Sunday, January 28, 2007 11:34 PM

DRUM BEAT
Grampa Al Lewis on his favorite music.
April 2004

It’s been a while since I wrote a column for HAD. I’ve been busy recuperating from a very difficult operation.  I’m coming along and I will be back!

Music is one of my great loves, a theme throughout my life, a hobby that I’m devoted to and gives meaning to my life. I listen to everything.  I like good music, but I’m especially partial to music that jumps out of the box. I’m deeply respectful of classical music because I understand the mastery required to play it, but if I’m honest, I prefer jazz, blues, folk, rock, rap, musical forms that are flexible, playful, irreverent, and soulful. I like being surprised. And, of course, there’s my life experience!

The music I grew up on, Jewish wedding hall music, Klezmer, was also playful, inspirational and improvisational.  These were qualities I admired.  Our Jewish music was often sad and played in a minor key bespeaking the suffering of our people. That may have prepared me for experiencing jazz. The elements were similar and spoke to me.  This was the subconscious language of the people. Classical music, on the other hand, was usually developed and paid for by the elite.  Beautiful? Yes. A popularexpression?  No.

I was fortunate to be alive when Jazz burst onto the scene in New York City in the 50’s. In Harlem and on 52nd Street Jazz Clubs popped up like mushrooms, places where musicians could develop individual style, bands could find their niche and audiences could learn about this new musical art form.  I’m not much for copy-cat stuff. What energizes me is originality, art that expresses social reality and permits an artist to soar. The jazz I heard in those clubs was something fresh, but seemed to tell the story of suffering… the blues in an improvisation of sound. Themes were picked up and dropped then woven into walls of sound. This music was a uniting force.

We didn’t know it then, but this was the era of jazz greats.  Heck, I was a struggling performer.  So I shared a Harlem apartment with another struggling artist, Lester Young, the tenor sax player with the porkpie hat. Billie Holiday gave him the nickname “Prez.” Now many think Prez may be the best tenor sax of all time. Billie also sang in many of the clubs where I hung out and we became friends. Go down the list of the jazz greats who have become household names, and they were there. 

I befriended some of the club owners and they use their space for Sunday jam sessions.  My job was to watch the door and see that everything went smoothly. Jam sessions had a special allure because you never knew who would show up to play, what they would play and who might be watching. Those years listening to cutting edge jazz shaped my taste for music.

Later, when I was performing in shows out of town, I would let this great passion of mine lead me to clubs and to music stores looking for recordings of my favorites. My love of music provided me with hours of joy.  I also studied jazz history and learned the key differences in performance styles and that sort of thing. After so many years, many consider me an “expert.” It’s all those years of listening and applying my knowledge to what I heard. The music blared, bleated, screamed, screeched, flowed, flowered and healed people, ordinary people who came to experience music in a new way called jazz.

Al "Grandpa" Lewis, famous for his role in the classic early sixties series "The Munsters", also a well known actor, comedian, entertainer, book author and acrobat, and his wife, Ms. Karen Lewis, run an inmate pen-pal program as humantiarians. Grandpa and Karen Lewis are honorary lifetime members of the H.A.D. Organization since October, 2002. Grandpa, with his vast knowledge of life, will be regularly contributing articles on a variety of topics, along with his wife. Grandpa has his own radio show, known as "Al Grandpa Lewis Live", which airs every Saturday from 12:00 noon until 1:30 pm on Radio Station WBAI, 99.5FM. If you are interested in writing to an incarcerated individual, through Grandpa and Karen Lewis's penpal program, please feel free to email us at grandpa@hadofnyc.org with your information.