Listening for Jews in the History of the Blues Ari Y

about relationships to the not so distant past Chicanos Por la Causa expressed, a proposed cheerleading justified if it empowers of Chicano politics. In both cases, ethnically Latino cultural center is meant to “show a community that is the target of specific museums struggle to envision their the other side of the community that we’re discrimination? future audiences as they continue to serve not just gang bangers and other things that 3. Insider vs. outsider audience: the communities from which they emerged. they think we are.” Many questions have Do ethnic museums teach their home emerged about this center: Who will it communities about themselves? Or David Shneer is associate professor of history serve? Why are so many Hispanic-operated do they educate a broader American at the University of Colorado at Boulder. museums in the country favoring the term audience about the value of cultural He is the author of Through Soviet Jewish Latino as opposed to Chicano, Mexican, or diversity? Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust Hispanic? What are the politics of Latiniza- 4. Plurality vs. essentialism: (Rutgers University Press, forthcoming tion for U.S. Hispanic-operated museums? Do ethnic museums reduce fluid and in 2010). As Shneer notes and as the Phoenix complex identities to essentialist voices? case study exemplifies, there are many Or do they embrace diversity within their tensions in the establishment and own communities? operation of any ethnic museum. Response As an organizer of the Exhibiting Our- Casandra Hernandez 1. Empowerment vs. commoditization: selves symposium, I join Shneer in arguing Do ethnic museums construct ethnic for more responsive and visionary ethnic David Shneer’s article raises important ques- identity in ways that empower minority museums, and for the development of new tions about the role of ethnic museums in communities to see themselves as equal critical approaches to cultural representa- the construction and expression of ethnic citizens? Or do they construct it in ways tion in museums and cultural centers. identity in the United States. His insights that are easily digestible and marketable about Jewish museums are in many ways to a broad consumer audience? Casandra Hernandez is education and programs relevant to the Hispanic/Latino community 2. Self-reflection vs. cheerleading: manager at the Deer Valley Rock Art Center and of Phoenix, which feels itself significantly Do they function as spaces where organizer of the 2009 symposium, Exhibiting underrepresented and misrepresented in estab- communities can be self-critical or are Ourselves: Representing Cultures in Museums lished museums. As the former president of they ethnic cheerleaders? Is ethnic and Cultural Centers. Listening for Jews in the History of the Blues Ari Y. Kelman ome people make pilgrimage to British musicians who helped define rock “independent” labels that emerged during the famous delis trying to taste or to and roll. (The British Invasion owes itself to late 1940s and early 1950s in almost every S remember Jewish life. Others go on Chess Records, and the Rolling Stones built city with a Jewish population: Cincinnati had walking tours looking for traces of Jewish their entire career on trying to sound like King, Los Angeles had Modern and Aladdin. life in neighborhoods like the Lower East Muddy Waters.) At the risk of overstating: Newark gave us Savoy, and Commodore, Old Side, Fairfax, or Maxwell Street. Some go to without Chess Records rock and roll may Time, and Atlantic were all based in New synagogue to hear strains of ancient texts, never have developed, and it certainly would York. And almost all of these labels special- and others dig deep into the earth hoping to not sound the way it does today. ized in music by and for African Americans. find Jewish history cast in pottery, bone, or So, on the first warm day of late spring This was at the time when Billboard bronze. I listen for hints of Jewish life on wax, in 2009, I found myself at 2120 South and Cash Box, the two largest music vinyl, and shellac in places like 2120 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, the home of industry magazines in the U.S., kept separate Michigan Avenue: the home of Chess Records. Chess Records from 1956 until 1965. In a charts for “pop” music and “race” records. Chess Records is one of the most space I had heard but not before seen, I didn’t Basically, this method of record keeping important, most influential record labels in find a celebration of the music or the label. divided white audiences from black, but popular music. During the 1950s and 1960s, Instead, I found a muted acknowledgment the Chess Brothers understood that African it defined the sound of Chicago blues, and of a history behind the music—a story of American communities represented a its label was responsible for an avalanche of Jews and African Americans, of unfinished market that most of the major labels (Decca, great music. Among the artists who began business, of royalties, and American culture. Columbia, and RCA) would not touch. their careers at Chess: Muddy Waters, Chuck 2120 South Michigan Avenue isn’t a shrine, Leonard Chess, the first of the brothers Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, it is an exhibit of cultural contradictions. to enter the recording business, freely and Koko Taylor. As if that weren’t enough, Chess Records, famously, was owned by admitted that he didn’t know anything those artists wrote, recorded, and released the two Jewish brothers: Leonard and Phil Chess. about music, but once sold on the blues music that inspired the generation of white It was one of a number of Jewish-owned by a young Muddy Waters, he grew in his 14 AJS Perspectives ability to hear a hit song. For Leonard, musical empty. The walls are largely blank, deco- edges and absences, this place spoke much success was not built on scales but on sales. rated sparingly with assorted records and more strongly than its Jewish counterparts Leonard proved a tireless salesman posters and an oversized photo of Dixon. because it refused to cover over the compli- and recruiter for Chess (and its subsid- Through a window, one can see the cated circumstances of producing American iary, Checkers), but the financial dealings control room where Dixon and the Chess popular culture in favor of ethnic flag-waving. between the Chess brothers and their artists brothers would have sat during a recording Blues Heaven does not offer the heart- became a source of conflict and tension session. The room is empty, save a table and warming story of Heschel and King marching practically from the very beginning. The some contemporary sound equipment. in Selma, and it does not share the story of Chess brothers believed they paid artists The artifacts that the museum does Jewish labor activists struggling for the lib- for their work, while the artists regularly house are placed largely without identifica- eration of the working class. Blues Heaven made claims of being ripped off or cheated tion. On the north wall is a framed 78-rpm tells a story about Jews and African Ameri- out of their rightful share of the royalties. record: Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” one of cans that is still—some forty years on—far The truth lies somewhere in the the first blues songs to sell a million copies from settled. The story revolves around middle. The music business is a complicated and something of a landmark in the American a pair of Jewish brothers who produced tangle of laws, loopholes, and subsidiar- recording industry. But it just hangs there some of the most important music of the ies that dictate how everyone involved in without a label or anything else to convey its twentieth century and left behind not only the production of a record is paid accord- significance (it was not recorded on Chess). an unmatched sonic legacy, but a more ing to their contribution to any and all of A few Coco Taylor gowns, a pair painful one as well that still echoes with the the following: radio play, touring, concerts, of Chuck Berry’s pants, a few hats, and inequalities between African Americans and payola, publishing, record sales, songwrit- assorted albums and posters rest in display Jews in mid-century Chicago. ing credits, and studio performances. cases deployed around the building’s For Jews like me, Blues Heaven’s empty Neither the Chess brothers nor their two stories, but little exists to put Chess walls and halls echo with the whole story artists seemed to have fully understood Records or Willie Dixon or any of what that’s not there, the story that is still too contracts or the legal ins-and-outs of getting happened there into any context at all. hard and awkward to tell: should the Chess paid for making music. And the sums of The Chess Brothers are virtually absent. heirs pay back-owed royalties to their money created in that murky middle area artists? Did the artists, however naively, created as much bad blood as it did music. I sat in the studio trying to listen for echoes of willingly enter into contracts that did This is why 2120 South Michigan Avenue is songs like “Spoonful” and “Hoochie Coochie not benefit them? Who now owns Chess currently the home of Willie Dixon’s Blues Man,” but my mind drowned out those sounds Records? Who owns its music? Its legacy? Heaven Foundation, which operates the with questions about American Jewish history. Who owns the right to tell that story? modest museum. Dixon played a key role This building, which housed one of the most These questions hung in the air like old at Chess Records.

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