An elite band of journalists are remembered by name for decades, and, in my experience, they are usually Americans: Mark Twain, Hunter S. Thompson, Woodward and Bernstein. Not in that pantheon, however, is Joseph Mitchell, despite being American and despite being called (by Newsday) ”the best reporter ever to write for The New Yorker.”
I was lucky enough, though, to come across a compendium of his collected articles,
Up In The Old Hotel and have been enjoying his detailed, local reporting on a forgotten back-alley of US culture: the world of New York’s Bowery district in the 1940s. It’s a curious world of urban hardship, bars, and eccentrics from another era. Mazie, for instance, sold tickets from a small theatre's box-office booth but after work, “in the nickel-a-drink saloons and in the all night restaurants which specialize in pig-snouts and cabbage” she is well known for her generosity to down-and-outs. Captain Charley, is a “a relentless and indiscriminate collector” who opened his own one-man Private Museum for Intelligent People in a cluttered basement (admission 15 cents). I hope those two examples give some idea of the strange, long-gone underworld that JM describes in his forty-plus articles, each of which reads more like a short story than normal journalism.
This post is about the night in 1939 that JM went to a dance hall in Harlem which was hosting a "Trinidad Carnival Committee Picnic.” That’s where he met, drank with and listened to Wilmoth Houdini and his Krazy Kat Band. After a drink, JM reports:-
Quote:
Houndini went behind the bar and got a spoon and a square green gin bottle. He showed the bottle to me."I brought her from Trinidad", he said. "I beat out many a tune on her. I can make her palpitate. I call her Ol' Square Face." The bottle was one third full of water.
Houdini returned to the [musicians'] enclosure and got up on his chair. He began a rhythmic, tantalizing beat with the bottle and spoon. Soon he was making more noise than all the other musicians, and began to sing.
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In fact he began to sing this song, specifically mentioned by JM and luckily available on Youtube too:-
Thanks to JM’s meticulous reporting, we even know how this music went down when delivered live: ”Only the old women along the wall listened to the words. The men and women on the crowded dance floor minded their own business. Occasionally one of the expertly wanton dancers would shudder and let out a loud moan, and then all the others would laugh uproariously and scream, “Hold tight!” or “Please, sister!” “
My verdict: I like this track mostly for its old-time obscurity, so I wouldn’t particularly enjoy the song if it wasn’t for that genuine crackly texture to the recording. Calypso has a kind of immediate, spontaneous charm which probably works well live, but as it's difficult to conjure up the giddy atmosphere of a Trinidad Picnic in the privacy of my own home, I probably won't bother to listen again.
But here's another song by Wilmoth Houdini which I enjoyed much more, thanks to the backing singers and to the fact that you can hear ringing out clearly what I truly hope is Wilmoth's bottle and spoon: Ol' Square Face herself, a gin bottle from Trinidad and from 80 years ago that we can still hear today. Now
that is the magic of modern recording technology!