Greater Syrian Diaspora at 78RPM: Toufic Barham and Danny Thomas

posted on: Dec 16, 2020

Toufic Barham with Danny Thomas, photo courtesy of Ancestry.com

Toufic T. Barham was born to Abraham Barham and Mariam Hajal Barham on Aug. 10, 1908, in Jerusalem, Palestine. He immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island with his brothers Ezzat, Daoud, Chekri, and his sister-in-law, Julie Barham in 1920 onboard the Rochembeau via Le Havre, France. The family first resided in New York’s Little Syria, and Toufic met and married his future wife, Alice, around May 1932. He and Alice had Toufic “Thomas” Jr., Barbara, Amil, and Yvonne over the next eight years. After Barbara was born in 1935, the family relocated to Detroit, Michigan where Toufic found work as a cleaner and restaurant owner before his career skyrocketed.

In 1940, Barham owned the Sheik Café on Lafayette and Randolph; he also headed an orchestra group called the Egyptian Melodies. The group played mahrajans and fundraisers through Michigan and the Midwest. By December 1940, he shared concert billing with Louis Wardini, John Fayad, and Wadeeh Bagdady. He also played with Amer and Sana Kadaj. Fortunes turned south in 1944 when Barham received notice that he was being charged with larceny in a food rations theft ring. Detroit Police arrest Barham and a distraught Alice had to fend for herself and raise the four children. Things got worse before they got better.

Alice was charged as an accomplice in an elaborate food rations and counterfeit stamps scandal. Officers arrested and charged some six others with similar charges. Toufic and Alice’s luck changed in the 1950s when the family moved to Inglewood, California. Toufic began to work and appear regularly with Lebanese American actor, singer, and performer, Danny Thomas.

Actor and comedian Danny Thomas (born Amos Muzyad Yakoob Kairouz) was a largely unknown, but budding radio entertainer when in 1937, he prayed to Saint Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes, for professional guidance and direction. Thomas promised to build a shrine to Saint Jude if he helped Thomas find his place in life. Twenty years later, with a skyrocketing, successful career, and “Make Room for Daddy” and “The Danny Thomas Show” on the ABC television network, Thomas incorporated ALSAC in 1957, its first project was to raise money for the proposed Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The acronym ALSAC intentionally had two meanings. It encompassed the Lebanese and Syrian ancestry of much of the country’s Arab American population, to which Thomas belonged, but it also stood for Aiding Leukemia Stricken American Children. The hospital opened in 1962 as a racially integrated, free-of-charge-hospital for children who lived with childhood diseases including leukemia, despite being in the southern US. The star-shaped facility was designed by African American architect Paul R. Williams.

With the move to California, Toufic began to work regularly with Thomas, Naif Agby, and Kanzar Omar. He played the Our Lady of Lebanon twenty-fifth annual festival with Thomas and Agby in 1952. Toufic began to headline mahrajan and Lebanese and Mediterranean festivals across the southwest and south. As his music career flourished, his marriage suffered. After years of frustration with the highs and lows of Toufic being on the road, he and Alice divorced in 1974. Toufic lived twenty-two more years and continued to play his oud off and on for the remainder of his life.

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