The History of Jazz in America, from Criminal Bondage to Liberation

Dangerous Rhythms, Jazz and the Underworld

T.J. English William Morrow/Harper Collins 2022. 448 pages. Illustrated.

Reviewed by Bill Nevins, Contributing Writer

In T.J. English’s enthralling new non-fiction book, Dangerous Rhythms, a cloud of menace and mayhem hangs over the story of how jazz music-- and organized crime — evolved side-by-side in America. English recounts how, by virtue of its origins in poverty and in bordellos and other “rough and rowdy” venues, and owing to the coercive nature of capitalism, the music and its practitioners necessarily were held in thrall to murderous thugs and their ruthless bosses. In other words, jazz and jazz artists came up the “usual” hard way in the cut-throat American capitalist system. The book includes many photos of the jazz greats and gangsters, over the decades.

Because jazz has its origins in the post-Civil War culture of recent enslavement, lynching, denial of rights, Jim Crow segregation and hyper-exploitation, jazz musicians suffered more dire — and more dangerous — “rites of passages” than many other artists. The arc of progress towards eventual “legitimacy” and liberation was, for jazz artists, a long and torturous journey over many lifetimes. The “plantation system” in jazz remained enforced until very recent years. Dangerous Rhythms tells the story of how jazz artists endured, survived and, eventually, escaped this bondage. It is an inspiring and very important story which until now has not been fully explored.

T.J.English--who has homes in Albuquerque and NYC and who recently taught at the Taos Writers Conference-- is our preeminent popular historian of American organized crime and he is also a lifetime jazz aficionado who hosts an occasional Latin jazz program in New York City.

English is the author of eight previous books and numerous magazine articles on the origins and development of various “outlaw” and “underworld” gangs and organizations, including the Italian mafia and its Irish, Jewish, Latin and Asian affiliates and imitators. Employing deep research and oral-history techniques, he also has given us insightful stories about crooked police, Black and Cuban revolutionaries, and other related topics. His reach is international and his perspective is that of an engaged progressive investigator. Because most of the people discussed in this book are now dead, English shares his research into oral histories and other documentation to produce a smoothly flowing, page-turning narrative. Additionally, he has provided a music soundtrack to accompany the story, available on Spotify and iTunes and on English’s own webpage: https://www.tj-english.com

Even well-informed fans of jazz may be shocked to learn from Dangerous Rhythms that such internationally-famed stars as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Tony Bennett and many others were held in thrall by mob “patrons” for most or all of their careers, and that even Frank Sinatra came very close to being “rubbed out” by his mafia “pals” at one point in his career. While English reveals that most performers accepted gangland supervision as the price of success in a dangerous and criminally- corrupted system, he does not sugar-coat the ugly side of this relationship.

Al Capone may have truly enjoyed both opera and jazz, but he was also a vicious killer who enforced his control of musicians as a “benevolent” slave-owner might have held the whip over even beloved “darkies” and privileged “house negroes”. English cites the maiming and near-murder of musician/comedian Joe E. Lewis as an example of what could happen if the bosses became displeased with even a favored “employee”. Lewis escaped with his life but was held in thrall as a mob-owned Las Vegas “performing- clown” for the rest of his life. For decades later, other artists saw what happened to Lewis as a warning and threat.

There is a distinct class element to the story that English conveys. Jazz, like rock-n-roll and hip hop in later years, was looked down upon by the American elite ruling class. It was the music of the streets, of people of color—not the preferred music of the WASP establishment. In opposition to that snobbish establishment, jazz was a people’s movement. And, like it or not, the criminal mob was a part of that movement, just as it was a part of the union movement. English points out that many Italian mobsters-- whose families themselves had experienced racial and class prejudice in America-- held a grudging affinity for Black musicians, even though they may long have denied Black fans entry into mob-owned and plantation-themed night clubs like the Cotton Club.

English in fascinating detail traces the conjoined histories of both American jazz and the American criminal underworld from their origins in horrid urban ghettoes through the mob- prosperous Jazz Age era of Prohibition boot-legging and the jazz links to the mob’s organizational spread across the USA and even into pre-revolution Cuba, then into the recent modern era of mob narcotics- trafficking and related heroin-enslavement/destruction of too many great jazz artists (Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Chet Baker among them) into the present-day rise of jazz to “respectability” as Wynton Marsalis and others take the music into such exalted venues as Lincoln Center and a Ken Burns documentary series. Along the way, brave and defiant artists like Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane, and (to a degree) Miles Davis stand out as beacons of hope who foreshadow how jazz would eventually outlive and escape the chains of the criminal “plantation”.

For all its detailing of grim reality, English has said that he sees Dangerous Rhythms as “a joyful history” in that the book describes and celebrates in detail the eventual progress of jazz and jazz artists from the slums of New Orleans to the glory of Lincoln Center. Certainly, the recordings of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and so many others are timeless and enduring. And as English enthusiastically reminds us, jazz is a living art, still growing — in particular in its contemporary Latinx manifestation. With English, the reader cannot help but rejoice in how this unique American art form and its practitioners have not only survived but have triumphed. Dangerous Rhythms is a highly recommended and historically vital book.