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,” referring to certain clubs where the new music was played. There were “’teenaged boys” sneaking peeks through unguarded windows, though he did not reflect upon the impact of social mores or gender conceptions more generally of such displays. However, he did say that as Prohibition was coming to a close, “the mob began to shift into narcotics sales,” with even more impact on the wider community.29 (In this context, the escapades of Eubie Blake should be noted. His relations with women reflected the degradation of women that flowed from mob-controlled performance venues, as did the relations of others in this environment. Several of his lovers committed suicide as a direct result of their interactions with him, and others were beaten by their spouses, while Blake deplored same-sex coupling. According to an observer, “He hated for show business men, even straight ones, to hug him or kiss him.”)30
According to a biographer of Charlie Parker, Kansas City clubs featured “men in dresses … performing oral sex on other men…. Women had sex with other women. Some puffed cigars with their vaginas, others had sex with animals.”31
This gangster-dominated climate not only shaped patriarchy and degradation. Gene Ramey recalled an era when bandleaders left the musicians they had hired stranded and then bolted with their wages or gambled these dollars away. Or, when the time came to pay musicians, they would receive the equivalent of 50 cents, rather than the $1.50 promised. But even a bandleader like Basie could be cheated by a club owner, as evidenced by a time when he had patches in his pants and holes in his pockets, as he walked the “streets, trying to be a dignified beggar.” One time, Ramey and his fellow musicians had been stranded and were all jammed into one room.
But why did Kansas City, of all places, become a beacon for the new music? Gene Ramey arrived there on August 18, 1932, via the “hobo” route, that is, hitching rides undetected on trains, many of which were headed to this center of stockyards. He also played semi-pro basketball, and the sport was developed—if not invented in essence—in nearby Lawrence, Kansas. It quickly became popular among Negro men who saw this college town as a place to know. Another diversion was the fact, said Ramey, that marijuana grew wild along the highway headed to Omaha.32
Basie may have been bilked by club owners, but the musician Buster Smith asserts that the bandleader was not wholly innocent. He told the rotund pianist, “I don’t think you done me fair about that ‘One O’Clock Jump,’” the signature tune of his band as Basie pleaded, “Don’t sue me.” This was a turnabout in what Smith had thought was a mutually fruitful relationship. “He loved gin and I did too,” said Smith. “We were sipping on gin and I’m griping.” Undeterred, Smith also mentored Kansas City’s own Charlie Parker when the saxophonist turned up in New York City. “He hoboed it there,” said Smith. “He came up and slept in the bed in the daytime and my wife and I slept in the bed at night.”33
IT WAS NOT JUST KANSAS CITY that presented a danger to life and limb. Playing before Euro-American audiences in southern states such as Texas was bound to engender friction too. Once in the 1930s, bandleader Woody Herman was onstage in Texas when he was handed a note demanding that he “stop playing those nigger blues,” a crudity that underscored how bluntly Black artists were barred from profiting from their compositions.34 In the 1930s when the band of King Oliver arrived to play in Texas, one of the musicians recalled that “everyone rushed to see the boys get out of the bus,” but “when the driver put the lights on they were struck dumb because we were colored. We unpacked and went into the hall and started to play but no one came in, so the man giving the dance went out and asked [why] they didn’t come in, they remarked that they didn’t dance to colored music. We were then told to pack up and leave immediately and there were many cars which followed
