RE: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: Correction]]

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Wolf, we all know the history you presented (me - only generally).   But notice 
that your earlier post to which I commented, associated rock n roll, which is 
1950's music, with bordellos.  In this post, you are talking about the 1920s, 
30's and 40's - the period of jazz, blues, dixie, etc.   You ain't a' said 
nothin' about rock n' roll and the fifties.   Prohibition was long over.   So I 
still don't see any evidence.


Reyzl   



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From:  Kame'a Media[SMTP:media (at) kamea(dot)com]
Sent:  Thursday, January 07, 1999 7:01 PM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant.
Subject:  [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: Correction]]

Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky wrote:
> 
> >One of the Black man's greatest contributions to world civilization is
> >blues music, from which jazz, rock n roll and other music derive.
> >Barrelhouse and jazz was born in  bordello (or sportin' house) parlors,
> >both to complement and stimulate the upstairs activities.
> 
> What's the proof of that?   This sound to me as if it was the 50's 
> conservatives who made such claims in order to besmirch the music, but was 
> later accepted simply because people who didn't know better just repeated it.

To start with,  at the turn of the century, the port of New Orleans (the
cradle of jazz) was a government-sanctioned "rest and recreation"
destination for the US Navy.  Prostitution and vice flourished until
things got somewhat out of hand and the respectable citizenry forced
repressive measures which 
only led to greater corruption in the form of police pay-offs and the
like.
The bordello was an accepted part of New Orleans society.  Southern 
white men of means routinely patronized these establishments and a
"quadroon" or "octoroon"mistress was considered a trophy. Several madams
achieved wealth and political power, to boot.

The biographies of  every seminal jazz figure, including Buddy Bolden,
Kid Ory, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong (whose mother was a prostitute) 
speak of being employed in sportin' houses.  I forget which (and I
apologize) but either Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith (blues-singers) worked
as a prostitute. 

 Memphis and Beale Street in the "Twenties,  under the regime of Mayor
"Boss" Crump -- same scene as New Orleans.

 Kansas City of the 'Thirties under the corrupt regime of Mayor
Prendergast 
created a wide-open atmosphere where the bars never closed.  KC became a
mecca for jazz musicians.  The  biographies of Count Basie, Jay McShann
and Lester Young  can provide more details.

On to Chicago and the hey-dey of Al Capone.  Illicit booze and sex were
for sale in clandestine speakeasies/whorehouses.   Read F. Scott
Fitzgerald.  Why is this period in history referred to as the Jazz
Age?   Prohibition, the brainchild of the US government,  built the
corporate criminal empires exemplified in films such as The Godfather.

 Why do you think people flocked  to Harlem in the 'Forties?  For the
sex and the drugs.  White people preferred not to "foul their own
nests", so to speak, so they practised their dissolute behaviours in the
Black part of town.  The music was the "shill",  and provided the
atmosphere.  The major nightclub owners, were, by the way, white,
although there were powerful Black gangsters, too.   ( See the biography
of Billie Holiday, who was employed as a laundress  in a Baltimore
whorehouse as a young woman.  She writes that she took the job because
of the music emanating from the place)!

The scholarship on all this, by the way, pre-dates the "Fifties and I
don't think the association of jazz and sportin' houses was created to
"besmirch" the music, but merely to record the facts.

Off the top of my head, read the books of Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, 
Charlie Gillette, Sam Charters and Peter Guralnick for further proof.

When a people is marginalized economically,  the underworld very often
becomes their only source of livelihood, something I do not expect most
people on this list to understand.   In Odessa of the late 1800's, the
Moldovanka was teeminjg with Jewish thieves and prostitutes as was
Krochmalna (St.) in inter-War Warsaw.  Sholem Asch's play, "God of
Vengeance" deals with a "respectable" Jewish bordello owner.

I believe, there  was/is a synagogue on the Lower East Side in NYC that
was once the congregation of Jewish pimps and the owners of sex-for-pay
establishments.  

I don't know if these  Jewish bordellos had live klezmer music.
I'll bet they  played a lot of jazz,  though.

Wolf Krakowski

Ingemar Johansson knows  quite a bit about jazz.  Perhaps, if he has
time, he will be able to point you to some specific sources.