Joel Grey's father, Mickey Katz, a talented musician and clarinetist, created the popular variety show "Borscht Capades" in the early 1950s. Mickey Katz, a saxophone player and bandleader, performed with various bands around the eastern United States, including in Cleveland, Ohio, where Joel Grey was born.
Mickey Katz's music career took him on the road with Spike Jones' band, where he played clarinet and performed comedic bits. After about a year, the Katz family joined Jones' band in California. During a recording session at the Sunset Boulevard RCA-Victor studio in Hollywood, Mickey Katz wrote a parody of a popular song, which he sang to a fellow Jewish musician.
Unbeknownst to him, the microphone was left open in the control room, and the non-Jewish heads of RCA-Victor, who were sitting in the control room, were amused by the Yiddish song and decided to record it. The recording became a huge hit, leading Mickey Katz to put together a variety show that sold out every week at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles.
Joel Grey, who was just 9 years old at the time, knew he wanted to become an actor. When his father's variety show came to town, Joel asked his father how he could be involved. His father suggested he sing and dance, but Joel replied that he couldn't do either, but would run around and move instead.
Joel's aunt introduced him to a popular Yiddish song, "Romania, Romania," which was a million words long and fast-paced. Joel learned the song by rote, without understanding the lyrics, and soon found himself boxed into being a song-and-dance man rather than an actor.
The song, reminiscent of a Danny Kaye spectacular, left room for Joel to dance, sing, and mug, much like his idol Jerry Lewis. Two years later, Eddie Cantor saw Joel performing in Florida and invited him to appear on his "Colgate Comedy Hour" television show, marking the end of "Borscht Capades" for Joel and the beginning of his long career in nightclubs across the country.
