Tough Guy Levi and the Jokey Jewish Cowboy Song Tradition
The September 1908 Edison Phonograph Monthly is out. Let’s see what’s listed for sale. Hey, this looks interesting: “A dandy new cowboy song with Western effects galore. Among them — the tom tom, cowboy chorus, cowboy and Indian yells, hoof beats, etc.” The ad also says that the vocalist “sings this number with the spirit and fire that the unusual words and music call for — so plainly too that not a word is lost, even in the yiddish dialect portion.” Let’s have a listen:
“I’m a Yiddish Cowboy” was performed by Edward Meeker (who had also sung the first recorded version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”). The composers were Al Piantadosi and Halsey Mohr. Of primary interest, however, is the overall theme as reflected in the lyrics of Edgar Leslie. What was funny about Jewish cowboys? And what about this one was viewed as Jewish in the first place? His Yiddish vocabulary appears to be limited to a single word — “oi” — and, while he insists on sending for a rabbi to preside at his wedding, the bride is Native American. Perhaps the key is his status as an upstart — brashly courting a “blue blood [sic] Indian maiden” and crassly refusing the offer of a peace pipe in favor of cigarettes. What chutzpah! Yet as a manly creature of the frontier, he appeared positioned to counter some negative stereotypes.
That promise was squandered in a follow-up song in which our protagonist, Tough Guy Levi, makes a guest appearance. Al Piantadosi again supplied the score, but this time the words were by Jeff T. Branen. As far as I can tell, no recording has survived, but the cover for the sheet music shows a caricature of a man with a black beard and huge nasal appendage in an Indian headdress. The lyrics state in part:
Cohen got tired of the simple life
And turned his pawnshop over to his wife….
[O]whoopska, owhoopska
Big Chief Dynamite, oi, oi,
I’m a tough Jew-Indian boy,
Who’s afraid of the western life?
What care I for the cowboy’s knife?
Tough Guy Levi and his bunch,
I will eat them for my lunch….
Spoiler alert — he’s Big Chief Dynamite because he blows up Tough Guy Levi in the second stanza.
Another specimen from the sheet music collections is almost as offensive. The chorus of a song from 1907 went: