Leibele Waldman

Leibele Waldman died on August 28, 1969, two months past his 62nd birthday, and was buried at Beth David cemetery, Long Island, New York.

Waldman initiated a series of recordings, produced by Moses Asch, and issued on his label, ASCH Records. Waldman later recorded for Stinson, Disc, Banner, and following the second world war, RCA Victor. In the 1950s Waldman recorded for ABC and later for a private label, MALOH Records. During most of these years, he recorded with Oscar Julius as his conductor and Abraham Ellstein as his accompanist.

Waldman published his autobiography, entitled Song Divine, in 1941.

At this point in his career, Waldman elected not to accept full-time cantorial positions, instead working on the High Holidays in many prominent venues, including Hunt's Point Palace (1936 and 1937), the Bronx Winter Garden (1938), the Concord Hotel and Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel in the Catskill Mountains (New York), Laurel In The Pines in Lakewood (New Jersey) and The Breakers (New Jersey).

While still a young man, Waldman concertized with the renowned cantor Zavel Kwartin (in his eighties at the time) and Yossele Rosenblatt. In fact, Rosenblatt shared the stage with Waldman during his final concert in the United States before his death in Palestine in 1933.

In 1928 he assumed his first adult cantorial position, officiating on the High Holidays at the Beth Israel Synagogue on Columbia Street in Cambridge, Mass. In 1929 Waldman became the cantor of Temple Emanuel of Passaic, where he remained until 1934. Waldman then served one year at the Mount Eden Jewish Center in the Bronx.

Louis Waldman born to a family of Jewish Galician immigrants living in the Lower East Side of New York City. Early on he was recognized as a "wunderkind", officiating at the pulpit with a choir by the age of nine. He studied with local musician Shabtai Weingarten. Referred to by his affectionately diminutive Yiddish name "Leibele", Waldman was the choir leader in the Wayne Street Synagogue of Jersey City (1924), the Livonia Street Synagogue of Brownsville (1925), the Flatbush Jewish Center (1925–26, with Cantor Samuel Katzman) and in the Galician Synagogue of Passaic in 1927.

Louis "Leibele" Waldman (June 22, 1907 – August 28, 1969) was a Jewish cantor (“chazzan”), composer and actor, the only American born cantor who may be considered as belonging to the great cantors of the so-called "golden age of jewish cantorial music".