Who Am I? December 2024
I was born during the presidency of Grover Cleveland in a N.Y. village which bears the same name as the place in Genesis given to the Israelites by pharaoh. It was also the same place from which the ancient Hebrews fled Egypt at the time of the Exodus. My mom, Ida, and my grandmother gave me a bunch of names at birth to reflect my mixed heritage.
My Jewish dad, Frank, worked as an electrician in nearby Monroe, N.Y. My blessed mom determined that my dad was a serial philanderer and gambler and finally got fed up and told him to hit the road and not to bother coming back.
Mom got remarried to a mechanic from Paterson, N.J. and moved the family to Newark. My mom was an accomplished organist and pianist and she gave me my initial instruction on an old organ and later on an upright piano I won in a contest. Mom also gave me an interest and appreciation in European classical music. My Uncle Rob taught me had to dance and soon after I won a dance contest!
To make ends meet my mom took in washing and I delivered the clean bundles. One of her customers was the wealthy Rothschild family. It seemed whenever I went to their home their kids were chanting their Hebrew lessons and I was invited to join in. I felt an affinity for both my Jewish heritage and for the Jewish people and I was happily exposed to Jewish music as well as to the African-American music of my neighborhood. I always surprised people when I spouted Yiddish phrases and expressions. In my autobiography I mentioned having my bar-mitzvah in Newark.
I excelled at sports at my Newark school mainly to make a hit with the girls. I was drawn to boxing and later, when I started playing piano in honky-tonk bars I met a lot of the boxing champs of that era. I was greatly influenced by the ragtime pianists and I took the popular songs of the day and “ragged them” by adding syncopated rhythms and improvising the melodies.
In 1916 I enlisted in the U.S. Army and during the Great War I was deployed to France. For a time I was the drum major in a regimental band; however, I was later cited for bravery.
I was greatly influenced in the early years of the last century with the piano styles of James P. Johnson and Charles Luckey Roberts. In fact, I made my bones as a master of a sophisticated piano style called “stride.” The stride concept means the pianist’s left hand shuttles (“strides”) between the low notes and the mid-range chords to make the rhythm section. I described it as a “two-fisted tickler to make it roll.” I later influenced the music of my friend Duke Ellington and other musical legends such as Count Basie, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Bix Beiderbecke, Artie Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie.
In the 1920’s I worked the jazz clubs of Manhattan and N.J. In the 1930’s I did some recording and could often be found at “rent parties” in Harlem. In the 1940’s I could be seen performing regularly at the famous 52nd Street clubs in Manhattan. I was a flamboyant character and knew how to work an audience so I often was called upon to emcee at the clubs. In later years I toured and played piano at festivals abroad and appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival. My style of piano playing became less popular over the decades but I could still find gigs in the U.S. and Europe into the 1970’s. I think you know me by now. That’s me in the photo below.
(1a)Who Am I? (2a)What was my nickname and why did a certain colonel give me that moniker? (2c)What town was I born in? (3a)Name one of the addresses of my family’s Newark residences. (3b)Describe my dress appearance from the waist up when I was tickling those ivories. (3c)Name 2 clubs I performed at in the 1920’s. (4a)What was the title of my autobiography? (4b)What is my most famous composition? (5)What was my last address in Manhattan before I passed?
