{"id":12800,"date":"2013-06-12T08:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=12800"},"modified":"2013-06-24T08:38:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T12:38:18","slug":"cool-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/12\/cool-world\/","title":{"rendered":"COOL WORLD"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

1. CLEVELAND 1975<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/strong>I wore red Adidas tennis shoes to an audition for a soul band at E. 91st Street and Union Avenue.<\/p>\n

\"\"The bandleader, Amos, liked my shoe color and<\/em> my skin color. He said, \u201cAin\u2019t no Holiday Inn going to hire no band without a white guy, and right now there ain\u2019t nary a grain of salt in this room.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wasn’t too good on sax and harmonica, but I got the job.<\/p>\n

Amos thought<\/strong><\/span> harmonica was corn pone, not a respectable axe for a black man, but it was OK for a white. He said, \u201cWe can use that harp. You hip to Tower of Power? They got a bad white dude on harp. You hip to War? Another bad brother of yours on harp.\u201d<\/p>\n

The keyboard player had doubts — not just about my playing. He didn\u2019t like Amos\u2019 pot smoking.<\/p>\n

The keyboard player broke up the band a few weeks later. He said. \u201cWeed is communicating with the demon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat <\/strong>you<\/span><\/span> think?\u201d Amos said. \u201cWhat you gonna do when we play cabarets and shit? It ain\u2019t no motherfucking church!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, I quit.”<\/p>\n

Regardless of the church\/cabaret conflict, we would have broken up. At our next rehearsal, Amos\u2019 son was on drums, then a woman drummer sat in. The other horn player — an old guy, about 40 — had no teeth. He said, \u201cI can\u2019t play without my choppers.\u201d But he could<\/em> play. He played bebop.<\/p>\n

Amos wanted<\/strong><\/span> to try gut bucket blues, even country western. \u201cI\u2019m unemployed! I\u2019ll try anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I stopped by the Hibachi Lounge at Union Avenue and E. 103rd<\/sup> Street, where we were scheduled to play. The bouncer wore a red jump suit and a red wide-brim hat; he shuckled<\/em> (davened) at the pay phone like he was listening to Dial-A-Jewish-Concept. Several women line-danced to the jukebox.<\/p>\n

The women stopped dancing when they saw me.<\/p>\n

\"\"

What's happnin', ladies?<\/p><\/div>\n

Was I<\/span> cool?<\/p>\n

Ask the women.\u00a0 I got out of there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. DETROIT 2002
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Yiddishe Cup shared the bandstand with a soul band at a fancy wedding. I asked the soul singer if she had seen the documentary Standing in the Shadows of<\/em> Motown<\/em>, which had just come out.\u00a0 She said her father, pianist Johnny Griffith, was\u00a0in it.<\/p>\n

The tenor player said, “The movie didn’t feature the horn players.\u00a0 It should have.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The tenor<\/strong><\/span> player tuned up.\u00a0 He sounded better than most Yiddishe Cup jazz solos.<\/p>\n

The tenor player liked our klezmer stuff, particularly our “Araber Tantz.” “What kind of scale is that?” he asked.<\/p>\n

“In Yiddish it’s called freygish<\/em>,” I said.\u00a0 (Freygish<\/em> is the “Hava Nagila” scale: E F G# A B C D E.) \u201cIt has a flatted second and a 1\u00bd-step leap from the second to the raised third.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVery cool,\u201d<\/span> he said.<\/p>\n

About time.<\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

Public service announcement.<\/span>
\nFor all you readers down in Wayne County (Wooster), Ohio. <\/span>
\nFrom Ellen Pill:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Re Don’t Buy From the Jew! \u00a0A History of Jews in Wayne County, Ohio — 1840-1950. \u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

We are writing a book and looking for any information on early Jewish settlers in Wayne County and surrounding areas: photos; newspaper clippings; personal information; and especially, anecdotes about daily life. \u00a0Contact Ed Abramson: \u00a0330.345.5350<\/span><\/a> or Ellen Pill: \u00a0ellenfpill@gmail.com<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[Editorial comment from Bert Stratton:\u00a0 Don’t Buy from the Jew<\/em>. Harsh! My grandfather Albert Zalk ran a “Jew store” in Yazoo City, Mississippi. They liked him down in the Delta.\u00a0 My wife’s grandfather George Rosen ran a “Jew store” in Clarksburg, West Virginia.\u00a0 I was there a few times.\u00a0 The town loved the Rosens.]<\/small><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. CLEVELAND 1975 I wore red Adidas tennis shoes to an audition for a soul band at E. 91st Street and Union Avenue. The bandleader, Amos, liked my shoe color and my skin color. He said, \u201cAin\u2019t no Holiday Inn going to hire no band without a white guy, and right now there ain\u2019t nary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12800"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15114,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12800\/revisions\/15114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}