Willie Dixon and Memphis Slim in Israel - 1960

Back in 2003, I produced a special Blues show that brought together many veterans of the Blues and Rock scene in Israel on one stage presented at the  annual "Jazz, Blues, and Videotape" festival in Tel Aviv. One of the guests was veteran Jazz drummer Araleh Kaminsky. During the rehearsals, I had a chance to chat with Araleh, and he told me of his memories from when he was 19 years young, still in the army, and was called down to a Jaffa club (the Hammam) to sit in with some American Blues artists that were touring Israel. The names Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon meant little to him at the time, but he remembered how wonderful it was to have these authentic Blues artists to play with and learn from... I didn't find any more information on Willie and Memphis visiting Israel, until I managed to get my hands on a rare copy of  the book by Mitsutoshi Inaba, "Willie Dixon: Preacher of the Blues".

Willie Dixon on a Camel - Eilat, Israel, 1960

Here is an excerpt from the book, where Willie Dixon tells us a little about the Israel tour of 1960:

...me and Memphis went to Israel in 1960 to work for this lady named Aviva who had a place in Haifa called Ha Moadon. We played everything in the club, blues and spirituals.

We went over there with the wrong impression that we would get 100 Israeli Pounds and 100 Dollars in American money. We thought the Israeli Pound was the same thing as the English Pound and, at that time, the English Pound was worth $2.80 US.

We started running all over Israel after our first payday and got into a heated discussion about the money. We had a few bucks of our own and were spending our money and keeping the Israeli Pounds. People were glad to get the American Dollar. When we found that the Israeli Pound was only worth 33 cents, we hardly had enough to survive on. 

We started trying to get other jobs at other places there to try to make enough money to get back home with. We went everywhere, down to Jerusalem, Haifa, the Red Sea (Eilat) and we got pretty popular over there. 

One time, we were just going down by the Red Sea somewhere,. I know it was hotter than hell and we were seeing people come along with camels and looking at this great big cat who was so tall he made Slim look like he was short. This guy had one of those big sickles like you cut grass with but it was bigger. He had a rag around his head covering one of his eyes. Looked like he might have been an old pirate or something.

We got to talking about him while we were walking around and we finally ran into a cat who had a camel. The camel was down and I decided to take a picture on there and, you know, when a camel gets up, it grunts. I was pretty fat, so Slim thought that this camel was grunting because he couldn’t get up with me on his back.

Slim was going to take my picture on the camel, and when you’re sitting on it and they raise up behind you first, you almost fall forward, and when they raise up in front, you almost fall backward. Slim was all set with his camera to take my picture and he ain’t got the picture yet. Some other guy took the picture of me on the camel because Slim was laying out laughing...

We went further down there and there was a guy with some kind of van like thing with a top pulled over there. I looked back in and he’s got all these tiny women, young girls in there with those veils across their face. 

He said, “I sell you a wife. How much you pay? Three American Dollars one wife as long as you’re in Israel. Five American Dollars, two wives as long as you’re in Israel.”

”But they’re babies.”

“No, no, no full grown. They’re women. You make love, they have babies.”

“No, no, no. ” We were laughing at the guy...