Bagels and Bongos?

Until I learned about this CD, it never occurred to me that bagels and bongos might be considered complementary goods, in the sense that we use the term in economics.

"Bagles and Bongos" is the title of a new CD, a re-release of tunes by Irving Fields [h/t to JJ for the link]:

In 1959, when Irving Fields was playing piano at the Sherry Biltmore Hotel in Boston, two couples approached him with competing requests.

“One couple requested, ‘I Love You Much Too Much,’ a nice Jewish song,” Fields recalled, while the other couple insisted, “We wanna rumba.”

“So I blended them and played this traditional Jewish song as a rumba, and the crowd loved it,” Fields said.

Now 90, Fields is among a group of musicians whose music is being re-mastered and re-released by Reboot Stereophonic, a not-for-profit record label dedicated to mining and preserving music from the Jewish past. Their first releases will be lost Jewish/Latino musical classics, including those by Fields.

Here's more in this article:

"Bagels and Bongos" became a hit not only in America, Mr. Fields said, but also in Europe and Japan. A sequel, "More Bagels and Bongos," was commissioned, followed by more fusion experiments: "Pizza and Bongos," "Champagne and Bongos," "Bikinis and Bongos."

If you are interested in the CD, I recommend the Amazon.com site over the Amazon.ca site. The last time I checked, the latter had a very high "import" price and an expected delivery date of 3-5 weeks, whereas the U.S. site had an expected shipping delay of 4-6 days.

Quiz: What is the cross-price elasticity of demand between bagels and bongos?