began to play an excerpt from Beethoven’s violin concerto. The headmaster listened intently as Leentje and Bloorman gazed quietly at Louis. Moments later, the headmaster told Louis to stop playing, then asked him to wait outside with his mother while he conferred with Bloorman. After several minutes, the door opened and Louis and Leentje were told to come back in. The headmaster said he was very impressed with Louis’ playing and thought that he could certainly benefit from some form of musical education, but he was concerned how such a young boy would cope in the competitive environment of the Conservatory. He said that he would admit Louis under one condition: if Mr Bloorman would personally take him under his musical tutelage, he would be allowed to attend the Conservatory. Bloorman readily agreed.
After the audition at the Conservatory, Louis had one more audition to attend. With his mother he went to the home of his uncle, Abraham von Beuren, to ask for help with tuition. Once again, Louis played the Beethoven piece. Uncle Abraham was very impressed with Louis’ progress, having heard him play only at holiday parties. He agreed to help pay for Louis’ tuition, and Louis promised his mother to use his musical talent to pay his uncle back.
At the Conservatory, Louis soon became one of the star pupils, and his ability as a leader of musicians also became apparent. Most of the students were also from poor families, so the need for additional income was always important. In his second year Louis formed a small orchestra with several students, and they hired themselves out for weddings and bar mitzvahs. Many, including Louis, weren’t even of bar mitzvah age yet. They would also perform on street corners, with Louis passing a hat for contributions.
Whatever money Louis earned - and in those days it was considerable - went straight into the jar his mother kept hidden in the kitchen. This extra money helped keep the lights on for weeks on end. Of course, Bloorman was not particularly thrilled that some of his best students were playing music in the streets, but as long as they kept up with their practicing he never interfered.
Louis practiced constantly. Leon Greenman, a fellow survivor and a boyhood friend from the Helmerstraat, remembers waiting outside the Bannet apartment with many of the children from the neighborhood, shouting for Louis to come down to play marbles. But Louis wouldn’t come out until he had finished practicing.
The queen’s official birthday, Koninginnedag, was a national holiday in the Netherlands, celebrated by street parties and other events. On this special day the queen would attend various festivities and visit one or two specially chosen locations. On Koninginnedag 1923, one of those locations was the Jewish Conservatory of Music. It was announced that Louis Bannet, a third-year violin student, would perform a Beethoven selection for Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina.
Chapter 2: Pimps and Whores, Laurel and Hardy
According to Jewish law and tradition, thirteen-year-old Louis Bannet was now a man.
But on the streets of Rotterdam, he still wore short pants and leggings just like any other Dutch boy. This didn’t stop him from taking to the streets to look for work as a professional musician, however. He had heard from some older students at the Conservatory of a place down by the waterfront called Charlie Stock’s, a coffee house that doubled as a musician’s hiring hall. When he walked in carrying his violin case, he was probably too young to realize that musicians weren’t the only professionals available for hire at Charlie Stock’s. The place was filled with merchant seamen, Chinese laborers, musicians, many with their instruments spread out on tables, and women: women unlike any he had seen in the Helmerstraat. Their faces were painted with lipstick and rouge. Their dresses were brightly coloured, not the drab blacks and grays worn by his Jewish neighbors, and there was much skin on display. As Louis attempted to venture further into the crowded hall, he was stopped by a man who told him that minors were not allowed inside. As he was being escorted out, he caught the attention of a young man sitting at a table playing cards with several young women. He motioned for the man to bring the young boy over.
Aren’t you a little young to be in a place like this?’ the man asked.
‘I heard from some friends at school that this was the place for musicians to find work,’ Louis answered.
‘This is a place for a lot people to find work,’ the man said, looking around at the table of women. ‘My name is Hein Frank. And who are you?’
‘My name is Louis Bannet, and I play the violin.’
‘Well, Louis Bannet, if you plan on finding work here, I can tell you one thing: Charlie Stock doesn’t hire young boys. Come with me and we’ll at least try to make you look the part.’ (When Louis recounted this story for the first time for me, he was well into his eighties, and he was a little shy about admitting that Hein Frank was a pimp - and not just any pimp, he said, but a Jewish pimp.) Hein Frank took Louis to the back of the hall and down a long corridor past several rooms, all with their doors shut. Louis could hear the sound of men and women moaning and furniture creaking as he walked past the rooms. Hein opened the door to one of the rooms, quickly walked in, and in a few seconds came out with a pair of pants. He held them up to Louis and then asked him to try them on for size.
Louis slipped into the room to change, and walked out a man.
He didn’t get any work that first day, nor did he find any on the second or third. But he came back day after day, and quickly learned how the selection process worked. It seemed that Charlie Stock always chose the same people. When he asked Hein Frank about this, Hein said Charlie had a very simple credo: you pay, you play. Sensing Louis’ frustration, Hein paid Charlie Stock a visit; the next day, when a violin player was needed for a children’s birthday party, Louis got the job.
He had to wait weeks, though, to be called again. But when he was finally chosen, he was sent to a cinema to play in the orchestra as silent movies from America played on the screen. Louis loved this job because it allowed him to play all types of music with a group of accomplished musicians. He played for cowboy movies, swashbuckling pirate adventures and tear-jerking melodramas. His favorites, though, were the comedies, especially Laurel and Hardy. There was just one problem. Louis couldn’t stop laughing, and finally the theatre manager had to fire him because his laughter was distracting the other musicians. ‘He said to me, "I hired you to play, not laugh,"’ Louis recalled nearly eighty years later. He returned again to Charlie Stock’s, but new work rarely came his way. Louis couldn’t understand why it was so hard to get work. Eventually, Hein Frank hired him to do some bookkeeping.
How Charlie Stock’s came to be the place where Rotterdam’s musicians went to find work, Louis was never certain. What is certain is that it was a gathering place for the sailors and dockworkers who unloaded the ships that arrived from all over the world. One thing the sailors always seemed to have with them was music, especially phonograph records from London and America. Charlie Stock played these records on a player he kept on the bar, and the sailors danced to the music with Hein Frank’s girls. In fact, it was on one of those records that Louis first heard the music that would change his life.
‘I was sitting in Hein Frank’s office one day and I heard a sound that practically lifted me off my chair. I went out to the main hall and noticed a group of sailors standing by the record player. They were drinking and snapping their fingers to the music. I had never heard anything like it. I thought it was a trumpet, but I wasn’t sure, since I’d never heard a trumpet sound like that. The notes were bending and moving in all different directions. There was a drumbeat pounding out a driving rhythm. I saw the record cover on the table and written on it was the name Louis Armstrong.’
As the weeks and months passed, Louis’ prospects dimmed. Hein Frank had a simple explanation.
‘Louis, look around you. All you see are violin cases. There are probably more violin players in Holland than tulips. Have you ever thought of another instrument?’
