Jewish Business News is an online newspaper published in English, which primarily covers stories relating to businesses owned, or managed, by Jewish business people around the world, as is implied by the paper’s nameplate. The newspaper launched in February 2013. Its founder, CEO and Editor-in-chief is Sima Ella, who was formerly a journalist for 27 years at Yedioth Aharonoth, Israel’s leading daily newspaper. (More from Wikipedia)
Spirit’s biggest hit song was a rousing rocker called “I Got a Line on You”, which was released in November 1968. The accompanying album, The Family that Plays Together is one of my favorite American albums of the 1960’s.
The album includes an unusual track called “Jewish” that is sung in Hebrew. Like “Taurus”, “Jewish” was written by Randy California; he had been raised in a Jewish home. According to a post by Jewish Business News, the lyrics are taken from a traditional song called “Henei Ma Tov” (or “Hine Ma Tov”) that is based on Psalm 133 (one of the Psalms of David).
This post also says of Randy California: “In his book Stars of David: Rock ’n’ Roll’s Jewish Stories, author Scott R. Benarde quotes [his mother Bernice] Pearle saying, ‘I always felt Randy [California]’s solos sounded like what I remember from Temple. I told him that sometimes his guitar sounded like a cantor in Synagogue.’”
The Jewish Business News post mentioned above also notes that Led Zeppelin’s case regarding Spirit’s claim that the opening chords for “Stairway to Heaven” were lifted from their 1968 instrumental song “Taurus”, is harmed by past copyright troubles: “[Led Zeppelin was] forced to emend credits for ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You’ as well as settling a suit over ‘Dazed and Confused’.” Not only that, I have written in the past about “How Many More Times” on Led Zeppelin, where the band had to show a writing credit for Howlin’ Wolf, who had written “How Many More Years” previously.
(November 2014)
