Aside from his musical contributions as the first composer of recognizable tunes that became some of the most prominent early jazz standards (“King Porter Stomp,” “Doctor Jazz,” “Original Jelly Roll Blues,” to name a few), Jelly Roll cut quite a figure. Though he was slight in stature—reed thin, like a bantamweight boxer—Morton made sure he was noticed when he entered a room. He wore embroidered ties, tailored suits (he claimed to own dozens of them), a diamond-encrusted cravat, and a silk hanky in his breast pocket. His complexion was café au lait, on the lighter side, which made him employable in many of the whorehouses where dark-skinned musicians were not allowed. He conked his hair or slicked it back in the upwardly mobile Negro style of the day. Embedded in his front tooth was a half-carat diamond that sparkled every time he smiled. His teeth were otherwise scraggly and sharp, like a ferret’s. When Jelly Roll entered an establishment, he had the look of an elegant wharf rat.

  At the same time he was emerging on the scene as a brilliant musical force, Morton staked his claim among the city’s sporting men. The nickname Jelly Roll came from his supposed popularity with women, “Jelly Roll” being a slang term for “vagina.” (The more accurate street translation might be “pussy.”) Said Johnny St. Cyr, one of the district’s most popular banjo/guitar players, “Jelly lived a pretty fast life. In fact, most of those fellows round the district did. They were all half-way pimps anyway.”

  In his memoir, Morton freely concedes that he was a pimp. In the district, a pimp was known as a “P.I.” Jazz pianists, apparently, were prone to a life as procurers, as they could keep an eye on their stable of girls while playing at a bordello. Equal to Morton’s reputation as a P.I. was his notoriety as a pool hustler and a gambler. Paul Barbarin, a New Orleans drummer, said that Morton was “mostly a gambler . . . He’d lose maybe four or five hundred dollars” a night, and that proved to be his “downfall—easy come, easy go.” Danny Barker, renowned musician and chronicler of early New Orleans jazz, noted that Morton “took on the lifestyle of the notorious night people of the underworld.” Pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines, who got to know Jelly Roll later in Chicago, said that in the early days of jazz, “you had to act bad whether you were bad or not,” meaning you had to carry yourself like a gangster. “Jelly Roll Morton found that out long before I did,” said Hines, “and that’s why he carried a gun and talked loud.”

  Morton was not the only musician to carry a pistol; many did. But unlike most others, his was not solely for protection against robbers and ruffians. Once, during a rehearsal with his band, Morton became frustrated when his trombonist, Zue Robertson, refused to play the melody of one of his tunes the way he wanted it. After trying to convince Robertson through verbal means, Morton chose another way. He took a large pistol from his pocket and placed it on top of the piano. On the next take, Robertson played the melody note for note as Jelly Roll wanted it.

  Morton’s persona as a hoodlum and pimp was unusual: The story of jazz and the underworld is most often a case of gangsters and mobsters influencing the business of jazz from above as club owners, managers, record label owners, et cetera. Morton’s personal proclivities suggest another aspect: hoodlums who rose from the streets to become practitioners of the music.

  In his historic interviews with Alan Lomax (later adapted into the book Mister Jelly Roll), Morton describes his introduction to jazz in New Orleans in a way suggesting that gangsterism—and the violence associated with it—was part of the equation from the start. According to Morton, the jazz parades, in particular, sometimes devolved into armed combat, which he describes as if they were something out of Herbert Asbury’s Gangs of New York:

  It’s a funny thing that the second line marched at the head of the parade, but that’s the way it had to be in New Orleans. They were our protection. You see, whenever a parade would go to another district the enemy would be waiting at the dividing line. If the parade crossed the line, it meant a fight, a terrible fight. The first day I marched a fellow was cut, must have been a hundred times. Blood was gushing out of him same as from one of the gushers in Yellowstone Park, but he never did stop fighting . . . And about that time the broomsticks and brick-bats would start to fly, the razors would come into play and the seven shooters—which was a little bit of a .22 that shot seven times—would begin popping . . . Sometimes it would require a couple of ambulances to come around and pick up the people that was maybe cut or shot occasionally.

  Morton understood that to play jazz in the streets, the bordellos, and the clubs was not for sissies. Between the late-night clientele in the district who might be drunk or stoned, and the volatile nature of race mixing in clubs and bordellos where the patrons were white and the performers were Black, the possibilities of “misunderstandings” and/or confrontations were ever present.

  Even so, Jelly Roll Morton insisted on going his own way. Other musicians sometimes preferred playing in clubs that were “connected”—that is, mobbed up or owned by underworld figures. To some, these clubs were safer; they were protected. But Morton didn’t see it that way. Later in life, he complained about being “robbed of three million dollars” by mobster club owners, as well as agents, managers, and other vultures. For this reason, he preferred to remain independent. Which also had its drawbacks.

  In the mid-1910s, Morton left New Orleans and ventured out on a tour that took him to the West Coast, from Los Angeles to Tacoma to Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia. Serving as one of jazz’s first unofficial ambassadors, he spread the gospel far and wide. Eventually, he wound up in Washington D.C., where he opened a club of his own called the Jungle Inn. The co-owner of the club was a woman named Cordelia, and Morton’s wife, Mabel, worked behind the bar. There was one night that Mabel would never forget:

  This Cordelia, she never would back up Ferd [short for “Ferdinand,” that is, Jelly Roll]. He had put a cover charge on the Jungle Inn to keep the riff-raff and the roughnecks out of the place, but she would let them come in anyhow even when they wouldn’t take their hats off . . . One night one of those riff-raff got to acting rowdy and Ferd called him out. The fellow then used some bad language. Ferd slapped him. Then he sat down at the piano and began to play and the fellow slipped up behind him and stabbed him. Stabbed him the first time in the head and, when Ferd turned, he stabbed him just above the heart. Then Ferd grabbed him and they went down.

  I was back of the bar mixing a Pink Lady when I heard the scuffle. When I came out from behind the bar I couldn’t hardly tell which was which, they were so covered with blood. The blood was just gushing out of Ferd like out of a stuck beef. I took the heavy glass ashtray and I struck this young man hard as I could in the head. Then we pulled Ferd away—Ferd was on top by then—and Ferd grabbed an iron pipe and was going to kill him, but Cordelia grabbed Ferd and the fellow got away.

  The assailant escaped and was never charged. Morton was rushed to the hospital. He survived the injuries, but, according to Mabel, there were physical repercussions that lasted a lifetime.

  It is possible—likely, even—that if the Jungle Inn had been a mob club, an encounter like the assault on Morton never would have happened. There would have been bouncers on hand—though in many cases public knowledge that a club was connected and/or protected by the mob was enough to keep it safe. Morton had long preferred to not be under the thumb of “the syndicate,” or any other controlling interest that might rip him off. In terms of security, this meant flying without a net. He learned the hard way: a sneak attack from a maniac with a long blade. Go your own way at your own risk.

  “Blow that Quail!”

  Louis Armstrong did not need to be told that the honky-tonks that were connected were the honky-tonks where you wanted to be. He learned this from King Oliver, whom he worshipped. Oliver was twenty years older than Armstrong. In many ways, the veteran cornetist and bandleader was both a mentor and father figure to the young musician. “I never stop loving Joe Oliver,” said Armstrong. “He was always ready to come to my rescue when I needed someone to tell me about life and its little intricate things and help me out of difficult situations.”

  Oliver had a big, bald head that he often topped with a bowler hat. He could be formal and stern, but he had a playing style on the horn that was raw and spontaneous. His genius was arranging his playing in such a way that it melded in interesting ways with others in the band. As a composer and arranger, Oliver created musical configurations that gave new meaning to jazz. His band, which he co-led with trombonist Kid Ory, was at the vanguard of the new music.

  Armstrong would come to watch King Oliver play nearly every night at Pete Lala’s, one of the most renowned jazz venues in Storyville. Clarence Williams, a pianist born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, who was part of the deluge of musicians who had arrived in New Orleans around the turn of the century, remembered Lala’s as the center of the universe:

  Round about 4 A.M., the girls would get through work and meet their P.I.’s—that’s what we called pimps—at the wine rooms. Pete Lala’s was the headquarters, the place where all the bands would come when they got off work, and where the girls would come to meet their main man. It was a place where they would come to drink and play and have breakfast and then go home to bed.

  Armstrong also remembered Lala’s:

  These pimps and hustlers, et cetera, would spend most of their time at [Lala’s] until their girls would finish turning tricks in their cribs . . . They would meet them and check up on the night’s take . . . Lots of prostitutes lived in different sections of the city and would come down to Storyville just like they had a job . . . There were different shifts for them . . . Sometimes two prostitutes would share the rent in the same crib together . . . One would work in the day and the other would beat out that night shift . . . And business was so good in those days with the fleet sailors and the crews from those big ships that come in the Mississippi River from all over the world—kept them very, very busy.

  Everyone knew that Pete Lala’s was a mob-connected club. The owner was Peter Ciaccio, a Sicilian immigrant, which was confusing because there were two other clubs in the district owned by men named Lala, including Big 25, another popular club with a business license issued to John T. Lala. All of these localities were part of a group of clubs owned and operated by Italians. Rightly or wrongly, clubs in the district owned by Italians were believed to be mafia-connected. King Oliver didn’t even need to tell Little Louis that these clubs were the place to be. The connected clubs were, ostensibly, the most reliable when it came to their dealings with the musicians.

  Armstrong knew this partly from experience. One of the first places he held a steady gig was at Matranga’s, which was located in Black Storyville.

  Matranga’s was nothing like Pete Lala’s, which was cavernous and well appointed. Matranga’s was a barrelhouse saloon that had been in existence since at least the late 1880s. Its clientele was primarily Black though the ownership was Sicilian—a common arrangement in New Orleans at the time. Being a Matranga, the owner of the club, Henry Matranga, was “a man of respect.” Remembered Armstrong, “Henry Matranga was sharp as a tack and a playboy in his own right. He treated everybody fine, and the colored people who patronized his tonk loved him very much.”

  Armstrong knew that Matranga’s was a mafia club. Using King Oliver’s example as his guide, he not only tolerated the fact that the club was connected, he preferred it. In his memoir, he gave an example of why. One night at Matranga’s, a fight broke out that was quelled by the club’s bouncer, who went by the name of Slippers. It was Slippers, as Armstrong remembered it, who got him the gig at Matranga’s in the first place. Slippers may have been a hulking thug, but he loved jazz.

  [He] liked my way of playing so much that he himself suggested to Henry Matranga that I replace the cornet player who had just left. He was a pretty good man, and Matranga was a little in doubt about my ability to hold the job down. When I opened up, Slippers was in my corner cheering me on. “Listen to that kid,” he said to Matranga. “Just listen to that little son-of-a-bitch play that quail!” That is what Slippers called my cornet . . . Sometimes when we would really start going to town while Slippers was out in the gambling room in the back, he would run out on the dance floor saying: “Just listen to that little son-of-a-bitch blow that quail.” Then he would look at me. “Boy, if you keep on like that, you’re gonna be the best quail blower in the world. Mark my words.”

  The night a fight broke out, Slippers was in fine form. To Armstrong, it was further example of why a jazz musician was better off in a mob-controlled club.

  That night, a ditchdigger from one of the levee work camps came into the place and gambled away all of his earnings in the back gambling room. Slippers had his eye on the guy from the moment he entered. The guy became angry upon losing, as gamblers sometimes do; he vented his frustration in the bar area by threatening to rob everyone in the place. Slippers tried to reason with the fellow: “Shut your mouth, friend, or you’ll be out of here on your back side.” The guy quieted down, but after a few minutes he was at it again, claiming that the house was running a crooked game. So Slippers grabbed the guy by the scruff of his neck and led him aggressively toward the door.

  The guy had a gun, a large .45, which he pulled out and fired wildly in the direction of Slippers.

  Through all of this, Louis Armstrong and his band were playing some down-home barrelhouse blues—until the shots rang out. Color drained from the face of Boogus, the piano player, while Garbee, the drummer, started to stammer, “Wha, wha, wha . . . what was that?”

  “Nothing,” said Louis, trying to act nonchalant, though he also was terrified.

  Slippers pulled out his pistol and fired back; he winged the ditchdigger in the leg. The guy went down. Slippers walked over and relieved the man of his gun, then continued what he started by tossing the man out onto the sidewalk. A horse-drawn ambulance arrived and the troublemaker was carted off to the hospital. Said Armstrong, “Around four o’clock the gals started piling in from their night’s work. They bought us drinks, and we started those good old blues.” In some honky-tonks, a shooting was a startling event that would lead, at least, to the club closing for the night. Not at Matranga’s.

  To Armstrong, it was a mutually beneficial alliance: “One thing I always admired about those bad men when I was a youngster in New Orleans is that they all liked good music.”

  Being aficionados of jazz was one thing, but even more significant was the role men like Henry Matranga could play in making it possible for Armstrong to function in an unjust world.

  One night when Armstrong wasn’t even scheduled to perform at Matranga’s, he stopped in for a beer.

  The tonk was not running, but the saloon was open and some of the old-timers were standing around the bar running their mouths. I just said hello to Matranga when Captain Jackson, the meanest guy on the police force, walked in. “Everybody line up,” he said. “We are looking for some stick-up guys who just held up a man on Rampart Street.” We tried to explain that we were innocent, but he told his men to lock us up and take us to the Parish Prison only a block away. There I was trapped, and I had to send a message to Maryann: “Going to jail. Try and find somebody to get me out.”

  Louis spent the night in jail, and then, miraculously and without explanation, he was released.

  While I was in the prison yard I did not realize that Matranga had contacted his lawyer to have us all let out on parole. I did not even have to appear in court. It was part of a system that always worked in those days. Whenever a crowd of fellows were rounded up in a raid on a gambling house or saloon, the proprietor knew how to “spring” them, that is, get them out of jail.

  Armstrong now had a protector in New Orleans; that protector was the mafia.

  2

  Sicilian Message

  The history of organized crime in America, much like the history of jazz, is part fact and part mythology. Popular culture has had a lot to do with this: Sensationalized accounts (yellow journalism and, later, the tabloids), dime store novels, radio in its heyday, movies, television, comic books, graphic novels, alleged memoirs, and countless “true crime” accounts have put forth a discernible narrative. American movies, in particular, with their melding of true-life characters and fictionalized story lines, make it possible for the average citizen to believe that he or she has knowledge of the subject. Most everyone has heard of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, or Meyer Lansky. Those names are as familiar as Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Duke Ellington. The gangster narrative is a cherished trope in the rags-to-riches fantasy that lies at the heart of the American Dream.

  Since pop culture is as much devoted to creating myths as it is to preserving historical reality, Americans sometimes embrace what they want to believe over what is verifiably true. In the case of the history of organized crime, there is a belief among many that it all started with the mafia. Others contend that Irish refugees fleeing the Potato Famine of 1845–55 laid down the template for organized crime. No doubt, waves of immigration—primarily Irish, Italian, and Jewish—shaped the development of mobsterism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. But the economic framework on which these dynamics would be exerted, and the philosophical core of U.S. capitalism (which has always involved the use of “influence,” power, ruthlessness, and violence), was in place long before mass immigration to the United States began.