The home of Avantgarde Jazz

The very last night at the Onyx, La Compostela 313, La Haban or «The purple panties for Norma B.»

F. Zihar, one of those rare unknown diamonds, without whom modern jazz in it’s today`s form would not have been possible, first set foot on Cuban ground in the spring of 1946. Born and raised in Lebanon, he had already been a superstar in the Middle East and Southwest Asia region where every little kid knew the rhythms and melodies he composed and played on his tabla.

Trying to break new grounds on the other side of the world, one humid night in downtown Havana he ran into Dizzy Gillespie, and together with other great influences around that time, they would take bebop jazz and transport it into the future. The band that he formed in Cuba only lasted for one performance, but they not only changed the game – they changed the ballpark forever.

Off Note Records proudly presents the first pressing of that live performance in La Compostela on the 21st of December, 1946: The Blanco Zihar Sextett, »The Dangers of Mystification, live«.
Please enjoy.

John Birks Gillespie, Autobiographical Notes, 1982, unpublished

Havana, Cuba, April 1946

This mad cat was hot as a Louisiana chicken wing. He collided into me during one of those typical warm, humid and floral Havana nights at my little regular hang-out in La Compostela. I’d come from New York myself just recently, trying to shake off a little habit of mine that I had mismanaged to control for some considerable time. Not that Cuba was the right place to attempt this in those days. But hey

He introduced himself as Franco or Francesco Zihar from Beirut. An Egyptian looking guy with the hair of a brother and an Italian first name? Dazed and confused as I was, measuring the intensity of his hairdo, I would adress him and refer to him as Blanco ever after. Sit down and have a glass with me, Blanco.

Everybody here had a story. After a few drinks he told me his.

Apparently he was what you would call a superstar tabla virtouose in the Far East (one I’d never heard of) but his new compositions were too far advanced for his people’s ears and he felt misunderstood on his home turf. Bringing only his tabla and a suitcase full of hope he signed up with the King of Hookah Shipping Company and left Tripoli as a dishwasher aboard the SS Algonquin in the winter of 1945/46 in search of the New World and new sounds. Within 3 weeks ocean time, he worked himself up to salad boy, then busboy, then head waiter. As those stories go, a French widow (la ›Comptesse de Truffe‹) fell in love with him at her dinner table over a Cordon bleu, they married aboard the ship (her idea), stormy night, slippery deck, over the railing she went (not his idea), then eaten by sharks. Adieu.

Medium heartbroken but a man of the world now, he reached the northern glittery shores of Cuba in the spring of 1946, on the day of our first encounter, about to change the future of Jazz music.

That’s all the information I got out of him on that first night. After a dozen daiquiries he started mumbling in his mother tongue, which to me sounded like German radio transmissions spoken backwards.

I said good night.

He said: "Be aware of the dangers of mystification. See you tomorrow, Dizzy."

Thus our friendship and collaboration began.

In the coming months we saw a lot of each other and I learned quite a bunch from him. He taught me the roots of Oriental and Maghreb music, he taught me about women and he also taught me how to prepare an insane Cordon bleu (which I later rechristenend Cordon Blanco).

It was the year after the big war, the jazz scene was ready for a change and that change was about to happen then and there in Havana.

Within three months he put together a band consisting of Cuban musicians and a couple of crazy birds from overseas. A legend was about to be born

The Diaries of Leonardo »Cinderella« Leguen Casares, Havana, 1976

Translated from Spanish by Valentina Flores Guadalupe

»…Brother, I remember the night as if it was yesterday. It was the 14th of September in the year 1944, the big war was still raging on the other side of the Atlantic. It was also the night that changed my fortunes until the end of my days, which is drawing nearer and nearer as I’m writing these lines. So be it, let the final sweet oblivion wash over me like the waves crash over the Malecon – I will die a happy man!

There was a second night about to come that I will always (a few more weeks? Days, maybe?) remember like it happened a few hours ago, a night that will provide me my final thoughts and images on my death bed, but more of that later. Indulge!

On the night of the 14th my wife sent me downton to buy meat for our dinner party which, as it later turned out, I eventually failed to attend. We had invited my in-laws and my sister plus husband. I was supposed to buy three chickens at the 24 hour butcher’s shop in La Compostela, but after my sister’s husband excused himself due to spousal disagreements of some sort, and after counting my coins, I decided two and a half chickens would have to do.

I realized some of the custumers of the butcher shop that night were extremely well dressed, some of them disappearing through a door in the back of the shop.

After putting in my order at the counter, I was courtiously motioned to follow two very chic dames through that very door in the back, the gateway into my new life.

Only later I found out that two and a half chickens was the secret code word that night, the key to my future. Brother, what are the chances?

What I saw upon entering blew my simple mind. The jazz club on the ground floor was packed to the last corner, the Cuban band on the stage played sounds I had only dreamt about until then.

Having been an amateur jazz man myself (with a decent record collection, though; the sax was my weapon of choice), I instantly knew I was in the right place at the right time, there to stay. Only a hundred mules from the mountains of Vignales could have pulled me out of there.

Well, just two minutes after, the one hundred mules materialized in front of me in the shape of a very angry looking waiter, slapping me across my cheek with his white gloved backhand, shouting at me to rush to the backroom and get dressed already.

What can I say? Yours truly played along. Weak in resistance and guided by higher forces I went to a small changing room and put on the clothes prepared for me, a clean and starched (!) white shirt, bowtie, dress pants and apron. Due to my shabby wardrobe upon entering, they thought I was the missing busboy for the night. Finest with me, I would have played a broom, as long as I could stay in the enchanted building.

I was led to a small hidden bar upstairs, beginning to fulfil my duties. The room was bursting, the crowd exuberant, the dresses were long and shiny, the tuxedos immaculate, the cocktails plenty. Thus began my first day of »work«, it lasted well into the morning hours.

From that day on, come nightfall, I returned every evening for two years, joyfully plunging into my Cinderella enchantment. After six months I became waiter, then head-waiter after another six, manager of the place by the year of ’46 and in the summer of that same year I spilled all my earnings on the heavy mahagony table in the back-office to become part owner of Onyx, the hottest underground club in Havana, Cuba. Darling, I was a made man, a member of society, a wearer of custom-made leather shoes. I drank champagne with Rita Haywood, Martinis with Dorothy Parker, more champagne with Ava Gardner, more Martinis with Dorothy and Scotch Whisky with Gregory Peck; I exchanged whispers with Lauren Bacall and cigars with Blanco Zihar. I met all of them.

…

Our Christmas Party on Dezember 25th of 1946 was approaching. Expectations were as high as the sky over Pinar del Rio. Even though my head and body were mostly in the clouds of the glamour and glitz of the upstairs bar, my heart’s true place lay 5 meters below, downstairs with the jazz.

For the party we needed to book the best band on the island, whatever the costs. There was but one solution. I talked to my brother Dizzy G., he arranged for a meeting with Blanco and we sealed the deal. This Blanco kid was as crazy as a butterfly bat from the caves near Baracoa, his music divine. Only the man himself with his newly formed sextett could turn Christmas into history…and darling, believe me, he delivered.

On the eve of the party, the line that formed outside Compostela 313 reached all the way across the Obispo. The Hollywood crowd, the music scene, the cultured people, many sharply dressed Italians that attended some kind of convention at the Nacional, you name it. The stage was set.

Upstairs in the bar the party was in full swing early on. Marlene Diedrich, this drunken angel, kept shouting out «fuer Oma, fuer Oma» (›to my granny‹) everytime she downed a daiquiri. Apparently her grandmother had died of a rum overdose on her honeymoon cruise to Barbados. This was much to the liking of Truman Capote and his charming companions, arthouse actresses Candy Barr and Tempest Storm. »Fajoma, Fajoma« they shrieked out all night, clinking glasses and throwing back their cocktails, slurring Marlene’s words. By midnight, the whole place had tuned in. »Fajoma« became the cheer of the night, the toast of the town.

Downstairs, the concert of The Blanco Zihar Sextett was reaching it’s climax.
Somehow Blanco managed to hook up his tabla to the massive power generator in the basement. The sounds, cascades, spirals and labyrinths he then played on his electrically enhanced instrument in a state of frenzy was something I’d never heard before and did not hear ever after.
Try to imagine Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew meets Sun Ra meets Pharoah Sanders, only louder! (By the way, those three legends were among the crowd, too, gasping in awe.)
The building was shaking.
Even my shy and beautiful new friend Norma Jeane Baker, in a state of ultimate bliss, started taking off parts of herunder-garments, throwing them at Blanco, unaware.
As the encore crescendoed, cracks began to zigzag across the walls, growing bigger with each beat from the stage. With the final ecstatic chords, the generator blew, heavy smoke from the basement invaded the building and evacuation was in full mode.

The party spilled all over the streets of Havana Vieja, mesmerised.

Blanco Zihar was the last person to leave the building.
He was wearing a smile on his face and the purple panties of Norma B. on top of it.
»Some like it hot, I guess. By the way, I like your boots.
Take care of yourself, Cinderella.«
Those were the last words he said to me. I've never seen him again in my life.

The building partially collapsed on January 1^st, 1947.
It’s spirit lives on in full.