Samy Attaya: The Life and Missing Recordings of Maloof Phonograph Records' Boston-based Tenor
SAMY ATTAYA
In the world of 78 RPM record collecting, especially in the
case of musicians from the late-Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Empire who fled to the
United States, the records of some artists are more common than others. One is
more likely to encounter a record by Louis Wardiny or Salim Doumani on the Maloof label or Macksoud label than recordings by, say, Prince Mohiuddin or “Fadwa” Fedora Kurban. Samy Attaya
fits squarely in the latter category. They are difficult to come by. In fact, I have never seen an
actual Samy Attaya 78 RPM face to shellac or even in photograph form. Yet, according to Richard K. Spottswood’s essential reference text Ethnic Music
on Record, Samy Attaya recorded some ten songs on Alexander Maloof’s record
label and some of these were duets with an otherwise ambiguously-named Mrs. McCormick.
As is typical with immigrants from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan,
and Palestine (then called Bilad al-Sham) or Greater Syria, the anglicization of names during the process of immigration to the United States can make locating 1920s Arab American musicians difficult.
First papers and documented adoption of anglicized name from Salim Ataia to Samuel Herbert Attaya. Courtesy of Ancestry.com |
Samuel Herbert Attaya or Samy H. Attaya was born Salim Ataia
on either 6 January 1897 or 22 February 1897 in Zahle, Greater Syria (now
Lebanon) to Solomon Ataia and Rosa Maloof. He was the eldest of seven children.
Solomon immigrated to the United States around 1900, but Rose and Salim arrived
in 2 November 1908 (although Samy told different census takers 1904 and
1910). The family initially lived in the
heart Boston’s Syriantown at 23 Hudson Street along the Hudson-Tyler-Harris
corridor. In Boston, Salim went by Samy or the more anglicized Samuel and he
worked for a publisher in 1917. The family packed up and moved from Boston to
Bath, Maine by 1920 because war related industry help Solomon secure work in an
iron foundry and Sam worked in the shipyard.
World War I Draft Card for Samuel H. Attaya from 1918. His mother is listed as his a contact who will know how to locate him. Courtesy of Ancestry.com |
In February 1920, Boston businessman Elias M. Hajjar hosted
a party celebrating his fifteen-year old son’s escaping the ravages of war and
starvation in Syria over the previous five years with the assistance of the Red
Cross and captain in the British Army. This event marked one of Samy’s first
paid music gigs as he sang and played the oud or as the press called it, a “Syrian mandolin.” In June 1920, Sam
returned to Boston where he married Ida Aboud, who worked as a seamstress and
dressmaker. Sam, again found work in publishing and printing and worked in this
industry for the remainder of his life. He along with a Miss McCormick recorded
ten songs on Maloof Phonograph records including in February 1923 including
“Charlotte Pt 1 & 2,” “Ya Boo Eeyoon Il Dublana Pt 1 & 2,” “La Paloma 1
& 2,” and “Kainter Fee Wachin Jameelin Pt 1 & 2.” Perhaps in
anticipation of generating revenue from the Maloof recordings, Attaya bought
property in Boston worth $6300. We have not determined whether Sam's mother, Rose Maloof Attaya, was related to label-owner Alexander Maloof.
We found no recordings by Samy Attaya in any of these estates we purchased and no photographs surfaced while researching for this post. Image by Richard Breaux. |
Things got much busier in the Attaya household as Ida gave
birth to three children between 1922 and 1928. First in February 1922, she had
Herbert. Two years later in May, Anthony joined the family. Finally, in
September 1928, Gerald was born. With
her hands completely full caring for three children, Ida became a full-time
stay-at-home mother. Sam continued to work in publishing full time, but sang on
occasion for events in the Syrian/Lebanese community.
Sam collaborated with up-and-coming singer, Najeeba Morad, to direct the chorus in a community pageant that included a combination dancing, "choral singing, instrumental music, and pantomime" production of biblically-inspired "Pageant of Syria and Lebanon" in September 1930. Some 12,000 people reportedly attended Boston's tercentenary celebration.
One of Boston's most active, widely-known, and continuously running women's clubs is its chapter of the Lebanese Syrian Ladies’ Aid Society. Founded in 1917, the Society celebrated the opening
of a new home and Sam Attaya along with Elias Shamon, Emily Harfoush, and John
Joseph performed as the program’s entertainment. In August and October, Syrian and Lebanese
members of the Catholic Charitable Bureau staged two separate productions: one about
life in the Middle East from the beginning of time to the coming of Christ and another
“depicting the progress of the Syrian Lebanese People in the United States.” Sam
Attaya served on the executive committee for the production. In March 1931 and
May 1932, he performed with a small ensemble and solo for the receptions at the
Church of Our Lady of Annunciation and the Lebanese Syrian Ladies Society. When the
Syrian American Club of Boston hosted its 20th Anniversary
festivities in April 1933 Attaya appeared on the same program as fellow Maloof
recording artist Midhat Serbagi, future Morad Records singer Najeeba Morad, and
others including Mitry Abdelahad, Nicholas Najjai, Louis Morad, and Earl
Chamberlain. Some 2,000 people showed up for this event. Many of the same
performers including Attaya and Najeeba Morad plus Anton Abdelahad, Harry
Hasakian and Garvis Baskarian provided entertainment for an equally large and
lively crowd the following year. The collaborative performances between Arab Americans and Armenian American musicians represent a practice, that music historian and Canary Records re-issue producer Ian Nagoski reminds us harken back to the first Ottoman diaspora recordings in the United States issued in the early the 1910s not long after Attaya arrived.
Sam Attaya performed at the same concert as Najeeba Morad and Philip Solomon. The Boston Globe 21 September 1935. Courtesy of Newspapers.com |
Sam Attaya eventually became a regular fan favorite at
Boston’s Syrian American Club annual festivals and concerts between 1933 and
1938. According to some reports there were approximately twenty-five local
Syrian or Lebanese clubs and organizations in Boston and over one hundred in
Massachusetts in 1934. Soloists Najeeba
Morad, Anthony Abdelahad, and Jobe Negeim appeared with Sam Attaya on the list
of singers who performed that year. The following year, 1935, violinist Philip
Solomon joined Morad and Attaya and Solomon appeared with Attaya, too, in
1938.
By 1937, Attaya also played of a role on the business and
planning side of events in Boston. He served as board member of Boston’s Syrian
American Club and a regional officer for the Syrian and Lebanese Federation of
the Eastern States as it planned its eighth annual convention in 1939. The
previous year he stood with a number of Syrian Americans in Boston in
opposition to political Zionism.
According to the “Hands Off Palestine” group, Arabs had “during all these
centuries lived in peace with their minority neighbors, the native Jews. At no
time in the last 13 centuries have the Arabs molested or attacked the Jews. The
disturbances,” they maintained, “are all caused by imperialistic English
policy, using Zionism to accomplish its purpose. We do not object to Jews. We
object to political Zionism.” Sam Attaya, with three other Arab American
leaders from Boston, visited U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull.
Attaya’s charitable work continued into the 1940s and 1950s
with a number of local Syrian American clubs and Our Lady of the Annunciation
Church, he also played smaller parties and sahras, but not larger concerts and
festivals anymore. For instance, Attaya joined a number of dignitaries at the
head table for the banquet that accompanied the mortgage burning ceremony for
Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in 1945. He sang and played the oud along
with derbekee player Joe Saliba at a small benefit for Douma, Lebanon in 1955. Illness
kept Attaya and Russell Bunai from playing at the Father Fairneny Memorial Fund
event in October 1956.
Sam Attaya performs at a benefit later in life. The Boston Globe 24 November 1955. Courtesy of Newspapers.com |
At first, finding a death date through our regular channels
turned up nothing. Sam Attaya filed a Social Security claim on 18 June 1963 and
his children filed another 16 July 1976. The first year Mrs. Ida Attaya appeared
in the Roslindale, Massachusetts City Directory as a widow was 1967. A lone
obituary in The Boston Globe in November 1965, however, tells us that Samuel H. Attaya
died 2 November 1965. Appropriately, Our Lady Our Lady of the Annunciation
Church held his funeral and memorial services. Ida Aboud Attaya lived until
1989.
Do you have a copy of one of Attaya's recordings on 78 RPM record? Share it or a photograph of the record label with us.
Do you have a copy of one of Attaya's recordings on 78 RPM record? Share it or a photograph of the record label with us.
Richard M. Breaux
© Midwest Mahjar
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