Dangerous Rhythms, page 23
Brooklyn born and bred, Siegel was an attractive figure. Handsome, impeccably dressed in bespoke suits, with silk ties and underwear, he was similar to Owney Madden in that he rose from being a terror in the streets—his rap sheet brimming with violent assaults and murders—to being a businessman/prince. He took elocution lessons and spent years molding himself into a presentable man about town. In L.A., he soon endeared himself to movie industry celebrities and notable restaurateurs. Presenting himself as a legitimate player in town, not a gangster (though most were familiar with his past), he was Jay Gatsby goes to Hollywood. But don’t call him Bugsy. That was a moniker that carried with it the stench of his Hebrew roots in Williamsburg, and his underlings were forbidden to use it in his presence.
In social circles, Ben Siegel was a star. The problem was that he wasn’t really doing what he’d been sent to L.A. to accomplish. Siegel was not detail oriented. If the syndicate was looking for someone who could manage the nuts and bolts of creating a racketeering enterprise from the ground up, Bugsy was not the guy. That guy was Mickey Cohen.
Another Brooklyn Jew burning with ambition, Cohen was cut from a different kind of cloth. If Siegel was cashmere, Mickey was mohair. At five foot five, he was half a foot shorter than Siegel, with a gutter sensibility that had come in handy in his early career as a boxer. In the ring, as in life, he had more guts than brains, though, over time, he would fashion himself into a capable mob boss.
What he and Siegel both had, in spades, was ambition. Mickey worshipped Ben Siegel and would do most anything on his behalf. They were a Brooklyn Jewish version of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, tilting at windmills, until Siegel’s lack of attention to detail led to his right eye being shot clean out of its socket, and Cohen ascended to the throne.
Long before that, Mickey was the new kid in town doing whatever Ben Siegel asked him to do. Cohen had been chosen for this task partly because he knew L.A. Though born in Brooklyn, the future mob boss was three years old when his single mother moved him and his brother to L.A. “I have no memory of my father whatsoever,” he would later say. In L.A., Cohen grew up in the Boyle Heights, which at the time was, according to Cohen, “strictly a ghetto neighborhood—Italians, Jews and Mexicans.” The section where the Jews congregated was known as Russian Town.
In his teens, Cohen became serious about boxing. This led him back to the city of his birth, New York, where he trained for a time at Stillman’s gym on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Men from the rackets hung around the gym, looking for teenage tough guys to recruit as muscle. Cohen made the transition from pugilist to hoodlum, which led him to Cleveland and then on to Chicago, where he distinguished himself in the waning days of the Capone empire. Cohen worshipped Big Al just as he would later worship Ben Siegel. The underworld was chock-full of wayward young men in search of surrogate fathers.
One of Cohen’s first assignments when he arrived back in L.A. as a full-fledged racketeer was to organize “the colored section.” There was money to be made among the shvartzas—gambling, narcotics, numbers, liquor, jukebox concessions, protection rackets, you name it. Ben Siegel, who spent his time with movie stars, wining and dining at the Trocadero and Ciro’s on Sunset Strip, or in Hollywood, was not likely to dirty his hands on Central Avenue. This was a job that called for Mickey Cohen.
For jazz musicians, white gangsters muscling their way into the business was nothing new. Many musicians in L.A. had come from elsewhere—New Orleans, Detroit, Pittsburgh, or New York. They all had stories to tell about the gangsters back home.
Cohen immediately made his presence felt. He drove a convertible Cadillac, always the latest model, and, both through words and action, he let it be known: “Things are gonna be different now.”
In 1940, Buddy Collette was a nineteen-year-old flutist and sax player, born and raised in L.A. As it was for other aspiring jazzmen of his generation, Central Avenue was his training ground and sanctuary. One of the bands that Collette played in was an eight-piece group led by Cee Pee Johnson, a drummer and vocalist who’d grown up in Algiers, Louisiana. Johnson was a flamboyant performer, with slicked-back hair and a Cajun accent. He also had a serious drug habit. Before and after shows, he would shoot up in the dressing room.
One night at a club called the Spot, Johnson’s band was just finishing up a set when Mickey Cohen and a couple of bodyguards stormed into the place. According to Buddy Collette, when Cohen locked the doors, “We knew something was going to happen.” The band skedaddled upstairs to a dressing room—“you know, to get out of there.”
From the dressing room, the bandmates could hear chairs being thrown around and staff members being slapped and/or pistol-whipped. Cohen’s crew was demanding to know “Which of youse been stealing the liquor?”
Soon Cohen himself came upstairs and burst into the dressing room, wearing his usual wide-brimmed fedora. “Hey, you’re getting paid to play, so get down there and play.”
Collette was terrified, but Cee Pee was unimpressed. “[He] was fixing up his hair. He had this conked hair, and he was fixing it, and he stayed high most the time.”
Casually, Cee Pee said to Cohen, “No. I’m not playing.”
The gangster was startled. From his waist, he pulled out a pistol and raised it, as if he were going to strike Cee Pee with the butt of the gun.
Collette took a deep breath. “I was standing there and I could [imagine] Cee Pee’s head being gashed in, which it frightened me, of course, being nineteen years old. But I guess Mickey was just trying to frighten him. But when you look at a guy and he’s not even frightened, I guess you just leave him alone. Cee Pee said, ‘I’m not playing,’ which is a wild thing. But that was the gang life. He lucked out. [Mickey] hit two or three people downstairs already, but he didn’t hit Cee Pee.”
For a few years, Cohen was a regular presence at the Spot and other Central Avenue clubs: the Downbeat, Club Alabam, Elk’s Hall, the Dunbar Hotel, which was the epicenter of the jazz scene in Los Angeles. Like a bantam rooster, Cohen made the rounds, a little man with two big thugs over each shoulder. Eventually, he opened his own club on Highland Avenue near Hollywood Boulevard called Rum Boogie. The opening act was the Treniers, a swing and boogie-woogie group made up of former members of Jimmie Lunceford’s orchestra whom Cohen recruited from the Avenue.
Buddy Collette also played in a band at Rum Boogie. He frequently saw Mickey there being polite and solicitous of his white celebrity clientele, not like his time in the colored section, where he would strut around, puff out his chest, and posture as if he were Tarzan, King of the Rackets.
9
Swing Street
At some point during the 1930s, as the heady years of Prohibition receded and became the hazy nebula of memory, the American gangster faced an identity crisis. For a long stretch, mobsters had not only garnered huge profits for themselves and the organizations they created, but they were viewed as semi-legitimate figures. By supplying a product that was technically illegal but in high demand, they were able to have it both ways. They may have been criminals, but they were admired by many. With repeal of the Volstead Act, mobsters not only lost their primary criminal racket, but they also lost their stature in the culture. They became simply hoodlums who were out to make a buck for themselves at the expense of legit society.
There was a certain amount of resentment on the part of some esteemed mobsters, who had grown accustomed to being seen as underworld noblemen. In later years, as some of these men occasionally voiced their views in congressional hearings, newspaper interviews, or ghostwritten memoirs, they expressed bitterness that society viewed them as disreputable figures when they were no different than other titans of business. The names of Joseph P. Kennedy and Edgar Bronfman Sr. often came up. These were men who had allegedly played a covert role in the supplying of liquor, via smuggling, to the bootleg syndicates of Capone, Madden, and others. After Prohibition, they resumed their careers as legitimate businessmen, pillars of virtue in the larger arena, a fact viewed by some mobsters with jealousy and cynicism.
Meyer Lansky was one gangster who, from early in his criminal career, seemed to yearn for respectability. Sometimes referred to as “the mob’s accountant,” Lansky had, as far as anyone knew, never killed a man with his own hands. Part of the reason he had formulated a partnership with the likes of Charlie Luciano and Ben Siegel was for protection. Both of these men had violent reputations, which cleared the way for little Meyer to focus on business.
In the early 1940s, Lansky likely believed he had made his most serious bid for legitimacy. That would explain the rarity of a published photo of Lansky—with a smile on his face, no less—shaking hands with representatives from the Wurlitzer jukebox company. The picture appeared in Billboard, the official trade paper of the music business. Lansky had reason to smile: He and his business partner, the mysterious Ed Smith, had just negotiated a deal with Wurlitzer to serve as the sole distributor of the company’s machines in the highly lucrative Northeast Corridor of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
The press conference took place in Manhattan at the Times Square offices of Lansky’s Emby Distributing Company. For this deal, he had created a subsidiary company called Manhattan-Simplex. Ed Smith, his partner, was actually Vincent Alo, Lansky’s co-conspirator on his various illegal casinos in South Florida.
It was highly unusual for Lansky to take part in such a public display of capitalist consolidation. In his career up until now as a car thief, extortionist, bootlegger, and illegal gambling impresario, many of his deals were conducted in back alleys, cars, speakeasies, and private clubs. Times had changed.
Said Milton Hammergren, vice president and general sales manager for Wurlitzer: “We know that in Meyer Lansky we have a man who is liked and respected by everyone. He is an intimate friend of many music merchants and we are confident that as Wurlitzer’s new distributor in this territory he will make new friends.”
The Billboard article that accompanied the photo of Lansky and the Wurlitzer representatives stated “When questioned regarding his plans for Manhattan-Simplex, Lansky intimated that he would much prefer to have his actions speak for him.”
Years later, those actions were explained by Hammergren, by then a former official with the Wurlitzer company. In 1958, Hammergren appeared in Washington D.C. before the Senate McClellan committee, testifying about the activities of organized crime in the labor unions. Hammergren was asked by the committee chief counsel, Robert F. Kennedy, if his mob-affiliated distributors used unseemly tactics when peddling his machines to their clients.
Hammergren: Yes, there was violence, such as blowing out windows of the store or blowing up an automobile or something of that nature, or beating up a fellow.
Kennedy: Is that part of the characteristics of the industry?
Hammergren: Yes, I would say so.
Kennedy: Were there also killings?
Hammergren: Yes, there was.
Hammergren went on to detail murders that took place as a consequence of the jukebox business.
Kennedy: Were company officials upset about the use of force?
Hammergren: Company officials, of which I was one, yes, we didn’t like it, but we still had to sell jukeboxes. We knew all about it, and we knew what the problems were. We tried to go along with it the best we could.
Kennedy: I mean if somebody, just in the course of trying to get your boxes distributed, if somebody was killed, that was taken as part of the trade?
Hammergren: That is one of the liabilities of the business, I would say.
By the early 1940s, jukeboxes were a significant racket for the mob. Major distribution companies were owned by mafiosi like Carlos Marcello in Louisiana; Sam Giancana, Jake Guzik, and Tony Accardo in Chicago; Abner “Longie” Zwillman on the East Coast; and Ben Siegel and Mickey Cohen in California.
By signing their new deal with Wurlitzer, the largest single manufacturer of jukeboxes in the United States, Lansky and Alo now had the most lucrative distribution company of them all.
New technology made it possible for the latest jukebox models to load up on single records known as 45s, which were installed by the distributor of the machines. Placed in bars, restaurants, diners, and arcades, jukeboxes became a major means—second only to commercial radio—to create hit records. At a time when jazz represented by far the largest share of the commercial music business, jukeboxes were, for musicians and the record companies, a major key to success. Theoretically, records were selected for installation based on their standing in weekly sales charts published in Billboard. There was a built-in logic to this method: Machines that sucked up the most nickels per play were the most remunerative. Nobody wanted a jukebox that didn’t generate profits.
But the mob also saw the jukebox audience as a way to promote musical acts that were, to coin a phrase, in their pocket: that is, bands, musicians, or singers they either owned a piece of or had a vested interest in seeing make it on a large scale. There was no single performer the mob was more interested in promoting than Frank Sinatra.
Your Signature or Your Brains
The bobbysoxers turned Sinatra into a cultural phenomenon. It wasn’t long before he was bigger than even Tommy Dorsey, the leader of the band and Sinatra’s boss. With the Dorsey band, Sinatra played all over the United States, from coast to coast. In May 1940, the band had its first number one hit on the Billboard chart, “I’ll Never Smile Again,” a shmaltzy, slow-tempo ballad that must have driven Buddy Rich crazy (you can hear the normally energetic drummer on the tune gently brushing the cymbals as if he were on Quaaludes). The band traveled to Hollywood to perform in not one movie but two. DownBeat, in its annual poll, named Frank Sinatra “Male Vocalist of the Year.” The winner of the poll the previous six years was Bing Crosby.
By February 1942, Sinatra was ready to leave the Dorsey band. It was a tricky maneuver. He and Dorsey, who was stern and taciturn, had nonetheless become close. Dorsey was a tightly wound Irishman with a temper, a brilliant musician and demanding bandleader. He and Sinatra were sometimes at odds, but they always made up, like father and son. Dorsey had reason to believe that he had “made” Sinatra. The singer had signed a three-year contract with Dorsey that still had nearly two years remaining. It was Sinatra’s intention to give notice to the bandleader that he would be terminating their business relationship in one year.
One night after a gig at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco, Sinatra told Dorsey his intentions. According to Sinatra, Dorsey said, “Sure.” Tommy was the type of person who simmered when angry, then exploded. He likely felt deeply betrayed. That night, Dorsey said to a journalist about Sinatra, “He’s a damn fool. He’s a great singer, but you know, you can’t make it without a band. Does he think he can go out on his own, as good as he is?”
Sinatra had every intention of going out on his own. He was ambitious, and he would use whatever means necessary to make it happen.
For weeks, Sinatra’s agent pestered Dorsey about signing some sort of termination agreement, so that the singer could get out of his contract. Sinatra, meanwhile, was still performing with the band, selling out engagements at the Paramount Theatre in Times Square and elsewhere around the country.
Dorsey knew that he had Sinatra over a barrel. Frank was asking to be released from an ironclad agreement. Dorsey could have said no, but he was a proud man. If Sinatra wanted out, so be it. But he was going to get his pound of flesh. Sinatra would be henceforth released from his contract, plus receive an advance of $17,000 (nearly $250,000 today) to start his solo career. In return, Dorsey would be Frank’s manager and receive 33.3 percent of the singer’s gross earnings “in perpetuity.”
It was an insane deal, and some might ask why Sinatra would sign such an onerous agreement, but to such an impulsive young man as Frank (he was twenty-seven years old), “in perpetuity” was likely a meaningless term. He wanted out, and the rest would take care of itself.
In early 1943, Sinatra went out on his own. Not only did he soon become the number one performing and recording star in America, but he also went into motion pictures—not as a musician but as an actor. It would be a few years before he could be classified as a movie star, but he was working steadily and making more money than he ever had before. The more he made, the more he realized that his old mentor Tommy Dorsey had seared deep into his flesh with a torch-heated branding iron. He wanted out of that onerous deal—pronto.
Dorsey was visited by lawyers and agents. Sinatra wanted a separation agreement. Dorsey would be paid a tidy sum, but the bandleader would no longer own a piece of the singer. Sinatra was not going to be his slave for life.
Dorsey smiled. He said he would think it over, but it soon became apparent that the bandleader was either going to drag things out until he squeezed Sinatra dry, or he was never going to sign the agreement at all.
Sinatra was in a pickle. So he did what he had back when he needed to settle a score with Buddy Rich: He reached out to the boys.
The incident that occurred—if it did occur—has gone down in mob and music business lore, with slight variations. Willie Moretti started the rumors by telling people the story of how he was sent by the New York mob to “muscle” Tommy Dorsey. Moretti and two others confronted Dorsey backstage at a club in Los Angeles, telling the bandleader that he had no choice but to sign a release that absolved Sinatra of all financial obligations. When Dorsey demurred, Moretti pulled out a gun.
Comic Jerry Lewis of Martin & Lewis fame, a comedy duo that would later frequently perform on a bill with Sinatra, had a different version. Lewis’s account, he claimed, came directly from Sinatra, who told him that the mob sent Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Frankie Carbo, and Moretti to confront Dorsey. “Frank told me years later—laughing—how the talk went. Carbo said, ‘Mister Dorsey, could you play your trombone if it had a dent in it? Could you play it if you didn’t have a slide?’ It was all just like that, and Dorsey got the idea.”
