These records, it turns out, were the standards in the early 1900s

T

he Manhattan apartment I lived in as a kid had many closets: the linen closet, the toy closet, the Pesach closet, and what we called the junk closet, which, based on its contents, was obviously in use even before I was born. One day, when I was about seven years old, I went scavenging in that very mysterious closet, when I stumbled across a record jacket in a cardboard sleeve containing three black discs. They looked different from the regular records we were used to — they were thicker and heavier, and if you dropped one on the floor, it would crack.

I showed this find to my older and wiser brother. What were they? Well, the jacket was called Yeshiva Melodies, but my brother informed me that these records played at a different speed than what our record player could play and needed an old machine. They were called “seventy-eights,” because they rotated at a speed of 78 revolutions per minute, instead of our 33 RPMs.

These records, it turns out, were the standards in the early 1900s. They were made out of shellac, were ten inches in diameter, and played just a few minutes on each side (that’s why each album had several records in the set). Until they were blown out of the market in the mid-1950s by the new, more durable 12-inch 33 RPM vinyl LP (“long play”) records.

My brother said he was pretty sure that if I searched diligently in the back of the closet, I’d find an old record player that would play it. Sure enough, I found it, we plugged it in, and we were amazed — we knew all those songs! Those were the tunes we sang in shul, at simchahs, and on Shabbos. Songs that have endured and are still popular today, such as “Kol Rinah,” “V’Karev Pezureinu,” “Baruch Hu, Elokeinu,” and “Utzu Eitzah” to name a few.

We know that Rav Meir Shapiro ztz”l composed “Utzu Eitzah” and Rav Ezriel Mandelbaum Hy”d composed “Lemikdasheich Tuv,” but who composed the other classics, such as “Yiboneh Hamikdash,” “Racheim Bechasdecha,” “Yevoreich Es Beis Yisrael,” and “Avinu Malkeinu” (the one we sing at the end of the tefillah)? I still don’t know the answer, and would be very happy to find out.

We examined the record jacket, which stated that these records were made in 1951 and produced by RSA, which was the Rabbinical Seminary of America, today known as Yeshivah Chofetz Chaim. The albums were made to raise money for children who wanted to go to yeshivah but whose families couldn’t afford it.

The album, which sold for $3 — probably the first modern-era yeshivish recording that wasn’t chazzanus (the first known commercial recording of a modern, non-cantorial Jewish song is “Hava Nagila,” produced in Berlin in 1922) — was the brainchild of Avrohom Zelig Krohn a”h, the father of Rabbi Paysach Krohn. It was directed by Louis Nulman, father of longtime talented Jewish musician David Nulman, and codirected by Naftali Frankel. The entire album had only one musical accompaniment: a piano, played by Joe King, who was a frum keyboard player and the owner of the biggest frum orchestra at the time, called the Joe King orchestra (no joking).

And who sang on the album? None other than three Chait brothers. Rabbi Leibel Chait, Rabbi Yochanan Chait, and Rabbi Moshe Chait — longtime rosh yeshivah of Chofetz Chaim in Jerusalem and father of Rabbi Baruch Chait. At the time, all three brothers were talmidim and rebbeim in Chofetz Chaim, which was still located in Williamsburg (in 1955 the yeshivah moved to Forest Hill, Queens). And they were all blessed with harmonious voices, obviously a family trait.

The original red record jacket had the names of the songs, the RSA logo, and a hand-drawn sketch of some happy yeshivah boys dancing in a circle. A few years later, when the album went into its second printing, 12-inch, long-playing vinyl albums had already come out, and the cover was changed to a photo of three yeshivah boys learning. That’s the one I remember — it was always playing in the background at home, one of the few pre-Pirchei records to hit the shelves. Somehow, the album even made it into the review section of the New York Times, which described it as “delightful.” Oh, how the times have changed.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1095)