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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.
It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.
So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24, 7, 365 days a year. So you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.
This is an ad by BetterHelp. What?
What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.
Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?
BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.
Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to the Library of Dark History. So if you're new here, hi! This is a safe space for all the curious cats out there who think like, hey, is history really as boring as it seemed in school? Oh nay nay. This is where we can learn together about all the dark, mysterious, dramatic stories our teachers never told us about.
No, they did not. So today's story is very exciting. I love jazz music. Jazz music is fine, dandy, and fun, isn't it? Well, recently, not even recently, when I did the episode about...
The Zoot Suit Riots. We had Professor Pagan come on and he had mentioned to me just like briefly, like nothing. He was like, hey, did you know that the history of jazz is really interesting? And he was like, you should do an episode on that. And I was like, the history of jazz? What? Music? Yes. And let me tell you, of course, of course, there's a dark history to freaking jazz music. What doesn't have a dark history at this point? Let me tell you.
I don't know yet. I haven't found it. Anyway, so today we're going to be doing a little deep dive into jazz music. Why is it here? Where did it come from? And what the hell is so dark about it? So let me open up to the jazz section in my dark history book and we're going to learn together. Why was jazz so dark? Let's go on this journey together, shall we? The birth of jazz.
And all that jazz. Yeah, no, I'm just kidding. Okay, so the birth of jazz. This story, today's story, it starts in New Orleans in the 1800s, which is where jazz was born. New Orleans was a huge melting pot and had many formerly enslaved people who decided to settle down and start a new life for themselves there. New Orleans has always been a town where music was happening.
Okay? On every street corner, you'd find musicians playing everything from the blues to international music to jazz herself. The early days of jazz are a bit of a blur because people didn't really know they were making history. You know, they were just playing music and entertaining. So nobody really documented what was going down. But some research shows jazz really began in brothels in the southern part of Louisiana. It's near the Gulf of Mexico.
And most historians agree that the father of jazz is a man named Buddy Bolden. Charles Joseph, or AKA Buddy Bolden, was born September 6th, 1877. He was a son of a working class family and was exposed to music at church and in school. He loved everything about it. I mean, the guitar, the piano, the strings, the horns, just all of the noise and the music.
In the mid 1890s, Bolden began playing the cornet, which is like a kind of horn that was, I guess, popular back then. It looks like a smaller trumpet if you don't know what it is, because I sure did not.
And though he never had formal training as a musician, he was a very popular music teacher in his community. Almost all the jazz musicians of the early 20th century say they were inspired by Buddy and some claim to have been taught by him. Due to his influence, everybody was quick to copy what Buddy did. He basically created a new sound that fused all kinds of music.
such as African folk music, spirituals, and blues. He also borrowed techniques from a genre that was pretty popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s called ragtime. But what really set Buddy apart is how he listened to church sermons and imitated the rhythm in which the pastor performed. Now, Buddy didn't imitate this by speaking. Buddy did this all with his horn. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, it was amazing. I mean, many of the more middle and upper class musicians at the time tried to dismiss this new style because it was like, oh, it's just different. Okay, it's chaotic. They were like, what are these sounds? Okay. Okay.
But these exciting sounds Buddy was creating appealed to a younger audience, especially to the more independent African Americans born and raised after the Civil War. So why did it have such an appeal to younger crowds? For one, Buddy wrote songs trashing authority figures, especially the police. His most popular song was called Funky Butt.
No, seriously, that's the name of it. Funky Butt. We love it. The exact lyrics have been lost in time, but it urged people to stop trusting the police. And a lot of jazz musicians from the time said that just singing the song around the cops would and could get you arrested. Because if you remember from the Sicilian lynchings episode, most of the police in the late 1800s New Orleans were white supremacists. Well...
Funny story, there's this rumor that Buddy once played his horn on a hot air balloon, which he rode over the police station, playing extra loud as he passed by. He's like, like blowing his horn, just like, it was like a fuck you without saying fuck you, you know? We love that. We support it. Hey.
Unique! Hot air balloon, you don't hear that often. Everybody started imitating Buddy's hot new sound, which we know today as jazz, but at the time they didn't have a name for it. And name or no name, that didn't stop jazz from basically becoming an overnight sensation. But as jazz exploded, the genre experienced an early tragedy.
After a few run-ins with the law, Buddy was diagnosed with a mental illness. Now, he was experiencing an episode of acute alcoholic psychosis, which was then given a full diagnosis of what we know today as schizophrenia.
Now he, if you remember like the past episodes, we talk about schizophrenia and how it like, that's what they called everything at that time. He was sent to an asylum for the rest of his life and his career was over by the time he was 30. But this wasn't going to put a stop to the rise of jazz. It was just getting started, my friend.
but let's pause for a quick ad break. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.
It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.
So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24, 7, 365 days a year. So you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.
This is an ad by BetterHelp.com.
What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.
Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?
BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Dark History today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Dark History. Joan, hey girl, how are you feeling today? I know. I know.
I can't tell you what she said. She is just ruthless, okay? Anyways, so hi, welcome back. We're now in the year 1916. Half a million African Americans left the South in search of a better life in the North. This became known as the Great Migration. Musicians moved North for the same reasons that motivated anyone.
They were searching for a better life, better opportunities, and basically just more personal freedom. And jazz went along with them and started making appearances in northern cities for the first time. It was like, ooh, what's this? It's new. It's different. Noises? Horns? Huh? So jazz became huge in the underground, okay, in the northern cities, and even started crossing over into more traditionally white venues.
That's when a group called the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who were composed exclusively of white musicians, made the first commercial jazz recording and started claiming that they had invented jazz. Of course, right? Which is a little strange considering this was 10 years after Buddy was locked up and decades after he started playing jazz.
Well, by this point, people all over the country were all about jazz. They're like, oh my God, yay. And as this music became a bigger thing in white clubs in northern cities, it was quickly getting a reputation as something dangerous and even a little scandalous. Because of its roots in Louisiana brothels, a good chunk of jazz slang referred to body parts and various types of sexual acts.
Also, jazz dancing was pretty risque compared to like the mainstream dancing of the time, which is funny when you think about it because they were probably just like
kick dancing their legs and stuff and like twisting. Nowadays everyone's just like grinding on each other. Anyways, on top of this, drug use happened all the time in those brothels. So now the intersection of jazz and drugs comes up later in our story, but what you need to know right now is that a lot of people thought jazz equals sex equals drugs equals America is crumbling. So
Because of all this, not everyone liked jazz and some people wanted to get it like the F out of their neighborhood. It was coming, it was creating chaos. People were not happy, especially cops. Cops hate jazz. It was considered outlaw music. And they were afraid jazz would bring crime, drugs, and like, oh my God, other races into their mainly white suburb.
In certain areas, you could be arrested and fined $200 for immoral dancing while listening to jazz music. Yeah, very footloose of us. Very footloose, you know? And articles were written in newspapers saying jazz needed to be stopped to protect the youth.
Some papers would even call jazz a disease like leprosy. There was an onslaught of not so very cloaked racist language trying to scare white people away from jazz. All of it was meant to make jazz seem like this big, bad, scary thing that was on its way to ruin America. You know, there's always that thing, isn't there?
No matter what the establishment did to try to make jazz seem scary, it completely backfired. When the New York Times said jazz was dangerous, it started popping up in the red light districts of major cities. Like almost like it was saying, quote, I know it's dangerous,
And like, so what? Which kind of embodied the attitude surrounding jazz music. Another big part of the allure of jazz was the colorful characters. I mean, there are tons of stories about old school musicians like Jelly Roll Morton, who wore a diamond in his tooth and would brag about a trunk full of money he kept in his hotel room.
Never mind the gun he sometimes brought to his shows. One time his trombonist refused to play a song a certain way, so Jelly Roll dropped his gun on the piano and just looked him dead in the eye.
Just stared him down. Enough said. Then there's Sidney Bechet, who ended up in a French prison for a year after accidentally shooting a woman. I mean, oopsie. He meant to shoot another musician who had insulted his musical skills, which doesn't make it better, but you know, it happens, I guess. But the lifestyle and culture around jazz have always been fast and dangerous. At least that's the assumption, which made it so fun to consume and just be around.
Expect the unexpected. But then in 1920, something unimaginable happened. The United States outlawed alcohol. Oh my God, we need to do an episode on that because that's wild. This calls for a moment of silence, my friends. Pour one out.
Goodbye, alcohol, RIP. All alcohol was illegal from 1920 to 1933. Oh, people must have been miserable, right? This period of American history was called Prohibition. But as you can imagine, that obviously isn't going to stop people from finding ways to drink alcohol and have a good time.
So bars had to move underground and they became very secretive. Like if you wanted to get any alcohol at this time, you had to go to these places called speakeasies, which were these private bars or clubs where you needed a password or you like had to know a guy who knew a guy who could get you in. You know what I'm saying? Some of these speakeasies still exist in Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. I mean, now they kind of make them as trends too, like...
Hey, if you go behind the curtain on the left, there's a door and then you go through the door and go downstairs and there's like a bar in there. A lot of people are doing that now. Anyways, but back then the king of underground speakeasies and clubs was a mobster named Al Capone. Now this man, Mr. Capone, he was a badass with a big personality and even bigger guns.
Capone ran the Italian mafia in Chicago and cornered the black market of bootlegging, which was the creation and distribution of illegal booze. Oh yeah, he basically ran Chicago for years. So Capone knew jazz was the counterculture. And not only did cops despise it, but he could use his music to put butts in the seats of his speakeasies.
It became so popular during Prohibition that people started calling the 1920s the Jazz Age. Basically, Prohibition, the 1920s, and jazz were synonymous. So jazz quickly becomes the soundtrack to breaking the law. Capone would go out of his way to protect the black musicians from cops and unruly guests. And not only this, Capone was known for paying their performers fair wages,
Who would have thought, huh? Fair wages. Jeez, my God, what a moron.
I mean, this was completely unheard of at this time and technically still today. But Capone, as you can imagine, was a very complicated guy. Like there's a story about a famous jazz musician named Fats Waller. Now, one night, Fats was kidnapped after a performance and dragged into a club. With a gun pointed at him, Fats was directed to a piano and was forced to play.
Now he's terrified to die. So he played his first song. He's like, please don't murder me. And then it was handed a stack of cash. He played another song and then it happened again. Eventually he realized he was performing at a birthday party for Al Capone. Yeah. He didn't know. He was the surprise guest, this Fats man. Yeah. He was such a surprise guest that even Fats didn't know what the hell was going on.
But he made money, so that's good too. Well, Capone was powerful, but wasn't invincible. Eventually the law caught up to, you know, big old Daddy Al. And with their protection gone, Jazz was going to have to face some tough times for the government, specifically the federal government. So let's set the stage for the villain in our story, the character who becomes obsessed with destroying Jazz after this ad break.
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.
It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.
So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.
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Your cash back really adds up. Welcome to 1933. Prohibition is coming to an end because people like to drink and the government realized that they really couldn't stop them from doing it. So while alcohol was no longer illegal, the government still viewed jazz as this dangerous and dirty art form.
They hated how popular it was getting with white audiences. And prohibition may have been winding down, but racism, babe, of course, it's America, it's thriving. So enter on the scene a new set of laws to try to censor jazz. It's called the cabaret card system. Basically, a cabaret card was a card that said a musician was allowed to perform, okay? But what the cards actually did was make it harder to perform freely.
Musicians and performers had to apply for them at a police station, which like makes no sense because you're just trying to play like an instrument. Why do you have to get the police involved, right? Yeah. So red flag number one. Then they'd have to get like their photograph taken and have an interview. In the interview, police made them explain any past arrests they may have had. And then the police would say either yay or nay to giving you one of these cards.
Anyone performing in a club had to show one before they were even allowed to get in the door. Now, this created a legal way for the police to harass jazz musicians. And as the years went by, it became clear that white performers had no problem getting and maintaining a cabaret card.
Which if you've been paying attention, we're on episode 24 now and this should not be a surprise to anyone. So at the same time, cabaret cards were being used to control the popularity of black jazz musicians. There was even something like more ugly going on.
Basically, it wasn't just the police targeting jazz musicians is what I'm getting at. Remember those guys enforcing prohibition? Well, they didn't go away, okay? The government decided to give them a little glow up and like rebranded their position, calling them the federal police.
Bureau of Narcotics, the FBN as they called themselves, because who doesn't like a good acronym? They were going to focus on tracking down drug users. And the man at the top, it's the first and only commissioner, was a guy named Harry Anslinger. Great. I got his name right.
So let's talk a little bit about Harry and his little FBN. Now, Harry was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania on May 20th, 1892. And he was the eighth of nine children in a Swiss immigrant family. When he was 12, he was sent by a neighbor to pick up a package of morphine from the drugstore.
Morphing is basically like medical heroin. So, I mean, he's just ready to party. Just kidding, but no. Harry said that he never forgot the horrifying screams of the agony shrieked by the neighbor's wife because of her withdrawal symptoms or how easy it was for a 12-year-old boy to buy morphine at that time. Harry said this inspired his life's work to put an end to drugs. And he did it. Yay, he solved it. You know, just kidding. He just ruined people's lives instead.
But we'll get into that. So Harry worked his way up in government jobs and gained a reputation as being incredibly racist. Even people in the 1920s considered him a little too racist. There are actual records of the newspapers at the time calling him a racist. Plus there are government memos where he is openly using crazy racial slurs that, you know, we're not going to repeat. And he would also fire any black employee who complained about anything at all.
Eventually, Harry's work as a tough prohibition agent earned him a promotion to the commissioner of the brand new Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which was in charge of policing cocaine and heroin use. Cool, right? You know, the only problem for Harry was that these drugs weren't that widely used. So there wasn't really a ton for him to do. But Harry had to just like justify his job in his shiny new department. He's like, you guys need me and I'm going to let you know that you need me.
Harry quickly started thinking about how he could make the department relevant. And since cocaine and heroin were not that popular and alcohol was legal, he picked marijuana as his focus. I should point out that it was a popular opinion at that time that weed was a heavy drug. Many still believe that now, but back then people believed it was super dangerous and made you go crazy and could, like, you would kill your whole family.
Yeah, but fun fact, Harry didn't actually believe this. Back in the 1920s, he said publicly that marijuana was no big deal. He called the idea that it made people mad or violent an absurd fallacy.
Sure. So why was he all of a sudden Mr. Anti-Marijuana? Well, here's the thing. The belief was that the majority of marijuana smokers were in black and brown neighborhoods. And what was happening in these neighborhoods at the time? Jazz. Jazz was flourishing. And this gave Harry the idea that would completely revive his department.
So from this point on, Harry completely changed his tune, which allowed him to target black and brown communities. So Harry over here put his nasty little ideas into practice. He began sending all of his agents at the FBN to round up anybody he could find in jazz clubs and arrested them for trumped up charges of marijuana related crimes. So there was a lot of arrests at this time in jazz clubs, but how many convictions were there? Let me look at my notes.
That'd be cool if you did something around here and handed me notes. Joan, why don't you do something and hand me notes? Whatever. Well, actually, no one was arrested. Oh, that's why you don't have the notes, because no one was arrested. Duh, there were no arrests. Because there was one thing that Jazz World had that Harry absolutely never expected. Solidarity.
The end. No, I'm just kidding. Nobody wanted to snitch on any of their friends. Anytime that someone got busted, everybody would band together to raise money to bail them out. But this ultimately wasn't the point for Harry. He simply was fucking with jazz musicians. Because if you remember, getting arrested was enough to put your cabaret card in jeopardy. And without your cabaret card, you couldn't perform.
Now not surprisingly the government thought Harry's whole like let's round up all the jazz musicians thing was a weird waste of time. They told him to like cut it out essentially he's just wasting money and he was instructed to change his focus away from petty weed crimes back to some of the harder stuff like heroin. Harry was as resilient as he was racist and he quickly figured out a way to thread together his hatred of black people
jazz and drugs into one perfect target. The woman he called his public enemy number one, none other than the jazz legend, Billie Holiday. We love, we love. Oh, we got to pause for an ad break. Sorry.
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.
It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.
So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24, 7, 365 days a year. So you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.
Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?
BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.
Okay, so Billie Holiday was one of the most iconic and talented jazz singers to ever walk the earth. If you didn't know, hi, where have you been? She floated above it, as a matter of fact.
Even if you don't know it, you've heard her music. Her birth name was Eleonora Fagan and she was born on April 9th, 1950. Right from the very start, Billie had a rough go at her life. Her parents were teenagers when they had her and from the ages of four to six, she worked alongside other kids washing the floors in a brothel where she lived with her mother. Now the madame who ran the brothel was a jazz fan.
So this is how Billie first discovered the genre. She immediately fell in love. But her life took an awful twist when at the young age of 10, she was sexually assaulted by one of the brothel dudes, patrons, pieces of shit.
Thankfully, he was arrested and went to prison, but that doesn't erase trauma and permanent damage. And because of where she lived and who her mother was, Billy, who was then 10 years old, was accused of being a sex worker.
As punishment, she was forced to go to a Catholic school for discipline. When she got out at the age of 14, her mother was still working at the brothel. So Billie was forced to help make ends meet. And at just 14 years old, she entered a life of sex work.
Now we can't be sure, but it's assumed by historians that it was around this time she started using like heavier drugs like heroin and alcohol as coping mechanisms, things she would use for the rest of her life. It was around this time the police raided the brothel where she lived in and Billy was arrested for sex work.
After this, she focused all of her energy on music and would go to bars around New York every night and she would sing wherever she could. Luckily, she landed a gig pretty quickly, which allowed her to leave sex work behind. One night in a very A Star Is Born moment, Billie's entire life changed. She was just singing at some random bar when a producer, John Hammond, heard her.
her. Now John was a big deal at the time and was setting up a studio band so he's impressed with her talent so John decides to introduce her to jazz legend Benny Goodman okay and then they end up working together and she makes her recording debut at just 17 years old which is huge.
So Benny was also a white man, and this detail is important because it gave her access to a wider audience from a younger age, you know, like...
Unfortunately, that's just how it was. It was around this time that Billie first performed Strange Fruit, a song that made white audiences very uncomfortable. You're probably wondering why, because the song is about lynchings in the South and how Black people hanging from trees were a type of strange fruit.
It was so popular that she would end her set with it every single night. And even when venue managers told her not to, she did it anyways. I mean, it's a powerful song. When it was time to record her album, the record label refused to record it. So she had to like go to a smaller label to get it done.
And that was a bad call by the bigger label because the song was a massive hit and she became an international star by the time she was 24. I mentioned Strange Fruit because it kind of sums up Billie's attitude towards authority. Like the song kept growing in popularity and eventually started pissing off some powerful people. And all of this was the perfect combination for Harry and Slinker and the F-
to view Billie Holiday as the ideal target. She was a young black female jazz singer who was addicted to heroin at the time and the government wanted to crack down on drugs and slow down the influence of jazz. I mean, she was their new target.
Harry became so obsessed with Billie that he even tried to intercept her before a gig when she was planning to perform "Strange Fruit." But she slipped past him, she got to the stage and performed the song anyway.
Harry was getting pissed that no matter how much he got newspapers to condemn drugs and jazz, people still loved Billie Holiday. So Harry needs a new strategy, right? Nothing seems to be working for him. He puts a special agent on Billie's tail. His name was Jimmy Fletcher. He picked Jimmy because he was one of the few black agents Harry employed.
The thinking was that Jimmy would be able to maneuver in the underground jazz world without blowing his cover. Jimmy followed Billie around for a year and slowly started to become really good friends with her.
Now there are rumors that in order to gain her trust, they would party together. And there were also rumors that he was falling in love with her. Okay, so Jimmy would eventually do what snitches do and Billy was busted for drug use. So when Jimmy arrested her, he brought a female police officer to perform a strip search and did just that.
As a result of her arrest, Billie spent a whole year in prison and this was during the peak of her career. And when she was released, her cabaret card, you know that card that you need to perform in clubs, it was revoked. Now she couldn't even perform in New York and Chicago, like the two biggest jazz scenes. But that wasn't enough for Harry. Jazz was still thriving and he wanted to make sure Billie could never reach the level of fame she deserved.
Mind you, there's lots of other like jazz going on. So why he hated Billy so much? He's like obsessed. Oh, ad break. BRB. Today's episode is brought to you by Hunt a Killer. I freaking love Hunt a Killer. I say it all the time. I shouldn't even have to tell you what Hunt a Killer is because I talk about it. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking.
Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance. It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts.
discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24, 7, 365 days a year so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.
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So remember in the MKUltra episode, did you listen to that one? Do you remember that creepy guy who would sit on a toilet behind a two-way mirror? Remember? He was sipping martinis. He was observing sex workers who were secretly drugging their men with LSD. Yeah. Well, his name was George White.
And get this, Harry assigned that guy to hunt down Billie Holiday. What a small little world, huh? George's job was to arrest Billie in the cities that she was still allowed to perform in. And the goal was to make sure she got banned there too.
So George got all dressed up and went to one of her concerts in San Francisco. He sat through the whole show and at one point even shouted out a request to her to sing one of his favorite songs, which she did. And then after the show, which I'm guessing he just had a wonderful time at, he arrested her for heroin possession.
Billy's arrest had some very strange circumstances surrounding it, though. George obviously does things off the book, and this was no different. He said that when he arrested Billy, he found heroin in her trash can. And then he never even submitted the heroin that he, quote, found. The police officer, you know? Yeah. The police department just took his word for it, despite the fact that Billy said that he was lying and she was set up, which I'm sure she was.
As part of Billie's punishment, she was sent to a drug clinic and while she was there, the staff noticed she didn't have any heroin withdrawal symptoms, which I mean, hello, that would happen, like guaranteed that would happen. So this kind of seemed to be a total setup.
But she was also a female. She was a black jazz performer and she was like the queen of it, honestly. So nobody believed her. The cycle of her being arrested and released would continue for years as she was constantly harassed by George and these other douche canoes. It's important to remember that despite being constantly set up, Billie Holiday really did have a drug problem. And unfortunately, sadly, in 1959, Billie collapsed at a friend's house while trying to get clean.
She was taken to a hospital and they refused to admit her. When they finally did, they called the cops and guess who shows up? Harry Anslinger. He went ahead and handcuffed her to the bed, okay? She didn't even have drugs on her. He was just...
waiting for his moment. So here's the thing about a heroin withdrawal, you can you could die from it. Withdrawals typically include like a high fever, severe pains in your stomach. If you don't eat well or sleep much, those side effects can also kill you. It leaves the most people just relapsing or using again because the withdrawals are worse than anything. And that was exactly what Billie was going through when she checked into the hospital.
There are drugs you can take to help with the side effects, but Harry made sure she didn't receive any help from the doctors, which is a very fucked up punishment. This fuck wanted to punish her. So Billy passes away, handcuffed to the hospital bed. And to make it even more horrific, Billy told her friend she didn't want to go to the hospital because, quote, they would try to kill her.
I wish I could say things got better from here, but they really do not. Harry was praised for his work and was even honored by President John F. Kennedy. While he was harassing Billy and focusing all his energy on jazz musicians, white mainstream figures like Joseph McCarthy and Judy Garland had opiate addictions too. And Harry knew about that. He specifically said that he didn't want to arrest them and like ruin their reputations. What a dick.
He even helped them cope with their addictions by getting legal versions of opiate drugs and suggesting they take some time off of work and, you know, work on themselves. Harry did what he could to suppress jazz by targeting artists like Billie Holiday, but jazz was and always will be an art form that stands up to assholes like him. I mean, jazz was like the precursor to basically tons of modern music, and to me it represents the idea of pure expression,
freedom, not even, it's just like the fucking best, there's so much soul in jazz, you could feel it deep in your fucking soul.
The nature of jazz is making choices like in the moment, being supported by those around you. And the forces working against the jazz movement and Billie Holiday were acting counter to all of that. In conclusion, I think it's safe to say that jazz is one of the few homegrown American art forms. Jazz scared the government and the government tried to tear her down.
It's kind of like a constant theme throughout American history, huh? It's like every generation has that thing that the other generation hates or just white people. It's always about white people. Why are white people so upset about everything? You guys ruin everything. We ruin, I can say that because I'm white. We ruin everything. Like why are you guys so grumpy?
Let me know down below. Because what was wrong with jazz music? It's just so bizarre that people were that upset by jazz music. Once again, just another story of white people being shitty. The fucking end. Welcome to dark history, okay? Look, Billie was a national icon. And the creators of jazz music, there are so many who never get credit for what they do. I mean, the blues community too, right?
Okay, Big Mama Thornton. She was like the first queen of like blues music. Elvis took her songs. I mean, don't get me started, bitch. Do not get me fucking started. Okay, while I close my book, here I go. Closing my book.
Okay, so our takeaway here, I'm not sure. Well, yes, I am. Because our takeaway from the expert, this is like an inspiring conclusion from the expert we talked to about today's story. Much of what made jazz scandalous was that it was a form of performance that disregarded race from the outset at a time when racial segregation was deeply entrenched.
A lot of the very early jazz musicians were Black, Jewish, Italian, and so on, and they mixed freely on the stage as well as on the dance floor. When doing so was enough to just get you arrested.
So as the jazz spread among young people in popularity, they followed suit. I mean, jazz clubs were places where color didn't matter. It's like what mattered was whether you could dance or not, you know, or whether you could blow your instrument with soul. Like those kinds of performances and attitudes directly undermined racial segregation, which was both written in the laws and enforced by social practice. Ooh, spicy. Spicy.
Well, everyone, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. That was a roller coaster. Don't forget to play some jazz music and dance a little risque.
Don't be afraid to ask questions or just be a curious cat, you know, because it kind of leads you into learning about our history, where things came from and finding the truth. I'd love to hear your reactions to the story. So make sure to use the hashtag dark history over on social media so I can follow along. Join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and catch Murder, Mystery and Makeup, which drops on Monday.
I hope you have a great week and you make good choices and I'll be seeing you guys later. Dark History is an Audioboom original.
This podcast is executive produced by Bailey Sarian, Kim Jacobs, Dunia McNeely from 3Arts, Ed Simpson, and Claire Turner from Wheelhouse DNA. Produced by Lexi Kiven. Research provided by Ramona Kivett. Writers Jed Bookout, Michael Oberst, Joey Scavuzzo, Kim Yageed, and me, Bailey Sarian. Special thank you to our historical consultant, Eduardo Pagan. And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian.
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