Marinella

It's been about two months since my last post. A lot has been on my mind: The passing of my Uncle Hy (that's him in the photo), my daughter having a serious operation (she's fine), leaving my old school and my beloved lower east side (more to come on that). After my father died I tried to fill in gaps about my father's life by questioning my Uncle. In the last year of my father's life when he was pretty ill, any attempt to talk about the old days was thwarted with, "Who cares about that!" Unfortunately, I didn't persevere. Here's one gem. One of my uncle's favorite songs (at least of the non-Greek variety) was a little known Artie Shaw number called Marinella. My father and uncle were childhood friends and as well sons of immigrants from Janina, Greece. They married two "yid" sisters. They belonged to a social club on East Broadway in December 1941. I think it might have been named the Allbros (short for Allen and Broome Street, the vicinity from where many of the Greek Jews lived. Marinella was near the top of the charts on December 7th. When news of Pearl Harbor reached home the club members knew things would change and that they would all eventually be drafted. They played Marinella, with it's strange haunting melody, over and over that day. Here's Marinella