Greater Syrian Diaspora at 78RPM: Joe Budway and Leo Budway

posted on: Jul 7, 2021

By: Richard Breaux/Arab America Contributing Writer

What do you do when you find several dozen 78 rpm records all in Arabic and you can neither read, nor speak the language? You research the musicians and record labels and write about them.…at least that’s what Arab America contributing writer, Richard Breaux did. The result is bound to teach you something about Arab American history and heritage in the first half of the 20th Century. Arab America highlights some of the well-known and lesser-known Arab American musicians profiled in this series. This week’s article features Arab American music legends, Joe Budway and Leo Budway.

It likely comes as a surprise to most readers of our blog that we have not written a full entry about the well-known, middle-period oudist- Joe Budway. An extraordinary musician and all-around strikingly handsome guy, Joe Budway came to lead a trio that included his younger brother. One of the things we’ve known for some time is that even the most experienced and expert researchers and ethnomusicologists have confused the life of Joe Budway (1912-1990), the oudist, with his younger brother Leo Budway (1926-2000), the violinist.

The story of the Budway family begins with Budwe [Budway] Abdullah, born either 2 May 1889 or 1891 or 18 May 1892 in Miniyeh, Syria [now Lebanon]. Before deciding to immigrate to the United States in 1914, Budway Abdulla married Aarjes-born Labiba Samreny around 1909 and the couple had Albert in 1910 and Yousif anglicized as Joseph Budway Abdullah on 5 April 1912 or 1 January 1913. The family recognizes April 5, 1912, as the most likely birthdate for Joe. He listed his own birthplace as Aarjes on his World War II draft card. Immigration, Census, and other government records are not at all-together clear, but perhaps Budway Adullah confused his arrival and children’s birthdates on government forms. The 1930 Census suggests he arrived in the United States in 1910; however, his petition to naturalize and other documents list 1914 as Budway’s arrival date. Whatever the case Budway lived and worked in the United States, making his way to western Pennsylvania where he earned a living as a barber and eventually established his own shop. Labiba Abdullah and her two sons, Albert and Joseph, officially arrived in the United States on 19 October 1925. Within a year’s time, Labiba gave birth to Leo Joseph Budway and she eventually had one more child, Raymond, in 1930.

The younger Budways attended Epiphany grade school and Central Catholic high school in Pittsburgh, neither Albert or Joseph attended either as Central’s first class enrolled in 1927 and Epiphany opened its doors in 1929. Joe Budway had a fifth-grade education. By 1930, Budway Abdullah continued to work as a barber and so did Albert. Joseph, however, worked in the Union Electric Steel Company’s mill, aspired to play baseball, but ultimately took up the oud and became a musician.  Joseph Abdullah, performing under the name Joe Budway, began playing on the emerging hafla circuit in western Pennsylvania by 1930 also. What’s more, Joe married fellow Syrian immigrant, Wadad Barack, around 1934, and in 1935, Wadad gave birth to Diane. A second daughter, Norma, was born in 1937. It is unlikely that he played on Maloof Records during the label’s final years, but he became one of Alamphon’s most notable ensemble oudist by the 1940s. In fact, although still employed off and on by Union Steel, Joe Budway listed himself as a musician in the 1940 Census living at 141 Court Street in Brooklyn. His WWII draft card affirms this, but also lists his mother’s Wylie Avenue address in Pittsburgh. 

Although it seems Joe Budway never fronted a band in the 1940s, Anne K. Rasmussen notes that his oud playing can be heard on Hanan’s “Wakef “ala Shat Baher (Standing on the Shore), Cleopatra 819 A & B, and Russell Bunai’s “Hall Tadree” (Do You Know) and “Li’B Al-Khayl” (Playing the Horses), Star of the East 1019 & 1020 and 1013 & 1014.

Within a few years, Joe, Wadad, and their daughters returned to Pittsburgh where Joe again worked for Union Electric Steel, but also as a weekend musician. Meanwhile, Leo Budway graduated from Central Catholic, enlisted and served in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946, and married Rosemary Griffin on 6 September 1949. 

Saint Mary’s Orthodox Church in Wichita, Kansas, welcomed Amer Kadaj, Momhamed Akkaad, Naim Karacand, and Joe Budway to its two-day mahrajan on September 8-9, 1951. Joining the celebration was Archbishop Samuel David from Toledo. When Joe Budway returned to Wichita a year later, he and Amer Kadaj were joined by Leo Budway and Mike Hamway and Archbishops Samuel David and Antony Bashir attended the events. Joe Budway’s schedule was booked solid on many weekends between 1954 and 1959, with 1954 and 1956 being his busiest years. In 1954, Budway appeared along with Elia Baida, Naif Agby, Mike Hamway, Philip Solomon, Anton Abdelahad, and others. Budway played the Cedars Hotel in Asbury Park, in Brooklyn, Newark, Pittsburgh, Miami, Washington, DC, and other cities. In the Caravan, his photo came to be associated with ads for the Eastern Star Restaurant as a regular customer. 

The 1960s marked a period when Joe Budway continued to book gigs on the hafla circuit and in Greek and Middle Eastern night clubs along the east coast. During the Spring of 1962, Joe Budway and Kahraman jammed at the two-day New Lebanese Club hafla two miles north of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. In 1965, while visiting Miami, Joe Budway stopped in at Soroya’s Harem, above Dore’s Supper club. Although he appeared for one night only, Florida became a regular jamming spot for almost anytime he traveled in the South. Closer to home, Joe & Leo Budway, Ed Khorey [b.1927-d.2019], and Amer Kadaj performed at the third annual “Red Fez Fantasy” sponsored by Saint Michael’s Orthodox Church in Greensburg and the same group performed at WAMO “Arabic Hour” radio program benefit. Efforts to provide SOYO members transport to the larger national conference in June 1969, secured Budway to raise funds for the group to travel from Terre Haute to Detroit.

In addition to the Mahrajan circuit, the Budways located a more permanent place to entertain an aging generation of Syrian and Lebanese American audiences. The purchase of a building at 1099 Saw Mill Run Blvd in December 1970, marked a new era in the life of Joe Budway and youngest daughter Norma – the founding of the Mediterranean Restaurant. This became the primary performance venue for the Budway Trio of Joe, Leo, and Ed Khorey from 1971 to 1980. In addition to playing at the Mediterranean, Joe accompanied poet Ali Amed Said and translator Samuel Hazo for an International Poetry Forum at Carnegie Lecture Hall on 17 March 1971. Greater Pittsburgh’s annual hafla brought Amer Kadaj to town and he was joined by Joe Budway to provide entertainment for the affair. Money raised by the 1973 hafla supported the local Arabic radio program. The following year, Hanan, Joe Budway, Ed Khorey, Leo Budway, and Angelo Veneri headlined at the Frontier Motel the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. When the National Our Lady of Lebanon Shrine in Jackson, Ohio, held its pilgrimage, mass, sahra in August 1974, the Budway Trio of Joe, Leo, and Ed Khorey supplied the music for the sahra. The Budway family really conceived the Mediterranean as a family affair; it was owned by Joe and Norma Budway Borick, Wadad cooked pastries and desserts for the restaurant, and Leo worked as a host and accompanied Joe as a part of the entertainment. The Mediterranean also employed dancers including a well-known belly dancer named Kweilin Nassar.

Kweilin Nassar was born in 1946 to Kathryn Johns and Alex Nassar. She attended Republic grade school and Brashear High School where she regularly maintained a place on the honor roll, sang in the school choir, and danced & drilled as a majorette. At sixteen, Kweilin began performing professionally and, influenced by a belly dancer who used the moniker Morocco and her relatives, appeared at the Mediterrean and at mahrajans across the United States. Sometimes Kweilin accompanied the Budway Trio and Greek musicians like the Kakias Continental band. Although Kweilin Nassar continued to dance on occasion, she became a radio and television program coordinator WWSW and KDKA-TV. She became best known for her public service work with the Orthodox Church and public radio and television on WQED-TV and radio. She also co-directed and choreographed Middle Eastern folklore events at the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh, and twenty-five dancer, ten-musician ensemble at the Kennedy Center.

The Summer of 1979 ended with Joe Budway, Richard Corey, and Amer Kadaj scheduled to play Tampa’s Al Kareem Club sahra on September 8th at Saint Stefanos Church Hall, however, tragedy struck when Amer Kadaj was killed in his Detroit store three days before the slated performance. Kadaj’s death shook long-term collaborator and friend, Joe Budway, to his core.

Family, friends, and fans feted Joe Budway at the massive testimonial held on Sunday, September 7, 1980, at Pittsburgh’s Hyatt Hotel. People came from near and far to celebrate fifty years of haflas, mahrajans, recordings, and nightclub jam sessions that was Budway’s career. Of course, Leo Budway and Ed Khorey provided much of the event’s music. Hanan travelled from Brooklyn, New York to attend and perform for one of the oudist who had backed her on so many of her recordings. Also Kweilin Nassar, the dancer, media personality, cultural ambassador, who once danced regularly at the Budway’s Medditerranean Restaurant dedicated a special performance to the honoree. The night ended with a few solos played by Budway himself and the evening’s events were immortalized on videotape and over the last ten years has been posted on Youtube in short segments.

Joe Budway, Leo Budway, and Ed Khorey worked as a trio in the 1980s following the killing of Amer Kadaj, and while health issues began to take its toll on the group, for a time, they kept up a steady pace of gigs at Middle Eastern restaurants and festivals.  The Saint George Orthodox Church in New Kensington, Pennsylvania featured the Budway brothers and Khorey at its annual Syrian Festival in July 1980. Vacations south during the winter months were never fully vacations for Joe Budway who appeared at Miami’s Ali Baba’s Middle Eastern Restaurant in March 1984.  Back in Pennsylvania, Joe Budway, Moses Fatfat, and Barbara Harriett (as the dancer Basheba) entertained diners and customers at Amel’s on McNeily Road in Pittsburgh. Similarly, Chahine’s Lebanese Restaurant booked Joe Budway, Ed Khorey, and an unidentified dancer in August 1985.

By the late 1980s, Joe Budway occasionally played gigs at local restaurants and nightclubs mostly in Philadelphia; cancer, however, slowed him down. The once powerfully-built Joe Budway courageously fought cancer in his latter years but died at West Pennsylvania Hospital on  18 July 1990. Nine years later, his family posthumously released Joe Budway: A Gift from the Heart, a seven track compact disc of Joe Budway with five recorded Joe Budway solos and two melodies.

Leo Budway’s career continued outside the mahrajan circuit and turned toward classical western music. Leo played violin in the Duquesne University Orchestra and the Edgewood Symphony Orchestra in the late eighties and early nineties. In 1993, he recorded “The Budway Heritage” with his children Maureen and David. His daughter, Maureen Budway, became a well-known Pittsburgh jazz vocalist in Pittsburgh and taught college-level voice courses on a part-time basis. David, too, is a jazz musician, a pianist, who has played with flutist Hubert Laws. Leo J. Budway suffered another heart attack on 14 September 2000. At the time he was survived by Rosemary, David, and Maureen. Sadly, Maureen died fifteen years later at the age of 51, and Ed Khorey, Joe and Leo Budway’s long-time friend and derbake player, died at 91 in 2019.

Richard M. Breaux is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse from Oakland, California. His courses and research explore the social and cultural histories of African Americans and Arab Americans in the 20th Century.

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