Joseph Cherniavsky was a Jewish American cellist, theatre and film composer, orchestra director, and recording artist. He wrote for the Yiddish theatre, made some of the earliest novelty recordings mixing American popular music, Jazz and klezmer in the mid-1920s, was also musical director at Universal Studios in 1928-1929, and had a long career in radio and musical theatre.

Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker.