Remembering Jay Black of "Jay and the Americans", Teen Idol of the 1960s and 1970s

On October 22 the world of pop music lost one of its biggest stars, Jay Black, lead singer of the group Jay and the Americans, who died at 82.

Black was born as David Blatt in Astoria, Queens and grew up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park. In his later career, he was known for touring New York State and Florida, singing, mainly solo, and preceding his singing with a stand-up comedy routine. 

Jay and his brother spoke Yiddish fluently. In 1966, he recorded a Yiddish song "Where Is My Village" about the Holocaust. In an interview with The Forward, he admitted being tossed out of three yeshivas as well as New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn.

As Ron Kampeas wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,

He was selling shoes in 1962 or 1963 at Thom McAn when a buddy, Marty Kupersmith, who knew Blatt from the Jewish doo-wop circuit, asked him to take the place of Jay Traynor, who had quit Jay and the Americans, a group that had scored a single hit in 1962.

There was a condition: Blatt had to take on the first name Jay.

There are differing accounts of how he got the name Black; there’s evidence he was using it professionally before he joined Jay and the Americans, but he insisted he muttered “Jay Blatt” when Mike Douglas, the daytime talk show host, asked him his name, and Douglas repeated “Black” and it stuck.

Black, raised in an Orthodox family, had sung as a youngster with the choir of Cantor Moshe Koussevitzky. He became known for his powerful reach-for-the-rafters voice and his dramatic delivery. Bandmates dubbed him “The Voice” and it stuck.

With his dark good looks and his operatic delivery, he affected a Latin persona; one of the band’s most popular numbers was “Cara Mia,” in which he pledges to his presumably Italian object of adoration that “I will be your love until the end of time,” escalating into a heart-stopping falsetto. The song peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

There were other hits: “Come a Little Bit Closer” (which peaked at #3 on the charts), about an encounter with a seductress in a Mexican border town that ends badly; and their cover of the Drifters’ “This Magic Moment” (peaked at #6). The group was big enough to open for the Beatles in 1964, at the Fab Four’s very first U.S. concert.

In this video of a performance in 1978, Black sings four of his most popular hits, Cara Mia, This Magic Moment, She Cried, and Come a Little Bit Closer, as he is touched and hugged by screaming fans in the audience who follow him onstage.

We're also sharing a video of him singingin Yiddish Vi Is Dus Gesele that was posted on YouTube by Albert Diner.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.