Cab Calloway - Who's Yehoodi? (Yehudi?)

Who is Yehoodi?

Someone please lend me a hand
Solve this mystery if you can
If he's mice or if he's man
Who's Yehoodi?

G-man Hoover's getting moody
Got his men on double-duty
Trying to find out who's Yehoodi
Who's Yehoodi!

The little man who wasn't there
Said he heard him on the air
No one seems to know from where ...
But who's Yehoodi?

The phrase "Who's Yehudi?" seems to have originated on Bob Hope's radio program in the late 1930s. Apparently, one night when violinist Yehudi Menuhin was a guest, Hope's sidekick Jerry Colonna repeatedly interjected the phrase whenever Hope's gags fell flat. On subsequent shows, Colonna continued to use the term to fill space, and for a while, Yehudi became a national catchphrase for "the man who wasn't there."

A short musical film featuring Kay Kyser and his orchestra illustrates a more troubling yet familiar meaning for Yehudi. In the film, Kyser's singer, Lane Truesdale, sings in front of a portrait of a stage Jew who is wearing an obviously fake beard and black hat and holding a book. After the camera zooms in on her body, the camera cuts to the "portrait," who is leering at her.

Cab Calloway's "Who's Yehoodi?" (written by Bill Seckler and Matt Dennis) hit the charts in 1940, an especially anti-Semitic era in America as well as in Europe. "G-man Hoover" refers to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who, in the early 1920s, jailed and deported political radicals, including many Jews. Perhaps the song predicts that the FBI will ferret out, like Hitler, exactly who's "Yehoodi" and who isn't. The "Yehoodi" of the song is omnipresent on the airwaves, yet he finally escapes detection. Is the song anti-Semitic, pro-Semitic, or something more mixed?

From
WHO'S YEHOODI?
Scat, Jive, and Yiddish, 1938-1953
BY JONATHAN Z.S. POLLACK

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Cab
• Calloway
• Who's
• Yehoodi
• Yehudi
• Menuhin
• jazz
• 1930s

[readbeowulfnow]

Yehudi Menuhin, a great Jewish violinist, there was a very strong connection between black and Jewish musicians in the 30's and 40's. Not anti-semetic, in fact, the very opposite. A great exhibit about it at the Jewish Contemporary Museum in SF

[mikeandkristymcgee]

@rotyoung not sure how you heard of my father's passing...especially since he was so bad at keeping in touch with anyone ..news travels far and fast! Always neat to hear of someone that knew of him as a child and his athletic abilities. My dad spoke of a Sy Louis (sp?) in the neighborhood...did you know of him? I'm afraid he may have died in Vietnam.

[rotyoung]

@mikeandkristymcgee ;-) trust Youtube to help us to get in touch with the in the know. Thanks for taking the time to respond!

[drafe007]

its the little man in the fridge who turns off the light when you close the door.

[irismcooper]

Yehoodi must be related to Howdy Doody (ha ha). Thanks for sharing that with all of us 2nd violinist. Is the 2ndviolnist in this piece related to you? Parents saw Cab Callowayback in the late 40's in a nightclub in N,Y. Said that he was the greatest. My grandmother was watching me so they could go to N.Y.

Iris from the D.C. area.

[mikeandkristymcgee]

Bill Seckler is my grandfather and Bob is my father. The catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" originated when violinist Yehudi Menuhin was a guest on the popular radio program of Bob Hope, where sidekick Jerry Colonna, apparently finding the name itself humorous, repeatedly asked "Who's Yehudi?" Colonna continued the gag on later shows even though Menuhin himself was not a guest, turning "Yehudi" into a widely understood late 1930s slang reference for a mysteriously absent person.

[Psydkik]

@zbestwun2001 Even if he meant the song meanly, it's long enough ago that some of us can laugh at it. So things are OK now...

[zbestwun2001]

OK RIP ole Bill...poor guy turned into an alcoholic and lost his house..

[Psydkik]

@zbestwun2001 I heard that was the later meaning. . . that it was just about a violinist at first. *Shrugs* Probably wasn't meant meanly originally

[1worldcurrency]

Cab Calloway often used cantorial [Jewish] phrases in his loose, jocular style.