Dorothy’s new album is a nod to musical legacy

Jewish Telegraph, March 2023

DOROTHY Moskowitz has had a complicated relationship with the album that brought her to prominence.
The 82-year-old was the singer with the groundbreaking experimental psychedelic rock band The United States of America who released one eponymous album in 1968 before splitting up.
Dorothy — whose new album, Under An Endless Sky (Tompkins Square) with The United States of Alchemy, is released last week — said she was initially proud of her debut album.
“When it seemed no one understood us, it became an embarrassment,” she told me.
“Since its reissue in 2004 on Sundazed Records, I’ve come to appreciate it for its place in rock history, even though there are flawed moments on it.
“I’ve learned about groups like Broadcast, Stereolab and Portishead being influenced by it and it’s uplifting to know.”
But before delving into her place in rock history with The United States of America, Dorothy is full of excitement for her new album, taking delight from the positive critical response so far.
She says Under An Endless Sky “has echoes of the experimentation that The USA had and even the name The United States of Alchemy is an intentional nod to the relationship between the two”.
The United States of Alchemy is writer Luca Chino Ferrari and composer Francesco Paulo Paladino.
“ I was introduced to Francesco by my writing colleague Tim Lucas, a novelist and film critic,” San Francisco-based Dorothy explained. “We had collaborated on a soundtrack CD that accompanied his novella Secret Life of Love Songs in 2021.
“When Francesco heard it, he contacted Tim, suggesting we collaborate. I accepted and within a few months, we had a new album completed.”
She added: “I like to think that open-minded — or should I say open-eared people — will appreciate what we are about. It would be helpful to listen to The USA album to gain some context for the rich mix of virtual and real instruments that Francesco has created.
“Francesco’s music has aspects of dada and electronic experimentalism that feel like an inheritance from The USA and bands of that genre.
“In terms of the lyrics by Luca Ferrari, there is a deep philosophical thread that I connected with readily.
“I’d read some philosophy in college, which helped our collaboration, but also the habits of mind from my early Jewish schooling may have contributed to my approach.
“I’ve done deep reading since I was eight, so tracing Luca’s complex nuances was pleasurable, not at all foreign.
“Ferrari submitted his rich Italian poetry to me in translations that needed some burnishing to make them sound like vernacular English.
“I’m quite experienced with editing Yiddish and Hebrew translations for singability. I’ve written a Hagaddah songbook for my extended family with English words and have created choral pieces from Jewish repertoire that have been performed in English in public schools here.”
Dorothy’s CD with Tim Lucas featured cameos from Mike Fornatale, formerly with the Lefte Banke, and Jewish guitarist Gary Lucas, who has worked with Captain Beefheart and Tim Buckley.
“After Secret Life was completed, Gary and I worked together remotely on a number of new pieces,” she said.
“Of particular interest to your readers is our revisit of his searing soundscape Terezin, to which I’ve juxtaposed vocal cues in Hungarian, Yiddish and Hebrew that suggest the tragic loss of a way of life.”
Dorothy describes herself as an atheist “like many Jews who have had families destroyed in the Holocaust”.
She said: “The female rabbi who conducts the services I attend at High Holidays is accepting of this.
“My Jewish attachment continues, however, and it is far deeper than a love of matzo balls and whitefish.
“Marking holiday rituals gives me a feeling of personal renewal. I’m especially devoted to teshuva (returning to our true selves). Year after year, I stop my bustling to reconsider friendships, promises, forgiveness, the ‘weighing of my soul,’ so to speak.
“The Doomsday piece on Under an Endless Sky has a connection with an ongoing ethical questioning that echoes teshuva in some way.”
Dorothy added that in her early years, she had a “keen sense of Jewish identity fostered by observant parents and the Hebrew day school Beth Hillel, which I attended through third grade.
“Both my parents emigrated from Hungary before the Second World War and met in Yonkers, New York, which I believe had a notable Hungarian-Jewish community at the time.
“I heard Yiddish and Hungarian spoken at home. I learned a bit of Hebrew at Beth Hillel and could sing liturgical passages comfortably. I also learned to analyse scripture using the Chumash.
“Questioning and debate was encouraged. The habit of considering multiple answers to deep questions was rooted early on.”
But Dorothy — who is married to Martin Falarski with two daughters — added that her Jewish identity became “closeted as I entered my teens”.
She explained: “My parents couldn’t afford to send me to the wealthy upper school that came after Beth Hillel, so I went to public schools instead.
“And, also, at around 11 or 12, I was asked to solo at my local schul. It was the first time I ever sang in public and remains a glittering memory.
“Unfortunately, the leader of the junior congregation associated with the shul told me that only boys were allowed to come up to chant and I was told to sit when I volunteered to sing.”
She faced a similar situation in 1987 when she was a member of Country Joe McDonald’s All-Star Band.
Country Joe, whose mother Florence Plotnick was Jewish, invited Dorothy to perform at a menorah lighting ceremony sponsored by the San Francisco Chabad and rock impresario Bill Graham.
“Rabbi Yosef Langer said I couldn’t appear on stage performing with men,” Dorothy recalled. “It reminded me of that Junior Congregation rejection, but Country Joe brokered a solution.
“He met with the rabbi and explained that there was a huge, elaborate dreidel costume available that Bill Graham had refused to wear. ‘If Dorothy wore the costume, her gender wouldn’t be known from the stage’, he reasoned.
“The rabbi couldn’t argue with that and at last the forlorn 11-year-old from Yonkers had her moment.
“A picture of me as a dreidel was carried in the local Jewish press and attracted the attention of Cantor Bruce Benson.
“He asked me to join his Shabbat rock ensemble Tsur Yisrael. In addition to playing keyboard and singing backup I soloed on some of my own compositions based on Hebrew liturgy.
“One Friday, they surprised me with an honorary batmitzvot certificate for all the Hebrew singing and musical support.”
While Dorothy is excited by the present and the future, it’s impossible to ignore the past.
She explained that before she met composer Joseph Byrd — who formed The United States of America — “I considered myself a traditional collegiate tunesmith.
“I’d studied applied harmony in high school, so by the time I got to Barnard College, I was able to score two original musicals, a ballet score and the college Alma Mater.
“I also directed and arranged parts for the a capella group Barnard Columbines.
“Joseph was at the centre of what was known as the Fluxus scene in New York with its associations with artists such as La Monte Young and John Cage.
“From 1963 until the formation of The USA in 1967, I was Byrd’s associate in experimental music and performance art, but once The USA was formed, Byrd’s sensibility seemed to shift towards mine with a focus on rich, accessible melodies that were paired with electronica.
“The USA is remembered for being groundbreaking, but we were actually less ‘avant garde’ than we had been earlier, when we had mounted experimental music concerts after we moved to California together.”
Dorothy noted that the very first professional gig she had was with a retired Ziegfield Girl.
“I was the high school accompanist at her dancing school, where ballet training and vaudeville routines had equal status,” she said.
Dorothy and Joseph released an album together in 1963 called The Life Treasury of Christmas Music.
They also developed a record series narrating the history of America in which Moskowitz provided research and production assistance.
The late 1960s music scene was renowned for being druggy, but Dorothy said drugs weren’t too much of an issue in her band.
“We were psychedelic in name only, with members tripping on acid seldom or not at all,” she told me. “Marijuana was smoked pretty openly though. It was polite to pass joints back then and we were very polite about drugs.”
When The USA signed to major label Columbia, Dorothy describes her parents as being “enthusiastic”.
She said: “They’d always encouraged musicality both in myself and in my older sister Renee Miller, who is an accomplished pianist as well as a professional actress.
“She is also adept with with the sound and rhythm of words and has written a lot of well-crafted light verse.”
The USA toured after the release of their album, although it only reached number 181 on the Billboard charts. Nine years ago, Cherry Red Records released an expanded version of the album with previously unreleased tracks.
When I asked Dorothy why the band split, she replied: “This a bit of a Talmudic question involving both professional and personal differences that may never have a singular answer.
“In some way, our connectedness never completely split. I’m still in touch with drummer Craig Woodson and manager Malcolm Terence.
“Bassist Rand Forbes and I were in regular contact until his death two years ago. Even some of the rancour between Joseph and myself has lessened.
“He emailed his string pieces in 2016 and I used one to write about Charlottesville, the antisemitic, white supremacist rally in 2017. It’s unreleased.”
In 1972, Dorothy became a featured member of Country Joe’s All-Star Band. She also provided vocals for Cracks, a short cartoon produced for Sesame Street, and composed music for children.
Twenty years ago, Dorothy became a music teacher for elementary schools in Piedmont, California, introducing students to the basics of brass instruments and vocal techniques.
In 2021, she provided vocals for two songs on the Todd Tamanend Clark album Whirlwind of the Whispering Worlds.
At the age of 82, Dorothy doesn’t have any plans to slow down.
She said: “The common wisdom in the music industry is to refrain from releasing or even referring to pending releases that might compete with one another.
“I don’t think that notion works when you’re over 80. I want to release as much as possible before my energies flag.”
She already has two more albums ready for release:
An electronic/vocal album about the James Webb telescope called Rising to Eternity. It’s set for digital release by Tompkins Square on the second anniversary of the launch, December 25.
And a collaborative album “with the gifted composer/artist Retep Folo (aka Peter Olof Fransson)” entitled The Afterlife to be released on the Buried Treasure label.
She is currently working on a reissue of Secret Life of Love Songs, as well as recorded material with Gary Lucas and collaborative projects with all the artists she’s worked with to date.
“New albums are in the works with each of them,” Dorothy said.
She added that the media reaction to Under an Endless Sky has “motivated me to revisit long-forgotten memories.
“I don’t have the ‘sitzfleisch’ to write a full autobiography, but I’m pretty likely to tackle a series of blogs for my website. Stay tuned.”
Despite her years of recording and touring, Dorothy says her career highlight is being a music educator.
“Every child whose life I may have touched by teaching a song or introducing an instrument is a unique highlight, even if I can’t remember each one by name,” she said.
Dorothymoskowitz.com and tinyurl.com/MoskowitzJT