Greater Syrian Diaspora at 78RPM: Farid Alam Al-Din

posted on: Nov 4, 2020

There is no doubt if you collect 78 rpm Arab or Arab American records you have come across the Alamphon Records label. For years there have been questions about Alamphon, its founder, the artists who recorded on the label, and the extent to which the label recorded its own artist or reproduced and dubbed imported records from the Arab world. The answer is quite simple, Alamphon produced both. The following is one of the more detailed accounts about the history of Farid Alam Al-Din and Alamphon Records.

The Alamphon Arabic Recording Company was an Arab-American record label based in Brooklyn, New York. The label was founded and owned by the Lebanese-Syrian American فريد علم الدين Farid Alam al-Din. Farid went more commonly by the anglicized name Alfred or Fred Alam.

Census records offer two different dates for the year the Alam Al-Din’s immigrated to the United States. The 1920 US Census lists 1913 as the year Farid and his family immigrated, the 1930 Census reads 1907. A third document, Alam’s “first papers” or his “Declaration of Intent” to become a U.S. citizen shows 12 June 1912 as the official date of arrival. Whichever of these is most accurate, we cannot say for certain, but the 1915 New York Census lists Ms. Rose Alam (42) and her two sons, Alfred (22) and Edward (20), and Terisa (19), Edward’s wife, as residents of Washington Street in New York’s Little Syria. Two years later, the 17 August 1917, New York Sun notes that Fred Alam lived at 128 Washington Street.

Initially, Rose Alam worked as a seamstress and embroiderer. Alfred worked as a peddler/salesman/demonstrator, Edward as a rug salesman, and Terisa as a maid. Times would get worse before they got better. Within four years, the family struggled just to stay afloat. Rose lost her job and the children could barely make ends meet. Alfred and Edward turned to one of the worst possible options. They began to prey on their neighbors.

In 1917, police arrested Edward for theft and a judge sentenced him to two months in Sing Sing Prison. In May 1919, police apprehended Alfred and Edward Alam for being accomplices to the robbery of Syrian diamond merchants who regularly dined at Abraham Neimer’s Syrian-Lebanese coffee house and restaurant on Washington Street. Merchants lost some $15,000 in cash and jewelry; police arrested the Alams and nine others and the judge set bail at $10,000. Edward returned to Sing Sing Prison; Alfred was deemed innocent and served no time.

Within a year, Alfred found work as a night watchman at the docks, Edward became a special police officer, and Rose lost her job. The family moved to a smaller place just a few blocks down at 330 Washington Street.

By the early 1920s, things turned around for Alfred. He peddled, worked as a salesperson, and saved enough to open a dry goods store. Alfred began to import goods from Beirut. He could now financially support his mother who resided with him. Among his imports were folk songs recorded on phonograph records performed by Arab musicians “in the old country.”

Although construction on the Brooklyn-Battery didn’t begin until 1940, plans to transform lower Manhattan date back to the 1920s and 1930s. The combination of these plans and the Depression forced many residents of Little Syria off Washington Street. One news story in 1935 noted, “The Syrian quarter of the town, which for years boasted one of the countries greatest rag centers, has practically vanished what remains is in Washington Street down by the Battery.” One of the best known is Alfred Alam’s Oriental gramophone record shop.

Alam’s phonograph record business is perhaps the only business of its kind not diminished by the radio. He imports records from Germany by Syrian artists and fills orders from his countrymen in America.” Three years later, another story titled “New York Day by Day,” discussed the “mysteriously exotic” Washington Street “cluttered with people from the Near East principality.” The Nile Restaurant and the Son of the Sheik restaurant commanded special attention as did Alfred Alam’s shop which included, “The piles of Egyptian and Syrian Phonograph records at A. Alam’s store.

Portable phonographs of odd designs, with full directions. Pictures of handsome Oriental and Near Eastern singers and actors.” Alfred Alam’s store occupied 81 Washington Street. The 1940 Census listed Alfred and his mother, Rose Alam, living in Brooklyn, New York, and Alfred self-employed as a “store manager, foreign phonographs and imported records” at their 208 State Street, Brooklyn shop. Alfred’s mother died in 1941 and Alfred married Mary Kalesh on 25 April 1941.

In 1941, Alfred moved from importing Arab records to recording Lebanese-Syrian American artists and performers in his studio. Collectors can distinguish those sides recorded in the Middle East and those recorded by Alfred Alam based on whether the words “Imported Recording” appears on the label. There seems to be no method Alamphon employed to determine what color label it used or additional elements on a label outside the single pyramid, a dromedary camel facing that pyramid, and the three date palm trees behind the camel at the top of the label. Alfred ran ads in Arab-language newspapers in New York and Detroit and English-language papers for an Arab American readership in Brooklyn.

Sometimes ads focused on particular artists like George Berbari and Sana and Amer Kadaj; other times ads included familiar names such as Elie Baida, Om Kalsoum, Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, Naim Karacand, and Karawan. Alam’s inventory included 153 song recordings. Eighty-five percent of his stock included recordings in the Lebanese dialect of Arabic. Alam recalled that most of his customers were Syrian Jews. Arabs and Arab Americans from a variety of religious faiths purchased 78 rpm discs from the new Court street home of Alamphon Records.

As the US entered World War II, Arab Americans members of the Syrian-Lebanese-Palestinian Committee in Brooklyn held four different War Bond drives and raised thousands, if not millions of dollars. The goal of their fourth was $2 million. The appearance of the US Department of Treasury’s World War II Minuteman Savings Stamp symbol (which also appear less prominently on Decca and Victor record sleeves during WWII) reminded Alamphon customers, from 1942 to 1949, that if they could not afford to buy bonds outright, they could fill their War Savings Stamp Albums with Treasury stamps.

There were albums for 10¢, 25 ¢, 50 ¢, $1, and $5 stamps. Only stamps for a certain denomination could be placed in a particular book; for example, the 10¢ stamp book could hold 187 10¢ stamps. Albums were given to customers when they purchased their first stamp of a given denomination. With an additional nickel, people could exchange their stamp-filled albums at the post office for a $25 SERIES- E Savings Bond when it reached maturity. The 25¢ album when filled with 75 stamps guaranteed the same return. Lebanese and Syrian Americans sponsored Red Cross drives and Army-Navy Emergency relief drives, and their efforts (spearheaded by Lebanese-Syrian American businessmen like George Hamid and Alfred Alam) gained them special recognition from the Treasury Department.

Buying Savings Stamps or Saving Bonds became a way for people to demonstrate ethnic pride proving their allegiance to their local communities, as well as national pride, demonstrating allegiance to the country where they held citizenship. Fascinatingly, Alfred was not yet a United States citizen.

World War II halted imports of Arabic records from Cairo, where Baidaphon was produced. The Odeon plants in Germany that once supplied a host of imports including Arabic records were destroyed. With the US and Allied Forces in North Africa, the US State Department contacted and then contracted with Alamphon Records to provide sources of music for the Voices of America radio program. The Arabic service program ran from 1942 to 1945. Alfred Alam and his company became all the more invested in the war effort as a result.

On the one side of the Alamphon sleeve is the bald eagle with its wings in the shape of the Allied “V” for victory and the text “Buy War Bonds and Stamps Win the War.” The reverse contains the Minute Man Saving Stamp logo along with three bald eagles, four US airplanes, the phrases “Keep ‘Em Flying” and “Justice for All”. Estimates are that between 15,000 and 30, 000 Arab Americans fought in World War II. Among the Arab Americans who flew in during World War II for the US Army Air Forces, later the Air Force, were one of the War’s first flying aces, Col. James Jabara, who is served two European tours flying P-51 Mustangs. Jabar, who was the Kansas-born son of Lebanese immigrants from Marjayoun, earned two distinguished flying crosses and later flew in the Korean War. Other Arab American WWII pilots included Lt. Louis LaHood from Peoria, Illinois, who flew over thirty combat missions, including five over Berlin. He, too, received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Months before World War II’s end, Alfred Alam’s journey toward becoming a US citizen came to an end. He filed his “first papers” way back in 1919, but the United States became a negatively more race and ethnicity conscious country into the 1920s and 1930s. On 26 March 1945, Alam finally became a U.S. citizen. Four years later, Mary became a naturalized citizen also.

After the war, Alfred Alam’s business grew and he began actively recording Arab American musicians. On occasion, well-known artists with established careers in the Arab world who toured the United States visited Brooklyn and recorded on Alamphon. In fact, the business became so lucrative that the company needed more office, storage, and recording space. In December 1953, Alamphon Records celebrated its move from 123 Court Street to larger quarters at 182 Atlantic Avenue in the heart of Brooklyn’s Syrian-Lebanese community. Editors of local Arab American newspapers, Arab American community dignitaries, and celebrities attended the event. Of course, a few well-known musicians such as Sami al Shawa, Naif Agby, and Djamal Aslan performed for attendees.

Success didn’t come without a price. Once each month in January, February, and March of 1955 thieves attempt to rob Alfred and Mary Alam’s Dean Street home. It was perhaps jealousy that the Alam’s were doing so well or perhaps, a bit of karma from his time as a youth when he and his brother Edward robbed local merchants back during their Washington Street days. Whatever the case, these attempts meant Alfred, though aging, needed to pay more attention to security at home and at the store.

Customers came to Alfred Alam’s store for all sorts of Arabic music, traditional taqsim, religious music, party songs, and love songs. In fact, Alam recalled that 90% of the music in his shop could be best described as love songs and some, such as “Haya Yazeinat” (Sing With Me at My Beloved’s Wedding) and “Mabrouk Aleiky” (A Blessing to You, the Bride, at the Wedding).” Sometimes, in addition to records, Alam’s store received and sold small supplies of ouds and derbakes (drums). Although he dealt primarily in 78 rpm discs, Alam also released a few 45 rpm and 33 1/3 rpm records as the technology available to him changed and improved.

When Lebanese American actor Danny Thomas released his so-called “Ataba” record to raise funds for his Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis in 1956, Alam’s store quickly sold 500 copies and had to rush order 500 more. Demand became so intense, customers offer $2, $3, and up to $5 for a copy of this record that sold for a mere $1.50. Nearly every Syrian Lebanese home in the United States with a record player or phonograph owned at least one Alamphon record and the Danny Thomas record.

In January 1958, Alfred Alam sustained a minor heart attack while he worked in the record store. Mary had him taken to Long Island College Hospital where he improved in a month’s time and returned home. Although well enough to be out of the hospital, Alfred never fully recovered. To keep the business going, Mary took on greater responsibility at the store, but recording ceased.

On Monday, May 22, 1961, after years of heart trouble Alfred Alam died. How long Mary continued on with Alamphon Records remains unclear. In the years that followed, Albert Rashid, a relocatee from Detroit to Brooklyn, came to control the Arabic film and record distribution business in Brooklyn, New York for the next few decades.

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