The Melodists: the family at the roots of Polish jazz and tango

As you may know, I am very fond of the twisted, tragic, and largely forgotten stories of the pre-WWII tango in Eastern Europe. And one of my favorite heroes of this amazing and lost era is Jerzy Petersburski, the musical soul of the boisterous cabaret culture of Warsaw, and the composer of such global tango hits as"Donna Clara" (originally "Tango Milonga", 1928) and "Ostatnia niedziela" ("Last Sunday", 1936, which took Russia by storm under a Russian title, "The tired Sun"), as well as Poland and Russia's most beloved waltz,"Blekitna Chusteczka" ("Blue Handkerchief"), a song which came to epitomize the heartbreak of the War. Unlike many of his colleagues, Jerzy was spared of both Nazi death camps and Stalin's Gulag. After the fall of Poland he joined the Belorussian State Jazz, an amazing project worth its own story, and eventually escaped the Soviet Union with the  Polish Corps of General Anders, playing for the military audiences in Persia, Palestine and Egypt, and rebuilding a new musical career for himself in faraway Buenos Aires
I knew that Jerzy Petersburski belonged to the storied clan of Jewish musicians whose surname, the Melodists, speaks for itself. I also understood that the famous Gold-Petersburski band included Jerzy's brother and several cousins, and somehow I assumed that Petersburski was just a scenic name, a capital-city calling card adopted for publicity (just like another trailblazer of Polish jazz and tango was a Warszawski after Poland's illustrious capital). But a chance conversation about (extremely rare) Jewish surnames derived from the cities in Russia's hinterland - such as St. Petersburg - made me revisit the family story of the Peterburskis and the Melodists, and discover the pivotal role the family ties played in birth of Polish jazz and tango. Oh, and yes, the surname "Petersburski" turned out to be a real family name, not a marketing invention at all!

Jakub-Lejzer Melodysta's
forgotten, broken
gravestone in Warsaw

OK, maybe "just a little bit of a marketing invention", and the one made by Jerzy's father Jakub, a jeweler who probably wanted his original family name, "Peterburg" (which stands for St. Petersburg, but in Russian) to sound more authentically Polish.

Eleonora Melodist, a
Soviet opera star, was the
most famous of
Jakub-Lejzer's children

Jakub Petersburski married Paulina (Pesse) Melodysta, a piano player from the branch of the Melodist musician dynasty which stayed in their ancestral town of Radom. It probably wasn't an old-time dynasty as the Jews of Poland only started taking government-mandated surnames in the 1820s, after the Napoleonic wars. The first Melodist on record was Paulina grandfather Chaskiel, a fiddler born in 1802.
Three of Paulina's brothers were musicians in Radom, but for our story it's more important to know that Paulina's uncle, Jakub-Lejzer Melodysta, a violinist, moved to Warsaw. Later on, Paulina's husband bought a bronze wares factory in Warsaw and moved there too. So the Petersburski kids became closely associated with Jakub-Lejzer's musician children and grandchildren in Warsaw.And what a constellation of talents it was! Jakub's sons Panfyl played alt in the Philharmonic and Ignacy lead bands, and daughters Maria and Eleonora starred in the opera. And Jakub's son-in-law Michel Gold played flute in the Warsaw Opera.

The 1922 ads for Danzig's Ermitage restaurant featured "first class jazzband trio of Karasinski"
in German, or "Karasinski-Melodyst-Petersburski trio" in Polish

Fred Melodyst (banjo) with his 1927 jazz band at a
Polish mountain resort of Zakopane

Jerzy Petersburski was the 5th child on his family, born Israel Petersburski in 1895. By the time Jerzy graduated from Warsaw Conservatory, the city has been overrun by the advancing German troops. As the young pianist continued his studies in Vienna, The WWI ended with the surrender of Germany and Austro-Hungary, Poland has won independence, and the Austrian Empire shattered. Jerzy went home, and his first gig in Poland was with his 2nd cousin, cellist Alfred Melodist (Panfyl's son), and an even younger and crazier violinist Zygmunt Karasiński who has just returned to Poland from Berlin where he played in a real American-inspired jazz band. The Jazz trio of Karasiński - Melodysta - Petersburski debuted in 1922 in the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk). The jazz craze didn't quite take over the Free City, but within a year, our jazz trailblazers made it to Warsaw where the cabaret and jazz scene really took off. Karasiński will later, after the dismemberment of Poland in 1939, invite his old pals to join the Belorussian State Jazz in Belostok; he ended up in Warsaw Ghetto during the war, but the music fans helped him escaped and hide in Lwow. Fred Melodist escaped both the Nazis and Soviets together with Jerzy Petersburski; they played together with their cousin Henryk Gold in Palestine and Egypt before Fred settled in liberated France and, eventually, in Israel.
OK, now it's time to tell more about the Golds (sons of Helena (Chaske) Melodysta and Michel Gold).

Henryk Gold was the mastermind and his brother Artur Gold (violin) and Jerzy Petersburski, the top talents of the Gold-Petersburski band which recorded so many tango hits; Stanislaw Petersburski (piano) played there as well. Their names were so synonymous with the music of the Warsaw nightlife that they even had a special song recorded about them:

Gdy Petersburski razem z Goldem gra Muzyka: Artur Gold Slowa: Andrzej Włast 1926 Strajkuje ten i ów Podskoczył dolar znów A pan Zdziechowski miał w komisji Kilka nowych mów Nie przejmuj tem się nic Uważaj to za witz I słuchaj sobie w „Qui Pro Quo” Z pogodą lic Jak Petersburski razem z Goldem gra Z jazzbandu te Ajaksy dwa Sam pan Świejkowski W humor wpada boski I przy małżonce swej Szalejmy, krzyknie, hej Gdy Petersburski razem z Goldem gra Nie zaśniesz w nocy, aż do dnia I podczas tańca będziesz myślał Że minęła chwila zła Gdy Petersburski z Goldem gra Mąż pewien w nocy raz Do sal Oazy wlazł A widząc żonę z gachem Krzykną: Ach! Złapałem was! Rewolwer wyjął i Ponuro zmarszczył brwi Lecz nagle zaczął śmiać się Mówiąc: przebacz mi

Where Petersburski and Gold play together Music by Artur Gold Lyrics by Andrzej Włast (Gustaw Baumritter) 1926 Strikes here and there, The dollar jumped again, And the Treasury Secretary Zdziechowski Said so many new words about it Don't you worry about anything Take it all as a joke And enjoy listening at "Qui Pro Quo" With the most serene faces How Petersburski plays with Gold, The jazzband's two Ajaxes. Even Mr. Świejkowski the mortician Falls into a  jolly mood And in the presence of his wife Yells "Hey!" like a madman When Petersburski plays with Gold You won't fall asleep at night until daylight And while you are dancing you will think That the evil moments have passed When Petersburski and Gold play One night, a certain husband Entered the halls of the Oasis And, seeing his wife with a lover. Shouted: "Aha! Gotcha!" He pulled out a handgun and Frowned dejectedly, But suddenly burst into laughing Saying: forgive me

Eddie Rosner with the State Jazz of Belorussia, 1941

The two Ajaxes of Homer's "Iliad" met their tragic ends but our two cousins, Jerzy Petersburski and Henryk Gold, lived to their old age despite the annihilation of the war. They fled Warsaw under the German bombs and made as far East as Białystok, which was soon occupied by the Red Army and annexed to Belarus. There, Zygmunt Karasiński hatched a brilliant and crazy idea, to rebrand the Warsaw Jazz as the First State Jazz Ensemble of Belorussia. Soon, jazz trombonist Eddie Rosner, "the Armstrong of Eastern Europe", took it over. Born in Berlin, he cut his "Jazz teeth" there, before fleeing the Nazis. As a stateless Jew stripped of his German citizenship by the Reich, Eddie Rosner wasn't allowed to join the Polish Liberation Army together with his fellow Warsaw jazzmen, and ended up marooned in Russia. My most beloved Russian tango, "Zachem", belongs to Rosner's wartime band. But after the war he ended up in the Gulag labor camps, and, upon return, suffered from blacklisting. Only right before Eddie's death, the Soviet government finally allowed him to leave to join his family in Western Berlin...Of the Melodist jazz clan, Henryk Gold's brother Artur remained in the Warsaw Ghetto, and was killed in Treblinka death camp (but not before being forced to entertain the Nazi camp command while dressed as a clown!). Jerzy Petersburski's brother Stanislaw settled in New York City.

A concert program in the Polish Library of Buenos Aires
featured the compositions of Jorge Petersburski...

While traveling across the Middle East with the Polish Corps, Jerzy got himself a Palestinian passport in Tel Aviv and a Brazilian entry visa in Cairo. And in March 1947 he disembarked in Rio de Janeiro and took a job at Boite Picadilli. A stint at Radio El Mundo in Buenos Aires followed (Jerzy composed a jingle for this station!) and then directing the orchestra of Teatro Nacional. But no tango anymore. 20 years later, after his wife was killed in a catastrophic Argentinian earthquake of 1967, Petersburski decided to return home to Warsaw. He was 74 when he met a 40 years old opera singer Sylwia Klejdysz (in the clip below, Sylwia sings the Blue Handkerchief, the most famous hit from her husband's stint at the Belorussian State Jazz). Their only son, Jerzy Jr., also a pianist and a composer whose Masters Thesis was on his father's life and music, is maintaining a virtual museum of the Petersburskis now. We got in touch when I was just starting to figure out how all the Melodists were related to one another.

Black and White Ball of 1966, the high mark of New York
opulence (from the Plaza hotel website)

The Golds' US immigration record

After their travels across the Middle East, Henryk Gold remained in Palestine after the war, and composed a few Hebrew hits, then tried his luck in Brazil and in France, but in 1953 he moved to America as well, winning a bandleader job in New York's iconic Plaza Hotel, then the site of the legendary Black and White Ball (and now most often remembered as the obscenely posh hotel in Home Alone 2 with a 10-second appearance of the hotel's then-owner Donald Trump, who bankrupted the property almost as soon as he bought it)

But the most improbable escape from the claws of death was pulled by the family of another Polish jazz and tango pioneer Henryk Wars (Warszawski), the creator of a 1928 hit, "Zatańczmy tango" ("Let's Dance Tango!"). Henryk was called up to the Polish Army at the start of WWII, and taken prisoner by the Nazis, but escaped and reached Russian-controlled areas. But his wife and two kids remained trapped in Warsaw ghetto. Luckily, Henryk Wars was based in Lwow early in his jazz career, and composed some of the city most beloved songs, including its unofficial anthem, "Tylko we Lwowie" ("Only in Lvov").

Henry Wars's marching band in Tehran (from USC archive)

So instead of joining the Belarussian State Jazz like most of the Warsowians, he managed to create a band of his own in Lvov, and to remix his hits in Russian! His outfit was called the Lvov Tea-Jazz, with "Tea" standing for "Theater" rather than for a drink :)  Having thus become a respected Soviet manager, Henryk Wars  succeeded in getting an official request from the Soviet Government to have his family released from the Ghetto! They arrived to Lwow just days before the hostilities broke up between the erstwhile allies, the Reich and the USSR. Henryk was out of town, but his wife and kids managed to escape the Nazi advance by the breadth of a hair. They toured the USSR for several more moths, before leaving to the Middle East (and famously entertaining the Shah of Persia) and Italy with the Polish Liberation Army. 

Diana Mitchell and Robert Vars talk about the life of their father at a
memorial concert featuring his music at the LAMOTH in 2017

Henry Warszawski arrived to New York from Naples in February 1947, penniless and stateless, on a transit visa to San Domingo with a ticket paid by the Jewish refugee agency HIAS. But only a few months later, the Warszawskis were processed for permanent residence in Los Angeles, and a long Hollywood streak of Wars's career got underway, under a changed name of Henry Vars. He ascended through the Hollywood ranks, from being an anonymous arranger to, most famously, the fully credited soundtrack of the "Flipper". His Polish waltz famously made it to the soundtrack of Schindler's List!
In the late 1960s Vars returned to Poland, almost at the same time as Jerzy Petersburski. But it was more like a celebrity tour, recording and conducting before coming back to Hollywood. Henry Vars's children Diana (Danuta) Mitchell and Robert Vars and grandson Dennis Mitchell are still in Los Angeles, and keep Henry's memory alive (although the family business is law rather than the music now). They are even working on getting Henry's unknown symphonic compositions to the public!

Still, nothing of their bygone epoch captures contemporary Poland's imagination better than Gold-Petersburski tangos, and especially "The last Sunday" wits its incredible variety of modern covers in all genres from hard rock to techno :) The spirit of the Melodists lives on!