Bei Mir Worst Du Poor

When an obscure Brooklyn composer named Sholom Secunda was writing songs for the Yiddish theater in the '303, he and Lyricist Jacob Jacobs would peddle the copyrights to music publishers for $15 apiece, and they were happy to get the money. One day in 1937, Secunda heard a familiar sound coming out of the jukeboxes of Flatbush. The Andrews Sisters had picked up one of his tunes, cut a record for Decca with new lyrics, and all over the U.S. people were dancing to

Bei mir bist du schoen--Please let me explain,

Bei mir bist du schoen means that you're grand.

Royalties poured everywhere but into the pockets of Secunda and Jacobs. Secunda's mother was so certain that God was thus punishing her for her sins that she went to a synagogue and remained there for an entire day, fasting and praying for forgiveness. But in the 24 years that followed, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen went on relentlessly inflating the fortunes of others. People have bought 250,000 copies of Bei Mir sheet music and 2,500,000 Bei Mir records--for a total gross of $3,000,000.

Last week the original copyright expired and, according to law, the authors (if living) could renew it. Secunda, 66, now writes liturgical music, and in summer is music director of a resort hotel in the Catskills. Jacobs runs a Yiddish vaudeville house in Miami Beach. Secunda has signed a new contract with Harms, Inc., music publishers, and the partners are assured that Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen is still worth at least $5,000 yearly. They shrug off the $350,000 they might have had. Says Secunda: "Mother was convinced that the big day would come."

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