Artie Shaw Story
Mark Eisenman
tale, as
told by Shaw was in the LA Times on August 6th 2000, a friend of mine
in Montreal sent this to me this morning, I thought I would pass on the
story.
Artie Shaw the great clarinetist died the other day and this tale, as
told by Shaw was in the LA Times on August 6th 2000, a friend of mine
in Montreal sent this to me this morning, I thought I would pass on the
story.
"Over the years people have asked me, "What's your musical
genealogy?" How was I supposed to answer that? I spent 10 years trying
to teach my mother how to play "My Country 'Tis of Thee." She was like a
seal with those musical pipes at the aquarium--no relation to music. My
father could at least pick out a melody single-fingered. I thought maybe
it was from his side.
When I was fifty something, my mother died. She had a Jewish funeral
on Amsterdam Avenue in New York. All my mother's family was there. "Hey,
Artie!" "Gee, Artie! Artie!" They even asked for autographs. "For
Christ's sake, my mother's dead!" I said. "Leave me alone, you schmucks."
We went into the funeral parlor and sat down. There was a plain pine
casket up there on this little rostrum. Orthodox Jewish funerals don't
have flowers. I was looking at a box with this woman inside with whom
I'd had a love-hate relationship ever since I could remember. There she
was, up there in this box.
I sat there and in spite of myself I was moved. Her life was over,
finished. It was like a big hole in my life for a minute. I was sitting
there with my then-wife, Evelyn Keyes, and this young rabbi got up--not
an Orthodox rabbi, but a young man who spoke perfect English--and he
addressed us.
"Here we have a coffin," he said, "with all that remains of Sarah.
We're here to pay reverence and respect to her for her life. Let us talk
for a moment about these people like Sarah who came to this country . .
." He did an Irving Howe-style commentary out of "World of Our Fathers":
"They came here by the thousands, expecting sidewalks of gold, and found
toil and travail and exploitation. They lived in the teeming Lower East
Side and worked in sweatshops and struggled to make a living. They
married and brought forth children, some of whom achieved fame and
fortune . . . "
He was going good, I thought. Then an old guy got up from the
congregation. A typical Lower East Side Jew, he wore navy blue pants and
a brown double-breasted jacket, open, with cigarette ashes on his vest,
and a big broad-brimmed hat. He went over to the rabbi and plucked at
his pants. The rabbi did a W.C. Fields take: Get away, kid, you're
bothering me. He was trying to get on with his speech. Then another guy
got up and tried to dissuade the first guy.
The first man was my uncle Moishe, my mother's older brother, and he
didn't speak much English. He was speaking in his guttural Yiddish to
the rabbi, and the rabbi didn't seem to understand. The other guy was
trying to pull Moishe away. The rabbi leaned over.
Finally the rabbi turned back to us.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "this man is the older brother of
the deceased, Sarah, and he's just been telling me he wants to sing a
lament for the dead, the Kaddish. So with your permission, I'll step
down and let him do that." Moishe got up on the rostrum--this little old
man in that typical uniform of the Lower East Side Jew--and he stood
there and started to sing. My jaw dropped.
He had no more voice, there was no instrument, it was all gone. But
he had musicality. The Kaddish is a beautiful Yiddish lament. And he
sang with such pathos and musical intonation--a real relationship of
note to note, which is what music is about--that within his own pitch,
he was singing perfectly. A shiver went through me, and I whispered to
Evelyn, "That's where it came from: my mother's side." This dead,
tone-deaf lady had been the one with the musical gene in her all along.
He finished singing. The other man took him away and sat him down
again. It was a very touching moment, his singing a lament for his dead
sister. It was one of the epiphanies of my life.
Two weeks went by and I got a call from my lawyer. He was the
executor of my mother's estate, which was still in probate, and he asked
if I could come up and help him sort through some bills. I showed up at
his office, and he had a pack of bills in front of him on his desk: gas
bills for the apartment, rent due. She had paid for a plot to be buried
in. Old-country people believe in doing these things.
"I don't understand this one," he said. "It's a bill from somebody
named Morris for $ 150. It's for singing at your mother's funeral."
"What?" I said. "Did someone sing at your mother's funeral? Did you hire
somebody?" You'd think a brother would sing for free. He had wrung my
heart out and then wanted to be paid. He saw a chance to make a buck. I
never talked to that SOB again. That's me and my family.
It was like a nightingale sending you a bill.
George Will
Ron Santen
Ron
"Mark Eisenman" <eise...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:BDFD9900.140C3%eise...@sympatico.ca...
