Dangerous Rhythms, page 47
Washington D.C., 34–35
Washingtonians, The, 173
Waters, Ethel, 96, 175, 297, 375
Webb, Chick, 210
Webster, Ben, 79, 307, 355
We Called It Music (Condon), 91–92, 121–22, 140–42
Wein, George, 186, 356–57, 406n
Weiss, Sam, 235
West, Mae, 169
West Bottoms, 64, 73–74
Westchester Premier Theater, 359–61
Weston, Randy, 343
Whalen, Grover, 137, 144, 146
“(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue,” 156–57
Wheeler, Delores Morgan, 128
“When the Saints Go Marching In,” 15
Whig Party, 49
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), 4, 5, 41, 162, 166
White League, 51
“White Negro,” 115
“whiteness,” 165–66
White-Slave Traffic Act, 201
white supremacism, 51, 56
Wholesale Liquor Company, 66
Wilkerson, Billy, 342
Wilkins, Baron D., 158–60, 161–62, 171
Williams, Benny “Black Benny,” 89–90, 92
Williams, Billy Dee, 243
Williams, Clarence, 35–36
Williams, Mary Lou, 9, 76–77, 78–79, 210, 297–301, 339, 351–54, 355
Will Mastin Trio, 201, 317, 332
“Will You Still Love Me in December as You Do in May,” 163
Wilson, Edith, 156
Wilson, Nancy, 310
Wilson, Quinn, 124
Winchell, Walter, 138–39, 140, 143, 164, 392n
Winnie Winkle, the, 73
Wonder Garden, 200
Woodmansten Inn, 147
World Series (1919), 153
World War I, 58–59, 106, 129, 160, 209
World War II, 232, 238, 240, 247, 248–49, 323
Wurlitzer, 220–22
Yacht Club, 230
“ya ya,” 48
Ybor City, 202
Yellow Front Saloon, 81–82
Yes I Can (Davis), 317–18
Young, Lee, 214–15
Young, Lester, 9, 79, 83, 150, 214–15, 258, 340
Zegretto, Joe, 54
Zulus Mardi Gras parade, 53–54, 234
Zwillman, Abner “Longie,” 222, 276
Photo Section
A young Louis Armstrong.
(Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University)
King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, with Oliver on cornet (standing, in center), and Armstrong on one knee with trombone, an instrument he rarely played.
(Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University)
Hilma Burt’s bordello in Storyville, New Orleans, on Basin Street, with Jelly Roll Morton on piano.
(Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection)
Tom Anderson, political boss of Storyville and proprietor of one of its most famous honky-tonks.
(Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University)
“Professor” Jelly Roll Morton.
(Wikimedia Commons)
The lynching of eleven Sicilians in March 1891 was a key event in the development of the American mafia.
(Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper/Historic New Orleans Collection)
Lester Young (on tenor sax) and Count Basie (on piano) were among those who revolutionized jazz in Kansas City during and after the Pendergast era.
(Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)
Kansas City’s Thomas “T. J.” Pendergast, political boss and kingmaker.
(Kansas City Public Library, Missouri Valley Collection)
Mafioso John Lazia (second from right) opened Cuban Gardens, Kansas City’s most luxurious nightclub, after a visit to Havana in the late 1920s.
(Terence O’Malley Collection)
Bennie Moten (standing, second from right), prominent bandleader, high-ranking official in Musicians Local 627, and a major player in the Pendergast machine—and therefore the mob—in Kansas City.
(LaBudde Special Collections, UMKC University Libraries)
Alphonse “Al” Capone was a major impresario of jazz in the 1920s. He owned a piece of many nightclubs, including the Sunset Cafe in Chicago (which later became the Grand Terrace), Club Plantation, Friar’s Inn, Green Mill, and the Cotton Club in Cicero, which was managed by his brother Ralph.
(Library of Congress)
Carroll Dickerson’s Sunset Syncopated Orchestra at the Sunset Cafe, 1924.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Earl “Fatha” Hines is believed to be the first great modern jazz piano player. He enjoyed a twelve-year run at the Grand Terrace, a club co-owned by Capone and other gangsters.
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
When the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred, on February 14, 1929, Hines wondered whether he was in business with mass murderers. Like many musicians, he adhered to the rule of the three monkeys: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
(Library of Congress)
Joe E. Lewis.
(Getty Images)
Jack McGurn.
(Chicago History Museum/Getty)
Green Mill opened on North Broadway in Uptown Chicago in 1907. In the mid-1920s, it became part of Al Capone’s portfolio of speakeasies. The club is still in existence today.
(T. J. English)
When popular singer/comic Joe E. Lewis switched from Green Mill to a different venue, the mob sought revenge. On orders from Machine Gun Jack McGurn, Lewis was brutally attacked. His throat was slit and his face cut. For years afterward, Lewis was a mascot of the mob.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Thomas “Fats” Waller was arguably the most entertaining performer of the Jazz Age. He was also a brilliant composer who wrote the music for numerous Broadway shows, including Hot Chocolates.
(Library of Congress)
Mobster Arnold Rothstein was known both in the underworld and the press as “the Brain” and “the Big Bankroll.” He launched the careers of many who would become New York’s most notorious racketeers, including Legs Diamond, Charlie Luciano, and Meyer Lansky. Rothstein also provided the financing for Hot Chocolates and other Broadway shows.
(Library of Congress)
The Cotton Club opened in Harlem in 1923. The owner was Owney Madden, who had only recently been released from prison after serving an eight-year term for homicide. The performers and staff at the club were mostly African American, but Blacks were not allowed in as patrons.
(Getty Images)
The club’s promotional slogan, “The Aristocrat of Harlem,” appeared on programs, menus, and advertisements.
(Author’s Collection)
Duke Ellington’s orchestra was the house band at the Cotton Club, where it presented some of the most sophisticated jazz ever performed on a stage.
(Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Collection)
To be a showgirl at the Cotton Club was nearly as prestigious as being a musician. Some, like Lena Horne, rose from the chorus line to become stars.
(Getty Images)
Owney Madden.
(Garland County Historical Society)
Dutch Schultz.
(Library of Congress)
When Dutch Schultz was murdered in October 1935, there was a seismic shift in the American underworld. For some musicians and show people (most notably Louis Armstrong), it was a relief, as Schultz had meddled in the music business like few others.
(Getty Images)
From the early 1920s until the mid-1930s, Harlem was the jazz capital of the universe.
(Library of Congress)
Jack “Legs” Diamond (with cigarette) was a big fan of nightclubs and speakeasies.
(Getty Images)
If you look closely, you can see the marquee for the Hotsy Totsy Club in Manhattan, the popular second-floor speakeasy owned by Legs Diamond, which showcased live music and, occasionally, dead patrons.
(Getty Images)
Sonny Greer, a drummer in Duke Ellington’s orchestra, had a fondness for gangsters. Whenever he wanted a cash tip, he moved his drum set near the gangsters’ table and played the song “My Buddy.”
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
When Lena Horne sought to leave the Cotton Club for greener pastures, she was told by the club’s manager, “Nobody leaves the Cotton Club until we say so.”
(Getty Images)
The Cab Calloway Orchestra followed Duke Ellington as the house band at the Cotton Club. Calloway’s shows were, if anything, even more elaborate and grandiose than the Duke’s.
(Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Collection)
In 1946, horn player Mezz Mezzrow, with co-writer Bernard Wolfe, published Really the Blues, an exposé on gangsters and drugs in the jazz world from the 1920s through the 1940s.
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
Louis Armstrong found himself caught between mob-affiliated managers. He resolved the dispute by signing a joint agreement with his manager, Joe Glaser (left), and Tommy Rockwell, handling promotion.
(Louis Armstrong House Museum)
Joe Glaser began his career as a hoodlum in the Capone organization. Some surmise that, throughout his long reign as arguably the most significant manager in jazz, he never did shake his gangster ways.
(Louis Armstrong House Museum)
Frank Sinatra at age twenty-three, arrested on charges of “seduction and adultery” in Bergen County, New Jersey.
(Getty Images)
Sinatra in 1942, singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.
(Hoboken Historical Society)
Willie Moretti was Sinatra’s first mentor in the mafia, and then, in 1951, he got whacked.
(Getty Images)
The 500 Club in Atlantic City, owned and operated by Paul “Skinny” D’Amato, was one of the most renowned jazz venues on the East Coast.
(Getty Images)
In Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the Crawford Grill was a popular jazz spot where numbers runners, bookies, and gangsters liked to hang out.
(Carnegie Museum of Art, Charles “Teenie” Harris Archive)
Bing Crosby had a fascination with Chicago gangster Jack McGurn. They were briefly golf partners.
(Wikimedia Commons)
In the years following Prohibition, Charles Luciano and Meyer Lansky (center, left to right) were architects of the mob’s expansion into many aspects of American commerce. One highly lucrative racket was the jukebox business, which the mob controlled from coast to coast. The mob later made inroads into the recording business.
(Everett/Shutterstock)
Few jazz scenes were more active than the Central Avenue District in Los Angeles during the 1940s. Club Alabam was one of the most popular venues.
(Los Angeles Public Library/Shades of L.A. Collection)
Gangster Mickey Cohen owned a piece of numerous clubs on Central Avenue. He ran his business like a plantation, where the musicians were chattel and he was the boss.
(Associated Press)
Pianist/vocalist Nat King Cole was a fixture in all the great jazz scenes where the gangsters ruled, from L.A. to Las Vegas, New York, and Havana.
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
In the late 1940s, heroin hit the jazz world like a tidal wave. Many great musicians got hooked, including Thelonious Monk (far left).
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
The man who brought dope to the United States, Vito Genovese.
(Library of Congress)
Perhaps the greatest jazz scene of all time, 52nd Street in Manhattan. This photo was taken in 1948, when the street was lined with clubs. Today, there is little physical trace that they ever existed.
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
Trumpet player and singer Louis Prima dealt with gangsters during a career that stretched from New Orleans to 52nd Street, Los Angeles, and Vegas.
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
Louis “Pretty Boy” Amberg.
(Library of Congress)
At the Famous Door nightclub on the Street, circa 1947, a band led by tenor sax master Ben Webster (standing left) holds the stage, while at the table, musician Cozy Cole regales “the boys” with stories.
(Library of Congress, William J. Gottlieb Collection)
Birdland, owned and operated by Morris “Mo” Levy, was one of the most mobbed-up clubs in history. It was also one of the most musically progressive.
(Leo T. Sullivan Collection)
Miles Davis was beaten bloody by a policeman while standing in front of Birdland. The average Black musician had more to fear from a cop than a gangster.
(Getty Images)
Mo Levy, seated in his office at Roulette Records, his highly lucrative recording label. As he once said to an artist, “You want royalties, go to England.”
(Richard Carlin, Wikimedia Commons)
By the 1950s, the uneasy alliance between the gangster and the jazz musician was showing signs of wear and tear. Artists were tired of being ripped off by gangster/businessmen like Mo Levy and others. For master pianist Art Tatum, it seemed that in the clubs there was always a gangster standing over your shoulder.
(Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)
Meyer Lansky took the lead in making Havana, Cuba, a dream come true for the mob.
(Library of Congress)
In 1950s Havana, the mob achieved its longtime goal of a jazz and gambling paradise in Cuba.
(Getty Images)
Latin jazz reinvigorated the music. Conga player and composer Chano Pozo was a transformative figure, until he was murdered in Harlem at the age of thirty-three by his marijuana dealer.
(Herman Leonard)
The Copacabana was perhaps the most mafia friendly of all the New York clubs. Sammy Davis Jr. always filled the place, though he endured many racial indignities while performing there.
(Getty Images)
Jules Podell, who managed the Copa, had such a thuggish personality that the mob considered removing him because he was bad for business.
(Getty Images)
Mary Lou Williams, a brilliant pianist, had ups and downs in a long career that spanned all the major jazz eras. In the end, she transcended the dark side of the business.
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
The jazz business was especially treacherous for women. The musicians were mostly men, the club owners and managers were men, and the gangsters were all men. Even big stars like singer Sarah Vaughan were constantly taken advantage of.
(Library of Congress, William P. Gottlieb Collection)
Billie Holiday was tough, but the jazz world, when combined with the underworld, fed her addictions and sucked the life out of her.
(Leigh Wiener Photography)
By the 1970s, the music recording business had shifted from its traditional bases in New York and Chicago to Los Angeles, where conglomerates like MCA traded on long-standing connections with the mob—in MCA’s case, its roots in the Chicago outfit.
(Getty Images)
The Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas was created with Frank Sinatra in mind. The club inside the hotel was called the Copa Room, and the entertainment director was Jack Entratter, who was imported from the Copacabana in New York.
(Getty Images)
Whenever Nat King Cole played the Copa Room at the Sands, the place was packed.
(University of Nevada Las Vegas Library)
Notorious mobster Sam Giancana, seen here with girlfriend Phyllis McGuire, lead singer of the McGuire Sisters, was a secret financial partner of Sinatra’s at the Sands, and in other business and political ventures as well.
(Associated Press)
Mo Levy was called “the Octopus” by Variety because of his far-reaching control of nearly every aspect of the music business. It was only a matter of time before the FBI took an interest, which it did, with a criminal investigation that lasted more than a decade.
(Getty Images)
For years, mafia boss Vincent Gigante wandered the streets in pajamas and a bathrobe, laying the groundwork for an insanity defense. At the same time, he partnered with Levy in the criminal exploitation of the music business. Eventually, both were arrested and convicted.
(Getty Images)
Sinatra and the boys, circa 1988. The singer had an ownership stake, along with various mafiosi, in the Westchester Premier Theater, where this backstage photo was taken. Some of the most powerful mobsters in America, including Paul Castellano (far left), Carlo Gambino (third from right), and Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno (second from right), are seen in this photo.
(FBI Photo)
Satchmo says goodbye. When his longtime manager Joe Glaser was on his deathbed, Armstrong visited him in the hospital and allegedly said, “I’ll bury you, you motherfucker.”
(John Loengard/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)
About the Author
T. J. ENGLISH is a noted journalist, screenwriter, and author of the New York Times bestsellers Havana Nocturne, Paddy Whacked, The Savage City, and Where the Bodies Were Buried. He also authored The Westies, a national bestseller, Born to Kill, which was nominated for an Edgar Award, and The Corporation. His journalism has appeared in Esquire, Playboy, and New York magazine, among other publications. His screenwriting credits include episodes for the television dramas NYPD Blue and Homicide, for which he was awarded the Humanitas Prize. He lives in New York City.
