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for some to accept that a fecund artistic form that has attracted global attention was birthed by those of African descent. LaRocca is worthy of attention not because his meritless claims are worthy of contemplation but simply because he reflects a deep strain in the music, present at the creation, that reasserted itself continuously in succeeding decades.
SINCE MOBSTERS WERE OFTEN OF ITALIAN or Jewish extraction, this often contributed to ethnic or ethno-religious attacks upon them, not least by musicians. The pianist “Jelly Roll” Morton, who said that the new music was his invention, was acerbic in declaring that “there is a new system being used to put every one out of the music business but Jews. Since the Jews are in a dominating position at this time, they are in control of the union, radio stations, publishers, booking agents & etc…. The union officials that’s now in office was considered Communist before they entered office & believe me they have to put most everyone out of business but the Jews or Communists … using Fifth Column activities in this field.”86 Experience, as the saying goes, is a harsh teacher and such was the case for these musicians subjected to brutalizing exploitation in a context of weakened working-class organization. The raconteur Al Rose said of the Negro pianist and journalist Dan Burley that “when I first met him, [he] was as racist as a black can get [sic]. He endorsed the utopian ideals of Marcus Garvey…. And he was sure that whites were sadistic, untrustworthy, savage, greedy … and most of all, stupid.” Burley’s experience—he was born in 1907 in Kentucky—led him to these conclusions.87
Most of the figures in the pages that follow are men—especially men of African descent—and, to a degree, this is a reflection of the fact that the music they pioneered had roots in Africa. However, this geographical arc does not explain the gender imbalance. Black women faced severe obstacles in seeking to make their mark musically. Vi Redd, born in 1928, a gifted saxophonist and vocalist, moonlighted as a teacher. Yes, Philly Joe Jones was among the male artists who often had to work in other jobs to support their art, but Redd faced an added burden, being passed up for jobs because of bias against women, men walking off the bandstand as soon as she arrived—and worse. She was forced to endure a ceaseless flow of sexual banter uttered by bandmates and fans alike. The critic Whitney Balliet, who had the ability to make—and break—careers wrote infamously that “most women lack the physical equipment to say nothing of the poise for blowing trumpets and trombones, slapping bass fiddles or beating drums.” Still, the rise of the anti–Jim Crow movement that also served to propel feminism began to change this odious scene, though echoes of the past continued to persist.88
Inevitably, as organized crime figures ascended in the music that from its inception was shaped by a bordello culture, African American counterparts arose to challenge them. And the bordello culture was not conducive to gender parity among musicians. By the 1960s, according to one observer, John McClain “owned L.A.’s baddest jazz club, the It Club [and] was also one of the city’s biggest drug dealers. Some say he was ‘the Black Godfather.’” This notoriety meant that he spent years in jail, but not before mentoring Dick Griffey of Solar Records, who in turn helped the twenty-first-century mogul Marion “Suge” Knight assemble Death Row Records. Reportedly, Griffey was of the opinion that “everything Suge ever thought about doing I’ve done … ten times.”89
Los Angeles, within hailing distance of Nevada, which became a headquarters for organized crime, provided a model for McClain to emulate. In the early 1940s, the musician Buddy Collette was performing in a club in L.A. when in walked an angry Mickey Cohen, a known mobster. “When he saw that the band wasn’t playing yet,” Collette recalled, “he pulled a gun. ‘I’ll give you three minutes to get on the stand!’” Suddenly, “two or three of Mickey’s guys were hitting the waiters in the head with chairs. Mickey just locked the door and told the band to play while all the fighting was going on.”90
However, as the rise of McClain suggested, African American initiative in this business—beyond performing—accelerated in the 1960s and thereafter with the ascendancy of the anti-Jim Crow and concomitant Black Power movement. By 1967, a Jazz Musicians Association was formed and by late 1969 they had opened a record store in Manhattan, at Avenue A and 14th Street, with pianist Horace Silver, saxophonist Jackie McLean, and pianist turned television commentator Gil Noble in attendance.91 A few months later, musicians described as “expatriate jazzmen” had started a nightclub in the Canary Islands, yet another attempt to escape the murderous likes of those like Cohen.92 A few months after that, Black musicians in Los Angeles assailed movie studio policies and organized a picket line engineered by 100 members of the Black Musicians Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They demanded a 25 percent quota in hiring, which in itself was a rebuff of the merger between the previously racially divided local affiliates of the union, the American Federation of Musicians, which included 1,100 African Americans out of a membership of 14, 000.93 By October 1970, a group of more than sixty fiery musicians led by Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Lee Morgan interrupted a taping of the Merv Griffin Show on CBS in Manhattan, demanding more jazz and other black musical expressions. This took place at the studio on Sixth Avenue and 47th Street. The “Jazz and Peoples Movement,” as they were called, entered brusquely to accusatory shouts: “In Russia, they would have put you in jail five minutes ago.”94
Attempts byBlack artists and Black people generally to assume more control of the art form they created were not greeted with equanimity. In recounting the history of the new music, the story is told—not altogether accurately—that after Storyville, the red-light district in New Orleans, was restricted severely, musicians headed northward to Kansas City, though the serpentine Mississippi River, the water highway, would have taken them much more easily to Memphis or St. Louis. In any case, there was an efflorescence of organized crime in Kansas City that was tied to a political machine that ultimately produced a U.S. senator and president: Harry S. Truman. Into this maelstrom stepped the Negro entrepreneur with roots in Texas—Felix Payne. He began as a barber, then moved into nightclubs, where he became a partner of “Piney” Brown, a blues belter (immortalized in song by singer Big Joe Turner). Apparently, Payne was tied to a faction of organized crime in his ventures and another faction took umbrage, which led to his being kidnapped and stripped naked in January 1929 and forced to walk in sub-freezing temperatures. Payne, an amateur tennis player and NAACP donor, was also a newspaper publisher and in his newspaper glowing tributes were printed about Johnny Lazia, a crime boss ultimately slain by mob competitors in 1934. Payne was also caught up in the epochal transition of Negro voters from the party of Abraham Lincoln—the Republicans—to the Democrats, whom they continue to support overwhelmingly. Payne, during this tumultuous time, highlighted the racial segregation that was a feature of Democratic Party conventions during this era.95
As the example of Payne suggested, Negroes involved in the business of music felt the need to have powerful patrons, a variation (if not inversion) of the theme of “self-help.” The vibraphonist Lionel Hampton had an uncle in Chicago who worked for the gangster Al Capone, which helped to propel both his initial popularity and his ultimate success as a bandleader.96 He became a prominent supporter of U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush97 and, perhaps not accidentally, an abysmal exploiter of the musicians in his band.98 “I admired Lionel,” said the trumpeter Joe Wilder, who was employed in his band, “but I didn’t like the conditions that he created for the band. The band was treated like we were [in] shackles,” that is, “virtually in slavery.” Predictably, “you were always being reminded that if you complained about something…. We travel maybe two or three hundred miles and get to the town where we were going to play and instead of just checking into the hotel, he’d call a rehearsal” though “we’re tired as we can be … at the end of the job, he might play another 40 minutes or so overtime, for which none of us are going to be compensated. If you said anything about it, he was quick to remind you that ‘where else can you play?’ Don’t forget. There’s no place else for black musicians to play. ‘If you don’t like it here, I’ve got 500 other [musicians] who are waiting in line to play in this band.’ So you had that sort of a sword hanging over your head all the time.” Hampton studiously sought to “avoid paying the men what the job was worth … I very often made a statement that if slavery were coming back,