Jerry Silverman (born 1931) is an American folksinger, guitar teacher and author of music books.
[1] Among his notable books are the two volumes of The Folksinger's Guitar Guide for Oak Publications in 1962 and '64; The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust’’ (Syracuse University Press, 2002), which contains 110 songs in 16 languages - Yiddish, German, Hebrew,Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Ladino, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Norwegian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Hungarian and English.
Jerry’s father, Bill (b. London, 1896) and mother Helen Mindlin (b. Dubrovna, Russia, 1898) were married in New York in 1928.
Bill was a self employed fabric supplier for Broadway theatrical productions, but was also an accomplished amateur mandolin player.
Jerry began taking classical mandolin lessons at the nearby Neighborhood Music School with teacher Matthew Kahn at age 10.
In the summer of 1945, Jerry attended Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (Workers Children’s Camp) in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where for the first time he was exposed to 78 rpm recordingsof folk singer Woody Guthrie, blues singer Josh White, The Almanac Singers, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson (who was the “patron saint” of the camp), union songs and songs of the Spanish Civil War.
In 1948, Jaffe suggested that Jerry take over as the guitar teacher at the School when he left.
Here is a brief excerpt from the introduction to the book which sets the tone of the work: “In spite of the perennial popularity of blues songs…no collection has ever been available before now.
Since then, as a teacher and professional performer, I have been plagued by this glaring and inexplicable sin of omission – so much so that I decided to do the job myself.” In 1951, Silverman began writing music transcriptions and arrangements for the new monthly publication ‘’Sing Out!, The Folksong Magazine’’.