When I bump into some of my fans in the street from time to time – invariably they say something like, “Thank you for the work that you do!” We love your songs. We grew up on it. And sometimes they ask me how I came up with this idea. I tell them – it wasn’t me who came up with the idea of doing parodies.
The first one who did Jewish song parodies was Mickey Katz. He was a vaudeville player who would sing in Yinglish. Sometimes Yiddish and sometimes English, but always with an accent. He was the father of the Jewish song parody. If you want an example of his work check out Duvid Crockett on YouTube one day. After him came Alan Sherman and Tom Lehrer. Then Rechnitzer Rejects, Country Yossi and finally – Shlock Rock!
But going back to Mickey Katz, he had a son named Joel Gray. He starred in movies and television and Broadway and was known for his role in Wicked. And Joel Gray had a daughter named Jennifer Gray who is a movie star. And there you have it. That was a long way to go to get to the word Gray. But at least I gave hakaros hatov to the Father of Jewish Parody – Mickey Katz.
