[5][1][6][7] His father, Iancu Leib Goldstein, was a house painter, and his mother was named Rebecca (Rifke) Rappaport.

[1][8] Gustave showed an interest in performance and songwriting from a young age, and joined an amateur Yiddish theatre troupe at thirteen.

[1] At age fifteen he ran away to Czernowitz (today Chernivtsi in Ukraine) where he supported himself by singing his own compositions in taverns.

[3][4] These consisted of comedic skits, Yiddish theatre music, or imitations of scenes from Eastern European Jewish life involving Badchens and klezmers.

[14][15] 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.