Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars

Irving Berlin

1915

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.

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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.

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