Who am I ? Quiz

I was born of  Jewish descent.  My older brother was born 1896. It was about that time that my family moved to to Brooklyn NY .USA  I was born at the new residence on September 26, 1898; my birth certificate bears the name Jacob . I was named after my late grandfather . However, unlike common, Western practise of naming children with two or more first names , I had no other name but  XXXXX .  My family changed the spelling of my surname to XXXX.  After I became a professional musician; subsequently, other members of my family followed^.

My brother and  I lived in many different residences, as our father changed dwellings with each new enterprise he became involved with. Mostly, we boys grew up around the quarter. And we frequented the local Yiddish theaters, with me running errands for members and appearing onstage as ^agofor.

After me and my brother, two more children were born to the family.

I lived a usual childhood existence for children of New York tenements - running around with my boyhood friends, roller skating and misbehaving in the streets. Remarkably, I didn´t cared nothing for music until the age of ten, when I was intrigued by what I heard at my friends violin recital. The sound, and the way his friend played, captured me. My  parents had bought a piano for lessons for my older brother, but to my  parents' surprise, and my Brothers relief, it was I who spent more time playing it.

With a degree of frustration, I tried various piano teachers for some two years, before finally being introduced to Charles Hambitzer, by Jack Miller, the pianist in the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Until Hambitzer's death in 1918, he was my  musical mentor. Hambitzer taught me conventional piano technique; introduced me to music of the European classical tradition, and encouraged me to attend orchestral concerts At home, following such concerts,  when I was young I would essentially try to play, at the piano, the music that I had heard - completely from recall, and without sheet music. As a matter of course, I later studied with the classical composers and "avant-garde" composer-theorists , but we just did formally training.

Tin Pan Alley

I left school at the age of 15, and I found  my first job as a "song.plugger for Jerome H. Remick and Company, a publishing firm on New York City's Tin Pan Alley where I earned $15 a week..

In 1916 , I started working for Aeolian Company and Standard Music Rolls in New York, recording and arranging. I  produced dozens, if not hundreds, of rolls under my own and assumed names.  I also recorded rolls of my own compositions for the Duo-Art and reproducing piano-machines as well as recording piano rolls^.

^{Vaudeville theatres other burlesque shows wanted me as a Piano-player, were I had to improvise a lot. Later on I sold some of my compositions to the new "motion picture" companies called spectacles. When the sound first came to the filmindustry, my recordings could be found in a lot of "Nickelodions". The movies were made in Hollywood but we could watch them in NY, but they were silent , somebody had to play music to them . That´s what I did in my first musical carrer.}

^{Who am I ?}

^{Have you guessed me yet?} 

^{More tomorrow of me!}

^{Hear some music from "My time"}

(None of these songs are mine, but some of mine aresimilar to that style, mine are mostly written for piano...)

Hit Songs From the Roaring 1920's