Artists

Yiddish and Hebrew poet and playwright who wrote the lyric of “Dona Dona” for his play Esterke — stranded in New York in 1939, he never saw his family in Warsaw again.

Romanian-born violinist, composer, and Columbia Records' Jewish-music bandleader — the man whose studio orchestras put early American klezmer on record.

Retired New York City schoolteacher who put Gilbert and Sullivan into Yiddish — and wrote a singable Yiddish “Over the Rainbow.”

American translator of Yiddish and German songs whose 1950s English for “Dona Dona,” finished with Teddi Schwartz, is the version the folk revival sang.

The “Empress of the Blues” — the most popular and highest-paid Black performer of the 1920s, whose big, unamplified voice defined classic (vaudeville) blues on record.

Jazz and blues singer of unmatched phrasing whose 1939 “Strange Fruit” turned the blues tradition toward open protest.

Brandwein's great rival and opposite — a poised, lyrical clarinetist from Podolia who defined American klezmer for half a century and lived to mentor the 1970s revival.

The “King of the Surf Guitar,” whose 1962 Misirlou — learned from Lebanese uncles on the oud — became the life of the tune most of the world knows.

Scottish singer-songwriter who put Joan Baez’s “Donna, Donna” on his 1965 debut and helped carry the English Dona Dona into 1960s pop-folk.

Argentine-born Israeli clarinetist, the self-styled “King of Klezmer,” who left the Israel Philharmonic to carry klezmer to concert stages worldwide and helped drive its late-20th-century revival.

Buffalo-born composer — a cantor’s son, born Hyman Arluck — who wrote the melody of “Over the Rainbow” and a shelf of American standards.

The soprano of the American folk revival, whose 1960 recording of “Donna, Donna” turned a Yiddish theater song into an English protest standard.

The voice of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz — her 1939 “Over the Rainbow” became the song she was asked for for the rest of her life.

Trumpeter and singer who reshaped jazz around the soloist; his cornet answers Bessie Smith’s vocals on the classic 1925 recording of “St. Louis Blues.”

Vaudeville singer whose 1920 “Crazy Blues” was the first blues hit recorded by a Black artist — the record that convinced labels a Black audience existed.

Actor-manager who founded New York’s Yiddish Art Theatre in 1918 and staged Aaron Zeitlin’s Esterke — the 1940 production that first sang “Dona Dona.”

Greek rebetiko singer who recorded Misirlou as Mousourlou around 1930 in Athens — a slower tsifteteli that also circulated in New York.

Yiddish theater actress and lyricist who wrote the Yiddish words to Misirlou and, with Seymour Rexite, turned American pop into Second Avenue Yiddish.

Born McKinley Morganfield, the Delta guitarist who electrified the blues in postwar Chicago, shaping the sound that fed directly into rock and roll.

Orthodox rabbi on the Lower East Side whom Harry Smith recorded singing Misirlou in the 1950s — a Jewish room for the tune, language uncertain.

The self-styled “King of the Klezmer Clarinet” — a wild, ecstatic Galician-born virtuoso whose 1920s New York recordings are still the reference point for klezmer clarinet a century later.

Greek-American music instructor who registered a jazz-exotica arrangement of Misirlou and is still often printed as its composer.

Yiddish theater tenor and radio star — born Shayele Rechtzeit — who sang Miriam Kressyn’s Yiddish Misirlou on Banner around 1948.

Yiddish theater composer — one of the “big four” of New York's Second Avenue stage, and the writer of “Bei Mir Bistu Shein” and, with Aaron Zeitlin, “Dona Dona.”

Yiddish vocal duo of Chava Levi and Polina Fradkin — tight close harmony, jazz-leaning arrangements of Yiddish theater and folk songs. The name is Yiddish for “the sisters.”

Yiddish singer and translator who, with Arthur Kevess, wrote the English “Dona Dona” that Joan Baez carried around the world.

Ottoman Greek tenor and later record man who cut the earliest known Misirlou — Columbia, New York, July 1927.

Vienna-born actor and folk singer who recorded “Dona Dona” in Yiddish in 1959 — keeping the theater song alive on the American folk circuit just before Joan Baez’s English version.

Bandleader and composer often billed the “Father of the Blues” — not its inventor, but the musician who first wrote blues themes down and carried a folk music into print and popular song.

Yiddish-speaking songwriter and guitarist who recasts old songs in a blues-and-rock idiom — including Al Grand’s “Iber dem regnboygn.”

Lyricist of “Over the Rainbow” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” — born Isidore Hochberg on the Lower East Side to Yiddish-speaking parents.