Happy Holiday Shopping Season!

Today I have already received, by actual count, 347 Black Friday Sales emails. That does not count the Pre-Black Friday Sales emails I have received during the past week. That is just this morning. So there was really only one choice for opening up my season of Holiday-Songs-Written-by-Jews:

"The Christmas Can-Can," lyrics and arrangement by Walter Chase, music (mostly) by Jacques Offenbach, sung by Straight No Chaser:

Video posted by Today in Nashville

***


In the past, I have noted that while there was nothing definitive available about the Jewishness or lack thereof of the arranger, Walter Chase. Well, I now have a definitive answer: No. He is not. As he says:

In college, the ‘dreidel guy’ was a guy named Mike Itkoff, a nice Jewish boy from Columbus, OH. He was hysterical doing it. When the group re-formed back in 2008, Mike did the group for a year and then he left, and left a void of the ‘dreidel guy’ and that was passed down to me. I’ve been doing it ever since 2009, so I’m the de facto token Jew in the group now, although I’m not Jewish.”

However, the melody--the famous "Can-Can" from Orpheus in the Underworld (otherwise known as "The Infernal Galop") is still by Jacques Offenbach, and he, despite converting to Catholicism, was indeed Jewish.

Video posted by Classical HD Live


One wonders what his music teacher/cantor father made of THAT.

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