Hrach Yacoubian

Born: March 17, 1917, Newark, NJ
Dies: Dec. 21, 2001, North Hollywood, CA
Active years recording: 1940s - 1980s
Label Association: Notable Records, Capitol Records, Era Records, MGM Records

Like many musicians we’ve discussed here, Hrach Yacoubian's name has fallen into obscurity. But from the mid-1930s well into the 1980s, he enjoyed a successful career as a violinist, band leader, and composer. Here, we present Hrach’s earliest recorded work, a four-disc set of his compositions titled Armenian Sketches. The set was published in the 1940s on the private Hollywood-based record label Notable Records. We’ve taken the liberty to present the album in full as one continuous piece of music. Hrach was notable not only for the strength of his compositions and virtuosity as a violinist, but for the energy and personality he conveyed as a performer — characteristics which both strengthened and damaged his reputation.

Hrach Yacoubian did not fall within a neat, idealized framework of Western or Eastern Armenian music. Though it was substantially informed by his Armenian heritage and perspective, his music was distinctly American in its aesthetics and context, a product of his own biography. Hrach was born on March 17th, 1917 in Newark, New Jersey, his father, Loutfi, was born in Aintab and his mother, Anahid, in Kharpert. His family would relocate to Chicago by 1922, where Hrach studied violin at the Bush Conservatory and Chicago Musical College. After Chicago the family again relocated to Los Angeles by 1935, and by 1940 moved yet again to San Francisco. The family's musical talent extended to Hrach’s sister, Florence, and as early 1936 the two performed publicly together, with Florence on piano and Hrach on violin. On a 1936 concert billing, Hrach was advertised as having been "discovered by Paul Whiteman," himself a prominent jazz bandleader. Even at this early stage of his career, it seemed that Hrach was adept at positioning himself closely to the pioneers of the American popular music scene.

This convergence of Armenian-American identity, formal Western musical training, and an eye towards American popular music shaped Hrach’s aesthetic and professional identity. In these ways, he was akin to other Armenian musicians of the late 1940s such as Haig Ohanian, who occupied a commercial space that was equally driven by a reflection of the old world while firmly American and forward looking. Over the course of a career spanning more than four decades, Hrach cultivated this sensibility, often writing for and performing with ensembles made of musicians that were mixed both in their ethnic backgrounds and instrumentation. His ensembles always had a foundation of familiar Western instruments like bass and guitars, led by Hrach’s violin, and often featuring a Greek bouzouki, mandolina, or accordion. This mix allowed them to move easily through the American night club and restaurant circuits, while still representing the musical vocabulary of their cultural heritage. 

Yacoubian was tremendously successful in this arena. Over the course of his career, he would work and come into contact with figures like Ed Sullivan and Frank Sinatra. Yacoubian’s identification with American night club culture also complicated his reputation. There is evidence that Yacoubian worked fiercely to advance within a commercial world centered around money and status. Over the course of his career he lodged numerous lawsuits against venues, making claims over copyright infringement of his compositions as well as more outlandish claims like medical injury due to food that was severely over cooked. But the most colorful incident of this nature, recounted by Tanya Lemani in her memoir Have Belly Will Travel, involved a scuffle where Yacoubian attempted to hit Frank Sinatra at the bar of the Las Vegas Sands Hotel, where Yacoubian was presenting his variety act titled “The Yacoubian Review.” According to Lemani, Sinatra had referred to the performance as “gypsy,” a classification that Hrach took offense to. This kind of behavior, along with questions around his politics and sympathies towards the Soviet Union, ultimately damaged and limited the later years of his career. 

Despite all the gossip and conflicted sagas of his late career, the recordings presented here display the sentimental and ambitious work of a young man whose talent was immense and whose aesthetic sensibility was deeply representative of his cultural identity as an Armenian-American boy. His compositions sit in a lineage of modern adaptations of elements and melodies from Armenian traditional music, that in many ways, trace a lineage to composers like Gomidas Vartabed. While Gomidas merged traditional folk songs with the Western conventions of modern harmony, Yacoubian took a similar approach, but as an American-born Armenian living in California during a peak of Hollywood culture, we hear less of the grand operas of Western Europe and more the inflection of the silver screen, with its lushly arranged soundtracks and popular music. The album is broken into seven pieces: Armenian Dance, Pastorale, Mood Orientale, Erivan Reverie, Byzantine Air, A Ballad of the Black Sea, and Poeme. Each reflects and reconfigures the sounds and sentiments of Yacoubian’s Armenian roots. 

A special thanks to the SJS Charitable Trust for their generous support of our work to digitize and share our collection of 78 rpm records.