Fertel speaks on his family and others on South Rampart

By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN

Randy Fertel, an author who studied the influence of his own family and several other Jewish families on the development of jazz music in its early days along South Rampart Street, appeared at Congregation Beth Israel Thursday night, December 17, to an anxious and packed crowd of interested community members.

Randy Fertel discussing the influence of his family on the development of jazz in New Orleans. (Photo by Alan Smason)

Fertel, who obtained his doctorate degree from Harvard University, is known as the author of “The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak,” a memoir of his two famous parents, Rodney and Ruth Fertel. Rodney had famously run for mayor of New Orleans on a campaign promise that he would populate the Audubon Zoo with a pair of gorillas, while his ex-wife became famous as the founder of the nationwide Ruth’s Chris Steak House franchise.

Fertel’s talk was punctuated with a number of slides with quotes from a variety of people including family members and outsiders like reporter and author Harnett Kane. Many of those attending reminisced about the good old days when families like the Fertels, their in-laws, the Finks, and the Karnovskys ran loan shops in the 400 block of Rampart Street.

Fertel admitted that his own family was important in that they became some of the most wealthy members of the New Orleans area in a relatively short period of time. “Brick and mortar. Brick and mortar; that’s what counts,” Fertel quoted his great-grandmother, Julia Deiches Fertel, as having said.

According to Kane’s obituary, she left behind a fortune of more than two million dollars, valued at more than $36 million by today’s standards.

Also, according to Fertel and those in attendance, most of that money was kept on the premises because Julia and Sam “Moneybags” Fertel were distrustful of banks.

Rodney Fertel admitted to his son that one of the six safes his parents kept on their property contained a treasure trove of diamonds. “She would open it (the safe) and regale him with this statement,” Randy Fertel remembered his father quoting her: “’I have so many diamonds, I could make a dress of them.’”

Much of Fertel’s talk centered on the importance of the Louis and Ester “Tilie” Karnovsky family and their sons Alexander and Morris, who had a direct influence on jazz great Louis Armstrong during his formative years.

Morris provided Armstrong with a $2.00 loan advance to purchase his first B-flat coronet, while his mother taught the young man Russian lullabies. She often fed him following his hard work selling coal and other items.

Fertel concluded by suggesting that the concept of spreading manure around to grow things could be likened to both jazz musicians and their Jewish pawn broker counterparts. The manure, or oppression both Jews and African-Americans suffered, was literally turned into “gold,” he said.