Jerry Silverman

Jerry Silverman (born 1931) is an American folksinger, guitar teacher and author of music books. He has had over 200 books published, which have sold in the millions, including folk song collections, anthologies and method books for the guitar, banjo and fiddle. He has taught guitar to hundreds of students. He has presented concerts and lectures at schools, universities and concert halls in the U.S. and abroad. Among his notable books are the two volumes of The Folksinger's Guitar Guide for Oak Publications in 1962 and '64; The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust’’ (Syracuse University Press, 2002), which contains 110 songs in 16 languages - Yiddish, German, Hebrew,Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Ladino, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Norwegian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Hungarian and English. The songs include the works of concentration camp prisoners and inhabitants of the ghettos of Eastern Europe as well anti-Fascist anthems inspired by the Spanish Civil War, Red Army songs, and songs of Resistance fighters; New York Sings – 400 Years of the Empire State in Song (reviewed by his friend and colleague Pete Seeger). Seeger and Silverman were both editors at Sing Out! A Folk Music Magazine in the 1960s.; The Baseball Songbook – Songs and Images from the Early Years of America’s Favorite Pastime; The Folk Song Encyclopedia (a two volume compilation of over 1,000 folk songs; words, music and guitar chords); The Complete Book of Bach Chorales (translated into English); Ballads and Songs of the Civil War (piano-vocal with guitar chords); The Guitar Player's Guide and Almanac (a combined method book and survey of musical, technical and anecdotal information); Of Thee I Sing (patriotic American songs from the Revolutionary War to the present). == Early life == Jerry’s father, Bill (b. London, 1896) and mother Helen Mindlin (b. Dubrovna, Russia, 1898) were married in New York in 1928. They followed the newly constructed subway line from the crowded tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the northeast Bronx in the Allerton neighborhood, near Bronx Park and the New York Botanical Garden. It was populated largely by eastern European Jewish immigrant families. Gerard “Jerry” Silverman (b. 1931) was their only child. Bill was a self employed fabric supplier for Broadway theatrical productions, but was also an accomplished amateur mandolin player. Jerry began taking classical mandolin lessons at the nearby Neighborhood Music School with teacher Matthew Kahn at age 10. In the summer of 1945, Jerry attended Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (Workers Children’s Camp) in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where for the first time he was exposed to 78 rpm recordingsof folk singer Woody Guthrie, blues singer Josh White, The Almanac Singers, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson (who was the “patron saint” of the camp), union songs and songs of the Spanish Civil War. It was a life-changing experience for him. He began teaching himself the guitar when he returned home from camp. Jerry return