# Why Armstrong, Sinatra and Crosby all had mob connections? Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/08/10/why-armstrong-sinatra-and-crosby-all-had-mob-connections-video-photos/
- Published: 2022-08-10T00:02:18+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**When jazz was born in the brothels of New Orleans in the early 20th century, its
parents were musicians and mobsters.**

Author T.J. English’s latest book, “Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld,”
which comes out on Aug. 2, explains why jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Duke
Ellington and Frank Sinatra flourished within mob empires headed by the likes of
Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, John T. “Legs” Diamond and Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

“Jazz began at the end of a long sustained period of lynching after the Emancipation
Proclamation,” English told The Post, speaking from his Manhattan home where he 
has lived for 32 years. “The music seems to me an attempt to create a new reality,”
he added. “The music says, ‘We are alive.’ I see jazz as a response to terror and
violence.”

English, who has written several books about the criminal underworld, as well as
episodes for TV’s “NYPD Blue” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” said the unlikely
connection between black musicians and Italian mobsters made sense in the context
of an oppressive turn-of-the-century social order.

[⌊52nd street lined with clubs⌉⌊52nd street lined with clubs⌉[

Clubs lined Manhattan’s 52nd Street, which was once a hub for jazz.

Library of Congress William P. Gottlieb Collection

Jazz first started bubbling in New Orleans, where Sicilian immigrants and black 
Americans faced the same predicament — they were shut out of wealthy white Anglo-
Saxon Protestant society and harassed by corrupt white police officers.

“Black people had less to fear from a Mafiosa boss than a white police officer,”
said English, a self-confessed jazz fan. “They saw the mob as their protection in
the commercial marketplace. That was very true of Louis Armstrong. He knew you had
to have your gangster for protection. Louis said, ‘Get yourself the biggest gangster
you can.’ ”

The New Orleans recipe — where black performers aligned themselves with mobsters
who oversaw one of the nation’s first legal [red-light districts, Storyville](https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/storyville/district),
where brothels and bars thrived  — spread to Kansas City, Chicago, New York, and
then Las Vegas.

[⌊Louis Armstrong in King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1923.⌉⌊Louis Armstrong in
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1923.⌉[

Louis Armstrong in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in 1923. The band often played
in Capone’s mafia-run clubs in Chicago.

Hogan Jazz Archive Tulane University

In 1920, Prohibition ushered in a new era for nightlife when white society started
pouring into speakeasies.

“They went where the booze was,” said English. Nightclubs became socially acceptable,
jazz entered mainstream entertainment even as society remained otherwise segregated,
and the underworld stew became the entertainment business model.

And many mob bosses really did appreciate jazz.

“[Al] Capone was the greatest benefactor. He loved the music,” English said, adding
that his henchmen once “kidnapped” New York City native Fats Waller after a 1926
performance in Chicago to surprise Capone for his birthday. Waller was greatly relieved
when he realized what was going on. “[Capone] was good for the musicians: He spread
the money around in the jazz world.”

Beyond just shelling out for entertainment and liquor, mobsters continued to uphold
their part of the bargain to keep performers safe.

By the late 1920s, white performers had co-opted jazz and artists like Bing Crosby
mainstreamed the sound, perfecting vocal pop jazz. By 1932, Crosby was one of America’s
biggest singing stars and when a hoodlum tried to take advantage by extorting Crosby
for protection money — that is, protection from the hoodlum beating him up — the
mob stepped in.

[⌊Al Capone⌉⌊Al Capone⌉[

Al Capone “was the greatest benefactor” for jazz musicians, author T.J. English 
said.

Library of Congress

“Crosby was raking in the dough at the time and his management, MCA, had mob connections,”
said English. “MCA sent a mobster named Jack McGurn to handle it. McGurn takes the
guy and kicks the s – – t out of him and Bing was never extorted again.”

Bing and Jack — also known as “Machine Gun Jack,” who reportedly took part in the
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, when seven Irish mobsters were gunned down
by Capone’s rival Italian crew — [became golfing buddies afterwards](https://nypost.com/1999/12/22/bing-crosbys-secret-life-fbi-documents-reveal-singers-ties-to-mob/).

But “the biggest singer in the United States golfing with a gangster didn’t look
so good,” said English. “So Bing ended the friendship. Jack was actually murdered
eight months later, so maybe it was wise to end it.”

Even as jazz became an all-American music and the genre sped into differing styles,
from Crosby’s crooning to wild swing and then bebop, ties to the criminal underworld
and mobsters, whether Italian, Irish or Jewish, were tightly bound.

[⌊Bing Crosby⌉⌊Bing Crosby⌉[

“A hoodlum tried to extort Bing Crosby for protection money,” author T.J. English
told The Post.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

“The most popular club in New York City in the 1940s was Birdland, owned by Mo’ 
Levy, a gangster who sold heroin out of the club,” recalled English.

Mo’s brother Irving managed the club, glad-handing with big stars like Marlon Brando
and writers such as Norman Mailer, who were regulars. [One night in 1959](https://the1959project.com/post/182324292372/january-26-1959),
Irving was stabbed and killed by a pimp while the band was playing. “It was sensational,”
said English. One newspaper headline read, ‘Jazz serves as background for death.’”

Then along came the Rat Pack and Old Blue Eyes, who ruled the modern pop jazz scene,
and their HQ, mob-created Las Vegas, became the epitome of glamorous American nightlife
and “The Good Life.”

[⌊A show at Birdland Restaurant on December 16, 1949. From left to right, trumpeter
Max Kaminsky, saxophonist Lester Young, "Hot Lips" Page, Charlie Parker on the alto
sax, and pianist Lennie Tristano.⌉⌊A show at Birdland Restaurant on December 16,
1949. From left to right, trumpeter Max Kaminsky, saxophonist Lester Young, "Hot
Lips" Page, Charlie Parker on the alto sax, and pianist Lennie Tristano.⌉[

A show at Birdland on Dec. 16, 1949 featured (from left to right) trumpeter Max 
Kaminsky, saxophonist Lester Young, Oran “Hot Lips” Page, Charlie Parker on the 
alto sax and pianist Lennie Tristano.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

[⌊Ol' Blue Eyes at the Westchester Premier Theatre in 1976. Top row: Paul Castellano,
Gregory De Palma, Frank Sinatra, Thomas Marson, Carlo Gambino, Aladena 'Jimmy' Fratianno,
Salvatore Spatola. Bottom row: Joe Gambino and Richard Fusco⌉⌊Ol' Blue Eyes at the
Westchester Premier Theatre in 1976. Top row: Paul Castellano, Gregory De Palma,
Frank Sinatra, Thomas Marson, Carlo Gambino, Aladena 'Jimmy' Fratianno, Salvatore
Spatola. Bottom row: Joe Gambino and Richard Fusco⌉[

Old Blue Eyes (third from left in the back row) at the Westchester Premier Theatre
in 1976. Top row: Paul Castellano, Gregory DePalma, Frank Sinatra, Thomas Marson,
Carlo Gambino, Aladena “Jimmy” Fratianno and Salvatore Spatola. Bottom row: Joe 
Gambino and Richard Fusco.

FBI Photo

“Sinatra’s relationship with the mob was very specific, very real,” said English.“
The mobsters ran the casinos and the clubs and booked the music they liked.”

Which, by the 1960s, didn’t jibe with young people screaming for the British Invasion
or the antiestablishment hard rock of hippie culture.

“Young people thought Vegas was hokey. The music was music their parents liked,”
said English. Jazz, once the music of rebellion, started to sound old-fashioned 
in comparison to the youth culture’s pop, rock and soul, and the mob’s hold on the
entertainment business began to show cracks. By the 1980s, the old gangster world
had crumbled and jazz lost its financial backing.

“[At the beginning] there was no patronage from the institutions of culture and 
wealth,” said English. “Jazz wasn’t going to happen at that level. It had to earn
its place at the table.”

That would never have happened without the mob, and the performers who for decades
kept quiet about what they saw.

“They kept their mouths shut,” English said of the musicians. “They played, got 
paid, and didn’t talk out of school.”

![Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby](https://i0.wp.com/nypost.com/wp-
content/uploads/sites/2/2022/07/armstrong-sinatra-crosby.jpg?resize=640%2C427&ssl
=1)

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