Document text
Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Herman Partnaw
ADDRESS 557 West 144th Street
DATE June 5, 1939
SUBJECT Fringe Folklore THEN GOD FOR COLUMBUS
1. Date and time of interview may b, 1939
2. Place of interview Foot of Canal Street Bridge
3. Name and address of informant swim Rosen
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of pE:rson, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
A, wide waste ar,a at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge where
the unemployed are sunning. Third Avenue L, second-hand
clothes shops, heavy traffic.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms,
each bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material
refers.)
STATE
NAME OF WORKER
ADDRESS
DATE
SUBJECT
FORM C
TEXT OF INTERVIEW (UNEDITED)
New York
Herman Partnaw
557 West 144th Street
June 5, 1939
Fringe Folklore THANK GOD FOR COLUMBUS
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
Yes, it's E wonderful voice. And it ain't no expense neither.
A little eggnogg, same Heide's pastilles and it comes out clear like
a canary: That's my nickname in the sewer Sam, the Canary. Rough
laborers, they ain't artistic and sensitive like girls, but they call
me the canary, they gotta, on account of my voice. I don't mean my
voice. I hate to say I, my. It's a born voice, that's all. It
happens by accident it's mine. It's a pleasure. It's an inspiration,
it gives me a good appetite, it makes me happy. Except at night I
eat two cups of coffee and supper, I feel so heavy it gets screechy.
I'm too tired, it effects the voice, you understand. The slightest
thing makes it screechy. I didn't know till three, four years ago
I even had it. Nobody told me. My wife never told me. She tried
to kill it, even. She was a nervous woman, irritable a born nag-
gard. She put me on a pedestal and made an idol out of me, then
she knocked me off. I got annulled.
I went to work in the severs for MPA. It was an accident
one day I was shovelling and I began to sing. The boys hollered
for an encore. I was surprised. It was an inspiration, it put
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life into them. Since that time everybody calls me Bing Crosby,
Junior, because I'm an amature. Your whole life you go around,
nobody tells you, nobody is decent enough, now, I'm Bing Junior.
How much waste. A name, Bing.
My uncle had a baby he named him Dennis. So what? The
kids on the block call him Ziggy. Foolishness. My name is Sam
Rosen, plain, I don't care who asks, June 6th I'm singing in A
Law's Theater Amature Hour, shall I go and change my name? 501
Madison Avenue, that's WEEMithere, downstairs is a confectionery,
they gave ma an audtion, they give no auditions all over, I sing
in one room, they listen in another room over the microphone, the
receiver, the amplifier, whatever you call it. Then when I'm through,
I hear them say: "Thank you." It's an inspiration, the way they say
it, "Thant you." Most of the time they ask for an encore too. It's
an exhiliration, you get a better appetite, you don't feel like an
appendage. Today it's so busy by slack every ody is demoralized.
They don't know where to look. If a person looks up at the sky
and somebody whispers he's a Messiah, they follow him. They don't
know no better, they're looking for an iOspiration. Like on Forty
Second Street, let one person only look up, everybody is looking.
My inspiration, I need to serenade a girl. When I hear the
call of nature, to satisfy my cravings, follow my sex nature, I
need a meter. But I can't locate her. I got a good nature, I'm
quiet, not like other laborers, but since I'm annulled I can't
locate my ideal. I'm going to a matrimonial bureau. A friend of
nine, I know him a long time. He's opening a new office now on
42nd Street, he's sending me a post card, he expects to get the
American type, educated. I'm looking for a lady with a Mid=
brother or a father they're in business and they'll allow me to
work for them.
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I'm not satisfied with the girls he got now. They're fat or
they're widows or they got children. Only one girl, she was
slim, with a good skin, three inches taller than me, we clicked
right away. But when we got through talking in the office there,
I asked her telephone number, she said: "Get a steady job,
keep company." That ain't my ideal. Go get a steady job. At
what? Fixing fountain pens?
The only thing I got to depend on is the voice. The
sewer work is only ten eleven days a memlot month so the rest
of the timeI go to school. I take up French, acting, I learn
dancing, classical dancing, even fencing. For poise, you under-
stand. Like a real opera singer, only it don't cost me a penny.
It's WA culture courses. It's a pleasure, an inspiration.
Thank God for Columbus.