That would be an astounding story in and of itself and one well worth its own hit record. Odd and unusual novelty records - just as some which were made for a wholly different audience - could still cross over to major success.īut, if the primary source for Andy Griffith wasn’t the Michel Rosenberg recording on Banner, then this is a story of two men who never met or knew each other and who independently (and nearly simultaneously) came up with an all-but-identical (but nonetheless culturally-specific) comic monologue about an unwilling and unpleasant first encounter with football. But consider the overheated ubiquity of novelty recordings in American popular music from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s (the same popularity that accounted for Griffith’s own breakout success). So, could Andy Griffith have also heard the Getzel record? Again, not likely. The 16 customers you’ll meet at the Zabar’s lox counter.The oft-repeated anecdote (I heard it from legendary Mount Airy fiddler and banjo player Tommy Jarrell in the 1970s) reveals the local persistence of a funny and positive event involving Jews, one which Griffith may have certainly encountered while growing up. On its face, the chances do not seem good but, as it turns out, a well-known local incident, dating back to the 1920s of Griffith’s Mount Airy youth, offers a clue.Ī popular store owner named Cohen was approached by the bully of the town leading a dog on a chain: “Hey, Cohen,” he called out, “this here’s my dog and he’s half Jew and half son of a bitch!” to which Cohen coolly replied: “Ah, I see he’s little kin to the both of us.” So, how would a country boy like Andy Samuel Griffith from the small town of Mount Airy, North Carolina (Jewish population: statistically insignificant), experience, or even encounter Jews or Jewish humor? Sales of “Getzel,” while nowhere near “What It Was, Was Football” numbers, did help to keep the fledgling Banner enterprise solvent and allowed Rosenberg to purchase a one-time Miami Beach roadhouse and turn it into his homage to the beloved Roumanian restaurants he left behind on the Lower East Side.įuture Star of Stage and Screen: Andy Griffith launched his career with a novelty comedy record.

However, even if “Getzel at a Football Game” was not the product of Rosenberg’s own high-octane imagination, his unique lapel-grabbing style monologist style made everything he did seem inexorably his own.

19, 1947 episode of “Forward Hour” on WEVD and credited to humorist Louis Markowitz. While it’s not clear who wrote the skit, a guess might be the author of the companion Getzel Banner 78: “Getzel at a Baseball Game.”Īround the same time the Banner disc was made, a longer version of the monologue, “Berl Bass Shpilt Baseball/Berl Bass Plays Ball” was performed by Zvee Scooler on a Dec. A dollar a ticket? But I see everyone grabbing a ticket and God knows what sort of bargain this is so now they have my dollar, too and they let me in.” Until I come to a place they wouldn’t let you in without a ticket. So, I’m on the subway up to the Bronx, something must be doing there so I run, too. I have a habit that when I see people running, I run, too.

“ Look at them running! What kind of chaos is this? America, you rascal! Everyone’s running. Unlike Griffith’s later laconic amble, which consumed both sides of a 10-inch record, Rosenberg’s animated Yiddish-English antic declamation does it on one side. In late 1946, Banner Records was formed, and, thanks to the label’s musical director, Yiddish theater composer Abe Ellstein, Banner cornered the market on the reigning crème de-la-crème of Yiddish performing veterans: Michel Rosenberg, Moishe Oysher, Molly Picon, Maurice Schwartz, Myron Cohen and a dozen more (Out of all the indie Yiddish labels of this period, only Banner sustained a long enough run to create a hefty catalog of nearly 200 titles.)įor Banner B-2012, (their second release) Rosenberg turned to his most popular stage-tested character, a frantic, sputtering allrightnik named “Getzel,” who is plopped down in a stadium and then brilliantly describes what happened. New Jewish labels included Jubilee, Apollo, Laff and Sun.

How a Yiddish theater mecca became ‘the church of rock ‘n’ roll’.

Andy griffith football story 1953 video