Folklore
In Minnesota today, tales of Kid Cann and his rumored dark deeds may be considered to have made him a local urban legend, similar to Al Capone or Whitey Bulger.
Two tales are told of the origins of his famous nickname. According to one legend, he picked up the name during a brief attempt at boxing. Another story told by his fellow North Side Jews alleges that young Isadore Blumenfeld would always lock himself in the outhouse to avoid gang fights in the neighborhood. Kid Cann indignantly denied both versions.
In later years, he was alleged to have installed bulletproof windows on his suburban house and to have been able to fix any problem with a single phone call. During his lifetime, Kid Cann bore a love–hate relationship with his legend, on one hand glorying in the attention and also feeling infuriated by the increased Federal Bureau of Investigation surveillance that it brought him beginning in the early 1950s. In a 1976 interview he snapped, "Ninety percent of what was written about me is b--- s---!"
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Famous quotes containing the word folklore:
“So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio—remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales—we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination.”
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