Gus Goldstein

Gustave "Gus" Goldstein (; 1882 – February 19, 1946) was a Romanian-born American Yiddish theatre actor, songwriter, vaudevillian, and recording artist. During the boom in Yiddish music recording in the 1910s and 1920s, he recorded dozens of 78-rpm discs of comedy and theatre music for Victor, Brunswick, Emerson, OKeh, and Columbia Records, collaborating with many celebrities of contemporary Jewish music such as Naftule Brandwein, Abe Schwartz, Louis Gilrod, and Clara Gold.

Biography Goldstein was born in Iași, Romania on June 1, 1882 (although the Leksikon fun yidishn teater gives the year as 1884). His father, Iancu Leib Goldstein, was a house painter, and his mother was named Rebecca (Rifke) Rappaport. Gustave showed an interest in performance and songwriting from a young age, and joined an amateur Yiddish theatre troupe at thirteen. His earliest recordings seem to have been with Victor Records in early 1916; over the next decade he would record at least 70 sides with them, some with other Yiddish comedy figures such as Clara Gold or Anna Hoffman. In 1922 and 1923 he recorded another set of roughly 20 discs for Okeh Records. His final round of recording seems to have a handful of discs been for Brunswick Records in 1927 and 1928, including some records with Alexander Olshanetsky's orchestra.

After the collapse of the ethnic recording industry at the end of the 1920s, he returned to Yiddish vaudeville and worked as a singer and comedian during 1930s.

He died on February 19, 1946, in New York.