at Emerson Records before settling in at Columbia's rival label Victor Records. He stayed there for several years, making roughly two dozen recordings from 1923 to 1927, consisting mostly of virtuosic klezmer music put out under the label Naftule Brandwein Orchestra. In 1923, he was sued by the violinist Max Leibowitz for allegedly recording a tune he had copyrighted the year before. The case ended up being dismissed because Leibowitz had still been a Romanian citizen when he had copyrighted the work, which gave him less protection than an American citizen would have had. His career declined from the mid-1920s onward, as demand for his traditional approach to klezmer music waned; his run of Victor Records sessions ended in 1927. From being the top musician in New York, he was reduced to playing in the Borscht Belt. He finally returned to the Victor Records studio in 1941, recording a handful of klezmer dance pieces under his own label once again. By the 1950s, he had difficulty getting many gigs, because of the changing expectations in the music scene; he could not read sheet music and was not as comfortable with popular American music as some of his contemporaries like Dave Tarras, and especially as compared to the younger generations such as Sam Musiker and Max Epstein. Nonetheless, he continued to work regularly until shortly before his death. Brandwein died in October 1963 at age 79. He was buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing in the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society section. Style Brandwein was known as much for his colorful personality as for his musical talent, sometimes playing with a neon sign, reading "Naftule Brandwein Orchestra", around his neck, and with his back facing the audience, to conceal his fingering tricks. He also wore plugged-in Christmas lights as part of his costume on several occasions, which once shorted out when he perspired too much, almost electrocuting him. His wild style incorporated the many strands of Eastern European Jewish music which was influenced by Greek, Turkish, Hungarian and Gypsy music. His warm and lively playing style would constantly jump up and down the scale and express itself in trills, slides and other ornamentation; he is often contrasted to the other famous klezmer clarinettist of his time, Dave Tarras, who had a different style of sound and phrasing. Brandwein took risks in his playing, often improvising a wildly different interpretation of