The Jews Who Rock wiki

The Jews who Rock Wiki. It's a long, long list of every more-or-less bigtime Jew in music. It was lovingly, painstakingly compiled by Jewcy's own Izzy Grinspan, and we now bring it to the public to help us fill in any remaining omissions. Know of anyone who should be on the list, but isn't? Add them! Tell us about them!

Kenny Aaronson
Bassist Kenny Aaronson has played with a long list of rock luminaries, among them Bob Dylan, Hall & Oates, Rick Derringer, Foghat, Sammy Hagar, Billy Idol, Joan Jett, and the Rolling Stones. In the early seventies he was a member of the band Stories, which scored a number-one hit with the interracial love song "Brother Louie" in the summer of 1973. Aaronson was raised in Brooklyn.

Paula Abdul
Former cheerleader for the L.A. Lakers, now the arbiter of our country’s talent on "American Idol." Abdul began her career in music choreographing for Janet Jackson, but when Jackson complimented her voice, she used the earnings from her dance work to record "Forever Your Girl." Four of the album’s tracks went to the top of the charts: "Straight Up," "Cold-Hearted," "The Way That You Love Me," and "Opposites Attract," which may be the only number-one hit ever to have a video co-starring a large animated cat in suspenders. Paula Abdul is often counted among the many half-Jewish American celebrities, but she’s actually one hundred percent: her father is a Syrian Jew, while her mother is Jewish and French-Canadian. The Forgotten Exodus, a campaign on the behalf of Jews who have had to flee Arabic countries, uses her image on one of its posters.

Lou Adler
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the man who brought The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the American screen was also a rock manager. Lou Adler began his career working with Herb Alpert, fellow member of the tribe, as co-manager of the surf group Jan and Dean. Soon he and Alpert were writing songs together under the name Barbara Campbell, but the partnership ended in 1964, when Adler founded his own record label, Dunhill Records. Dunhill found some success with the song "Eve of Destruction," by two songwriters on the label, but its real triumph was in signing the Mamas and the Papas. Ever-foresighted, Adler eventually sold Dunhill to ABC in order to focus more on planning (and recording) the Monterey Pop festival. The recordings made him a rich man, and he went on to found the label Ode, signing Carole King and producing her album Tapestry. In 1974 he brought over the British theatrical version of Rocky Horror and produced it as a film; not long after, he began managing the careers of two stoner humorists named Cheech and Chong.

Aerosmith
Rumors abound (mostly on neo-Nazi websites) about the Jewish background of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler, but whether or not Liv’s dad is a chosen person, it’s certain that drummer Joey Kramer was once a nice Jewish boy. Kramer, who counts Jon Bonham as a major influence, was born in the Bronx. As one of the few Jewish kids in a predominately Italian school, he hung around a group of tough older boys for protection; these bigger kids eventually inspired him to take up the drums. He hit upon the band name "Aerosmith" while still in high school, possibly inspired by Harry Nilsson's album Aerial Ballet. When two guys he knew in Boston invited him to be in a band with his old friend Steven, Kramer accepted, contributing both his simple yet powerful drumming style and the name Aerosmith.

Alisha
One of the many mono-monikered pop stars of the eighties, Alisha was only fifteen when her self-titled album became a hit in 1985. "All Night Passion," the first single, quickly became a dance club favorite. It was followed soon after by "Baby Talk," the bassline of which sounds an awful lot like "Into The Groove." When "Baby Talk" rose up the Billboard charts, the Brooklyn-born Alisha gained the dubious distinction of being the first dance diva ever to be dismissed as a wannabe Madonna.

Herb Alpert
Herb Alpert was a musical mensch on both sides of the business, founding the wildly successful A&M records and playing trumpet as one of its acts. Born in LA in 1935, Alpert began his music career writing songs with Lou Adler, including the Sam Cooke hit "Only Sixteen." He founded A&M records with Jerry Moss in 1962; the label’s artists would ultimately range from the Carpenters to Cat Stevens to Janet Jackson and would include Alpert’s own group, the Tijuana Brass. Playing a south-of-the-border style known as "Ameriachi," Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass released ten Top 20 albums during the sixties.

All Saints
Three out of the four members of the now-defunct British teen pop ensemble All Saints were Jewish: England-born Melanie Blatt and Canadian sisters Natalie and Nicole Appleton. Their single "I Know Where It’s At" reached number four in the British charts in 1996, entered the top 40 in the United States in 1997, and was a hit in Europe and Asia. By 1998, their self-titled album had gone platinum; their second effort, Saints and Sinners, was released in 2000 and also entered the charts. All three Jewish members of All Saints have gained media attention for their romances with fellow British rock stars: Melanie Blatt is married to Jamiroquai bassist Stuart Zander, Natalie Appleton’s husband is Liam Howlett of the Prodigy, and Nicole Appleton has a baby, Gene, with Liam Gallagher of Oasis.

Anthrax
Scott Ian of Anthrax has managed to thrash his way into hard rock history despite being short and Semitic. Starting with 1984’s Fistful of Metal and continuing through the eighties, Anthrax set the standard for speed metal with lighting-fast guitar work and heavy vocals. Even as a metal god, Ian never forgot his heritage, referring to himself in conversation regularly as "the Jew." But depending on your definition of Judaism, Ian isn’t the only Yid in Anthrax. Born Jewish, guitarist Dan Spitz has been a Jew for Jesus since 2001.

The Archies
Jews were making bands long before Making the Band. Just look at the Archies, a pre-fab ensemble concocted around the blueprint of the popular cartoon and best known for the infectious 1969 hit "Sugar, Sugar." Archie, Jughead, and Betty surely weren’t Jewish (though the jury is still out on Veronica), but the band’s mastermind Don Kirschner and producer Jeff Barry were indeed members of the tribe. And while none of the actual musicians in the Archies identified themselves as Jews, backing vocalist Andy Kim looks Jewish – he’s the spitting image of Neil Diamond, but he’s actually Lebanese.

Army of Lovers
Swedish pop groups tend to be about as Jewish as Creed, but two of the Scandinavian pranksters in Army of Lovers were of Yiddish persuasion. Ex-hairdresser Jean-Pierre Barda is French-Algerian and Jewish, while former phone-sex operator Dominika Peczynski is a Polish-Russian Jew. In the late eighties, these Euro Jews and their colleagues delighted the continent with their high camp disco. By 1993, however, they had crossed the line from fame to infamy when their single "Israelism" was accused of mocking Jewish culture. The Army swore that the track, which added a much-needed backbeat and rap section to "Havenu Shalom Aleichem," celebrated Judiasm; naturally, while the controversy raged in Europe, the song went to the top of the charts in Israel.

Asleep at the Wheel
Despite their incredibly emo band name, Asleep at the Wheel is not made up of four sad nineteen-year-olds from New Jersey; instead, the band is composed of an ever-shifting number of Western swing musicians. At 6’7", lead singer Ray Benson is somewhat of a Jewish giant. Also Jewish is the band’s steel guitarist, Lucky Oceans (who was born with the far more plausible name Reuben Gosfield). Asleep at the Wheel has been playing songs in the style of Merle Haggard and Bob Wills since 1970. Their discography, which includes the 1975 hit record Texas Gold, 1978’s Collision Course, and their 1987 comeback album, Asleep at the Wheel 10, has earned them a whopping nine Grammy awards over the course of their career.

Elan Atias
Elan Atias may not be the most famous person to front the Wailers, but he’s definitely more Jewish than Bob Marley. In 1997, when the Orthodox Atias was 22, he was picked as one of many in a succession of post-Marley lead singers for the Wailers. Atias has also toured with Santana and played with members of No Doubt. His recent cover of Roxy Music’s "Slave to Love" featured Gwen Stefani on backing vocals, and he is currently working with Tony Kanal on new tracks due out this year.

The Bad Livers
The Bad Livers may have been the most experimental neo-country band ever to come out of Austin. Alongside banjo-players and guitarists Danny Barnes and Bob Grant, Jewish bassist and tubist Mark Rubin helped create a sound that brought both punk influences and sampling techniques to bluegrass. Rubin was raised in rural Oklahoma and grew up listening to klezmer – yet another of the diverse musical traditions the Livers added to their eclectic Austin country.

Bad Religion
Brett Gurewitz fits the model of other Jewish musicians with record labels, but with one notable exception: his label, Epitaph, is one of the most influential in punk rock. Gurewitz was raised Jewish but had become disillusioned enough by the time he was fifteen to name his band Bad Religion. Founded in 1980, the band has a lifespan unrivaled in the fast-moving world of hardcore: Despite several lineup changes and a long hiatus on Gurewitz’s part, Bad Religion is still around today. Gurewitz’s other project, Epitaph Records, has exhibited equal stamina. Epitaph was founded in 1983 as a way for Bad Religion to release its records. By the early nineties, the label had a number of hit bands; today, its roster ranges from the indie hip-hop of Sage Francis to the Swedish neo-garage group the Hives.

The Band
In addition to backing Robert Zimmerman on what would eventually become the Basement Tapes, the Band had their own Jewish star. Robbie Robertson, who played rhythm guitar and wrote most of the Band’s songs, was born in Canada in 1944 to a Mohawk mother and a Jewish father. He was recruited to be a member of Ronnie Hawkins’ rockabilly band the Hawks; as the Hawks morphed into the Band, Robertson morphed into its most recognized member. The band gained popularity as Dylan’s backing group, but proved their chops with their own Music from Big Pink in 1968. After permanently making his mark on American music with four more albums, Robertson went on to score several Martin Scorsese films, including Raging Bull.

The Bangles
Who knew that the voice behind "Walk Like an Egyptian" grew up singing at Passover seders? Lead Bangle Susanna Hoffs is an L.A. Jewish girl who formed the band in 1981 by placing a want ad. Originally called "Colors" and then "the Supersonic Bangs," the group settled on their name when they learned that "the Bangs" was already taken. Their Different Light garnered national attention with the Prince-written "Manic Monday," and subsequent hits included their cover of fellow-Semites Simon and Garfunkel’s "Hazy Shade of Winter," the perennial karaoke favorite "Eternal Flame," and of course, the aforementioned track about the land of Mizrayim, which was number one on the charts in 1985.

The Barenaked Ladies
These Toronto boys played for years before their breakthrough hit, "One Week," climbed the charts in 1998. The band formed in 1988, taking their name from an old joke the vocalists had shared at a Bob Dylan concert as teens (they were inventing fictional bands with goofy names due to sheer boredom – Dylan wasn’t at his best back then). For most of the nineties, the Barenaked Ladies were a cult act, charming college kids with silly pop songs like "Be My Yoko Ono," but 1998’s Stunt brought them into the mainstream. Jewish frontman Steven Page recently included three Chanukah songs on the band’s holiday album Barenaked for the Holidays, and all five Ladies refrain from touring during the Jewish holidays.

MC Paul Barman
"My dandy voice makes the most anti-choice granny’s panties moist," boasts MC Paul Barman on one track. That’s one way to put it. Barman raps flowlessly through his nose, dropping filthy but clever lyrics with so little rhythm that he generally sounds like a parody of a white rapper. But his debut, It’s Very Stimulating, was produced by Prince Paul, and he’s collaborated with such hip-hop luminaries as Deltron 3030.

Steve Barri
Brooklyn-born producer Steve Barri got his start when legendary manager and label-head Lou Adler took him under his wing. Barri produced tracks for artists such as Jan and Dean and Johnny Rivers, for whom he wrote "Secret Agent Man" with his writing partner P.F. Sloan. As the head of A&R for Dunhill Records, he was responsible for signing Steppenwolf, Three Dog Night, Steely Dan, Jimmy Buffett, the Four Tops, and Dusty Springfield. In the early eighties, he began doing A&R for Motown Records, bringing in Rick James, the Commodores, and Lionel Richie. Barri was known for producing records with a rich, full sound; some of his greatest hits include albums by the Four Tops, Mama Cass Elliot, and Smokey Robinson.

Jeff and Mark Bass
The Bass Brothers – yes, it’s their real name – are the two Jewish guys responsible for Eminem’s sound. Growing up in Detroit years before Eminem made Eight Mile Road famous, the Basses got their start young, when the 12-year-old Jeff and 8-year-old Mark auditioned for a Greyhound commercial. Three years later, the brothers set off to make their musical fortune with Jeff’s band Dreamboy. By the early nineties they were producing hip-hop acts; they joined up with Eminem in 1992 after hearing him on the radio performing at an open mic. Years later, the Bass Brothers would produce most of the tracks on both Slim Shady and The Marshall Mathers LP. They also co-write many of Em’s songs, and when Eight Mile came out, Jeff and Mark Bass shared an Oscar with Eminem for their work on "Lose Yourself."

The Beastie Boys
Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D. began playing together as a hardcore punk act in the early eighties, when they were still known as the New York high school kids Adam Horowitz, Adam Yauch, and Michael Diamond. They were discovered by legendary rap producer Rick Rubin in 1984, signed to Rubin’s new label Def Jam in 1985, and catapulted into fame with the release of the frat-party classic License to Ill in 1986. It would be hard for the band that wrote "Girls" not to mature on their subsequent albums, but nobody expected them to become post-modern heroes (their sample-crazy, Dust-Brothers-produced Paul’s Boutique prefigured Beck's Odelay by several years) or pious activists (their Tibetan Freedom concerts brought together huge names in alternative rock throughout the late nineties). Bonus ancestral note: Adam Horowitz’s father is playwright Israel Horowitz.

The Beat Farmers
The Beat Farmers were formed in San Diego in 1983 as a country band with an L.A. punk rock influence. Leader Country Dick Montana recruited a host of musicians, including Buddy Blue, a Jewish fellow born Buddy Seigel, who played with the band until 1985, leaving shortly after their debut album was signed to Curb Records. The Farmers went on to play for the next ten years, collaborating with such musicians as John Doe of X and the Jewish singer (and former stripper) Candye Kane, until Montana’s death in 1995.

Beck
Beck’s mother, Bibbe Hansen, was not only Andy Warhol’s youngest Factory actress but also the daughter of a Jewish mother whose own mother was also Jewish. As a result, by Halachic rules, Beck Hansen is a Jew, despite a non-religious background and a recent interest in Scientology. Like his fellow Jewish pranksters the Beastie Boys, Beck is a master of collage, mixing up folk, blues, country and funk and layering the whole stew with a hefty dollop of samples. His first album, Mellow Gold, became a success after 1994’s "Loser" taught a generation of kids how to explain how incredibly not cool they were in Spanish. His next big hit was 1996’s Odelay, which spawned six singles, followed by Mutations in 1998 and the ridiculously funked-out Midnite Vultures in 1999. In recent years, Beck seems to have finally shed his perpetual adolescence, releasing the melancholy Sea Change in 2002 and marrying the actress Marissa Ribisi.

Dan Bern
Dan Bern’s angry, literate folksongs have earned him the "new Dylan" label, and his tongue-in-cheek riffs on Dylan’s talking blues haven’t exactly helped shake that comparison. Unlike the former Mr. Zimmerman, though, Bern has never come close to hiding his Jewish background. He often performs under his family’s original surname, Bernstein, and his backing band is called the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy. Bern’s songs have titles like "Jew from Kentucky" and "My Name is Bernstein" (in which Bern claims that Jesus was born with the name Jesus Lipshitz), but his most Jewish lyrical moment might be in "Jewish Guys." When a woman informs him of Jesus’s many miracles, Bern’s narrator replies, "You don't know a lot about Jewish guys/ That's just the way we are/ All that stuff they say about Jesus/ I can do sittin’ in my car."

Biohazard
This Brooklyn metal band is known for being one of the first to incorporate elements of hip-hop into their sound. Their 1992 album Urban Discipline gave the band a reputation for beat-heavy songs about the ravages of city life. Drummer Danny Shuler and bassist/vocalist Evan Seinfeld are both Jewish; Seinfeld even proclaims his heritage with a somewhat paradoxical Star of David tattoo.*

Roy Bittan
See Max Weinberg.

Jack Black
Jack Black (that’s his real name) grew up in Los Angeles, where he discovered his acting skills during a game of Freeze after a Passover seder one year. Black’s career took off after he became a member of Tim Robbins’ acting troupe at U.C.L.A. As an actor, he has often played musically-inclined roles, including Barry in High Fidelity and the hero Dewey in School of Rock. But Black is also a rockstar of sorts as one half of Tenacious D. The joke-rock duo gots its start with just one song: a tribute to the greatest song in the world, although not that song itself (because the band had forgotten how that one went). The D had an HBO series in 1999; it didn’t last long, but Black and bandmate Kyle Gass have toured the nation twice now and are at work on an upcoming Tenacious D movie.

Chris Blackwell
Chris Blackwell founded Island Records, the label that introduced ska and reggae to Europe and the US. Blackwell was born in London, but his family had long-standing ties to Jamaica; they had founded the first synagogue there, and when Blackwell was young, they moved back to the island. Blackwell’s career would reverse that trip across the Atlantic. He started Island Records in Kingston in 1959, but moved it to London in the early sixties. There, he quickly became the number-one provider of Caribbean music to the city’s growing West Indian population. He found his biggest reggae success with Bob Marley but eventually branched out to produce rock and pop, including such artists as U2, Robert Palmer, and Tom Waits. When the observant boy band Evan and Jaron went looking for a record label that would honor their "Shabbat clause," they turned to Island, and Blackwell was happy to accommodate them.

Blondie
Shiksa goddess Debbie Harry may be the face of Blondie, but the band wouldn’t be the same without founder and guitarist Chris Stein, a Jewish fellow from Brooklyn (at least according to Guy Oseary's 2001 book Jews Who Rock, although Stein has been known to claim otherwise). Stein met Harry in 1973 while she was waitressing at Max’s Kansas City. They had some success with their first two albums, but their real breakthrough into the nation’s consciousness came in 1978 with their third album Parallel Lines, featuring the classic new-wave tracks "Hanging on the Telephone," "Sunday Girl," and "One Way or Another." Both "Heart of Glass" from Parallel Lines and "Call Me," their theme to the movie American Gigolo, simultaneously topped the charts in the US and the UK.

Blood, Sweat and Tears
One particularly intense night at the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, Al Kooper bled all over his organ keyboard. He’d just formed a new band after leaving the Blues Project, and this incident inspired their name. Blood, Sweat and Tears was comprised of Kooper, Blues Project guitarist Steve Katz, and four other Jewish musicians: Bobby Colomby on drums, Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss on trumpet, and Fred Lipsuis on sax and piano. The bassist and trombonist weren’t MOT, but the band did hire a string ensemble for their first album that was three-quarters Jewish. This album, Child Is Father to the Man, has been called one of the best of the sixties. With horns, Kooper was able to add soul elements to the blues-rock of his previous band, while pushing it in the direction of jazz. Only about a month after the album was released, however, Kooper took a job at Columbia Records. He was replaced by a Canadian singer named David Clayton-Thomas, whose creamy voice can be heard on Blood, Sweat and Tears’ most famous singles: "You Made Me So Very Happy" and "Spinning Wheel." Without Kooper, the band lost some of their credibility, a problem that was greatly compounded by subsequent choices to tour on behalf of Nixon’s State Department, play Vegas, and compose music for Barba Streisand. They lasted for quite a while despite demonstrably poor judgment, but Child Is Father to the Man remains their greatest creative endeavor.

Michael Bloomfield
Raised in a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago, Michael Bloomfield received his first guitar for his Bar Mitzvah. He also received a career-making favor from the rabbi who officiated, Edgar Siskin, when Siskin introduced young Michael to Columbia Records executive John Hammond, Sr. Hammond had signed Bob Dylan, and in 1964, he added Bloomfield to his roster of successful musicians. After an adolescence spent sneaking out of the house to hear music in Chicago’s clubs, Bloomfield was as knowledgeable about the blues as any young Jewish kid possibly could be—he’d even played with the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King. This made him a natural session musician, and he went on to a series of studio gigs, most notably as guitarist on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. (He also backed Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.) Bloomfield’s own bands were all acclaimed for their innovation and energy, starting with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He played guitar on their 1965 self-titled debut and their 1966 raga-influenced East-West, then quit in 1967 to found Electric Flag. In ’68, he teamed up with Al Kooper to make Super Sessions and The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper. 1969 saw the release of 2 Jews Blues with Barry Goldberg, an album Columbia didn’t want Bloomfield to cut. Bloomfield never hid his Jewish identity, though, occasionally even playing under the goofy name "Fast Fingers Finkelstein." In 1981, when he died (allegedly of a drug overdose), Barry Goldberg called him a "true hero not just to the Jewish people, not just to musicians, but to the world."

Blue Öyster Cult
Of course it was Jews who discovered the hard-rock potential of the umlaut. Having gone through several even-worse band names (Soft White Underbelly, Oaxaca), founders Sandy Pearlman and Richard Melzter settled on "Blue Oyster Cult" just before signing to Columbia in 1971. Known for playing "thinking man’s heavy metal," BÖC had their biggest success with "(Don’t Fear) the Reaper," which was featured in the horror movie Halloween and hit the top 40 charts. Read more about Blue Öyster Cult in Don't Fear the Rockdots.

The Blues Project
Al Kooper, keyboards. Danny Kalb, guitar. Steve Katz, guitar and vocals. Andy Kulberg,bass. Roy Blumenfeld, drums. How’s that for a Jewish line-up? Sure, there have been other all-Jewish bands in the history of rock. There have even been other bands with five Jewish members; see J. Geils. But no other band—certainly no band this influential—has consisted entirely of what the rock writer Scott Bernarde points out is half a minyan. (They had a non-Jewish singer for a short while, but he left after the first album). The Blues Project formed in 1965 out of a group of musicians who had little in common other than their Jewishness. Somehow, they were able to create a sound that included Kooper’s rock leanings, Kalb’s love of the blues, Katz’s pop sensibility, Kulberg’s jazz and classical training, and Blumenfeld’s interest in African and Caribbean music. Projections, released in 1966, is widely considered the band’s finest achievement. Not long thereafter, though, the Blues Project split over the subject of horns. The pro-brass Kooper left to form Blood, Sweat and Tears; the rest of the band recorded one more album and then drifted apart. (See also Al Kooper, Blood, Sweat and Tears.)

Marc Bolan
See T. Rex.

Michael Bolton
Love him or hate him (is there anyone left who actually loves him?), Michael Bolton is undeniably Jewish. Born Michael Bolotin in 1954, Michael changed his name in 1983 after finding middling success as a singer-songwriter. Amazingly, his career as Michael Bolotin involved a stint as lead singer for a metal band, Blackjack, which released two albums with Polydor. Bolton found his real niche singing honky-fied versions of soul classics when his cover of Otis Redding’s "(Sitting on) the Dock of the Bay" became a Top 40 hit in 1987. His next album, Soul Provider, contained five Top 40 singles, and the follow-up, Time, Love, and Tenderness, had four more. By the nineties, his audience had come to their senses; 1997’s All That Matters was a flop, and Bolton turned his hand to singing opera instead of the blue-eyed soul that made him famous.

Bon Jovi
It’s hard for a band of Jersey guys not to have a Jewish member, but the boys of Bon Jovi have found themselves a real mensch in keyboardist David Bryan. Bryan was born David Rashbaum in Edison, NJ. He and the young Jon Bongiovi played in bands together as teenagers. When they hit the big time with a Polygram/Mercury deal in 1983, both David and Jon changed their names. Bon Jovi had three Top 10 hits with Slippery When Wet and five more with New Jersey. Five of their singles, including the classic "Living on a Prayer," reached number one on the charts. They are still beloved around the world – and David Bryan is still very active in his local shul.

Karla Bonoff
The LA-based singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff wrote three songs for Linda Ronstadt’s 1976 album Hasten Down the Wind. Her success with Ronstadt won her a recording contract with Columbia, and the third of her albums for them contained "Personally," which was a Top 40 hit. Bonoff worked on several soundtracks in the eighties, most notably Footloose.

Bush
British grunge heartthrob Gavin Rossdale is half-Jewish; his father is descended from Russian Jews. In 2000, Rossdale recited the Motzi at a Friday-night concert in Austria as a statement against the nation’s newly elected radical right-wing government (and also as a blessing over its bread). Bush gained fame in the early nineties on the strength of their post-Nirvana hooks, reaching the Top Ten with the singles "Little Things," "Comedown," and "Glycerine." Their albums Sixteen Stone and Razorblade Suitcase were grunge staples, but the Seattle sound had fallen out of favor by the 1999 release of The Science of Things.

Randy California
See Riffed Off by Dave McKenna.

The Calling
Thanks to their name and the religious overtones of some of their songs, the Calling are sometimes mistaken for a Christian rock band. However, both singer Alex Band and guitarist Aaron Kamin are Jewish. Band and Kamin met when the twenty-year-old Kamin began dating fifteen-year-old Band’s sister. Despite the age difference, the two began playing together, actually doing a stint in a group called Generation Gap. The Calling had a chart-topping single with "Wherever You Go" from the album Camino Palermo.

Vanessa Carlton
Born in a small town in Pennsylvania, Vanessa Carlton was something of a musical prodigy. She began her studies at the School of American Ballet in New York at age fourteen, but the rigidity of ballet frustrated her, leading her to take up the more individualistic craft of songwriting. Be Not Nobody debuted in 2002. Its single "A Thousand Miles" reached the charts, and Carlton’s follow-up album, Harmonium, came out last year.

Rick Chertoff
Rick Chertoff produced hit albums for Cyndi Lauper, the Hooters, Joan Osborne, and Sophie B. Hawkins, among others. While attending the University of Pennsylvania, he met fellow Jews Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian. The two went on to form the Hooters; Chertoff went on to produce them. In 1996 Chertoff was nominated for a Grammy for the Joan Osborne song "One of Us," which was written by Bazilian, but he’s probably best known for his work on Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual.

Leonard and Phil Chess
The Chess brothers, who immigrated from Poland as young boys, ran the most influential blues label of the fifties. Signing such legends as Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon, Chess Records set the standards for Chicago blues. The label also had a hand in kick-starting rock and roll when Leonard signed Chuck Berry in 1995.

The Clash
Lest you think there was a single band in the heyday of punk that was entirely Jew-free, we present for your consideration Mick Jones of the Clash. Jones grew up in a working-class household in Brixton, the son of a Jewish mother whose own mother was a Russian refugee. True, he played in a hard rock band called the London SS – ah youth – but the name changed with the addition of a few new members, including a belligerent young fellow named Joe Strummer. After a stint supporting the Sex Pistols on the famous Anarchy Tour, the band released a self-titled album (cover photo taken by friend and great Jewish rock photographer Kate Simon). It hit number 12 on the British charts and was declared unfit for radio play in the US – a double punk coup. By 1979’s Give 'Em Enough Rope, the band members had simultaneously developed social consciousnesses and impressive arrest records. It wasn’t a huge hit, but the band released London Calling that same year, debuting at number one on the British charts, hitting 27 in the US, and forever earning themselves a place in the rock pantheon. 1983’s Combat Rock was even more successful, but that fall, Mick Jones was fired from the band. He went on to form Big Audio Dynamite; the Clash went on to release one more, very mediocre LP and then disbanded.

Johnny Clegg
Johnny Clegg founded South Africa’s first multi-racial band, Juluka. Their first album got grassroots attention but never made it to the radio due to racial prejudice. With their second album, African Litary, Juluka achieved a South African hit, and by their third album, Scattering, they had a host of international fans. When Juluka broke up, Clegg went on to form the immediately-successful Savuka, which sold two million copies of its first album. Heat, Dust, and Dreams, the band’s fourth album, was nominated for a Grammy in Best World Music.

Clem Snide
Named after a character from William S. Burrough’s druggie classic Naked Lunch, Clem Snide play country-inflected indie rock. Lead singer and guitarist Eef Barzelay was raised Jewish in New Jersey. Drummer Ben Marcus is also fifty percent Jewish and one hundred percent rock star; as Barzalay tells us on a birthday song for his bandmate on 2003’s The Soft Spot, "half-Jewish boys make kick-ass drummers."

Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen was a novelist and a poet before he became a singer, but before that, he was just a Jewish boy from Canada struggling to join his family’s dry goods business. Cohen’s first album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, appeared in 1968 after Judy Collins spotlighted his songwriting talents with her version of "Suzanne." A perennial college favorite, Cohen has always been more popular as a songwriter than a singer, as well-known covers of his haunting "Hallelujah" by both Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright demonstrate.

Nudie Cohn
See Nudie and the Technicolor Jacket by Eddie Dean.

Counting Crows
The hedonistic world of rock and roll affords many temptations for the Jewish rocker: In March 2003, the Counting Crows’ Jewish lead singer Adam Duritz was photographed cooking pork ribs in Blender. Duritz explained that he’d been led down the road of traif by that notorious corrupter Gibby Haines of the Butthole Surfers, who taught him his secret Dr. Pepper marinade. The Counting Crows, who got their start playing coffeehouses in San Francisco, rose to fame with their 1993 album August and Everything After on the strength of the Van Morrison-esque single "Mr. Jones." Since then, the Crows have released three CDs and a double live album, honing their dark but laid-back sixties sound with each release.

Country Joe and the Fish
Best known for their anti-Vietnam War anthem "I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag," Country Joe and the Fish were one of the many legendary groups to play at Woodstock. Their three albums, all released in the late sixties, combined folk music with psychedelic rock and jazz. In 2003, drummer Gary Hirsch told rock biographer Scott Benarde that he’d always thought of the group as a Jewish band. Actually, with a Jewish drummer, a Jewish keyboardist, two half-Jewish guitarists, and a bass player whose maternal grandmother was a Jew, the band is officially only 65% Jewish.

Cream
Although the sixties proto-supergroup Cream was technically a trio of non-Jews, their "silent" fourth member was a member of the tribe. Pete Brown grew up Jewish in London. He was a published poet by the time he reached the age of 18; Cream drummer Ginger Baker used to attend his poetry readings, which is how he met the band. Brown collaborated with Cream on many of their songs, including "I Feel Free," "White Room," and "Sunshine of Your Love."

Jim Croce
Like Sammy Davis Jr, Jim Croce is a famous convert. Raised in an Italian Catholic family, Croce horrified his parents when he fell in love with a very young folksinger named Ingrid Jacobson. He converted for her and married her in a traditional Jewish ceremony that was not attended by a single member of his family other than his brother. Croce released two well-received albums and had four hits, including "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," which went to number one in 1973. Tragically, he died in a plane crash while finishing up a tour for his second record, Life and Times.

Culture Club
Culture Club was hugely popular in its heyday, achieving seven straight Top Ten hits in the UK and six in the States, including "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" and "Karma Chameleon." The band’s gender-bending lead singer Boy George (who is not Jewish) has said that the Jewish T. Rex frontman Mark Bolan inspired his own rock star persona; he also played for a while in an early incarnation of Bow Wow Wow after being invited to join the band by the Jewish punk impresario Malcolm McLaren. Culture Club drummer Jon Moss is Jewish. He had previously played with Adam and the Ants and the Damned.

The Cyrkle
The Cyrkle are remembered primarily for two hits: "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn Down Day." The band formed as the Rhondells at Lafayette College in the early sixties but soon relocated to Greenwich Village and changed its name to Cyrkle on the advice of John Lennon. Cyrkle had two Jewish members, guitarist and pianist Don Danneman and drummer Marty Fried, but it also got by with some help from its Jewish friends, including Paul Simon (who co-wrote "Red Rubber Ball") and Beatles manager Brian Epstein. These connections helped the Cyrkle achieve brief but widespread popularity between 1966 and 1967.

Clive Davis
Arguably the greatest talent scout in the history of rock, Clive Davis went into the music business because he thought being a young lawyer didn’t confer enough status. He went on to become a major industry macher, signing such notables as Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Chicago, Patti Smith, the Grateful Dead, Whitney Houston, and Sarah MacLachlan. He founded Arista Records, which is named after the honor society he was a member of in high school. He later formed LaFace records with Babyface and cut a 50/50 deal to form Bad Boy with Sean "Puffy" Combs. Despite publicly claiming to have no ear for hip-hop, Davis was thus also indirectly responsible for the careers of Monica, Outkast, TLC, Faith Evans, and the Notorious B.I.G. Most recently, he started J Records – it’s his middle initial, which weirdly enough stands for nothing – and turned Alicia Keys into a megastar.

Sammy Davis Jr
Read about Sammy Davis Jr in Funny, He Didn't Look Jewish by Wil Haygood.

Taylor Dayne
Jewish girl Leslie Wonderman changed her first name to "Taylor" and her last name to "Dayne" to become one of the pop divas of the eighties. After two unsuccessful stints in rock bands, she cut a solo called "Tell It To My Heart" which entered the Top Ten in 1987. Both her debut album, also called Tell It To My Heart, and the follow-up, Can’t Fight Fate, produced three top ten hits.

Neil Diamond
Known as the Jewish Elvis, Neil Diamond is responsible for some of the catchiest not-quite-rock songs of the twentieth century. First hitting the charts with "Cherry, Cherry" in 1966, he went on to score five Top 20 hits in a row. Diamond wrote such classics as "I’m a Believer," "Sweet Caroline," and "Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon." His filmic career includes the soundtrack to the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the lead role in the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer, the plot of which he revamped to better reflect his own life in show business. Little-known Neil Diamond trivia: he attended NYU on a fencing scholarship.

The Dictators
Before the Ramones, there were the Dictators. Founded in 1974 by Andy Shernoff and music critic Richard Meltzer, the band set a New York standard, playing balls-out garage rock in a town where almost no one actually has a garage. Their sound was dirty, their subject matter trashy (wrestling, fast food). They enlisted frontman Richard Blum, aka Handsome Dick Manitoba, after he proved himself totally incompetent as a roadie. In short, they were punk rock before punk rock actually existed. Despite being wildly influential – this is a band that featured both ACDC and Cheap Trick as opening acts – they were hated by the critics, and by the time their aesthetic caught on in the late seventies, they had broken up.

Dire Straits
See Mark Knopfler.

The Doors
Robby Krieger, the Doors’ guitarist, may be the only Jewish Door, but his contribution to the band came from a very different cultural tradition. Krieger studied Indian music at UCLA and met Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek at a meditation session. The Doors formed soon after, in 1965, and found instant success with their single "Light My Fire" in 1967. Their first, self-titled album was enormously popular. While the band continued playing together for the next four years, they were never able to release an album that was quite so gorgeously dark and rich.

Bob Dylan
Perhaps the single most famous Jew in rock, Bob Dylan is a self-made enigma. Born Robert Zimmerman in 1941, Dylan began fabricating an image for himself from his first performances at the University of Minnesota, taking his new last name from the poet Dylan Thomas. Upon his arrival in New York in 1961, he became a staple of the Greenwich Village folk scene with his signature twisty, evocative lyrics and developing political sensibilities, all set to a classically folky acoustic backing. 1962’s The Freewheeling Bob Dylan went to number twenty-three on the charts and introduced Dylan to the world outside of New York. In 1965, Dylan famously shocked his fans with an electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, after releasing the partly electric Bringing It All Back Home. As the title of the famous documentary about him suggests, he never looked back, releasing literally dozens of albums of both electric and acoustic folk-rock throughout the rest of his career. A mysterious period in the late seventies saw Dylan’s conversion to Christianity, but he was back to the Jewish faith by 1983. For more about Bob Dylan, see Talkin' Hava Nagilah Blues, A Night in the Life and Subterranean Homeland Blues.

Jakob Dylan
As the son of one of rock’s most influential musicians, Jakob Dylan has done an admirable job developing a rock and roll career of his own. Sure, the famous name didn’t hurt, and it must have helped that he came equipped with piercing blue eyes and unholy cheekbones, courtesy of his stunning mother Sara Lowndes. But Dylan’s band the Wallflowers had a respectable showing in the charts with their 1996 album Bringing Down the Horse, producing the pleasant-enough hits "One Headlight" and "6th Avenue Heartache."

Elastica
Elastica lead guitarist/vocalist and Jewess Justine Frischmann couldn’t have been more of a rock goddess in the nineties. A founding member of Suede with her then-boyfriend Brett Anderson, Frischmann left the band to start her own group in 1991, explaining in one interview that she’d "rather be Pete Best than Linda McCartney." She proceeded to become half of Brit-pop’s most celebrated couple when she began dating Blur’s Damon Alburn. Meanwhile, Elastica’s singles "Stutter" and "Connection" climbed the charts, although they were criticized by many who said that their riffs were both lifted directly from Wire songs. Frischmann was also ragged by the press for her posh upbringing, causing her to reveal in one interview that her father is a Holocaust survivor who was at Auschwitz when the war ended. Ultimately, feeling pressure from both her band and the media, Frischmann quit the music business, but not before making a major impression on the Cool Britannia scene.

Mama Cass Elliot
Poor Mama Cass: eternally haunted by the rumor that she died choking on a ham sandwich, which is no way for a Jewish girl to go. Born Ellen Naomi Cohen, Cass Elliot started her performance career as an actor; she actually competed against Barbra Streisand for the part of Miss Marmelstein in an off-Broadway performance of "I Can Get It For You Wholesale" in 1961. Elliot became part of the Mamas and the Papas in 1965 when she left her own folk group to sing with Denny Doherty and John and Michelle Phillips. After hits like "Monday, Monday," "California Dreaming," and "Dedicated to the One I Love," Cass Elliot was enough of a star to embark on her own solo career, but it was cut short with her death (of a heart attack, not a sandwich) in 1974. See Who's Your Mama? in Words.

Brian Epstein
The Beatles’ famous manager Brian Epstein knew all about the fifth commandment – the not-very-rock-and-roll exhortation to honor thy father and mother. Epstein worked at his parents’ music store (which, coincidentally, is where James McCartney Sr bought his family’s piano on an installment plan). When a catchy new pop group called the Beatles caught his eye, he immediately asked his mom and dad to come see the band in action. They were a little unsure – Epstein’s Yiddishe mama had no idea what to wear to a rock concert – but after the show, they gave their son permission to manage what would become the most famous band in rock. Epstein is the man who got the Beatles their first contract, fired Pete Best, and oversaw the band through their rise to fame. Sadly, his career was cut short with his death at age 32 from an overdose of sleeping pills. His body was discovered next to working script of "Yellow Submarine" and a copy of The Rabbi, a novel by Noah Gordon.

Marianne Faithfull
The daughter of a Jewish baroness and a British WWII spy, Marianne Faithfull went from being one of the less talented singers of the sixties to one of the more extraordinary ones of the late seventies. Faithfull was initially known mostly for being Mick Jagger’s girlfriend and partner in crime – literally, as famous accounts of the lovebirds’ drug busts attest. Her recordings, including Jagger’s "As Tears Go By," were not very well received, and she sunk into drug addiction. But in 1979, with her comeback album Broken English, Faithfull found herself suddenly widely appreciated, especially by the newfound punk scene. All the years of drinking and heroin had roughened up her voice, giving it both texture and gravitas. Since then, Faithfull has recorded several albums, working with critically acclaimed songwriters like P.J. Harvey and Beck.

Perry Farrell
Perry Farrell is another loud, proud Jewish rock star. Born Peretz Bernstein in Queens in 1959, Farrell worked in his father’s diamond business for a while before moving out west to found Jane's Addiction 1985. Two platinum albums, Nothing’s Shocking (1988) and Ritual de lo Habitual (1990) followed. Both were hugely seminal for the nineties alternative rock scene, but by the time Nirvana broke, Farrell had moved on to a new band, Porno for Pyros. Perhaps more importantly, he was also at the helm of a project that defined the sound of the era: Lolapalooza, the enormous traveling rock show. Farrell debuted his pierced, tattooed baby in 1991, headlining with Jane’s Addiction just before they broke up, and went on to steer the festival through the decade.

The Flamingos
Several different bands in the history of Jewish rock got their start in the synagogue chorus, but the Flamingos may be the only ones who met in a church choir – a Jewish church, no less. Jake and Zeke Carey were cousins who joined the Church of God and Saints of Christ Congregation when they moved from Baltimore to Chicago in 1950. The church, or synagogue, is the oldest black Jewish congregation in the US (yes, there are others). When the Carey cousins joined the choir, they became friends with Paul Wilson and Johnny Carter. Sollie McElroy rounded out the group, and as a doo-wop fivesome, they recorded their first track, "If I Can’t Have You," in 1953. In 1956, they had a Top Ten song with "I’ll Be Home," but their biggest hit was 1959’s "I Only Have Eyes For You." Having spent the early part of their vocal training on sad Jewish melodies, the group were well prepared for the lovelorn ballads of fifties R&B.

Fleetwood Mac
Born into a highly musical Jewish family, Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Greenbaum – later Peter Green -- started playing with his future bandmates in the Bluesbreakers, replacing Eric Clapton in 1966. The band became Fleetwood Mac in 1967 when the rest of the members left behind founder John Mayall to form their own group. Green’s hard-edged, blues-influenced guitar gained acclaim for the new band. Two of his songs, "Man of the World" and "Oh Well," were number two hits in 1969. But by the following year, Green’s heavy drug use had rendered him unstable, and in the spring of 1970, he left the band.

Alan Freed
Rock and roll might have existed without Alan Freed, but "rock and roll" would never have been born. In 1951, Freed began two spin rhythm and blues records on a Cleveland radio station, WJW. Instead of calling the sound "r’n’b," though, Freed gave it a racier new name, one that cut loose the blues and focused on the rhythm. Three years later, he applied for a patent, making "rock and roll" a legal coinage. By then Freed was a genuine star, DJ'ing on WINS in New York. Ultimately, a scandal involving radio bribery brought him to ruin, but the phrase "rock and roll" remained his legacy.

Kinky Friedman
Country singer, mystery author, independent gubernatorial candidate: Texas’s leading Jewish cowboy, Kinky Friedman, wears several different ten gallon hats. Born Richard Friedman, Kinky spent three years in the Peace Corps before founding Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. With songs like "They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore" and "Ride 'Em Jewboy," the band appealed to a small but growing cult following, ultimately touring with Bob Dylan on his Rolling Thunder Revue. The Jewboys disbanded in the late seventies, and by the early eighties, Kinky Friedman had become a writer, publishing mystery novels about a Jewish country singer named Kinky Friedman. He’s had a long career as an author, but he’s moving on once again; this spring, Kinky is running for Texas governor under the slogan "Kinky Friedman: Why the Hell Not?"

Art Garfunkel
True, Art Garfunkel may go down in rock history as the ultimate embodiment of "that other guy," but before his songwriting partner abandoned him, Garfunkel was half of one of the most important folk duos of the sixties – and don’t you forget it. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel got their start as Tom and Jerry, hitting the top fifty with their single "Hey Schoolgirl." Lack of success caused them to split up, but when they reformed as Simon & Garfunkel in the sixties, they scored a number-one hit with "Sound of Silence" after their producer added electric guitars to their gentle folk-rock. "Homeward Bound," "I Am a Rock," and "Hazy Shade of Winter" all hit the charts in 1966 and 1967. "Mrs. Robinson" became a hit on the strength of the movie The Graduate, and their 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water remained on top of the charts for ten weeks. After the group split up, Garfunkel pursued an acting career which included a role in Catch-22. He also released several albums, but never even approached the fame of his former partner.

The J. Geils Band
The J. Geils Band couldn’t have been more Jewish, with the notable exception of J. himself: singer Peter Wolf, drummer Stephen Bladd, harmonica player Magic Dick (born Richard Salkovitz), keyboardist Seth Justman, and bassist Danny Klein were all Jews. And they didn’t hide it: the band was often called the Jewish Rolling Stones. During the seventies, the J. Geils band toured tirelessly, gaining a reputation based on their gritty r’n’b and wild live shows. Their second album, The Morning After, had a Top 40 hit with "Looking for a Love" in 1970, and 1972’s Bloodshot entered the top ten thanks to the single "Give It to Me." But they were mostly known as a concert band until 1981, when their single "Centerfold" became a favorite on the newborn cable channel MTV, driving the album Freeze Frame up the charts. As one of the great live bands of the era, the J. Geils Band did miss one major gig: obscure band trivia has it that they were asked to play the original Woodstock. Sadly, it seems the influence of one too many Jewish grandmothers came through; the band supposedly gave the supremely bubbe-esque response: "Three days in the mud – who needs it?"

Barry Goldberg
See Mike Bloomfield.

The Grateful Dead
From their early days in the San Francisco psychedelic scene to their one radio hit, 1987’s "Touch of Grey," the Grateful Dead have always had a large Jewish following. Deadheadism is a lot like Judiasm. Fans of the Grateful Dead, like observant Jews, glean spiritual meaning from the intensive study of their chosen texts: in this case, song lyrics. They view themselves as misfits in the greater world but draw incredible strength from their own communities. And, as the joke goes, much like the Jews, Deadheads tend to follow around the Grateful Dead. Of course, the high number of Jews in the Dead’s fanbase is echoed by the band’s own Jewishness. Drummer Mickey Hart was raised Jewish, and the band’s publicist and manager were both Jews.

Peter Green
See Fleetwood Mac.

Guster
What is it about Jewish musicians and college-based cult followings? Like Phish, Guster developed a major following in the nineties with almost no radio play, winning the hearts of thousands of college kids on their practically endless touring loops. The all-Jewish trio met at Tufts University in 1992 and released their debut album, Parachute, two years later. Goldfly came out in 1997 and Lost and Gone Forever the neat year. In 1998, the band signed to a major label, Sire, but it folded. Undeterred, they released Keep It Together with Reprise in 2003, still touring tirelessly all the while. These days, they might be the only band at any given school’s spring weekend playing a shofar - but that’s only because Phish no longer exists.

Arlo Guthrie
Woody Guthrie wasn’t Jewish, but he married a Jewish girl and settled in Brooklyn near his mother-in-law, the Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt. Guthrie’s son Arlo grew up Jewish and was deeply influenced by his grandmother, who served the family Shabbat dinner every Friday night. Arlo Guthrie is best known for his eighteen-minute-plus "Alice’s Restaurant Massacree," which was released in 1967. Inspiring a 1969 movie and causing the album it was on to go gold, "Alice’s Restaurant" was Guthrie’s biggest hit; however, his 1972 single "The City of New Orleans" was a commercial success, and he continued to release albums throughout the seventies. Read more about Arlo Guthrie in This Land is Your Land.

Mickey Hart
See the Grateful Dead.

Ofra Haza
If you're an Israeli pop musician, the highlight of your career is normally to become a finalist in the annual Eurovision Song Contest. Although Ofra Haza did just that in 1983, with her single "Hi!", this daughter of Yemenite Jewish refugees would soon achieve international success unprecedented for a citizen of the Jewish state. Her 1984 album Yemenite Songs (AKA Fifty Gates of Wisdom), featured club-dance versions of traditional secular and religious compositions. The album's lead single, "Im Nin'alu," with lyrics by 16th-century mystic Shalom Shabazi, reached the top 20 in the U.K. and was a hit in American clubs as well. Haza subsequently recorded a well-received English album, toured the U.S., and recorded with Iggy Pop, Sisters of Mercy, and fellow tribe-member [[Lou Reed]]. She died of AIDS-related complications in 2000.

Richard Hell
Sure, the Brits had Malcolm McLaren, but here in the US, we had our own Jewish punk pioneer in the person of Richard Hell. Born Richard Myers, the half-Jewish Hell got his start playing in Television – the band that convinced a dive bar on the Bowery called CBGB’s to start having live shows. Hell was deeply inspired by the trashy aesthetic of the New York Dolls, so when that band broke up, he teamed up with Johnny Thunders to form the Heartbreakers (although he dropped out before they made music history touring England with the Sex Pistols). Finally, Hell found his niche as a frontman with the backing band the Voidoids, defining the ennui of an era with their 1977 song "Blank Generation."

Peter Himmelman
Peter Himmelman’s Jewish rock credentials are unimpeachable, even aside from his role as son-in-law to one Robert Zimmerman. How Jewish is he? Well, he refuses to play on Shabbos. His most recent album, Imperfect World (released in March of 2005) was written after an inspiring Tisha B’av fast period. Even his Hebrew name—Pesach Mordechai—is more Jewish than most. Himmelman’s twin interests in Judaism and music have been with him since his childhood in Minnesota: he made his first trip to Israel at age eight and got his first guitar when he was 12. In the early eighties, he began playing under the pseudonym Sussman Lawrence, which eventually became the name of his new wave band. Both of their albums were lauded by critics, but it wasn’t until Himmelman went solo with This Father’s Day (1986) that he really found his stride. Dedicated to the memory of his father, with whom Himmelman was extremely close, the album won him a contract with Chris Blackwell at Island Records. Today, many albums later, Himmelman also writes children's music and music for television. He is known for his imaginative approach to concerts—he once took an entire audience out to eat after a show. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty hugely Jewish thing to do.

Susanna Hoffs
See the Bangles.

Janis Ian
Janis Ian was born Janis Eddy Fink in New York City in 1951. Though she began using "Ian" as a surname when she started playing folk music in high school, Ian never quite left behind her given name: her 1968 album was titled The Secret Life of J. Eddy Fink. Ian’s first hit was the highly controversial "Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking)," a song about interracial romance that Ian wrote when she was only 15. The track gained attention after Leonard Bernstein featured it on a television special, launching Ian’s career. She released albums thr