Speaker 1: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 1: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman and I'm
Speaker 1: Joey Angelfield. Producer engineer Mike Tomran is working somewhere behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. Amusing Jews is a project of a Dotaverine
Speaker 1: Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the American West,
Speaker 1: and Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joe, when funk legend George
Speaker 1: Clinton was in sixth grade, he overheard his friend practicing
Speaker 1: for his bar mitzvah. One of those Hebrew chants later
Speaker 1: became Parliament's hit song Flashlight. This is just one of
Speaker 1: the many stories of how black and Jewish sounds have
Speaker 1: shaped American music.
Speaker 2: We're excited to talk again with Joe Alterman, an Atlanta
Speaker 2: based jazz pianist and executive director of the Niranua Concert
Speaker 2: and Culture series. Joe, welcome back to Amusing Jews Man.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. So good to be here.
Speaker 2: When did you first become aware of convergences between black
Speaker 2: and Jewish music.
Speaker 4: Well, I think I've always been aware. I've always kind
Speaker 4: of felt it more than I was even aware.
Speaker 3: Of it.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think like growing up listening to the
Speaker 4: jazz records that I just was in love with. I
Speaker 4: kind of always felt like me and the people on
Speaker 4: record on the record like had something in common, like
Speaker 4: they were almost like they were talking to me. And
Speaker 4: in a lot of senses, I feel like I grew
Speaker 4: up going to Jewish day school, and I think I
Speaker 4: felt like, for a while, I felt like what I
Speaker 4: had been taught in Jewish day school that I would
Speaker 4: find in Judaism. I found it surprising that I actually
Speaker 4: found it in jazz instead of Judaism at that young age.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's all changed now.
Speaker 4: But but yeah, I've always had something I've always felt
Speaker 4: that it wasn't really until, you know, I'd always I
Speaker 4: grew up hearing about the Black Jewish Alliance. I'm from Atlanta,
Speaker 4: so like we have the Temple here and you know,
Speaker 4: all the Martin Luther King's his churches here. I grew
Speaker 4: up hearing about that, but I didn't really know much
Speaker 4: about it, especially in the world of music. I feel
Speaker 4: like in this conversation, you really hear about the Alliance
Speaker 4: and sports and politics more than music. It wasn't until
Speaker 4: I met some of my mentors, pianists like Les McCann
Speaker 4: and Ramsey Lewis, that I really started to feel that
Speaker 4: this was something that they felt too, you know, and
Speaker 4: they kind of confided in me that, you know, my
Speaker 4: being Jewish was.
Speaker 3: Something that made them feel a little closer to me.
Speaker 4: Right away, and we you know, we talk about it,
Speaker 4: and they understood that had they been born twenty or
Speaker 4: thirty years later, that might not be the case. So
Speaker 4: it was really through them that I started to see
Speaker 4: this as like a real lived thing, not just like
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, because I guess the way I
Speaker 4: was always taught about the alliance was more like the
Speaker 4: March on Selma, and that was like that one experience.
Speaker 4: I've just learned that it's so much deeper than that.
Speaker 4: It's like it's in fact, I think it's the things
Speaker 4: that we love, Like so much of what's American about
Speaker 4: being American about is Jewish, is black and Jewish and nothing.
Speaker 1: Yet, as you're alluding to, the Black Jewish Alliance did
Speaker 1: fizzle at a certain point on the political realm, with
Speaker 1: you know, the nineteen seventies and the Black Power movement
Speaker 1: and things like this that kind of severed ties with
Speaker 1: Jewish activism to a great extent. Did that also happen
Speaker 1: in the music world where Jews and blacks kind of
Speaker 1: went their separate ways?
Speaker 3: Kind of?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there was a moment I think. I mean,
Speaker 4: you could still say there's a Jewish black you know,
Speaker 4: there are Jews and blacks working together in the music industry.
Speaker 4: But I feel like, up until a certain point that
Speaker 4: I'll get to in one sec it was kind of
Speaker 4: like a Jewish industry and we'll get into I'm sure why,
Speaker 4: Like Jews kind of created the music industry in a sense,
Speaker 4: but really what happened is around like a lot of basically,
Speaker 4: there wasn't really a music industry before Jews came. I
Speaker 4: don't know if you want me to like explain what happened,
Speaker 4: but you know, I could just share that pretty much
Speaker 4: Jews kind of created the record labels that would record
Speaker 4: black artists, and there were not you know, before the
Speaker 4: Jews got into the industry. There were a few major labels,
Speaker 4: but they really weren't touching black artists.
Speaker 3: If they were, they kind of called it race music.
Speaker 4: So like for most immigrant groups when they moved to
Speaker 4: the United States in the early nineteen hundreds, they aspired
Speaker 4: to fit in with the Wasps, but the Jews didn't
Speaker 4: really feel that and they, you know, fit in more.
Speaker 3: With the black community.
Speaker 4: And so they moved to those kind of neighborhoods, and
Speaker 4: you know, and there were people who Jewish people who
Speaker 4: moved for those neighbors, who like loved music and wanted
Speaker 4: to get into recording music and stuff. But there were
Speaker 4: also people who just you know, they were just you know,
Speaker 4: there wasn't a lot to do for entertainment back then.
Speaker 4: So they go to the bar, you know, and they
Speaker 4: go to the bar in their neighborhood and they'd see,
Speaker 4: like every night there was some black musician entertaining an
Speaker 4: audience that was just lined out the door to see
Speaker 4: this person.
Speaker 3: Every night. It was like that.
Speaker 4: And then they'd come to the conclusion that no one's
Speaker 4: recording these artists, but there's a demand to see them.
Speaker 4: So so like a label like Chess Records, they were
Speaker 4: just like take a chance on all these artists that
Speaker 4: they were seeing in this club called the mcumba Lounge.
Speaker 4: And I mean this was like, now, it's amazing. It's
Speaker 4: like callan Wolf, Muddy Waters that you know, Ated James,
Speaker 4: people like that but back then they didn't know what
Speaker 4: was gonna hit and what was gonna be a dud. Really,
Speaker 4: so basically back then the Chess brothers, it's you know,
Speaker 4: when we look back on it now, the Chess family.
Speaker 3: This is why they get a lot of.
Speaker 4: Stuff, I guess is because their family is very wealthy,
Speaker 4: whereas like most of the musicians, it took a lot
Speaker 4: of lawsuits and stuff for them to become wealthy. But
Speaker 4: what happened is when they decided to record all of
Speaker 4: these artists and start their own label. They they couldn't
Speaker 4: there wasn't really like a blueprint for how to do contracts,
Speaker 4: first of all, but they couldn't afford to do what
Speaker 4: you do today, which is basically you pay some sort
Speaker 4: of advance and then pay a royalty. So they basically
Speaker 4: just paid everything as an advance and that's how you know.
Speaker 4: And by the way, like so so say they put
Speaker 4: out twelve albums, most of the will not really make
Speaker 4: any noise. If anything made noise, the best case scenario
Speaker 4: for them was it would sell thirty thousand copies around
Speaker 4: that much, which would have been a failure for Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 4: Sinatra needed to sell like you know, between two and
Speaker 4: ten million copies of a record back then, so they
Speaker 4: sell thirty thousand copies that could barely afford to pay
Speaker 4: for the records that sold nothing. So that's like how
Speaker 4: they managed to stay a company and to even survive
Speaker 4: past a few years.
Speaker 3: And then, you know, you can't.
Speaker 4: Predict the future necessarily, so it's hard to imagine that
Speaker 4: twenty years later all these British bands like the Stones
Speaker 4: and the Beatles would come around saying the greatest music
Speaker 4: that's ever existed is on Chess Records. Then people go
Speaker 4: and buy this music, like what and so then at
Speaker 4: that point, that's when it starts to get a little
Speaker 4: tricky because they paid them advances, not royalties. That's when
Speaker 4: they I think everyone should have potentially renegotiated the contracts
Speaker 4: and stuff, but it didn't really happen like that for
Speaker 4: the most part. And so the moment of the breakup
Speaker 4: in the music industry, the long winded way of getting
Speaker 4: there is is that when Martin Luther King was assassinated,
Speaker 4: there was a push among black people in the on
Speaker 4: the industry side of the music for to encourage them
Speaker 4: to own their to own more of their output. And
Speaker 4: so that's when there was like this this real movement
Speaker 4: to get out of these Jewish owned record labels, maybe
Speaker 4: start your own, or at least on your publishing things
Speaker 4: like that. And yeah, I think from then on it's
Speaker 4: it's less of this like Jewish black story in American music,
Speaker 4: and it's more of like coincidental moments that that include
Speaker 4: those those people, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in defensive Chess Records, as you're saying, you know,
Speaker 1: with these nascent industries where you have a shoestring budget
Speaker 1: and you don't know what's gonna be a success. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes the artists themselves, we're just really happy to sell something,
Speaker 1: and you know that we're not looking twenty thirty years
Speaker 1: in their own future to see, you know, did I
Speaker 1: make a mistake? And this happened with like but you
Speaker 1: know Siegel and Schuster when they sold the rights to Superman,
Speaker 1: you know, when they were just kids trying to trying
Speaker 1: to get into the industry that didn't think about royalties.
Speaker 1: And I was just reading as well, Eddie Goldfarb, who
Speaker 1: it's still alive with like one hundred and four, he's
Speaker 1: a Jewish toymaker. When he made the Chattering Teeth I
Speaker 1: think back in the nineteen forties he just like sold
Speaker 1: the whole idea for nine hundred bucks.
Speaker 3: Everyone was just trying to survive. Really, it was yeah.
Speaker 2: Enjoining the show, click like and subscribe.
Speaker 1: You've written that African American and Jewish American culture share
Speaker 1: the blue note.
Speaker 3: Could you explain definitely?
Speaker 4: I feel like so I feel like before American music
Speaker 4: and I define American music, what I'm really talking about
Speaker 4: is black music that has you know, that has some
Speaker 4: Jewish contribution within it. But before that, if you were
Speaker 4: going to be like an opera singer, for example, there
Speaker 4: was a sound that you're trying to you're studying all
Speaker 4: these years to attain this one sound. And then in
Speaker 4: American music, really I think thanks to Louis Armstrong who
Speaker 4: was really influenced by this Jewish prayers that he heard
Speaker 4: not the not the prayer, like the words of the prayer,
Speaker 4: but the emotional feeling of the melody.
Speaker 3: He kind of.
Speaker 4: Made it so the goal of American music was be
Speaker 4: you the two cultures like the Jews, I feel like
Speaker 4: the Jewish, the Jewish community and the Black community. If
Speaker 4: you look at like any of the music that was,
Speaker 4: you know, black gospel, music or songs we sing in
Speaker 4: synagogue and just look at the sheet music and play
Speaker 4: like the melody exactly as written.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I would do this as a little kid, you know,
Speaker 4: playing like, oh say shallow, I'm just like the melody,
Speaker 4: and then you know, maybe amazing grace, just the melody,
Speaker 4: and the teacher would always say I did it right
Speaker 4: because I played it exactly as written. But that's it
Speaker 4: never felt right to me. It always felt like something
Speaker 4: was missing. And that's kind of the soul. Like these
Speaker 4: songs were kind of written to be not told, not
Speaker 4: with interpreted with precision, but to you know, you put
Speaker 4: your truth into it.
Speaker 3: Like the goal with both of those community communities music.
Speaker 4: I think this is really the blue note is the
Speaker 4: goal is telling your truth. You know, don't You don't
Speaker 4: need to be precise, that's missing the point. The point
Speaker 4: is like be you. And I think that's like that's
Speaker 4: really kind of become like the American.
Speaker 3: Message of music.
Speaker 4: I think to the whole world thanks to Louis Armstrong
Speaker 4: and that kind of stuff. And if you don't mind,
Speaker 4: I'll share one little thing that just came into mind.
Speaker 4: I got to interview Mike Stoler of Libra and Stoller
Speaker 4: who wrote like Jailhouse Rock and hound Dog and all
Speaker 4: that stuff. And I kind of awkwardly mentioned this to
Speaker 4: him because I was like, you know, I got to
Speaker 4: be honest, like this is kind of uncomfortable to ask,
Speaker 4: but you know this, if you read the Jewish tunes
Speaker 4: just as written on the cheap music, the Black Gospel
Speaker 4: tunes just has written on the sheet music, and honestly,
Speaker 4: like some of yours, like have I just play hound
Speaker 4: Dog as written, it's the the the the I was like,
Speaker 4: that's that's kind of feels like it's getting the notes
Speaker 4: that you wrote right, but it's missing something. And he
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, that's why Jerry's Mike Stoller, Jerry leevery
Speaker 4: He's like, that's why Jerry and I we always were
Speaker 4: producers of the music of these songs, because we wanted
Speaker 4: to protect the intention of them. And that's why Bert
Speaker 4: Backrach would come in and picked Geon Warwick to sing
Speaker 4: the song he wrote. He knew that, like that was
Speaker 4: part of the magic of it. It has to be.
Speaker 4: It's about interpretation.
Speaker 2: Speaking of the Blue Note, Blue Note Records was founded
Speaker 2: by two Jewish jazz enthusiasts who fled naz Germany, Alfred
Speaker 2: Lyon and Francis Wolf. What does this tell us about
Speaker 2: Jews working behind the scenes of black music.
Speaker 4: I feel like there's a few different kinds of Jews
Speaker 4: who got into the industry. One were people like the
Speaker 4: Chess brothers who go to this bar and just see
Speaker 4: an economic opportunity. And this Blue Note example more sheds
Speaker 4: light on the people who really got in it because
Speaker 4: they loved the music.
Speaker 3: Like they loved it.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think one of the reasons they wanted
Speaker 4: to come to America, I mean, obviously was to escape
Speaker 4: Nazi Germany, but one of the reasons they chose America
Speaker 4: and wanted to be here was so they could be
Speaker 4: near all the jazz musicians that they loved. And then
Speaker 4: they came here and they were shocked at all the
Speaker 4: prejudice they saw it to these musicians, and they like
Speaker 4: part of their mission was not only to record music,
Speaker 4: but it was to like, you know, out of you know,
Speaker 4: help their lives and try, you know, so they I mean,
Speaker 4: one thing that's amazing about Blue Note versus some other
Speaker 4: labels is Blue Note. Actually I don't know where they
Speaker 4: got the money or how they made this work, but
Speaker 4: they were able to pay for a few days of rehearsal,
Speaker 4: maybe two or three days of rehearsal before the session itself.
Speaker 4: So if you look at Blue Note Records output versus
Speaker 4: like Prestige Records output, So take Sonny.
Speaker 3: Rollins versus John Coltrane.
Speaker 4: Basically Sonny was on Prestige and John Coltrane was on
Speaker 4: a Blue Note. You'll see that John Coltrane mostly recorded originals,
Speaker 4: whereas Sonny Rollins mostly recorded standards. And it's nothing, it's
Speaker 4: all great music. But because Blue Note was able to
Speaker 4: give these guys these extra days to rehearse, they were
Speaker 4: able to get to easily more get together their originals.
Speaker 4: And that's actually, you know, that's more money for these
Speaker 4: artists in the long run because they're recording their own music.
Speaker 3: So there's there's more in it for them.
Speaker 4: But I think like there's there's Blue Note guys. And
Speaker 4: I think by the way they saw like some of
Speaker 4: the the beatings and stuff of these black artists that
Speaker 4: they loved so much.
Speaker 3: I think they called them pog romes when they were here.
Speaker 4: But Norman Grands is a similar like fascinating guy and
Speaker 4: that world.
Speaker 3: Norman Grand started Verve Records.
Speaker 4: He like owned all these record labels and started this
Speaker 4: thing called Jazz at the Philharmonic, which basically like it
Speaker 4: was like an evening of like all the most all
Speaker 4: star jazz you could. I mean, back in the day,
Speaker 4: you would literally see like Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Coleman, Hawkins, Elephantzgerald,
Speaker 4: Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson all in the same concert. And
Speaker 4: Norman Grands made sure that every hall was desegregated, Like
Speaker 4: he wouldn't let the concerts happen if they were going
Speaker 4: to be segregated. He actually would like pay to transport
Speaker 4: the musicians in limousines. He paid for it himself because
Speaker 4: he wanted them to make sure like they felt on
Speaker 4: par with the classical musicians that he knew that they were.
Speaker 4: There's all these stories of like, I mean, he busted
Speaker 4: this cop somewhere, I think it was in Texas.
Speaker 3: He busted a cop. El Fitzgerald was on stage.
Speaker 4: He saw this cop putting cocaine on El Fitzgerald's toilet,
Speaker 4: and he like sued the I mean, he he protected
Speaker 4: his his his artists a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean another story, like he's about to get.
Speaker 4: In a cab with Ella and the cab driver says,
Speaker 4: he pulls out a gun and says like, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: shoot you if you get in my cabin.
Speaker 3: Norman calms the situation.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a lot of and even like Jerry
Speaker 4: Wexler is another interesting figure too from Atlantic Records. There's
Speaker 4: a funny story where his partner was ahm At Urtigu
Speaker 4: and who was actually Muslim, and they worked together with Atlantic.
Speaker 4: And there's this hilarious story where Jerryry Wexler was meeting
Speaker 4: with Stephen Stills and he was pissed because Stephen Stills
Speaker 4: was signed with Atlantic or about to sign with Atlantic,
Speaker 4: but Crosby Stills was going with another label, and he's
Speaker 4: like he was pissed and he was gonna he just
Speaker 4: like went in the meeting and it was like over
Speaker 4: in like ten minutes. Steven Still is just like left,
Speaker 4: like furious. And then the next day, Omedor Toagoon is like,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go meet with him now, and Omedor to
Speaker 4: Goon just he goes and meets with Steven Stills and
Speaker 4: at the end of the meeting he's like, yeah, not
Speaker 4: only is Steven Stills back on the label, but I
Speaker 4: got Crosby Still was the nash To come on the
Speaker 4: label too.
Speaker 3: They were just like a hilarious partnership.
Speaker 4: But like Jerry Wexler and I'll just share one more
Speaker 4: little tidbit about it, because it's all kind of similar
Speaker 4: in spirit. I think, like before Aretha Franklin was on
Speaker 4: Atlantic Records, she was on Columbia Records. Colombia the recordings
Speaker 4: on that label of her are great, like she's singing,
Speaker 4: but she's he's not really the Aretha that we all know.
Speaker 4: She's singing like over the Rainbow and songs like that
Speaker 4: with string sections. It's almost like they're trying to make
Speaker 4: her be the next like El Fitzgerald. And so she
Speaker 4: goes to audition for Jerry Wexler, who's just like a
Speaker 4: like a funny, tough Jewish guy, you know. And she's
Speaker 4: in the middle of her audition and he just stops her.
Speaker 4: He's like, cut out the Judy Garland imitation. Apparently that's
Speaker 4: the line he said. And Aretha's like, well, you know,
Speaker 4: He's like, tell me about yourself. And they gotta play
Speaker 4: the piano in my church. They won't play the piano,
Speaker 4: and so she sits down and plays the piano. And
Speaker 4: that's when like The next song she recorded was I
Speaker 4: Never know a man the way I Love you, you know,
Speaker 4: like that's Aretha.
Speaker 3: And it's not to say I think the most.
Speaker 4: It's important to keep in mind the most important person
Speaker 4: in this story is the artist, but you know, someone
Speaker 4: like Jerry Wexler in that situation was able to see
Speaker 4: something in her that you know, she hadn't quite awoken yet. Similarly,
Speaker 4: like Ramsey Lewis, just one last time. There's so many
Speaker 4: things here. But Ramsey Lewis was one of my mentors
Speaker 4: and he was on Chess Records, and he told me
Speaker 4: that basically what happened was he was in a group
Speaker 4: called like I can't remember the name at the time,
Speaker 4: but let's say it was the Clovers. It was like
Speaker 4: a name like that it was. It wasn't like a
Speaker 4: person's name, and it was it was like a seven
Speaker 4: piece band. There were horn players. But then all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, all the horn players got drafted to go
Speaker 4: fight in Korea. So they all go to Korea and
Speaker 4: is now it's just a trio and they were still
Speaker 4: going by like the Clovers. But this DJ in town
Speaker 4: was like, hey man, you know, like you know, normally
Speaker 4: if the piano players. The lead in plays the melody
Speaker 4: like it should be like the Ramsey Lewis trio. So
Speaker 4: they did that and then Chess Records decides to audition them,
Speaker 4: signs them.
Speaker 3: And Ramsey told me two things about being on the label.
Speaker 4: He said, First of all, you never would have heard
Speaker 4: of me had it ever been never been for Chess Records.
Speaker 4: He's like, I had no ambitions of being anything other
Speaker 4: than this pianist for this septet. But they they not
Speaker 4: only made me a leader, they signed me. They gave
Speaker 4: me a record deal, you know, and there were a
Speaker 4: lot of artists like that who you know.
Speaker 3: So But at the same time, Ramsey said, occasionally he'd
Speaker 3: get like.
Speaker 4: A a gift quote quote for his wife that would
Speaker 4: be like a mink coat, and he knew it wasn't
Speaker 4: like a bonus. It came from something, came out of something.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, there's all the business stuff. But
Speaker 4: in the end, you know, these guys really document it
Speaker 4: and preserved so much incredible music. It's like hard to
Speaker 4: imagine America the world without I mean, for me for sure.
Speaker 1: One of the most important examples of Black Jewish musical
Speaker 1: collaboration is the anti lynching song, Strange.
Speaker 3: Fruit lunch trees. That's strange.
Speaker 5: Fruit, blood on the leaves and blood up the roots,
Speaker 5: Black Bodies Swinging. In the seventies, Inch Frew.
Speaker 4: Hanging from the there was a song actually it precedes it,
Speaker 4: I think by more than a decade. It was an
Speaker 4: Irving Berlin song called supper Time, which was actually like
Speaker 4: the first song written about lynching.
Speaker 3: And so I just think it's worth throwing that out there.
Speaker 4: But Strange Fruit is pretty fascinating because everyone thinks it's
Speaker 4: written by Billie Holliday because it just it's how could
Speaker 4: it not be when you hear her sing it, you know,
Speaker 4: But it was actually written by a Jewish school teacher
Speaker 4: named Abel Mirpol an Able Mirpol. In addition to being
Speaker 4: a Jewish school teacher in the Bronx, he was a
Speaker 4: pretty active socialist. He adopted the children of the Rosenbergs
Speaker 4: after they were executed.
Speaker 3: This wasn't just like he was writing a song.
Speaker 4: I mean, he did see a photograph that kind of
Speaker 4: that really angered him and inspired him to write the.
Speaker 3: Poem that became a song.
Speaker 4: But there was actually apparently like a movement in New
Speaker 4: York of poets writing Yiddish poetry about lynching black lynchings
Speaker 4: in the South at the same time, so it wasn't
Speaker 4: like in a vacuum necessarily, But anyway, he really wanted
Speaker 4: to get the song to Billie Holliday and somehow he
Speaker 4: got it to her and she just was, you know,
Speaker 4: really really wanted to sing it. But she was signed
Speaker 4: to Columbia Records too, the same label we were just
Speaker 4: talking about with Aretha, and that was owned by this
Speaker 4: guy I run by this guy John Hammond, who's like
Speaker 4: a legendary figure. But at the time, he didn't want
Speaker 4: to touch a song about lynching. He just thought it
Speaker 4: was going to be bad for business, and you know,
Speaker 4: I don't He would not touch it. So she was
Speaker 4: really sad and frustrated. And the story is that she
Speaker 4: went to her friend Bill Gabler. It was a Jewish record.
Speaker 3: Owner. He owned a label called Commodore Records.
Speaker 4: It was just like, I got this song, I have
Speaker 4: to record this, and he said to sing it to
Speaker 4: her and she just sang at a cappella for him
Speaker 4: in the store and she finished. He was like in
Speaker 4: tears and said, like, I don't care if we make
Speaker 4: a dollar, we have to put this song out and
Speaker 4: so they worked out a deal with her label. They
Speaker 4: put it out. The song ended up being called like
Speaker 4: the number one song of the century century by Time magazine.
Speaker 4: She got in a lot of trouble for that song,
Speaker 4: like everywhere she went, like people a lot of times,
Speaker 4: the you know, the club owners didn't want her to
Speaker 4: sing the song, either because they were racist themselves, or
Speaker 4: they were afraid what you know, would happen to them,
Speaker 4: you know, people would have backlash to it or whatever,
Speaker 4: and so she was most of the time she was
Speaker 4: really discouraged from singing the song, but she really loved
Speaker 4: the song and wanted to sing it. So there was
Speaker 4: a club in New York It's called Cafe Society. It
Speaker 4: was actually the first integrated nightclub in the city.
Speaker 3: Somewher in the village.
Speaker 4: The owner of that club was this Jewish guy named
Speaker 4: Barney Josephson, who not only didn't tell her to not
Speaker 4: perform it, he insisted that she performed it, and he
Speaker 4: insisted that none of the waitresses could serve a drink
Speaker 4: or food or anything when she sang it. And he
Speaker 4: also insisted that she do it as the last song
Speaker 4: every night, and there would never be an encore He
Speaker 4: liked the fact that the you know, he wasn't it
Speaker 4: was an integrated nightclub, but he wasn't really in the
Speaker 4: quote entertainment business. He liked the part the fact that
Speaker 4: they're gonna have to sit there, this integrated group and
Speaker 4: then they have to leave kind of uncomfortable thinking about that,
Speaker 4: and so I just think it's I mean, it's amazing
Speaker 4: that these three white Jewish men had integral roles in
Speaker 4: this song that you know, I still can't believe Billy
Speaker 4: Holiday didn't write it herself, you know. But oh but
Speaker 4: Milk Gebler, by the way, was Billy Crystal's uncle. He
Speaker 4: so he was the producer on Rock around the Clock,
Speaker 4: the first quote quote rock and roll song, even though
Speaker 4: he would tell you it wasn't. But the reason it's
Speaker 4: called the first rock and roll song is because Milk Gabler,
Speaker 4: as the producer of that session, have this group.
Speaker 3: It was a white country group, and he picked a drummer.
Speaker 4: That he really loved, and it was this black drummer
Speaker 4: who had worked with Louis Jordan and like the R
Speaker 4: and B scene, rhythm and blue stuff, and he combined
Speaker 4: this this R and B drummer with this country group
Speaker 4: and that's the sound that created why everyone thinks the
Speaker 4: song is rock and roll. But the reason I mentioned
Speaker 4: this is because when they did this session that day,
Speaker 4: they Rock around the Clock was the B side of
Speaker 4: the record, and they thought that the song that was
Speaker 4: on the A side was going to be the hit,
Speaker 4: so they spent most of the day on that. So
Speaker 4: by the time they got to Rock around the Clock,
Speaker 4: they only had time to do two takes. And when
Speaker 4: he listened back to the takes, he realized he liked
Speaker 4: the sound of the band on the first or one
Speaker 4: of He liked the sound of the band on one
Speaker 4: of the recordings and the sound of the vocals on
Speaker 4: the other. He didn't know what to do, so he
Speaker 4: figured out how to splice them together.
Speaker 3: And that was the.
Speaker 4: First example of splicing tape and music like that.
Speaker 3: That's that's like the blueprint of like hip hop and
Speaker 3: you know so much. It's just I think that's just
Speaker 3: an amazing thing.
Speaker 2: Getting back to Mill Gabler, who produced Billie Hollidays recording
Speaker 2: A Strange Fruit. You organized a concert celebrating him. How
Speaker 2: did that come about?
Speaker 4: I have this organization Atlanta called NRAN and I that
Speaker 4: used to be called the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival, and
Speaker 4: every year before I came on, there was that we'd
Speaker 4: pay tribute to a Jewish born artist, but you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of times beyond the fact that the person
Speaker 4: happened to be born have been born Jewish, I didn't
Speaker 4: really know what to leave the concert feeling like I
Speaker 4: learned anything about Jewish stuff. You know. It was more,
Speaker 4: we're celebrating this guy who whose parents were Jewish, so
Speaker 4: he was too, you know, and so I was like,
Speaker 4: let's let's what's a more meaningful way to do that.
Speaker 4: And so I thought, let's pay tribute to a Jewish
Speaker 4: owned record label every year, or as many as.
Speaker 3: Often as we can.
Speaker 4: So that was kind of the first year we did Chess,
Speaker 4: because I thought, you know, we need to start with
Speaker 4: the most complicated story. It's not about patting ourselves on
Speaker 4: the back or anything like that. It's like really about
Speaker 4: understanding the stories. And then I was like, finally we
Speaker 4: did Chess. We did Atlanta, and I thought, let's do
Speaker 4: a commodore milk Gabler, and I was lucky. I got
Speaker 4: to interview Billy Crystal and he told me all these
Speaker 4: amazing stories about his uncle and you know how big
Speaker 4: growing up around all these jazz musicians was were like,
Speaker 4: what what uh made him want to be funny because
Speaker 4: it would be a comedian because he liked making these
Speaker 4: jazz guys laugh. And I mean so that was like
Speaker 4: the highlight for me to just get to speak with
Speaker 4: him about all of these you know, stories and stuff.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the concert was great. We rearranged a lot
Speaker 3: of those songs that they records.
Speaker 4: It's like paying tribute to Milk Gabler and Comedo Records
Speaker 4: is like paying tribute to Frank Sinatra. It's like there's
Speaker 4: every song you could choose from. So it's gonna be fun,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: And Billy Crystal did that wonderful Yiddish scat routine at
Speaker 1: the Tony Awards some years ago. Ella Fish Jerald, wherever
Speaker 1: you are, I apologize on advanced.
Speaker 3: Billy look about flag him second.
Speaker 5: Tim Loganza lokiz lain lame leg it legos.
Speaker 1: Right now your turn?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: So yeah, because I I, uh, I didn't I knew
Speaker 4: he knew Louis Armstrong. He told me about going to Uh,
Speaker 4: Louis Armstrong coming to their Satyrs. He said that, you know,
Speaker 4: Louis Armstrong had the raspy voice, and he said something
Speaker 4: like his He remembered his grandma saying like, Hey, Louis, can't.
Speaker 3: You just cough it up?
Speaker 2: And uh?
Speaker 4: But uh, Anyway, I thought like, since he had been
Speaker 4: around Louis Armstrong, I was curious if he knew this
Speaker 4: story that's really hard to like find, which.
Speaker 3: Is Louis Armstrong.
Speaker 4: The moment he invented scat singing, he was recording this
Speaker 4: song called Hebgb's and a lot of people know that
Speaker 4: he dropped the sheet music with the tape still running,
Speaker 4: so he just started scatting, but not a lot of
Speaker 4: people know that. In that moment, he thought back to
Speaker 4: the jew the Jewish family in New Orleans that he
Speaker 4: worked for, when they put their baby to bed, they
Speaker 4: go in the kitchen and pray, and like they were
Speaker 4: they were from lithuan And I don't know what language
Speaker 4: they prayed in, but it wasn't English. And so and
Speaker 4: he talked about how that sound of them praying was
Speaker 4: so emotionally powerful to him that he said that in
Speaker 4: the moment that he invented skatzing, and he actually thought
Speaker 4: back to the Jews bring in their kitchen and again
Speaker 4: that these kind of emotionally powerful, random syllables, kind of
Speaker 4: like scatt.
Speaker 2: When you play tunes by composers like George Gershwin or
Speaker 2: Harold Arland, do you sense a certain Jewish genesa Kuah.
Speaker 4: There's only a few songs that I play that like,
Speaker 4: I always feel that, and they're honestly, they're Coldporter songs.
Speaker 4: And Colporter was not Jewish there, but Coldporter. There's this
Speaker 4: song my Heart Belongs to Daddy, I feel like is
Speaker 4: the most Jewish sounding song in the book, in the songbook,
Speaker 4: Yes might be long.
Speaker 5: To Daddy, jaw should be, couldn't be bad?
Speaker 4: Yea shall I'm gonna marry day? This other one, you'd
Speaker 4: be so nice to come home to. Also, I just
Speaker 4: it feels Jewish. And he actually he was quoted saying that,
Speaker 4: you know, he was. He kind of struggled for a
Speaker 4: little while how to write for Broadway, and when he
Speaker 4: realized that, like much of the audience coming to those
Speaker 4: early Broadway shows were Jewish Jews who were fans of
Speaker 4: Yiddish theater, he realized that, I think the quote was
Speaker 4: he realized that he had to write Jewish music. So
Speaker 4: he was like writing minor major tunes with them in mine.
Speaker 4: It's kind of fascinating. But I think a lot about
Speaker 4: the you know, I think there's some that, now that
Speaker 4: I know the stories behind them, I think the Jewish
Speaker 4: thing more.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think like my heart belongs to Daddy as one
Speaker 4: that even if I didn't know anything about it, it
Speaker 4: would always feel kind of Jewish to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think whenever, like Irving Berlin went into
Speaker 1: the minor key, he was like exuding some of that
Speaker 1: you know, Russian Empire Jewish experience.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I mean totally, It's like Russian March.
Speaker 4: It's almost like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think just
Speaker 4: a lot of the blues is is very similar to
Speaker 4: that minor sound. So when the jazz guys interpreted with
Speaker 4: the swing, it just feels like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you ever said, like hofta cancelation to like
Speaker 1: a you know, a more jazzy rhythm, it's it's just
Speaker 1: cat callaway.
Speaker 3: You know. That's fascinating. I've never thought that, man. I
Speaker 3: found out that what's this.
Speaker 4: I was friendly with the writer and Matt hint Off,
Speaker 4: and Matt told me that he fell in love with
Speaker 4: jazz walking down the street and as Tawny grew up
Speaker 4: with Chiny grew up, which was Roxbury outside of Boston,
Speaker 4: and he said he heard this song and he said
Speaker 4: that it literally I think the words he said was
Speaker 4: it sounded like a frozen swinging and he found out
Speaker 4: late it was a woody no No no, an Artie
Speaker 4: Shaw piece that Artie Shaw had based off.
Speaker 3: Of a nagoon. He found that out later, so that
Speaker 3: was Yeah, there's so much in common. I feel it.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much Joe for joining us.
Speaker 3: Of course you'll want to talk for like three more hours.
Speaker 3: I could do this all day. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: I love this and to our audience, now back to
Speaker 1: your regularly scheduled lives.
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