Dangerous Rhythms

Dangerous Rhythms traces the intertwined histories of jazz and organized crime in twentieth-century America. T. J. English, author of Havana Nocturne, follows a relationship that took shape in some of the country's most notorious vice districts.

For the first half of the century, mobsters and musicians benefited from one another. Gangsters including Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Charlie "Lucky" Luciano gave a stage to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald, offering opportunities that would not otherwise have existed.

At the center of the arrangement was a deep racial inequity. The musicians were mostly African American, while white men owned the clubs and controlled how the music was produced. English describes it as a kind of plantation system that grew increasingly out of step with the emerging Civil Rights movement. Artists saw their options differently. Louis Armstrong and others felt safer, and more likely to be paid fairly, in "protected" venues, while some believed that working outside mob control would give them more command over their careers. The book draws on extensive research to tell this story of American history.