Great profile of a lovely man, David; went to him for years as you know, and gleam got me onto Frank (mentioned upthread) as an alternate, still $15 one decade later, and I've spent more time up there lately (now in Elmwood Park).

I was surprised Joey Doves showed up in the video - is "Tony" another alias, or was that just misremembered?

Matt, quite certain this was a mis-remembering situation.

I was off-camera interviewer for this video, so I know we captured a lot more good stuff. I'm hoping we can edit together another piece that focuses on Emil's love of food. Every time I go in for a haircut, we talk food. He had some good stories about hunting snails in Sicily when he was a kid and about how his wife makes pasta sauce.

Emil actually practiced as a "barber-surgeon" in Italy, letting blood, which is solidly part of the barber tradition (thus the pole with swirls of red).

When Gebert and I were working on a "Taste of Melrose Park" video, we interviewed a woman with the last name Aiuppa, and I'd bet she was related to Joey Doves, but I couldn't bear to pose a potentially uncomfortable question related to that relationship to the nice old lady while she was preparing sfingi.

An aside:

Some of you would love to be "flies on the wall" at the Oak Park barbershops I grew up patronizing. Haven't been back to my main one in quite a few years since my main barber fell ill, and it was a crapshoot if he would actually be there or not. I'd imagine that you would literally fall out of your chairs laughing uncontrollably at the free-flowing NC-17 shit talk melded with political and socio-economic banter that happens on Madison Street, East of Ridgeland on a Tuesday-Sat basis. Imagine 30% of Eddie Murphy's "Coming To America," 20% of Ice Cube's "Barbershop," and 50% MORE funny than both. Wanna talk about Soul Food or who's got the best tip link combo these days?

deke rivers wrote:

JSM wrote:The Oak Park Arms used to house a truly authentic radio station if my memory serves me right.

it was WGLD not Triad..Triad was 105.9 ELmwood Park and then Michigan avenue

I know this is a really old post, but as long as we are revisiting nostalgic Oak Park, the original name of the station was WOPA at 102.7 FM. During the day it featured foreign language shows (polish, Russian etc.). At 10 pm it went psychedelic with Scorpio and Psyche. After midnight, it featured Big Bill Hill's "Shopping Club" show, and the infamous Pervis Spann, "Your Midnight Blues Man" (later shortened to "The Blues Man") . I remember he used to say "Tell Leon that Pervis sent you, and maybe he'll throw an extra rib on the plate for you". (I didn't make that up just to make this about food)

WOPA-AM (1390) was purchased by Phil and Leonard Chess in the 1960's and became WVON (Voice Of the Negro), perhaps the greatest R&B station of all time. Pervis became a DJ for WVON-AM, while still doing his midnight show from the Oak Park Arms on WOPA.

Here is a link to a recording of a telephone quiz on the WOPA "Midday Polka Parade" with host Maly Wayne. According to the acetate, WOPA doesn't stand for Oak Park Arms, rather "World's Outstanding Polka Artists"

Here is another link to The Stepfather of Soul Blog's post about WOPA's Big Bill Hill which includes an excerpt from his radio show.

Here is a short Sun-Times article about the station.
http://www.suntimes.com/photos/gallerie ... -arms.html

the infamous Pervis Spann, "Your Midnight Blues Man"

Back in the mid 70's I worked the afternoon shift loading planes at ORD. Used to listen to Pervis on the ride home every night. At that time it seemed that he played the same 5 or 6 records over and over and had just 1 sponsor, a sexual rejuvenation tonic for men."Men, let me take a minute to get personal with you, if you're having problems fulfilling your obligations with members of the opposite sex them I got goot news for you!"
Really classic stuff!
Pervis was also on the tube for a while with his side kick Carl Wright.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD22ZAJyfqw

Emil Messina, my barber of many years, told me in the video (linked below) that he'd work until "the day comes." Today, I found out, that day came. Some health emergency, I was told, and that's all anyone knew. He worked at the Palmer House ("the world's biggest barber shop, 100 chairs") before he moved into a shop in the Oak Park Arms. He cut the hair of Liberace, Jack Benny, Tony "Big Tuna" Aiuppa, Murray "Camelback" Humphreys, and me. During haircuts, we'd share our casual philosophies about gardening, marriage, and food, always food.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlMQmyKPcPQ

I don't believe he's the one that's sick, but I just don't know. And yeah, it was always amazing how busy he stayed, always people in his shop, just dropping in to chat or get a snip.

From this comment, I get the impression he retired and did not die. Am I correct?

You are correct.

David Hammond wrote:He cut the hair of Liberace, Jack Benny, Tony "Big Tuna" Aiuppa, Murray "Camelback" Humphreys, and me.

I thought "Big Tuna" was Tony Accardo? There was a Joey "Doves" Aiuppa that allegedly reported up to Mr. Accardo.

Kman wrote:

David Hammond wrote:He cut the hair of Liberace, Jack Benny, Tony "Big Tuna" Aiuppa, Murray "Camelback" Humphreys, and me.

I thought "Big Tuna" was Tony Accardo? There was a Joey "Doves" Aiuppa that allegedly reported up to Mr. Accardo.

Joey Doves is right (see first post of this page) - Emil had a momentary misstatement on this front in the original video, which I actually spoke with him about. Joey's uncle would have been Anthony Aiuppa, a much quieter character Emil wouldn't have reason to remember.

Not that I don't enjoy what's written, but wonder why it's here in the 1st place?