Oy, Caramba! Lost Album is All Mixed Up
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Long before DJ Danger Mouse’s controversial “Grey Album” mash-up of The Beatles’ “White Album” with Jay-Z’s “The Black Album,” there was an even more unlikely melding of popular musical styles.
Top Latin musicians such as Ray Barretto and Charlie Palmieri put their spin on Jewish classics like “Havah Nagilah” and “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein.” The result, in 1961, was “Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos” by the hybrid-name band Juan Calle and his Latin Lantzmen.
Long gathering dust in the ignored collections of aging Jews, this infectious, bouncy album filled with rumba, merengue and cha-cha versions of old Yiddish favorites has just been resurrected and re-released through the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation — “a nonprofit dedicated to exhuming lost Jewish music from America’s attics,” says co-founder Roger Bennett.
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