• Lindy > Swing Talk
• Posted Thursday, November 11, 2010
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Came accross this video on Youtube, and I thought I'd post a video that finally answers's the questions, "Who's Yehoodi?" (The answer's around 2:40)

The video also has this great summary of the history of the phrase:

The catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" (or, alternatively, "Who's Yehudi?") originated when violinist Yehudi Menuhin was a guest on the popular radio program of Bob Hope, where sidekick Jerry Colonna, apparently finding the name itself humorous, repeatedly asked "Who's Yehudi?" Colonna continued the gag on later shows even though Menuhin himself was not a guest, turning "Yehudi" into a widely understood late 1930s slang reference for a mysteriously absent person. The United States Navy chose the name "Project Yehudi" for an early 1940s precursor to stealth technology.

A song with the title and catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" was written in 1940 by Bill Seckler and Matt Dennis. It was covered by Kay Kyser and more famously by Cab Calloway. The final stanza of the song is: The little man who wasn't there Said he heard him on the air No one seems to know from where But who's Yehoodi?

Both the catchphrase and the song eventually lost all of their original connection with Menuhin. Its double meaning of "Who Is Jewish?" — the word "Yehudi" means "Jew" in the Hebrew language — was emphasized in a short sound film ("soundie") of the song with variant lyrics made in 1943 with singer Lane Truesdale and the Kingsmen, a male trio, in which a "living portrait" of a pejoratively stereotypical Jew with black hat and long beard leers inappropriately at Truesdale's swinging hips before finally announcing "I'm Yehoodi!"

The national swing dance / lindy hop community website Yehoodi derives its name from this catchphrase, as popularized by the Cab Calloway version of the song.

Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE (April 22, 1916 -- March 12, 1999) was a Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985. He is commonly considered one of the twentieth century's greatest violin virtuosi.

In 1962 he established the Yehudi Menuhin School in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey. He also established the music program at the Nueva School in Hillsborough, California sometime around then. In 1965 he received an honorary knighthood. In the same year, Australian composer Malcolm Williamson wrote a violin concerto for Menuhin. He performed the concerto many times and recorded it at its premiere at the Bath Festival in 1965.

Menuhin also had a long association with Ravi Shankar, which began with their 1966 album West Meets East. During this time, he commissioned the composer Alan Hovhaness to write a concerto for violin, sitar, and orchestra to be performed by himself and Shankar. The resulting work entitled Shambala (c.1970), with a fully composed violin part and space for improvisation from the sitarist, is the earliest known work for sitar with western symphony orchestra, predating Shankar's own sitar concertos; unfortunately, Menuhin and Shankar never recorded it. Menuhin also worked with famous jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli in the 1970s on Jalousie, an album of pop music of the 1930s arranged in chamber style.

In 1977, at the Edinburgh Festival, he premiered Priaulx Rainier's violin concerto Due Canti e Finale, a work he had commissioned from her. He also commissioned her last work, Wildlife Celebration, which he performed in aid of Gerald Durrell's Wildlife Conservation Trust.

In 1983, he and Robert Masters founded the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists. Now one of the world's leading competition for young violinists, many of its prize winners have gone on to become some of today's most exciting violinists. Among them are Tasmin Little, Nikolaj Znaider, Ilya Gringolts, Julia Fischer, Daishin Kashimoto and Lara St. John.

The catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" popular in the 1930s and 1940s was inspired by Menuhin's guest appearance on a radio show, where Jerry Colonna turned "Yehoodi" into a widely recognized slang term for a mysteriously absent person. It eventually lost all of its original connection with Menuhin.

Yehudi Menuhin was also 'meant' to appear on The Morecambe and Wise Show but couldn't as he was 'opening at the Argyl Theatre, Birkenhead in Old King Cole'. He was instead replaced by Eric Morecambe in a famous sketch featuring the conductor André Previn.

So does this mean we should also register Yehudi.com?