After five decades of innovation and inspiration, Mordechai Ben David is still at the mic

Photos: Kobi Katz, Tzvi Miller

He was the shy kid in the family, the one most unlikely to get up and sing in public. But five decades and dozens of albums after a young chassidish fellow named Mordechai Werdyger swallowed his fear in an opening act at Brooklyn College, the “King of Jewish Music” is still belting out winning compositions, relevant as ever, while staying true to his ideals — perhaps the real secret to his success. MBD might have celebrated a jubilee, but he’s not yet ready to hang up his mic

Mordechai, who initially knew nothing about this impromptu performance, says he was quivering that whole Shabbos, not stepping out of his bungalow, dreading the moment Shabbos would be over.

“But my friends insisted,” he remembers. “They came over and literally dragged me to the auditorium, depositing me on the stage. I was shaking, but then I started singing, and somehow my fears melted away.”

He sang a few of his father’s songs and some of the songs from his own upcoming first album. It wasn’t exactly a concert to remember, but for Mordechai Ben David, it ignited a trajectory he could never have fathomed in his wildest dreams.

“My first real performance was at Brooklyn College in 1972, where I sang as the opening act for the Ohr Chodosh group before an audience of about 2,500 people — and I got a whopping $50 for that night,” the “King of Jewish Music” says of his debut, as he celebrates 50 years in the industry. “Reb Moishe Kahan a”h, a record producer, apparently liked my singing and asked me to do the opening for an upcoming concert with Yigal Calek and the London School of Jewish Song, who were touring New York then. By then my fee had gone up to $250.”

Forty-six solo albums and over 40 collaborative albums later, Mordechai Ben David, celebrating his personal yovel in the business, considers the unlikely fact that he’s one of the greatest influences on the current chassidic music genre. Unlikely, because although he comes from a highly musical family — back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, his father, chazzan David Werdyger a”h, released dozens of recordings from various chassidic groups and was the first one to record the niggunim of Reb Yankel Talmud — of all the musical prodigies that the Werdyger family produced, he was considered the shyest and most introverted of them all.

“I was petrified to perform in public,” he relates. The odds that he, of all his siblings, would become a groundbreaking musical icon, were close to nil.

“I’m the only one of us four brothers who never wanted to sing,” he shares. “I was very shy. My brothers davened before the amud with no problem and sang wherever they were asked. To this day, I cringe when I have to go up to be chazzan.”

But the plans written Above were different. Over the years, his dozens of albums and hundreds of popular songs generated a revolution in the world of music, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a frum home anywhere in the world where his songs haven’t been played.

And although music seemed an unlikely future, it pursued him relentlessly.