700 Sundays Read online

  "Fuck you. This hurts, that's how I feel."

  "There it is. I can see the face. Oh, that's a cute-looking baby, Helen."

  "Who does it look like?"

  "Joe Louis, actually. Uh-oh. The baby's shoulders are too big for you. We need forceps to get the baby out of there."

  Oh, my God! I saw the forceps coming toward me. I said, "You know what? I'll come back later, you're all so busy. Thanks anyway. I'll see you in a little while."

  They pulled me out. Somebody slapped me on the ass. Pow! WAAAAAH! They put me on a cold scale. WAAAAH! The doctor sounded like the man behind the counter at the deli as he looks at the needle on the scale after he puts more than half a pound of corned beef on it . . .

  "It's a little bit over. You still want it?"

  Yes, a rather difficult birth, which my relatives always reminded me about every time they saw me.

  "Oh, there's the little guy who almost split his mother in two."

  "Billy, don't take this personal, but your mother didn't sit down until you were twelve years old."

  I didn't take it personal.

  Sunday Number Two: my circumcision. This I took personal.

  This is no way to be brought into the world. I'm on a pillow, totally naked, eight pounds, nine ounces. I looked like a boiled chicken. I'm brought out in front of the family by a guy with bad breath and a beard. He puts me down on a table, grabs a razor and my penis and cuts off the top . . . six to eight inches . . .

  "Get me the electric knife. Stand back when I yell timber. Come on. Whoa. Look at that. That's a five-skin! Look at the size of this thing! Hey, throw it on the car. It looks like it may rain."

  I'm screaming in pain, "My dick, my dick!" and then I heard my Uncle Herman yell, "Let's eat!" Because, you find out, in Yiddish "bris" means blood and buffet.

  Sunday Number Three. I got a gun. I was only two weeks old, but if somebody was coming near my dick again, they were going down.

  Now you can't pick the family that you're born into. That's just the roll of the dice. It's just luck. But if I could pick these people, I would pick them over and over again because they were lunatics. Fun lunatics. What a crazy group of people, and great characters too. It was like the Star Wars bar, but everybody had accents.

  Good people, immigrant people who came here and made something of themselves. There were two sides of our family, the Crystal side, and the Gabler side.

  The Crystal side was small. It was Dad, his brother, Berns, and their sister, Marcia. There weren't that many cousins in his extended family. His mom, Sophie, was a sweet Russian woman. We actually look a great deal alike. She had left Kiev when she was just fifteen. Told her parents she was going to take a walk, and made her way to America.

  My grandfather, Julius Crystal, died when my dad was just sixteen. He was a very interesting man. His immigration forms said he was also from Russia, but recent information has him from Finland. Julius had been an actor in the Yiddish theater. He translated King Lear into Yiddish and he played Lear with Sophie playing Cordelia. He also wrote a book called The Tyranny of God. They lived for a while in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and moved to Brooklyn when Dad was around nine. I once asked Grandma Sophie, Why did they live in Grand Rapids? She said, "That's where the train stopped."

  My Aunt Marcia was one of my favorites, a beautiful red-haired blue-eyed woman, with a great sense of humor. I always felt extremely close to her. Uncle Berns was the baby, all six foot four and 250 pounds of him. He was a true eccentric, bigger than life. He had the mime ability of a circus clown, and he could do magic tricks, and would always use one of us as his assistant. He seemed more like our older brother. He was the uncle you could play with. He was an artist, who had actually been ordered by Eisenhower during World War II to interpret the war on canvas. His first assignment was D-Day. His life story would later become a documentary film directed by my daughter Lindsay, for HBO.

  The Gabler side was Mom's family. She was one of six brothers and sisters. The generation before them was a mixture of the Kasindorfs, from Rostov on the Don in Russia, and the Gablers of Vienna.

  My Grandma Susie (Kasindorf) was one of nine children. Grandpa Julius (Gabler) was one of four brothers, and all of these people had a lot of kids; they really took the "Be fruitful and multiply" quote from the Bible very seriously. So when we all got together for a holiday dinner, it was an enormous crowd of colorful characters. There was my Aunt Lee, who was one of the first woman bank presidents in America; her brother, my Uncle Sid Kasindorf, who was an inventor. He actually built one of the first transistor radios; he put it in a box of wooden stick matches, and it was featured at the World's Fair of l939. My Aunt Jean (Mom's sister) and Uncle Greenie were husband-and-wife doctors. Greenie wrote the first papers on ambulating patients after surgery. There were furriers and architects, accountants, a baby bonnet salesman, even a suspected spy.

  Our Russian cousin Albert Parry (born Paretsky), who knew Lenin as a teenager, and had escaped his revolution after Lenin had told him how bloody the revolution would be, came to America, taught Russian Studies at Cornell University, wrote several controversial books on Russia and may have helped track down war criminals after World War II. We went to Russia together, when I did an HBO special there in l989--Albert's first trip back in over seventy years--and Gorbachev personally had to approve his visit. Another of my mom's cousins was married to a woman whom I knew as Cousin Marjorie. She was a quiet, very lovely woman. Only a few years ago I found out she was actually the Marjorie that Marjorie Morningstar was written about.

  The rest of the family was not quite as exotic. Hardworking people. The kind of people who spoke mostly Yiddish, which is a combination of German and phlegm. This is a language of coughing and spitting; until I was eleven, I wore a raincoat. These people love to eat and talk at the same time, so if you're on the other side of a sour cream conversation, they'll spray their breakfast all over you.

  "No, no, no. He's a schmuck! He's a goniff! He's a putz. He's a prick!" If you're in a blue suit, you're a Jackson Pollock like that! You end up wearing more than they ate.

  My younger uncles were great guys. They were charismatic, great athletes, they drank a lot, had a lot of girlfriends. Picture the Kennedys, except they're eating flanken and playing mah-jongg. They were the Jewish Kennedys. I always thought the Kennedys would have been more fun if they were Jewish. It would have relaxed them a bit. Think of them around the table, during the holidays.

  "Momma Rose, this lobster bisque is fantastic. What a novel way to break the Yom Kippur fast. Teddy, you're eating my kugel, Teddy. Stop eating my kugel, Teddy."

  "Jack loves a shiksa. Jack loves a shiksa."

  "You cut that out. Bobby, have a bissel of the tssimis, just a bissel."

  "Some people see things the way they are and say why, I dream things that never were and say, WHY THE HELL NOT?"

  The older relatives weren't as much fun. They always looked miserable. They had faces like fists. Always with a frown. I called them the upside-down people, because if you put them upside down, they would look so happy. And they would argue about anything, like who was sicker.

  "Murray, what are you talking about a fever. A hundred and six isn't a fever. I was in a coma for seven months. I never missed a day's work."

  Cranky people but proud of their heritage. They were proud of who they were. There are some Jewish people today who are still uncomfortable being Jewish:

  "Levine, party of six please."

  "Excuse me. You mean Leviiine."

  "Shapiro, party of four."

  "Pardon me. You mean Shapiiiiro."

  "FleCHman, are the FleCHmans here?"

  "Excuse me. You mean Miller."

  I have a theory as to why they were so miserable. I think they were miserable because they were hot. Let me explain: Open your family photo albums. Let's face it, we all have the same five relatives. They just jump from album to album.

  They all looked exactly alike, and they all wore the same th
ing: big mink hats, beaver hats, earmuffs, gloves, mukluks, Persian lamb coats, mink coats, beaver coats . . . all at the same time. The women are wearing a fox stole, head, claws and tail, with a clasp that was always the fox biting its own foot. Wasn't that terrifying? It had a look in its glass eye that seemed to say, "How the hell did I end up here?" They were wearing stuffed animals, the Norman Bates line of clothing. It's like the old joke--two minks in the slaughterhouse. One turns to the other and says, "Well, see you in shul."

  I guarantee you, we all have this same photograph. A couple is standing there, covered with every conceivable pelt, hats pulled down over their ears, you can see just a sliver of their unhappy faces, and the caption reads: "At the beach, August, 1912." They're hot.

  When I was growing up, we had this whole other group that was living with us. An extended family. This group was not speaking Yiddish. They were speaking a language that they actually made up themselves. This group was speaking jive talk. They were speaking hip talk. They were smoking cigarettes with no writing on them. They were jazz musicians, mostly African-American and some of the greatest players in the world. It was Jews and jazz forever. The house always smelled of brisket and bourbon. How did this happen? One man was responsible, and he unknowingly changed my life. It was my Uncle Milt Gabler.

  CHAPTER 3

  For years and years, my grandfather had this little music store on 42nd Street between Lexington and Third that he called the Commodore Music Shop. And in it, he sold radios, electronic devices, that kind of thing. But during the summer months, he rented this little cottage on the ocean, a place called Silver Beach in Whitestone, under where the Throggs Neck Bridge is now. And at the end of the point, there was a wealthy man who had an estate. In the garden he had an outdoor dance pavilion, which overlooked the sea, and he would hire Dixieland bands to play so his friends could dance and have an illegal cocktail.

  During the summer months, my young Uncle Milt and his sister Helen, who would become my mom, would swim out to the point at night and hide by the dock treading water, watching the rich people party. Under those summer moons, my mom fell in love with dancing, and my Uncle Milt fell in love with the music, with the hot jazz.

  Milt was a student at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, and after school he worked in my grandfather's store. So one day, with the music in his mind, he takes one of the speakers from one of the radios, puts it over the front door transom of the Commodore Music Shop and dials it into the local jazz station that plays Bix Beiderbecke records. Now the great Bix's hot cornet jazz is blasting out onto 42nd Street. And as people are walking by, hearing the music, they start changing direction, and coming into the store. "Hey, you guys sell these records?" But there weren't any.

  So Milt gets an idea. He runs to his father.

  "Hey, Pop."

  "Don't sneak up on me, Milt. I thought you were a Cossack. I could have killed you."

  "Pop, listen. We can sell jazz records. Everybody's coming in and wanting these jazz records, Pop. We should sell jazz records."

  "Milt, why do I want to get involved with that crap for?"

  "We could make a couple of bucks."

  "Okay. I'm in."

  So they start licensing the master recordings of out-of-print records from some of the local record companies in town, and they start reissuing these out-of-print records with just a plain, white label that said "Commodore" on them. And these reissued jazz records started selling really well.

  Now young Milt starts going to all of the jazz clubs that were in Manhattan at the time. This is a particularly great time for jazz in New York. The clubs were all over town. In the Village, there was a club called Nick's. Then later, Eddie Condon, the great guitarist, opened his own club, and oddly enough he called it "Eddie Condon's." Jimmy Ryan's was on 52nd Street. And then there was Leon & Eddie's and the Onyx Club.

  Milt starts going to Harlem and meeting all the great musicians in town from New Orleans, Kansas City and Chicago, all of these great original jazz giants, who play the same music but with different styles. And he gets another idea. He goes back to his father.

  "Hey, Pop."

  "Again with the sneaking up on me. Who died and made you a Cherokee? What is it?"

  "Pop, listen. I want to produce my own records. Why are we making money for everybody else with these reissues for? I want to make my own jazz records, Pop. I can do it."

  "Why would I want to get involved with that crap for? I hate jazz."

  "We can make a couple of bucks."

  "Okay. I'm in!"

  So, on the day after Benny Goodman's legendary "Sing Sing Sing" concert in 1938--with Benny's searing clarinet and Gene Krupa's astounding, pulsating drum solo, Swing music was played for the first time ever in Carnegie Hall and it knocked the music world on its ass--Milt gets Goodman's sidemen and his now good friends, the great jazz guitarist Eddie Condon, and the best clarinetist in town (Benny left town that morning), Pee Wee Russell, and they go into a studio, and they do something my Uncle Milt never did before in his life. He produces two records: "Jada" and "Love Is Just Around the Corner." And the Commodore jazz label is born, the first independently owned jazz label in the world, and the records do great. Then Milt gets yet another idea. He decides to sell the discs by mail, so he starts something called "The United Hot Record Club of America." He invented the mail order business in the record industry. He was only twenty-seven years old.

  The word gets out to all the jazz artists around the country, that there's this young producer who has a great set of ears and an even bigger heart. Now everybody wants to do a session with my Uncle Milt on what is now our family business, the Commodore jazz label. Milt was a natural producer. He was a charismatic man, with a great laugh, and booming voice. He also was a great judge of character. He understood the musicians. He spent so much time getting to know them, he realized that he didn't have to get too creative with their talents. Make them comfortable, he thought, and make it sound like they were on stage "jammin'." He placed the microphones in the studio, so they would play together not separately, as was the norm, and he would simply bring a couple of bottles of whiskey, a carton of cigarettes, and turn them loose. He let them play it the way they felt it. He let them play it the way they created it. Sometimes, on one Commodore record, there would be three cuts of the very same song. He would press all three cuts because there was a better solo, the beat was different, or there was just something about it that the musicians liked. He put them all on the same record, and they were grateful to him for it. He said, "Listen. Who am I to tell them how to play this? After all, this is jazz, America's only true art form."

  So when I was a kid growing up, my father was now managing the Commodore Music Shop and he had become the authority on jazz and jazz records in the city. And this little store--it was only nine feet wide--was now the center of jazz not only in New York City but in the world, because that little mail order business was now third worldwide behind Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, just selling Commodore and other jazz records.

  Milt turned over the store and the running of the label to my father, his brother-in-law, because he went on to become a vice president in charge of Artists and Repertoire at Decca Records. For thirty years, he had one of the greatest careers that any producer's ever had. From 1941 to '73, he changed the way that people listened to music, and not just in jazz. In rhythm and blues, it was the great Louis Jordan. Remember the musical Five Guys Named Moe? That was all of the music that they did together. And the big song that he co-wrote was called, "Choo Choo Cha Boogie," which actually brought about the beginnings of rock and roll. In folk music, it was the Weavers and Burl Ives.

  In pop music, it was the Tommy Dorsey Band, the Mills Brothers, the Ink Spots, the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Hoagy Carmichael, Judy Garland, even Jerry Lewis's "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby." In jazz, it was Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald singing duets, and Lionel Hampton. He also wrote "Danke Schoen" for Wayne Newton and he told him, "Wayne, strap 'em up. Y
ou'll hit the high notes." The other songs he's responsible for: "Three Coins in the Fountain," "Volare," "Red Roses for a Blue Lady." In his career at Decca he produced thirty records that sold a million copies each. He's in the Grammy Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a little thing he produced called "Rock Around the Clock" with Bill Haley and the Comets. "Rock Around the Clock" is one of rock's anthems, and ironically led to the demise of the music that Milt so loved, hot Dixieland jazz.

  Going to the Commodore Music Shop was the greatest fun because now it was my dad's place. I remember my first trip in. It was my fifth birthday, the first time he and I went into the City alone together. We drove in from Long Beach. And that was the first time I saw the skyline from a distance, and I thought I was going to the Emerald City. We drove into the Midtown Tunnel, Dad explaining to me that we were now actually underwater. The tunnel was built under the East River connecting Manhattan and Long Island. I was scared. Especially when drops of condensation would hit the windshield. I thought for sure it was leaking, and soon we would be engulfed in water, like the Egyptians in the Red Sea. (I had seen The Ten Commandments.) Manhattan was incredible to me. The awesome buildings, towering over us. After we parked the car, we walked to the store. Dad pointed out the Chrysler Building, its silver skin gleaming in the morning sun. We went into this little coffee shop, and that's when I discovered my dad's secret life. As we sat down, the guy behind the counter came over, a big smile on his face.

  "Hey, Jack. How you doing?"

  "Good, Sam. How are you?"

  "Who the hell is this guy?" I thought. "How does he know my father?" Now he smiled at me . . .

  "You must be Billy, huh? I hear you're the funny one."

  Who the hell is this guy?

  "What are you going to have, Jack, the usual?"