arts&life

PHOTO BY ANNA KOHN

PHOTO BY BLAIR NOSAN

music

Phab Phreddy

A DJ like no other

joins the lineup for

the JCC’s inaugural

Ethan & Gretchen

Davidson Music

Festival.

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
DJ Phreddy spins with Menachem
Mendel Pinson.
DJ Phreddy.
Nefesh Mountain.

44

March 16 • 2017

E

ileen Laxer was a middle-
class New Yorker con-
vinced she was marrying
into elite society when she
wed Henry Wischusen, a nice
guy from Boston. Wischusen
was indeed a WASP, but not
of the Vanderbilt, Du Pont or
Rockefeller variety, though
his father, also named Henry
Wischusen (but with a III at the
end), came with his own prestige.
Wischusen III had discovered a
brilliant new way to bond thin
cardboard boxes and became
the celebrated “King of Gluing
Popcorn Boxes.”
One of the King’s factories
was in Eutaw, which took up all
of 12 square miles in Alabama.
Henry and Eileen moved there
so Henry could supervise the
plant, staying until it was sold.
The couple moved to Lilburn,
just outside Atlanta and down
the corner from Stone Mountain,
the famous high-relief sculpture

jn

(the largest in the world) depict-
ing Confederate heroes Jefferson
Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas
“Stonewall” Jackson.
Here, their son, Henry F.
Wischusen III (bearing the exact
name as his grandfather, “num-
ber and all, and no, it doesn’t
make sense,” says the second
Henry III, who came to be called
Fred) grew up.
Fred was “not the typical
kid” in Lilburn, he says. He was
chubby, his family had no history
anywhere in the South and there
was something else, something
he couldn’t quite pinpoint and
wouldn’t learn the truth of until
he was 17: Fred was Jewish.
Today, Fred is Phreddy
Wischusen — a storyteller
(he won Detroit’s Grand Slam
in 2013 and the city’s Moth
Story Slam numerous times),
comedian and musician. He’s
also known as DJ Phreddy and
will appear at the JCC’s Ethan

& Gretchen Davidson Music
Festival, to be held at the Berman
Center for the Performing Arts
March 23-26 (see sidebar for a
complete schedule).
“Phreddy is a wonderful
addition, not only to the music
festival but also our planning
team,” says Elaine (Hendriks)
Smith, director of the Berman.
“He worked with us to make this
event one with a real festival
atmosphere, and I’m delighted
that he’ll be performing twice,
each time with a different sound
that complements that evening’s
performers. We are very happy
that he is part of this new, excit-
ing music festival.”
Being a little kid in the Deep
South in the 1980s was a lot of
what you probably imagine:
schools were basically segregat-
ed, there were lots of small towns
where “you were either on your
street or in your house” because
sidewalks didn’t exist, and people

were friendly, Fred/Phreddy says.
In the 10th grade, Fred had
an experience that stayed with
him. A football team with a more
diverse student population came
to play his school. Fred’s white
classmates responded by cover-
ing their bodies with drawings of
Confederate flags and swastikas.
Fred felt alienated and confused,
he says, and it was soon after
that he learned he was Jewish.
His mother had never told him
because she’d been afraid.
Fred wondered: “What does it
even mean to be Jewish?”
Fred attended Florida State
University, where he fell in love
with music: Weird Al Yankovic,
Pearl Jam, grunge rock and
show tunes, “the schmaltzier the
better.” He loved it all so much
he “decided to learn to play an
instrument so I could connect to
music better.” He took guitar les-
sons, and at 30 he joined a band.
Then he discovered David Bowie,