Crash Course Timeline, No. 7: Al Jolson & His Various Demons

A final tribute to a massive ego.

Al Jolson was a massive presence of the 1920s, which makes it hard to know where to begin with him. One could mention him starring in the first “talkie” - 1927’s The Jazz Singer, of course, a role that, though not written for him, seemed tailor-made to his real-life story. There’s also his years-long use of blackface, the odious 19th century artistic relic that he carried to new heights in the 20th century. As an essay posted to Ferris University’s website put it:

“If blackface has its shameful poster boy, it is Al Jolson. Many other 20th-century performers from Shirley Temple to Bing Crosby donned the makeup for various roles, but Jolson adopted it as a core part of his public persona.”

After a little reading and a lot of thought, calling him America’s first rock star best translates Al Jolson for a modern audience: several times larger than life, consumed by ego, and burning bridges all the way. They made a movie called The Jolson Story in 1947, but his personal history would have posed one hell of a challenge to making Jolson sympathetic.

Jolson was born Asa Yoelson circa 1886 in Seredzius, Kovno Governate, Russian Empire, aka, what is now Lithuania. Because Russia wasn’t the gentlest place for Jews (pogroms, etc.), his father Moses Yoelson, a rabbi and a cantor, made arrangements to relocate to the U.S., first on his own to get settled then to send for his family. (The best source for this period was a site called Musicals 101; just to note it, you’ll learn more from their four-part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) than you will reading this.) His wife Naomi brought over Asa and his three siblings - two sisters, Rose and Etta (both bit players in his story) and his older brother Hirsch (highly relevant) - and the family planted roots in Washington D.C…for as long as Naomi kept them planted. Jolson’s mother died when he was 10, an event that, by every account I read, shattered Jolson; as Musical 101 puts it, “Jolson, for all his tough, earthy exterior, would remain an emotional child for the rest of his life.”

Despite Moses Yoelson’s dreams that both boys would follow him into the family business, they were busking on DC street corners as early as 1897; they even Americanized their names to Harry and Al. When Harry moved to New York to get into show business, Al ran away to join him (they both ran away a lot, as it happened); the ragtime bug had bit them both. Wikipedia’s history of Jolson mentions some time spent in the circus, but the Jolson brothers eventually teamed up to form a vaudeville act with a wheelchair-bound comic named Joe Palmer. While accounts vary on the details - particularly, on what made the act fall apart - they all agree that Al left the other two. It’s what happened next that changed Al Jolson’s life.

One Hit No More, No. 32: Thunderclap Newman, Pete Townshend's Other Wild Vision

This will make sense by the end. Promise.

The Hit
If you weren’t fully sentient in 1969, or didn’t log enough time on a particular kind of “oldies/classic rock” radio programming, it’s likelier than not that you first heard Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air” while watching something – e.g., Almost Famous, Kingpin, or an episode of My Name Is Earl. If I had to guess, I’d say you liked it. Some number of you probably asked the person next to you, “hey, who is that”?

The band was Thunderclap Newman. Yes, Thunderclap Newman.

It’s a pretty song, sounds a little like the Summer of Love, maybe with a bit of a hangover; the tinny (frankly pinched) quality in the vocals pairs with the twanging treble to create a bright sunny melody, so it sounds very late 60s West Coast. The bass and a spidery guitar sound creates a counter-melody that grounds that higher register, and there’s just a lot of fun orchestration going on. It’s just a nice song to listen to. Makes you feel like hugging strangers. Seriously.

The Rest of the Story
“I don’t quite know if that’s a fair description of it but I can tell you, for me, it was a bit sort of traumatic, except for having been a civil servant, and being used to dealing with the public.”

That’s what the actual Thunderclap Newman, aka, Andy Newman, had to say about backing into fame by way of a very famous fan-boy crush. The fan-boy in question: The Who’s Pete Townshend, who had seen Newman play a lunch-time show at Ealing Art School while he was studying graphic design. Newman wasn’t even scheduled to play, but, a mutual friend of Townshend and Newman’s named Rick Seaman suggested the latter to fill in. Unbeknownst to Newman (and for, like, literal years), Townshend left that lunch-time show he’d stumbled into the presence of overlooked genius. Newman had put out some recordings – importantly, recordings he made through multi-track recordings on single-track devices – and Townshend played one of them, Ice & Essence, something like into the ground. (This also files under “unbeknownst to Newman,” because he thought they sounded terrible.) He roped Newman into a couple projects over the years; Thunderclap Newman wound up being the last and largest of them. It’s worth pausing a second to talk about what Newman did at that lunch-time show (quote from Richard Barnes, Maximum R&B):