Tin Pan Alley: Bei Mir Worst Du Poor

When an obscure Brooklyn composer named Sholom Secunda was writing songs for the Yiddish theater in the '303, he and Lyricist Jacob Jacobs would peddle the copyrights to music publishers for $15 apiece, and they were happy to get the money. One day in 1937, Secunda heard a familiar sound coming out of the jukeboxes of Flatbush. The Andrews Sisters had picked up one of his tunes, cut a record for Decca with new lyrics, and all over the U.S. people were dancing to

Bei mir bist du schön—Please let me explain,

Bei mir bist du schön means that...

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