Jazz musician Jakovas Šabsajus, 1934–1945: A –Brother Szabsaj Band in Druskininkai, 1934, Jakovas – second left; B – Musicians of the State Jazz Orchestra of Soviet Lithuania in Balachna (Russia, 1943, Jakovas with the saxophone in the centre between two accordionists; C – poster for a jazz orchestra concert, 1944; D – jazzmen in the hall of the Republican Radio Committee, Gedimino pr. 22, 1946, Jakovas with the clarinet – in the centre; E – poster for a concert of Western jazz, 1945. A photograph from the private archive of Samuilas Šabsajus. The authors of the photographs are unknown.

Jakovas Šabsajus, the forgotten Last Mohican of popular jazz
By Darius Pocevičius

Much has been written about the first four groups at the Philharmonic: a symphony orchestra, a string quartet, a mixed choir, and the Lietuva Folk Song and Dance Ensemble. But there is almost no information on the State Jazz Orchestra, which gave concerts from 1942 until 1946, or about its founder and artistic director Jakovas Šabsajus. We can call him the Last Mohican of interwar jazz in Vilnius; jazz which, due to its nature as entertainment, was not considered serious music, and was often called džiazucha (jazzukha, popular jazz, musicians' jargon).

His son Samuel, who lives in Israel, says about his father’s childhood and youth: “Father was born in Slanim in 1909, a small town that then belonged to Poland and now to Belarus. He grew up in a large musical family. While he was still a small child, he played in the orchestra of a local fire brigade, and came to like wind instruments, the clarinet and later the saxophone. He studied at a Jewish gymnasium in Vilnius, and very early on the 12-year-old boy started playing in cinemas and cafes.

"In 1932, he graduated from the clarinet class at the Vilnius Conservatoire. His other brothers, the violinist Michael, the pianist Ludwig, and the accordionist Abraham, studied privately with the Conservatoire’s lecturers. His brother Isydore graduated not only from Vilnius but also from the Warsaw Conservatoire (after the war he became a famous pianist and conductor). The five young people (sometimes their sister Ruža joined them) played in the Šabsajus Brothers Orchestra. Their father was then still a student.”¹

To escape the turmoil of the Second World War, Šabsajus moved to Minsk, where he was a conductor with the local philharmonic and radio orchestras. In June 1941, he was sent to the front line, wounded and hospitalised. The following year he was assigned to the 16th Lithuanian Division, which was being formed in Balachna, and found himself on the Volga. There, together with the pianist and conductor Chaimas Potašinskas and the soloist Romanas Marijošiius, he formed a group of musicians which in October 1942 became the official jazz band of the Lithuanian Philharmonic. Jakovas, called Jasha by his friends, was the artistic director of the band, and received a salary of 1,000 rubles.²

The repertoire was created by members of the band arranging Lithuanian folk songs and popular Western melodies. Potašinkas, who was the main contributor to the creative process, called the pieces created by the orchestra “sympho-jazz”. The nature of the jazz compositions can be judged from their titles: “Jazz Paraphrase”, “Military Suite”, “Jazz Rhapsody”, “Belarusian Foxtrot”, “Lithuanian Swing”, “Virtuosos”, “Nagasaki”, “Argentine Tango”, “Blue scarf".³
In the spring of 1943, the first concerts for troops were held in Balachna (illustration 1B). The band, which probably formed its repertoire quicker than the other ensembles, began to tour, visiting many military units that were deployed on the front line and in towns in the rear. They played in Donbas, Abkhazia and Sochi.    
In August that year, the band gave several concerts in the great halls of Moscow. The legendary ballet master Igor Moiseyev wrote in the Izvestia newspaper: “Lithuanian jazz lacks soloists. The orchestra’s leader and conductor J. Šabsajus is an amazing soloist, but he has to resort to his saxophone too often, because he has no equivalent substitute among the other instruments. G. Marnis’ 'Lullaby' performed by him received well-deserved applause.”⁴
In August 1944, the band returned to Vilnius and gave its first concerts (illustration 1C). The performances with unique improvisations by Šabsajus on the saxophone were accompanied by local and other artists, who had come there because of the war. They were the soloist Benjaminas Chajatauskas, who replaced Marijošius (he had returned to Kaunas), the singers Nona Nikeyeva and Eugenija Belousova, the step dancer Grigorijus Joffė, the acrobat J. Nortmanas, and others. By the summer of 1945, the mixed company of frequently changing performers had held dozens of concerts. The posters included the programme “Western Jazz Music, Songs, Dances and Musical Pranks” (illustration 1E).

The light orchestra of the Pergalė cinema house, 1952; first from the right– Jakovas Šabsajus, second from the right – Benjaminas Gorbulskis. Photographs by an unknown author. From Samuilas Šabsajus’ archive.Unfortunately, Šabsajus failed to form a permanent jazz group, as there were probably too few musicians. The band began to break up. Potašinskas, the main writer of the compositions, followed in the footsteps of Marijošius: he found a job with local radio; Chajatauskas joined the popular music soloists’ group at the Philharmonic. In the autumn of 1945, the last band posters “Contemporary Jazz Music” were printed. The time was not given on them, so the concerts probably did not take place.
In January 1946, Juozas Banaitis, the head of the Board of Art Affairs, issued a decree: “From July 1945, the State Jazz Orchestra stopped working altogether due to a lack of artists ... State jazz artists shall be dismissed from 1 February this year, and from the same day, after a suitable leader is found, a new jazz band is to be created.”⁵ In Šabsajus' employee file at the Philharmonic, there is a short note: “Dismissed on 1 February 1946, in connection with the disbanding of the band.” There was no one to create a new jazz band.

Jakov did not give up, and soon, with the help of his friend Potašinskas, the chief music editor on the Radio Committee, found a job in radio. The radio had not only a symphony orchestra, but also smaller light music ensembles. Šabsajus started playing in one of them (illustration 1D).
Light music thrived at the Philharmonic and often surprised Vilnius residents: in 1945, four acrobatic troupes gave performances, and until the 1960s, people went to see the dark-skinned Brazilian Titus Romalis (nobody knew how he had ended up in Vilnius), who performed exotic rhythmic dance compositions.  

Šabasajus was probably the only person who remained faithful to interwar traditions and continued to play “little jazz” in cafes and at dances. In August 1946, the Komjaunimo tiesa (Communist Truth) newspaper attacked him in the article “Biznieriai Arklių g. 1” (Businesspeople at Arklių Street 1). It turned out that Jakov and a friend of his had rented premises from the Puppet Theatre in the name of the Adrija Cinema, and held dance evenings where waltzes, Boston, tango and foxtrots were performed by his jazz band.⁶  A scandal broke out and the premises were given to a military club, but dances with jazz improvisations played by Jakovas were held there for a long time. Not only that, but Šabsajus also played in other cafes and at the Maskva Cinema before film showings.    
His son Samuil said about his later life: “Of the members of the Šabsajus band, two of them survived the Holocaust: Father and Izydoras. Father's brother remained in Poland, and played and conducted at the Szczecin Musical Theatre after the war, and later at the Wrocław Opera. In 1957 he left for Israel.
"Father’s main workplace was the Radio Committee in Vilnius, located on Gedimino Avenue above a food hall. Live radio concerts were broadcast from there, not just symphonic, but also light music. I remember going there around the 1960s: there were radio presenters, announcers and journalists sitting in the hall, and the band conducted by my father was playing behind a glass wall.
"In 1952 my father was imprisoned. At the time, he conducted a pop orchestra which played before the screenings at the recently built Pergalė (Victory) Cinema. Someone had reported him. Both he and the theatre director Boreika were convicted of alleged financial irregularities. Father was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp near Kazakhstan, but returned two years later when Stalin died and the fictitious sentence was overturned. We met him at the railway station. Just at that time, the radio orchestra was taking another train to the decade of Lithuanian culture in Moscow, only without Father ...

"When he returned, as a former prisoner, he could not find work, so he was forced to embark on long journeys with one of the travelling circuses outside Lithuania. He would go on tours with the circus company for a month or two, conducting the circus orchestra. That lasted for almost ten years. He did not find a job in Vilnius until around 1965: the conductor Hermanas Perelšeinas hired him for the Ažuoliukas choir. He was already of an advanced age, but continued to play the saxophone at the Literatų Svetainė, the Tauras Cafe, and at evening dances at the Officers’ House. In early 1974, we all left for Israel.”⁷

Jazz returned to Vilnius in 1962 together with the youth cafe-cum-reading room called “tchitalka”, the Vilnius Jazz Club, and the young jazz virtuoso Vyacheslavas Ganelinas. It returned not as light interwar “little jazz”, but as serious chamber music with its own rules. It is disappointing that the new generation looked down on its predecessors. "Until 1950, many entertainment and dance orchestras were called jazz orchestras in our country, though they had nothing to do with jazz,”⁸ wrote Liudas Šaltenis, the most progressive musicologist at that time, in a 1966 issue of the magazine Kultūros barai.

This attitude has persisted to this day. Probably because of this, the Last Mohican, Jakovas Šabsajus, who for many decades demonstrated the vitality of different jazz, not heavy and intellectual, but easy and understandable to everyone, was forgotten.

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¹ Interview with Samuelis Šabsajus, 28 May 2021. Audio recording from the author's archive.
² Jakovas Šabsajus' autobiography, 5 March 1945, LLMA, f. 264, ap. 5, b. 827, l. 6–7.
³ Programme of the Lithuanian State Jazz Orchestra LTSR, 4 October 1944, LLMA f. 264, ap. 5, b. 566, l. 2.
⁴ Игорь Мойсеев, "Концерты литовского искусства“ (Igor Moyseyev. Concerts of Lithuanian Art), Известия, 21 August 1943, No 197 (8190).
⁵ LTSR Meno reikalų valdybos viršininko įsakymas No 32, 26 January 1945, LLMA, f. 289, ap. 1, b. 1, l. 89–90.
⁶ "Biznieriai Arklių gatvėje 1“, Komjaunimo tiesa, 30 August 1946, No 85 (441).    
⁷ Interview with Samuil Šabsaj.
⁸ Šaltenis, Liudas, "Ateivis iš svetur ar perspektyvus žanras?“ Kultūros barai, April 1966, No 4 (16), p. 36–37.