Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars

Irving Berlin

1915

Page with English title on top and decorative border.
Tooltip info icon

Sheet music for “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars,” a comic song about a Jewish businessman on his deathbed trying to collect money owed him. “Yiddish dialect songs” were popular performance pieces in an era that also embraced Italian dialect songs and blackface. All these genres stereotyped and mocked their subjects. Eventually, even some Jewish stars, such as Irving Berlin, Fannie Brice, and Sophie Tucker, wrote and performed Yiddish dialect songs, whether because of a desire to subvert the genre or simply because they were a popular and profitable repertoire.

Credits

Irving Berlin, “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-seven Dollars” (New York: Ted Snyder Co., 1915). Courtesy The Lester S. Levy Sheet Museum Music Collection, The Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

Engage with this Source
Restricted
Some content is unavailable to non-members, please log in or sign up for free for full access.

Related Guide

The Rise of Popular Culture: From Folk Traditions to Mass Media

1880–1918

Jewish popular culture evolved from following folk traditions to creating new forms of mass media, strengthening ethnic identity while depleting cultural heterogeneity.

You may also like

Photograph of female figure sitting behind skeleton.
Tooltip info icon

Photograph of Theda Bara

Theda Bara (1885–1955) was born Theodosia Burr Goodman in Cincinnati. After completing public high school, Goodman moved to New York to become an actress. In advertisements for the Fox Film Company’s…
View Source

Free Love

I do not believe in free love. There is legal marriage, an institution based on ideas and pretenses. A legally married wife you can divorce, but where will you run away from free love? As for…
View Source
Page with Portuguese titles and text and small portrait photographs throughout.
Tooltip info icon

Kreuzer Sonata Advertisement

A Portuguese-language advertisement for February 5–6, 1915, performances in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, of the Grande Companhia Israelita’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s novella The Kreuzer Sonata.
View Source