Craig Pomranz: Berlin to Dylan to Simon and Garfunkel, It’s All Kosher

In 1911, son-of-a-cantor Israel Beilin (Irving Berlin) was a song-plugger when he wrote “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” It was a huge hit, perhaps, Craig Pomranz suggests, opening a door to the Jewish influence on popular music. This artist’s version starts quiet, then picks up syncopation. He growls on the word “honey.” “Embraceable You” by Jacob Gershwine/Israel Gershovitz (George and Ira Gershwin) follows. (Father Morris Gershovitz changed the name after Ira was born.) It’s been some years since I’ve seen Pomranz. He sings higher now, above the note – raising his chin to do so. This works better with muted songs.

Curiously, Pomranz doesn’t have fun with vaudevillian tunes “Secondhand Rose” (Grant Clark/Frederick Hanley) and “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long” (Victor Young/Sam Lewis nee Levine). Murray Grand’s “I Always Say Hello to a Flower,” however, arrives vaudeville-light and enchanting – “Hiya-synth!’, “Hi-dranga!” with a sweet anecdote. Go figure.  

An unembellished “My Yiddische Momme” (Jack Selig Yellin/Lew Pollack) is touching rather than schmaltzy. “I know this is an old song because my Yiddische Momme never had grey hair,” Pomranz quips. A rendition of “Far From the Home I Love,” customarily performed by Tevye’s daughter Havel in Fiddler on the Roof, is introduced as being “about loving someone and having the courage to live one’s own life.” This selection also lands meaningful and notably empathetic (Jerrold Lewis Bock/Jerry Bock and Sheldon Mayer Harnick).

Acknowledging that “most of our popular Christmas songs were written by Jewish people,” Pomranz sings “In Your Easter Bonnet” (with audience assistance) and “White Christmas” (strangely without audience assistance). (Israel Beilin/Irving Berlin). The latter is followed by “I’m Dreaming of a White Hanukah” with the Hanukah Menorah/ Children reading the Torah…May all your bushes burn bright…a parody sorely in need of Barry Kleinbort cleverness.

Paul Frederic Simon/Arthur Ira Garfunkel (Paul Simon/Art Garfunkel)’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” emerges aptly like a hymn, as, effectively, does Robert Allen Zimmerman’s (Bob Dylan) “Forever Young.” This is a show from the point of view of a mature artist – not just in age, but also in terms of life view.

Pomranz’s signature “I Love Being Here With You” by Norma Deloris Engstrom (Peggy Lee) and Bill Schluger, elicits audience response to “I love when you call my name” with a vociferous “CRAIG!” We close with Harold Lane David/Burt Freeman Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now” (Hal David/ Burt Bacharach). Like some other songs tonight, what might be corny seems appropriate and needed. The room sings with gusto.

Frequent big endings could successfully be halved. Arrangements are pedestrian.

Craig Pomranz: Berlin to Dylan to Simon and Garfunkel, It’s All Kosher
Director Ronald Cohen
Musical Director Michael Roberts
Don’t Tell Mama
343 W 46th Street