Jazz and Crime

[Ellery Eskelin]

I sort of remember a thread on the old speakeasy that may have addressed this but I thought I'd bring it up again. Over on my thread Gary and I were talking about neighborhoods, change and gangs and it got me to thinking about this again.

Anyone know of any books, articles or anecdotes on the role of the Mafia and organized crime in the jazz business? I know from talking to elder musicians growing up in Baltimore that there was a definite criminal element involved in some of the clubs. Louis Armstrong's manager Joe Glaser was allegedly connected to the Al Capone mob. I think Dave Brubeck made some comments about the mob and how that affected careers (and maybe the music?) in an article I read recently. It's a subject that I'm interested in knowing more about.

Chris A., you must have some info on this, having known so many musicians over the years. Any comments?

[Reid]

In the STN interview of Sunny Murray, Murray talks a little bit about this.

[Chris D]

Morris Levy, who owned Roulette Records and once ran Birdland, was long reputed to be Mobbed up.

[Dick Trickle]

Youngstown is not that far from here... major mob area. It's off topic here, but Richard Pryor used to talk about it in some of his routines and it is used in one of his movies (his experiences of doing gigs in Youngstown)...

I'll bring this up with Dr. Mike next session and see if there he knows of anything in print or can tell me about the scene. It has been talked about a few times at the sessions... like how most of the old clubs in the area were indeed ran by gangsters and stories of loansharks and booking trickery amongst some of these old characters. Apparently, there were some clubs you stayed away from period, because when you were done and went to get your money, you would get threatened with an ice pick or some torture. I guess that practice was very common around here.

[shrugs]

Would love to hear some more of this!

Originally posted by Ellery Eskelin
Chris A., you must have some info on this, having known so many musicians over the years. Any comments?

• Yes, Ellery, I have heard numerous stories from the roaring past, and the gangster element was still working the jazz scene in the early 1960s, when I was with Riverside and Prestige. I think it is fairly well known that Joe Glaser (while outwardly working as a minor boxing promoter) functioned as a lower echelon gangster in Capone's Chicago. Earl Hines told me that Joe used to file serial number off the bodies of stolen cars. I also heard is from Junie C. Cobb.
  
  Elmer Snowden used to tell a story about the time when he had his band, the Washingtonians, at the Hollywood Club, in mid-Manhattan. It was run by gangsters, one of whom on a particular night advised Elmer not to leave his instruments (he then played a variety of saxophones) in the club. Elmer didn't take the advise. but wished that he had when he learned the the club burned down during the night. There was another occasion, he said, when the advise was repeated--this time he managed to rescue his instruments from the fire that ensued.
  
  I have interviewed many, many musicians who were active in the 1920s and 30s, and it was not uncommon, even decades later, for them to hesitate before mentioning a gangster's name--some even lowered their voices!
  
  Alberta Hunter sang in many clubs that were owned by gangsters. On one occasion, at the Burnside (outside of Chicago), a big time thug came up to her, tore a $100 bill in half, gave her one part and pushed the other into his breast pocket. The idea was of course that she would earn the other half by singing his favorites. This was not uncommon, she said, but on this particular night, the lights suddenly went out and shots were fired. When the lights came on again, there was Alberta's thug, dead on the floor. She ran over to the body, screaming "somebody help this man," while she smartly extracted from his pocket the balance of her tip.

[Cem]

Rock on, Alberta! Great nuggets Chris!

Hope we hear more of'em...

I don't mean to hi-jack the thread, Ellery, but I'd also be curious about swindles, scams & other crime committed for the love of jazz or in the industry etc.. When I was heavily into the Grateful Dead, there were these tall tales floating around about folks pulling all sorts of scams, embezzling etc. (as well as mortgaging their homes and what not) to go to Egypt to see the band in 1978. I guess white-collar crime ain't as exciting as mob stories, but... maybe, I'll start another thread for this...

[Gary Sisco]

From what I've read and heard, back in the real swing days, nearly all of the major clubs were mobbed up. I'd guess there must've also therefore been some mob piece of the record end of things. There was in rock and roll's younger days, and r&b's, so I'd be surprised if it wasn't the case for jazz. Especially if we remember that part of the old days and swing days overlap with Prohibition.

[Ellery Eskelin]

Thanks Chris...wow...

My mother played Hammond B3 organ in the clubs in Baltimore in the '60s. There were definitely guys hanging around who were hooked into the crime thing. They were mostly small time, but people knew who they were and word got around. There was at least one stand-off during one of her gigs that she knew of but fortunately it only amounted to the brinksmanship of a couple of guys, both who "knew people", going toe to toe until one of them blinked...without any shots actually being fired. They were fighting over her, at least in their minds. Interestingly, many folks seem to have carried guns whether or not they were criminals. In fact, my mother carried a gun but it only shot blanks. Being a woman playing nightclubs in the early '60s she felt she needed something to show for protection although her brother (who played a little drums for awhile and also carried a gun) would laugh at her saying "what are ya gonna do if you actually have to shoot someone?"

But as for the larger issue of crime in jazz I guess what I'm feeling is that a history of the music that does not fully illuminate the role of organized crime is not really an accurate history, is it? What did it mean economically for the music? Was it that jazz made money and criminals wanted in? Was it that criminals needed to run joints to front their business ventures and supported a music which might otherwise not have survived as well? I remember seeing a clip of Frank Sinatra in a televised interview being very candid about this being an element in the music business that everyone dealt with on some level.

And so maybe now that enough time has passed (has it?) I wonder if this can be talked about and documented before too many more people who actually remember these things pass on. And for that matter, I guess any US history that leaves this out is incomplete as well. There seems to have been mob influence at all levels of politics. The whole revisiting of the Kennedy presidency last year reminded me of that (buying votes in Chicago I believe it was?). I know there's plenty of books on organized crime, but does anyone know of any books on music that deal with this in anything more than an anecdotal manner?

[Gary Sisco]

I've never heard of such a book, but if someone's going to write one, he or she'd better get on it while there are still some cats to talk to, who were on the scene back then. There aren't many left.

I know an old cat, tenor player out of Port Huron and Detroit, Big Joe Burrell, who played with everyone, it seems (including a stretch on the bus with BB King for a couple years, in the segregated south, 50s, but those are some other stories). He's been making his groceries since the late 30s playing his horn. Anyway, I brought him up because he's told me several gangster stories from the days -- when he many times had to play behind strippers, and during their breaks, and such places, and he told me a story once of a Baltimore joint where he was playing burning down under suspicious circumstances and how the gangster in charge never paid up what he owed the band. No gun fire but there were some tense moments over the money when the pistol was in sight for all to see. The cats split when things got too tense, sans their last week's pay.

[las.vegas.lynn]

I suspect you could get bits and pieces of this information from biographies. I seem to remember a story about Ellington and a club contract he tried to get out of. The details escape me right now but needless to say, it would have been bad for his health.

Definitely sounds like a great research topic well worth a grant.

A lot of the joints in Vegas were mob run and they employed many players in the 50's and 60's. Not anymore. Now it's a town of bean counters.

[Ellery Eskelin]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
I know an old cat, tenor player out of Port Huron and Detroit, Big Joe Burrell, who played with everyone, it seems (including a stretch on the bus with BB King for a couple years, in the segregated south, 50s, but those are some other stories). He's been making his groceries since the late 30s playing his horn. Anyway, I brought him up because he's told me several gangster stories from the days -- when he many times had to play behind strippers, and during their breaks, and such places, and he told me a story once of a Baltimore joint where he was playing burning down under suspicious circumstances and how the gangster in charge never paid up what he owed the band. No gun fire but there were some tense moments over the money when the pistol was in sight for all to see. The cats split when things got too tense, sans their last week's pay.

Gary,
Your post reminds me of another issue I think about, that of local scenes and local players and their role in the history of the music. The recorded history doesn't paint a full picture. I'm always intrigued when I read interviews with musicians who mention influential folks they grew up with hearing who weren't necessarily known nationally. It paints a different picture really, and you get more an idea of the social fabric that was the context for this music.

Originally posted by las.vegas.lynn
A lot of the joints in Vegas were mob run and they employed many players in the 50's and 60's.

yea, I suspect Vegas would be a case study in and of itself...gotta be some books on that...

[Gary Sisco]

Ellery -- Yeah, I'll bet there are lots of guys like Big Joe (well, maybe not many as old as he is that are still playing and active). He came up in the 30s, playing black clubs in Port Huron, Detroit, and various Ohio cities -- where he knew Lovano's father, Big T, very well -- so he has that big, fat midwestern tenor sound, and even now, at an advanced age, he can fill a bar with his horn, sans amplification, no problem, and does it all the time. Count Basie heard his organ band once while on the road, and immediately hired them to be the house band at his club in New York, so off they went, after setting up the club owner with a replacement band -- which was led by Junior Walker, and was Walker's first-ever regular gig.

A curious sidenote: It was Big Joe's band that recorded the original "Daddy's Home." Not the one that was the big hit, but the original of which the hit was a cover.

I used to have three or four hours of conversation with him on cassettes, telling stories while we drank beer and flipped through his many scrapbooks. But, alas, they went the way of all cassettes, eventually, as I recorded them back in the 70s when I first met Joe (who I immediately hired to play a tenor solo on a song I was recording).

He ended up in Burlington, VT, after having a slight stroke in the 70s, up in Quebec. He had a nephew who's a prof at UVM in Burlington, who had a room where Joe could live and recover. Still more strangely, turned out an old pal of his, Sam Armstrong, who sang the lead on The Rays' doo wop hit "Sillouettes," was a car dealer in Burlington and a drummer playing regular gigs -- jazz gigs, amazingly enough -- at a bar in one of the small towns outside Burl. So Big Joe of course was in the band right away. And it wasn't long before the local cats knew about him and started going to his gigs (how I met him, and hired him, during his first break that night). And not long after that some of the local cats talked him into starting a blues band with them, which he hesitated to do at first, because he was like, What do I want to be playing blues with a bunch of white kids. But when he heard them play he changed his mind, and the band became the hands-down ruling band for many years, finally disbanding a couple of years back. He *owns* Burlington, man, where he's a certifiable superstar. Everyone knows and loves him. He actually got the key to the city one night from the mayor, during the jazz festival.

He still plays every Thursday in a little bar/restaurant in Burl, sans amplification. Indeed, I have to get into town one of these weeks to hear him again before I wake up some morning to see in the paper that he's gone.

[clinthopson]

I heard stories in L.A. about Mickey Cohen regularly frequenting the jazz clubs. I recall seeing some pretty unsavory characters in the clubs. But they may just have been movie extras on a break.

[graypencil]

Ellery:

Since the late 50s/ early 60s were my real "road days", and since
much of my employment at the time was with various Italian singers,
I can personally say I spent a lot of time in clubs ( particularly in Chicago, Miami,
and Las Vegas/Tahoe ) that were either owned or under Cosa Nostra
control ..

The major thing I recall from these gigs was that as a rule, the acts AND the
musicians were treated much better than they were in many non CN controlled
venues ..as long as you kept your nose clean, and did your gig, they were
all great guys to work for ..

just a small note or two from the past ..

Phil Kelly

[mke]

Ellery,

There's a book on the relationship between jazz & the mob in the 20s and 30s. I read about it in an old copy of JazzMan I got second hand last month. I can't find it at the moment, but if I do I'll give you more details. I think it was written in the late 80s, but was discussed in France only a few years ago when it was translated.

[Joe Milazzo]

It's been a while since I cracked the spine on it, but I seem to recall that Leon Ostransky's JAZZ CITY: THE IMPACT OF OUR CITIES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF JAZZ discusses these issues, if not in minute detail.

Somewhere out there in academia there is a nice bibliography on "jazz studies" that pulls journal article, books, etc. from a variety of disciplines. I'll do some hunting...

[Bill Barton]

Well, Ellery, unfortunately I don't have any stories like Chris A.'s or Phil's to share, but from the "tenor" of this thread and what I've read - Mezz Mezzrow et al. - it seems that these guys had, and maybe still have, better taste in music than the bean-counters and Republicans that (seem) to control everything these days.

And, Gary, say hello to "handsome" Big Joe Burrell for me the next time you see him, man. He's truly and certifiably a legend, there and elsewhere. Plus, one of the sweetest and most genuine people I've ever met. I really miss being able to go out and hear him play.

[Gary Sisco]

Will do.

[Ellery Eskelin]

mke says
There's a book on the relationship between jazz & the mob in the 20s and 30s. I read about it in an old copy of JazzMan I got second hand last month. I can't find it at the moment, but if I do I'll give you more details. I think it was written in the late 80s, but was discussed in France only a few years ago when it was translated.

Joe Milazzo says
It's been a while since I cracked the spine on it, but I seem to recall that Leon Ostransky's JAZZ CITY: THE IMPACT OF OUR CITIES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF JAZZ discusses these issues, if not in minute detail.

Somewhere out there in academia there is a nice bibliography on "jazz studies" that pulls journal article, books, etc. from a variety of disciplines. I'll do some hunting...

Thanks fellas...any info on these would be great...I'll track down the Ostranksy book, sounds good...

EDIT bookfinder.com lists the author as "Leroy" Ostransky, and says the title is out of print. I'll check other sources...

[Chaz Longue]

Then there's the story about how Art Blakey took up drums.

Blakey was a piano player. One night the mobster he was working for at the time told him to get off the piano bench and play drums. Blakey said "...but I don't play drums". The guy put his hand in his pocket, revealing his holstered gun, and said something like "well, you do now - 'cause Garner here is gonna be playing piano from now on".

[mke]

Ellery,

Here are the book references I mentioned earlier:

Wait Until Dark - Jazz and the Underworld, 1880-1940
Ronald L. Morris
Bowling Green University, Popular Press, 1980.

[Ellery Eskelin]

Thanks Mke!