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Editor’s Note; This article was originally published in the Forward on September 20, 2012. To some lovers of classical American song, it may seem paradoxical that the Tin Pan Alley genius who created such goyish holiday classics as “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade” was born Israel Isidore Beilin in Belarus, Russia, the son of a village cantor. After he and his family fled to New York to escape Cossack pogroms in 1893, the family’s name was changed to Baline at Ellis Island. In 1907 it was altered again to Irving Berlin by Joseph Stern, a sheet music publisher who concocted the...

Digging into the tradition, playing vintage material for young hipsters, making musicology fun—Maria Muldaur started doing that in the Boston coffeehouses five decades ago, and Tuba Skinny is doing it in New Orleans now. So, it’s no surprise that they’ve been circling around each other for a while (Muldaur sat in with Tuba Skinny at d.b.a. two years ago) and that they’ve now made an album out of it. The pairing makes sense on a few levels: Tuba Skinny have lacked a good frontwoman since regular singer Erika Lewis went part-time, and Muldaur can always use a band to click with. They’...