Yossi spent his entire life using his guitar and voice to cheer people up and introduce Jews to the beauty of Yiddishkeit
Yosi Piamenta a”h, whose ninth yahrtzeit is coming up next week on 8 Elul, was a treasure to Jewish music, not only because he was so musically talented, but because he was such a lovable human being. I remember back in 1980, when I heard that Yosi had decided to settle in New York, I immediately booked him to play on one of our early Suki & Ding wedding albums. When I got to the studio, all the musicians were hanging around, eating doughnuts and drinking coffee, but then I realized that the new guitar player I’d hired wasn’t there. When I looked around to find him, I spotted him sitting quietly with his guitar, ready to play, with a Tehillim in his hand, diligently reciting perek after perek. I found out later that he would try to finish the entire Tehillim every single day.
Yosi never used sheet music. All he had to do was listen to a song once and it was already imprinted in his mind. Veteran arranger Yisroel Lamm once told me that he first met Yosi at a concert in San Diego with MBD, where Yosi, who was living in Israel at the time, was the opening act, together with his brother Avi on flute. MBD and Yisroel were backstage when they first heard Yosi playing, and right then, they both knew that Yosi was in an entirely different league than all other guitar players. After the concert, they approached Yosi together and told him that if he moved to New York, he would be in demand for weddings and concerts every night.
I’ll never forget Yosi’s surprise entrance at the second HASC Concert, when he and his brother Avi came on to perform their famed “Asher Bara” song. The audience went wild and loved the duo.
Yosi had two trademark customs that he became known for at every concert. One was that he would do a full guitar solo with the guitar behind his back, and the other was that — as he was known for cranking up the volume — at the end of the first song, he would always ask the audience, “Am I too loud?” The audience would always shout, “No!” to which he would respond, “Wait ’til you hear the next song!”
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