grandfather of actress Jennifer Grey.
Katz was born Meyer Myron Katz on Sawtell Court in
Cleveland, Ohio, to a Jewish family. One of five children, Mickey and his
siblings contributed to the family finances by entering amateur musical
contests in the neighbourhood theatres and bringing the prize money home to
their parents. Even after graduating from high school, Mickey continued to
support his family with the money he earned from his music.
He began clarinet lessons at the age of 11, within two
months he started playing amateur nights. Shortly after high school, he worked
with a band in a local restaurant. He then toured with band leader Phil
Spitalny, playing clarinet and saxophone..While waiting at the train station to
leave on the tour, Katz met Grace Epstein, his future wife. He was seventeen
and she was fourteen. He married her three years later, in 1930.
He worked for Phil's brother Maurice in the early 1930s as a
pit musician at the State and Palace Theatres. In the summer he led his own
orchestra on the Goodtime entertaining passengers on Lake Erie excursions. He
later organized a novelty band "Mickey Katz and his Kittens."
Spike Jones, Kaye Ballard & Mickey Katz
After a USO tour in 1946 with Betty Hutton, Katz was hired
by pistol-packing bandleader Spike Jones to replace Carl Grayson. Mickey’s specialty
was "glugging" which is a vocal sound effect that can be heard in
such classics as "Holiday for Strings" and "Cocktails for
Two". He stayed with the band for about a year and a half. He eventually
quit due to the exhaustive touring schedule.
Katz eventually mentioned to Jones' RCA producers that he
had been working on his own parody tunes, combining popular tunes with Yiddish
lyrics and instrumentation. RCA decided to record Katz and released his first
single, "Haim Afn Range" backed with "Yiddish Square
Dance." It proved a surprise hit, selling over 30,000 copies in one month.
Mickey assembled a a band of his own, comprised of musicians
of the traditional European Jewish ' klezmer' style, including trumpet player,
Ziggy Elman, trumpeter Mannie Klein, trombonist Si Zentner; pianist-arranger
Nat Farber and drummer Sammy Weiss, and dubbed them the Kosher Jammers. The popularity of his RCA singles led Katz to organize a
road show, which he called "The Borscht Capades." Among the cast was
Katz' own son, who later became famous as Joel Grey. Ironically, one place the
show never appeared was the Borscht Belt itself.
Katz switched to Capitol Records in the early 1950s, and
remained with the label until he retired in the late 1960s. Most of his
material remained the same throughout his albums--Yiddish interpretations of
American tunes, rendered in Katz' heavily-inflected comic Jewish accent
("ecch-sent"). But he did play it straight for the album, Mickey Katz
Plays Music for Weddings, paying homage to the klezmer music he heard as a
child. He also recorded one straight comedy album, Mickey Katz at the U.N., and
The Katz Pajamas, a collection of fairy tales..
Katz sang primarily in pidgin Yiddish, and is largely
recognized as one of the fathers of American song parody paving the way for men
like Allan Sherman and Weird Al Yankovic. Like any good comedian, Katz made
some people uncomfortable, he was thought too ethnic by some of his generation,
and too much of a comedian by musical purists. Although Katz had his fans, not
everybody loved him. There were many radio stations that refused to play his
records, and several venues feared hiring him.
He starred in the Broadway shows "Hello, Solly!"
and "Borscht Capades" which he wrote to explain old Jewish theatre to
a modern audience. He styled it as a Catskill-type revue and introduced his
teenage son, Joel, who would later make his own mark on Broadway as Joel Grey.
With the Spike Jones' City Slickers, he appeared in the 1947 film "Ladies
Man". Katz and the Kosher Jammers appeared in the film "Thoroughly
Modern Millie" in 1967.
Through the 1970s, Katz continued to perform in the theatre
and on records. He published an autobiography, Papa Play for Me in 1977. He
died of kidney failure April 30, 1985, in Los Angeles, California at the age of
75
(Edited from Wikipedia. IMDb, Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
and Spaceage Pop )
Katz was born Meyer Myron Katz on Sawtell Court in
Cleveland, Ohio, to a Jewish family. One of five children, Mickey and his
siblings contributed to the family finances by entering amateur musical
contests in the neighbourhood theatres and bringing the prize money home to
their parents. Even after graduating from high school, Mickey continued to
support his family with the money he earned from his music.
Katz switched to Capitol Records in the early 1950s, and
remained with the label until he retired in the late 1960s. Most of his
material remained the same throughout his albums--Yiddish interpretations of
American tunes, rendered in Katz' heavily-inflected comic Jewish accent
("ecch-sent"). But he did play it straight for the album, Mickey Katz
Plays Music for Weddings, paying homage to the klezmer music he heard as a
child. He also recorded one straight comedy album, Mickey Katz at the U.N., and
The Katz Pajamas, a collection of fairy tales..
