In 1913, when Joe Hayman waxed the first "Cohen At the Telephone" monolog for Columbia (that recording is also here in my archives), comedy skits in
Jewish dialect were an industry in their own right with every label marketing their own versions of the same bits, all of which sold very well. By the early Twenties, when this monolog was recorded, a new generation of people
were buying records and they were not as enthusiastic about racial stereotypes as their parents had been. This would be one of the last Cohen records, recorded on April 16 of 1923 for Columbia. The subject of a rascallion
wooing a wealthy widow had been popular Music Hall fodder for many years, and this is a good example of how such bits were performed. While the punchline is predictable, and more than a little cynical, it is a slice of
entertainment history and should be heard with that context in mind. The acoustic recording, probably made in London, is good with a quiet surface. Despite being played quite a lot, noise reduction was able to remove much
of the scratch and crackle. (The flip side of this record, "Cohen Phones for a Phone," is featured in a post at the
Vocal Tracks Blog.)
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