Author: T. J. English
T. J. English’s dangerous rhythms tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: A relationship fostered in some of 20th century America’s most notorious vice districts.
By offering artists a stage, the mob provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed.
Even so, at the heart of this relationship was a festering racial inequity.
The musicians were mostly African Americans, and the clubs and means of production were owned by white men. it was a glorified plantation system that, over time, would find itself out of tune with an emerging civil rights movement.
