Jazz and Justice. Gerald Horne
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organized crime, but rampant bias drove many away to more favorable climes in Missouri and Illinois.15
Pendergast was receiving tens of thousands of dollars regularly from dog races, a good deal of which was poured into his incessant gambling, particularly on horseracing. Testifying against him, New Orleans’ Arthur Slavin, a nightclub owner in Kansas City with ties to the Cuban Gardens, spoke almost enviously about one of Lazia’s clubs: it “had a dance floor and dining room one side and a casino on the other side for gambling. Dice games, card games”—and more. Local banks were among Lazia’s boosters, he said; they were eager to handle his cashier’s checks. At one point, Lazia had an accident crossing a bridge and the result was that his eyes were affected, causing furious blinking and twitching. His spouse, Marie Lazia, says her husband “nearly lost his eye; he was ill for a long time” too, leading to “three operations.” By 1929, “he was not up at all,” virtually recumbent. He had developed glaucoma. Cuban Gardens opened on September 15, 1929, but Lazia was not in the mood to enjoy the festivities: “I had to wear a bandage on my right eye all through the year 1929,” he told the court and “it made me nervous” since “my eye was inflamed….” It was “terrible, torture, terrible pain,” he said, speaking in early 1934. Lazia’s bodyguard Carrollo, a felon but president of North Side Finance Company, was also an investor in Cuban Gardens. His alias was “Charlie the Wop” and along with Lazia he too was indicted for violating laws on prohibition of alcohol.16
In the courtroom, Lazia’s jaws and teeth rhythmically chomped on a wad of gum while he kept blinking, his weak eyes barely glimpsed through his thick spectacles. Previously it had been observed that Lazia was frequently in and out of the office of Eugene C. Reppert, the local police chief.17 It was Pendergast who appealed to White House honcho James Farley for assistance in settling the income tax charges faced by Lazia.18
In early July 1934, shortly before dawn, Lazia, a power in the Democratic Party political machine, was struck with a hail of machine gun bullets. Before expiring, he said breathlessly, “If anything happens,” call Pendergast, “my best friend, and tell him I love him.” Presumably, Lazia’s attempt to elbow his way into the beer business contributed to his demise. Lazia and his fellow corrupt politicos had been receiving payoffs from increasingly restive owners of beer parlors and night club proprietors. The funeral procession for Lazia extended for several miles, an indication of the overwhelming majorities at the polls he helped to deliver to Pendergast.19
At the zenith, there were about 250 clubs performing the new music in Kansas City. After Lazia’s murder, scrutiny of these enterprises intensified, to their detriment. Musicians were not oblivious to or protected from this gunplay. After Lazia’s death, Jesse Price and his bandmates were ordered into a large automobile by armed gangsters and driven to a lonely spot on Cliff Drive overlooking the city. There the mobsters impressed upon them the naked power wielded by nightclub operators, hammering home the utter seriousness of their anti-union policies, meaning, of course, that musicians better not complain about poor pay levels.20
AS SO FREQUENTLY HAPPENS AMONG the U.S. right wing in their perpetual quest to dilute the potency of Negrophobia, a myth developed suggesting that Irish Americans too faced rampant bias, not unlike that which ensnared Negroes, up to and including signs stating, “No Irish Need Apply”; as an attempt to dilute the poisonousness of white supremacy, this was an urban myth of victimization in that, as one analyst put it, “the names of local politicians read like the roster of a unit in the Irish Republican Army.” The Scotch-Irish Truman was among those favored, as suggested by his moniker: the “Senator from Pendergast.” Appropriately, the outlaw Frank James, brother of the more renowned Jesse, ended his life as a bouncer and floorwalker in the Pendergast-controlled Jefferson Hotel. The Pendergast machine was heavily larded with saloonkeepers and gamblers, the constituency often found when the new music was being exhibited. The machine routinely raided clubs whose owners did not pay tribute, meaning that Pendergast was making a great deal of money by the 1930s. The machine was close to the Catholic Church and parochial schools, providing Pendergast with ever more far-reaching tentacles.21
Saxophonist Buddy Tate, who wound up in Kansas City, hailed from Sherman, Texas, a Jim Crow bastion. In 1926, at the age of thirteen, he began playing professionally. And by the age of fourteen, he was performing before segregated audiences, recalling that “you had to kind of stick more to dance music when you played for the white crowd…. Playing with the black crowd you could swing all night,” raising by implication the matter of what impact segregation had on the music’s evolution. His mother wanted him to be a physician, but his father died, and he wound up in Kansas City playing with Andy Kirk’s band. As for Pendergast, he concluded, “Everybody dug him,” since “he let you make money.”22
“I knew old Thomas personally,” said musician Eddie Durham, born in 1906 in San Marcos, Texas, speaking of Pendergast. Thus Durham well knew why “liquor stores stayed open 24 hours a day” and how and why the machine “would protect … gangsters.” Negroes worked for Johnny Lazia and vicariously thought “they were big shots because they worked for this big gangster.” Often they were armed, just like the leader of the musicians’ union and Durham himself: “Everybody in Benny Moten’s band had guns.” This was necessary for Moten since he would promote dances himself, foiling traditional promoters: “He would rent the auditorium himself” and the “band [served as] the bouncers … the reed section all had automatics and the voice section all had revolvers … I had a .45.” Once Durham went to church and was chagrined when his pistol “fell out” with a clang.23
“Everybody carried a gun,” mused bandleader Count Basie, born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1904, speaking of Kansas City, including “machine guns”; this also meant that “bulletproof vests” were de rigueur. In the ubiquitous clubs, patrons would “shoot at each other, and if you played a song they didn’t like, they’d shoot you” too.24
The pianist Mary Lou Williams, born in 1910, recalled that in Kansas City “’most of the nightspots were run by politicians and hoodlums and the town was wide open for drinking, gambling and pretty much every form of vice.” Bandleader Abie Price carried a pistol—then accidentally destroyed several of his toes with this ill-placed weapon.25
Williams, one of the few women to be found on the bandstand, also was aware of the casual corruption that routinely defrauded musicians. Joe Glaser, whose main client was Armstrong, also represented Missourians and was known to maintain double books, that is, as an agent he booked bands at a certain fee, then paid artists at a lower rate, pocketing the difference, plus his percentage of what was taken in at the “door.” Andy Kirk, bandleader, told her as much, stressing that “a lot of these promoters stole from the black acts at that time…. We were making enough, more than the average black anyway. They [were] skimming off the top, but we knew it.” Yet how could they respond effectively given the class and racist biases encoded in society? “’Besides Andy,” Williams continued, “Glaser stole from Louis and all the black acts he had, like Lionel Hampton.” However, since there was reason to believe that Kirk too kept two sets of books, his victimization seemed less dire. Glaser also swindled Williams.26
“See, it’s a gangster town,” concluded guitarist Eddie Durham, speaking of Kansas City. “I met Pretty Boy Floyd there and I saw Baby Face Nelson,” referring to two of the more bloodthirsty mobsters. “These guys paid you double for anything you ever done in Kansas City. They never owed a musician a nickel,” unlike other patrons.27 Buster Smith, a saxophonist who served as a mentor for the better-known Charlie “Bird” Parker,28 knew that in Kansas City “’big clubs were [run by] … big gangsters and they were the musician’s best friend,” at least paying them after performing. But this patronage came at a high price, as musicians were subjected to a cesspool of gambling, live sex shows, and the like. Waitresses at times picked up their tips with their labia. The Chesterfield Club featured four categories of naked waitresses, two “white,” two “black” with pubic hair shaved to represent a heart, spade, diamond, and club. Said Durham, understatedly, “The clubs were very risqué.” Bassist Gene Ramey, born in 1913, recalled that as late as 1934, “nude women [were] working there every night,”