Hit or Miss

I also had one of those experiences, when I just knew I’d discovered a winner. It was the early ’80s, and I happened to be having an “industry” conversation with the owner of an electronic store that sold Jewish records. When a woman who was searching through the record rack overheard me talking about my line of work, she introduced herself to me and asked me if I ever heard of Canadian children’s entertainers Sharon, Lois & Bram, who had put out several non-Jewish kids’ records, including one called Smorgasbord. She said she was from Toronto, and there, they were a well-known group. She assured me they had some great children’s songs on their records and urged me to listen to them. I made a mental note, and about a month later, when I happened to have been in a mall in Toronto, in the window of a record store called Sam Goody, there was a record called — you guessed it — Smorgasbord. I decided to invest $5.99 (Canadian) and purchase it.

As soon as I got back to New York, I put the LP in my record player (yes, that’s the thing with a needle that would rotate around a vinyl disc and make music) and spent a few seconds listening to each song. Some of them were old-time kiddie songs, others were jingles I didn’t connect with, to say the least, and I probably would have thrown the record out, but then, right between “Little Sally Saucer” and “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” there was a song called “Hey Dum Diddle Dee Dum.” As soon as I started listening, I was mesmerized. I listened to the song at least 30 times that day. I had never been attached to a song before, but I had absolutely no doubt that this was going to be an unbelievable Uncle Moishy hit.  A few months later, Uncle Moishy Volume 2 came out, and it goes without saying that my prediction had come true.