He became famous due to the talent of others.
Anyone can sing Leonid Utesov’s song “At the samovar, me and my Masha.” The artist recorded the popular foxtrot in 1934. Only the name of Semyon Kogan, who processed the composition, was written on the plastic, and the text was called folk. A little later, Lebedev-Kumach began to be listed as the author.
In fact, the funny song appeared five years earlier in Poland. The melody was composed by young Feiga Joffe, who performed under the name Fanny Gordon-Kwiatkowska. The cabaret manager Andrzej Wlast selected the text for the music. Less than two weeks later, they were singing about the samovar and Masha all over the country. Initially, the words were in Polish, but a little later the song was translated into Russian for migrants, of whom there were many in Warsaw.
Only in the 1970s were Fanny’s rights to the song restored. The woman received an official apology, and the Melodiya company, which produced those same Utesov records, even paid her 9 Soviet rubles.
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