Chasin’ The Bird The Great Migration, Urbanization, prohibitions and the birthing of Jazz Music

Written by Will Rowe

Hist 710

Dr. Tammy Ingram

11/20/21

On a small dark stage in a dimly lit room, a man stands drenched in sweat roaring into a tenor saxophone. It’s 2AM. Besides him, a figure lurches into a driving solo on the piano, then comes the crash crash crash of the hi-top drums, and suddenly the beautiful “bird” is heard soaring over the other instruments while the bass player carefully charts the time. The audience is slightly intoxicated, rowdy, and some are high on recreational street drugs. Cigarette smoke and the smell of stale whiskey fill the room. The year is 1945. The place is the New York City town hall. The man behind the saxophone is twenty-four-year-old Charlie Parker, one of the most brilliant improvisation artists in the jazz business. Parker's band is in high demand, and they often play night after night. Sometimes from 9 PM to 5AM.[1] Throngs of jazz lovers flock to -seedy- nightclubs run by mafiosos and members of other predominately white fringe criminal groups. These jazz fans are a heterogeneous mixture of Black and white, Americans who have all come to witness a living legend (perform).[2]

These music lovers have been transported into a deviant subculture, one which takes them deep inside of a shadowy underbelly self-contained within growing city metropolises like New York City. Vices ranging from gambling, prostitutes, strippers, and drugs like whiskey, tobacco, caffeine, cocaine, benzedrine, cannabis, and heroin permeate the night club scene.[3] Miles Davis describes hearing Parker’s band in 1944 at the tender age of 18 as the greatest moment in his life outside of sex. Davis states that this moment signified an arrival “Man, that shit was all up in my body. Music all up in my body, and that’s what I wanted to hear. The way that band was playing music—that was all I wanted to hear”.[4] In the mid-1940s the level of autonomy and personal freedom jazz musicians earned through their performances could be lost on no Black American. Jazz musicians occasionally refused to walk through the back “colored” entrance walking through the forbidden “whites only” gate and for a moment transcending their oppressed reality.[5] The “arrival” witnesses Davis relocating to New York after discovering the joys spawned on stage through collective acts of improvisation. The creation of the jazz genre restored the voice of Black Americans, after the systematic silencing of nearly two and a half centuries of slavery and the implantation of oppressive Jim Crow laws in the post-civil war South. Each instrument served as a unique voice/comment/utterance in what sometimes formed round-robin conversations, occasionally harkening back to the call and response of African music with horns and other instruments taking turns harping on the same musical motifs.[6]

Parker and many in his band are raging drug addicts known to consume all of the above-listed substances in succession. Parker is a full-blown polysubstance addict whose first exposure to heroin took place in Kansas City in 1937.[7] It is reported that occasionally he passes out before performances only to tweak his drug cocktail and gracefully walk out on the stage. Many are calling him an overhyped junkie. Parker and his band members live within a total reality of racial hostility, and nowhere is this more evident than when on tour in the Jim Crow south. A place many Black Americans have recently fled in a process known as the Great Migration. This massive movement witnessed large numbers of Black Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South and relocating to urban city centers like New York City.[8] This process began during the Civil War but peaked between the end of World War I and the start of the Vietnam War. At least six million people relocated to cities like Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, and New York City.

The birth of genre

The book Steel Drivin’ Man by Scott Nelson analyzes the cultural influence achieved by the most researched folk song in the world, “The ballad of John Henry”. Like jazz, this song exists in a multidimensional space, deemed one of the first songs in the genre known as “the blues”, one of the first country songs, and a folk song. This musical trifecta mirrors the rich swath of Americana that merges to form jazz music. This song was so culturally influential to members of divergent working class Black communities that it was recorded over 200 times.[9]

The lyrics of this popular folk song center around a Black man named John Henry working on a railroad, a scene which instills desires for the young Black schoolchildren who hear the song to learn Black American history for themselves. The method Scott Nelson employed to analyze the cultural role of this song serves as the framework for this paper’s analysis of the effects a live jazz performance had on its heterogeneous audiences. The experience of listening to jazz records mirrored the same kind of cultural response Black American’s achieved listening to live jazz. In an interview conducted in 2005 for Kenny Barron’s entrance into the American Jazz Hall of Fame. Kenny Barron, a famous piano player, discusses the entrancing effects of discovering an extensive jazz record collection and the influence this music had on him as a teenager, instilling dreams of becoming a musician.[10] The effect of jazz music on the Black listener like “the ballad of john henry” also compelled many to learn. Frequently audience members became so enthralled with performances that they would hang around these musicians and perhaps begin partaking in the use of illicit recreational substances and learn how to play an instrument.

These individual players forged a new genre of music, fusing the disparate genres of spirituals, ragtime, and blues into a musical amalgamation known as jazz. Jazz music borrowed the oppressed energy of blues as well as the musical structure of the 12 bars.[11] Jazz music took a new direction, however, and introduced a fuller sound with lots of musical flair to the oppressive air lifted from the tradition of blues that developed around the end of slavery in the 1860’s. The uplifting spin in jazz came from the influence of African American spirituals, a genre that also developed after the end of slavery, with the first spirituals dated to 1867.[12] Ragtime had the top spot on the American music scene during the years 1899-1917. The genre is marked by its syncopated rhythms that are a common trope in jazz music. Jazz spawned out of the exact same taverns as ragtime in New Orleans.[13] The influence of ragtime is particularly present in the playing of the piano. Artists like Jelly Roll Morton were adept at both stylings and wrote music in both genres.[14]

The busy eclectic sounds of jazz were concocted through diverse experiences encountered in the relocation to cities such as Chicago and New York. Many of jazz music’s greats first took drugs upon their introduction to the big city.[15] These drugs did not move exclusively through the channels of musicians but were linked more to the setting of urbanization and an influx of immigrants from all over the world. These cities were where Black Americans came into increasing contact with a new world, one of technological advancement, intoxication, and a slightly more prominent aura of equality.[16] This sense of “spatial diversity” experienced in the daily lives of musicians shaped the sounds they would create. These people no longer lived predominately on rural countryside’s or farms. Instead, they were now moving about constantly on novel forms of public transportation inhabiting a fresh world of unheard-of socio and cultural expansion. The interactions happening in downtown city centers, sculpted the nature of jazz’s musical genius through the musician’s absorption of diversity. This diversity could ultimately be heard playing out in the delicate sounds of horns, complex piano melodies, swinging bass lines, and crashing cymbals and hi-tops zooming out of these cities' increasingly ethnically diverse nightclubs.

Urban Influences

This influx of Black Americans to new urban sprawls created new zones of spatiality where Blacks interacted with American society to a new degree. These cities bred live entertainment, where nightclubs sported jazz performances, and offered a host of other “risqué” sights, sounds, and activities. These other sights and sounds on display in the jazz club are not without their influence on the developing jazz subculture. In Howard Becker’s article “Chicago, Jazz, and Marijuana” he states the enjoyment found in the freedom of moving around the city contrasted starkly with the confinement experienced living on rural sharecropper land and in Jim Crow towns and cities. This sense of revelry and freedom made its way into the music. The sexual energy of the sight of strippers, prostitution, the drunkenness, the stimulation, the fights all shaped the contours of the jazz sound.[17] The story of the sound of jazz is the story of diversity, diversity in city scenery, architecture, religious expression, ethnicities, cuisine, and technology.[18] The Avant-Garde artists promulgating the genre were men and women whose art challenged the structure of the white supremacist American majority.

Some scholars like Louis Wirth's famous article “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” have linked the process of urbanization to introducing doom and gloom upon the lives of the men and women who participated in the great migration and relocated to these rapidly developing cities.[19] The sense one gathers of the effects of city life on the personality of jazz and jazz musicians from reading autobiographies, listening to interviews, and watching documentaries is of shock and awe, proceeded by participation in city life rather than withdrawal and depression.[20] An air of camaraderie followed these great migrants into their new communities, which were far less miserable than their inhabitations on plantations and sharecropper land. Jazz musicians quickly began to refer to one another as “man” in an attempt to throw off the long-held societal label of boy. The moniker boy was used by plantation workers and slave owners to culturally reinforce the base position the slave and the Black American filled in American society.[21] This cultural shift in linguistics indicates a feeling of social uplift associated with one’s participation in the jazz scene. These feelings of upliftment occurred despite the financial difficulties that even the greats encountered as a) they were not paid well despite their fame, and b) large numbers were occasionally heavily addicted to drugs. There was certainly an air of autonomy achieved through participation in the jazz scene.

Kind of Blue

The lives of jazz musicians were brutally intensive. These men and women spent their lives on the road living as American vampires. Jazz musicians woke up after the clock spelled the end of the normal 8-hour workday. Their shift work occurred so late that in order to perform in the evening they slept all day. These musicians then woke up with various concoctions of stimulants, balanced out with the appropriate amount of alcohol or downers consumed throughout the night. The combination of grueling touring schedules paired with heavy drug use enabled many jazz musicians to adapt to their positions. The drugs were needed to maintain baseline and appear to not have been indulged in the same hedonistic manner as rockstars, comedians, and other countercultural icons of the 1970s. One clear marker for this is the lack of a rash of overdoses on the jazz scene. Charlie Parker died from his drug use, and other musicians did too, and many likely cut years off their life through hard drug use, but who could say that other aspects of the lifestyle were not equally responsible. Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Billie Holiday all experienced humiliation at the hands of the police. Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis were both beaten by police in incidents of police brutality.[22]

Police brutality is an aspect of cultural racism that reinforces the internalized racism that American Blacks feel as members of the under caste of society. In Monnica Williams groundbreaking 2019 book Eliminating Race Based Mental Health Disparities: Promoting equity and Culturally Responsive Care Across Settings the authors state that “Racism, in all its forms, constitutes a significant risk to the mental health of people of color in the United States”. American racism of the 1920’s, 30s’, 40’s, and 50’s was of an even more pervasive and damaging varietal. The marginal advantages provided through the passing of the civil rights era amendments of 1954-1968 were yet to provide improvement in the lives of Blacks.

Thelonious Monk born in 1917 as the Great Migration entered full swing suffered a mental breakdown after poor treatment at the hands of the police. In 1958 Monk and a co musician were stopped and illegally searched. The case was dropped due to illegal search and seizure, but the police beat Monk with a nightstick. During the 1970’s Monk seldom performed. Near the end of his life, he was diagnosed as bipolar. A disorder that causes the cycling between manic and depressive episodes.[23] Monk’s mental health ailment worsened after incidents with the police. Monk spent time in hospitals where staff treated him with the anti-psychotic Thorazine in an attempt to cure his mental health ailment.[24]

Comfortably Numb

African Americans historically had been viewed as “cocaine fiends” and drug addicts that were incapable of handling intoxication. This reputation penetrated deep within the concentric rings of the jazz underworld. Scores of musicians from Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis were arrested for possession of illicit narcotics. Occasionally their cabaret licenses were revoked in attempts at hindering their careers and silencing culturally influential Blacks by connecting jazz with substance use and penalizing that substance usage heavily. This served as the way for the white majority to attempt to minimize the magnitude of jazz’s influence on global culture. Fortunately for lovers of music, these efforts at policing artists like Louis Armstrong, Billy Holiday, and Miles Davis failed miserably. Louis Armstrong’s popularity allowed him to be released from jail and perform for radio and tv shows after his arrest and detainment for the possession of cannabis.[25] The same is true for Billie Holiday and arrests for heroin. This scene mirrors our modern times where rappers like Kodak Black are arrested for sexual misconduct, guns, and drugs, placed on probation, and then sent to court-ordered rehabs. Upon request in 2019, Kodak Black’s trial judge granted him the privilege of performing at a music festival.[26]

Cocaine and opium were made federally illegal by the Harrison Act of 1914, which came from lawmakers in New York, who specifically outlawed the sale of coca and opium in the United States. The demonization campaign against cannabis began in 1937 with the passage of the marijuana tax act by Harry Anslinger through the linkage of Mexican immigrants with smoking the plant.[27] Anslinger served as the first commissioner of the FBI, believing that musicians were tethered with cannabis use, as evidenced by his infamous FBI musician’s folder.[28] The tip of follow the jazz musicians that the police followed up on frequently, led to certain cities being annexed from the jazz tour loop because they were either known for not having drugs or because of fears of the police. The campaigns that outlaw cocaine specifically reference fears that harken back to the days of slavery and the constant accusation of Black men raping white women. This historical fear surrounding miscegenation makes little practical sense when presented with the traditional reality of white plantation workers sexually exploiting Black women and frequently producing offspring. This crusade essentially was nothing more than a witch hunt as there was no real identifiable problem with “cocaine crazed” Black Americans attacking white women.[29] In America opium first became framed as a major problem within the “outgroup” of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco during the mid-19th century. The drug was everywhere and in everything from soothing syrups for children’s teeth, cough suppressants, and as a remedy for colds.[30]

Before long, jazz musicians became associated with using cannabis, cocaine, benzedrine, and eventually heroin. The insider knowledge within the jazz community was that consuming cannabis could vamp up your live performance. Cocaine and benzedrine could give one the energy to play all night, and heroin could sooth whatever ailed you. Those who consumed cannabis in the jazz world were known as “vipers”. These “vipers” congregated at tea pads where cannabis could be procured and smoked if one knew the right person.[31] Musical aptitude tests document that cannabis could have potentially lowered one’s technical skill when measured traditionally. However, it is anecdotally referenced as improving the type of playing associated with improvisation. Jazz musicians believed this and recognized that even if one player was high, it could change the entire musical arrangement. They also believed that if you were a heroin user, you had to use heroin before you played. This is likely a fact as heroin users suffer from withdrawal and would not be able to perform unless slightly intoxicated; otherwise, they would be “dope sick”.

Heroin use exploded on the jazz scene after World War two.[32] In the insider jazz circle, heroin was hip and seen as capable of making one “play like the bird” despite Charlie Parker’s dual reputation for inability to perform. Illustrating the darker side of heroin use and the associated dangers with addiction. Many in the jazz world deem heroin a side hobby to playing music, as cited above over 53% surveyed in New York during the 1950s had tried the drug.[33] This demonstrates the staying power of the substance within the tight closely knit music scene. Musicians were often turned on to heroin by other musicians, although even Charlie Parker decried its usage to Miles Davis. This incident of a failed attempt at dissuasion, highlights that even legendary addicts were aware refraining from use was better than abuse.[34]

Jazz musicians reported that consuming cannabis allowed them to play for longer periods of time, reducing their pain and providing extensive sensory stimulation. In one autobiography, the bandleader states that the group would partake in the smoking of a reefer during the set break. The effects of the drug so enlivened the performances that everyone in the room “felt” the vibe.[35] The formal federal prohibition of cannabis took place in 1937 but by 1933 twenty-nine states had some form of local legislation in place.[36] During that same decade the FBI had a file dedicated to the problem of musicians and their cannabis consumption. To Anslinger, the dangers of cannabis were entwined with this new devil music. He saw the problem as growing and not just among musicians but their young fans utilizing the plant as a “stimulant for their nerves”. Frequently during this era, cannabis was referenced for its stimulating effects and not as a relaxant. This particular description of the plant as “stimulant for the nerves” of the user seems to be referencing a potential state of relaxation derived from use.[37] This depiction resembles contemporary connotations surrounding the effects of cannabis.

The Savoy Ballroom’s doors opened to the hip residents of Harlem in Manhattan, New York City, on March 12, 1926. This nightclub served as a hotbed for the emerging jazz scene for over 30 years and a popular location where one could smoke cannabis in a semi-public manner. The bathrooms were known to be filled with individuals chasing a quick reefer until 1940, three years after the official federal prohibition of cannabis and the introduction of bouncers to the nightclub scene. These bouncers were attempting to stop the blatant consumption of cannabis and the excessive private consumption of booze occurring around the toilet stalls. This enforcement of federal laws onsite in what some deemed a sacred space of debauchery, must have startled the jazzmen some of whom had been smoking cannabis since the mid 1890’s under the radar.

Heroin must be the drug that provided the most solace from the lasting intergenerational trauma associated with slavery and any emotional scarring that could be associated with the departure from the Jim Crow south. In modern America, many Black Americans grow up hearing stories about family members persecuted by whites for x, y, and z. Stories surrounding lynchings and other malpractices perpetrated by the white majority instill trauma, anger, and fear into the minds of Black Americans in American society. These memories can invade the psyche of a Black American even if they have never met the family member who suffered.[38] One could even argue the circulation of stories in communities unrelated to one’s own family would have this same effect on Black Americans. A jazz musician would have likely drudged up this intergenerational trauma on tour in the Jim Crow south. These individuals faced humiliation, witnessing the separation of the races and the forbidding of Blacks in attendance to dance.[39]

Ultimately the sounds of jazz can be interpreted as representative of the dynamic progression of urbanization in American cities and the success of these great migrants in relocating from the Jim Crow south. This is particularly evident in the experimental and erratic rhythms of the bebop era, a genre of jazz associated with the usage of cocaine, heroin, and cannabis. This genre began in the early 1940s. The founding fathers of this genre include Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane.[40][41][42] All these men used cocaine when performing and all of them were at times addicted to heroin except for Dizzy.[43]

The Kings of Cool

The 1958 song “Dr. Jekyll” on Miles Davis’s album Milestones featuring John Coltrane creates a whirlwind of sound where saxophone and trumpet collide as drums set the pace -fast- fusing the disparate melody together. Piano lines cut through the static, providing the listener with a sense of disjointed harmony that falls in and out of place, making space sonically for the bass. The modern listener can imagine these musicians felt a disjointed sense of harmony through their formation of misfit bonds over drug use and their addictions, as well as through the process of transcending their marginalized status collectively on stage. This resolve of abrasive melodies in jazz music through instrumental harmony could serve as the melodic representation of the Black Americans’ story of struggle to success. This effect can sometimes be heard in the changing of songs, that switch back and forth between styles like bebop and post-bop. The sound of post-bob is gentler and less wild, easier to groove to. The popular style before bebop was swing jazz, a variety known for its danceability. This transition in style can be heard in the change of tracks between Dr. Jekyll and Sid’s Ahead. Such stark contrast in sound would have no doubt stood out to the listener. This thematic shift musically could symbolize a process of assimilation, with the more orderly sound of the second track providing the listener with a lived-in feel. These melodic transitions could also represent the highs and lows of an individual’s experience with drugs, an effect that could have unconsciously made its way into the music. Drugs, particularly stimulants, influenced the pace of the music and its erratic arrangements.

The symbolic scuffling of Black America immortalized on wax in the form of jazz records, does not seem to have been lost on the white majority. From its onset, jazz was demonized by the media and portrayed as the devil’s music. The New York Times and women’s groups made up two of the prominent opponents of jazz.[44] In 1920 with the advent of prohibition and the ban on alcohol sales, the deviant nature of jazz grew. A group known as the general federation of women’s clubs launched their crusade against jazz in 1921.[45] However, these groups had been opposed to jazz before prohibition as well. The New York Times and these new women’s movements weren’t necessarily opposed to jazz because of any association with drug use, they were opposed to jazz because of the music’s demoralizing effect on the listener, as in the heinous influence a Black man could have on a white woman. This “dangerous affect” happened often, as evidenced by the large numbers of jazz men who married white women. Charlie Parker married a white woman, Miles Davis dated a white Frenchwoman. Amiri Baraka married a white woman, and Sammy Davis Jr. married a white woman. Louis Armstrong on the other hand had four wives, and all of them were Black.[46] The argument between these two extended to a discussion of their preferences in women and how the different acts portrayed themselves on stage. Miles Davis gave Louis Armstrong shit for putting on a show for whites, and Armstrong gave bebop grief in general, labeling the genre a fad. There was even a public spat between bebop and Louis Armstrong’s style of Dixieland swing jazz. When speaking about Armstrong’s form of jazz, the drummer Chico Hamilton stated that Armstrong could “dance” all around one note until he “swung a hole in your head”.[47] Bebop on the other hand comprised of complex arrangements with lots of movement.

Bebop attracted the white guys looking to party more than any other jazz genre, these individuals were known as the beats. The beats loved art, coffee, jazz, and drugs. Famous beats include Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, both notoriously associated with drugs, specifically amphetamines and in the case of Ginsberg, psychedelics.[48] Jack Kerouac wrote his tour de force On the Road while on a Benzedrine bender. Benzedrine was more effective than cocaine as its effects last a lot longer, making this a drug of choice on the jazz circuit. Jazz musicians would break open Benzedrine inhalers and drop the goods into their coffee, receiving a double dose of stimulation.[49] Ginsberg’s most famous poem howl legend has it was influenced by a mescaline experience. There is not documentation of a crossover between the appearance of new psychedelic substances indulged in by the white beats and jazz musicians, but as peyote was sold in the 1950’s in New York City “legally” it is not completely outside the realm of possibility.[50]

On The Corner

Both the prohibition of alcohol and cannabis greatly impacted the developing jazz scene and its growing seedy reputation. The distribution of alcohol occurred on site at jazz clubs as these spots were during the dry years of 1920-1933 speakeasy venues. The distribution of cannabis normally occurred offsite in separate locations known as tea pads.[51] The average white jazz fan would not have had as easy a time procuring cannabis as they would alcohol. To gain entrance to a site where cannabis would be smoked or sold, it was not always as easy as the movie Reefer Madness made it look. The cannabis dealer worked through their own “outgroups” and if a white jazz fan wanted to buy some grass, they normally had to have an in through a Black user.[52]

Obviously, there are exceptions to this, and Mezz Mezzro is a big one, as his in status as a jazz musician allowed him to transcend the reverse race barrier as a white Jewish man in hip Harlem.[53] The cannabis came from Mexico and was of a very poor wildly grown and harvested varietal. Nonetheless, this “ditch weed” was finding a consumer base. By 1938 New York City had a lively cosmopolitan cannabis scene. The scene comprised of a racially heterogeneous mixture of white and Black jazz musicians, Latinx individuals, and working-class young Jewish men who occasionally frequented jazz clubs in search of cannabis.[54] A late 1950s interview conducted with 357 musicians found that 82% of the jazzmen in the sample had tried cannabis at least once, 54% were occasional users, and 23% were regular users. In addition, over half (53%) had tried heroin, 24% used the drug occasionally, and 16% used it regularly.[55] Meaning on the average jazz stage during the 1950s, a ¼ of the musicians were high on either cannabis, heroin, and probably more were on Benzedrine.

Routine maintenance drug use by jazz musicians led to their falling victim to the purview of the police. Their existence in the jazz world had extended them an air of autonomy, but their usage of drugs recast the shadow of racist oppression on them. Jazz musicians were victim to discriminatory arrests, police beatings, and bad record deals. Some musicians like Billie Holiday made a good living from records and live performances, but many did not. The stripping of cabaret licenses like in the case of Thelonious Monk, cost musicians their livelihood.

From its onset the demonization campaign against cannabis failed with most jazzmen. Within the world of jazz, drug users already differentiated substances from one another, placing cannabis in a category of “soft drugs” and finding the moniker of “narcotic” unfit to refer to the intoxicating herb.[56] Jazzmen like Dizzy Gillespie lumped cocaine with marijuana and alcohol with heroin. Perhaps the cocaine of the day contained less adulterants or it was of a lesser concentration, as the drug is commonly associated but not always with addiction in its modern context. When referencing cocaine Dizzy stated, “I did that too; but I never had any desire to use hard drugs, a drug that would make you a slave.”[57] Dizzy contextualizes this statement by providing the example that once he was sold heroin instead of cocaine in an incident that induced vomiting. He said about the event that he would have beat the seller within an inch of their life if he could have only found this person. Evidently, the incidents experienced on the road with Parker shaped Dizzy’s stance on “the horse”. After witnessing the drug usher, the collapse of his first successful group, destroying his reputation in the process, it is no wonder he took heroin use seriously. This association of heroin use with turning one into a metaphorical “slave” is striking in that many became ensnared in this novel from of slavery after WWII. Cannabis use by jazz musicians became socially acceptable to the point that it spilled over into the larger white world.[58] Substances that caused the user to experience physical withdrawals after consuming consecutive doses ie. pills and heroin existed further in shadow than cannabis.[59]

The “legendary” figure most associated with the distribution of cannabis in Harlem, was the white Jewish man Mezz Mezzrow. Mezz’s autobiography tells the story of his life as a white jazz player who married a Black woman and effectively was seen as equal in hipness to Black players, is documented in several popular books and articles on the story of the enmeshment of drugs and jazz.[60] Mezz sold grass to Louis Armstrong and a number of other prominent musicians. There is even a score of songs referencing Mezz as having the most potent grass in all of Harlem.[61] The legendary status of a white “crime lord” existing in what was predominantly deemed a Black criminal space by the government is peculiar.

Why weren’t any Black dealers heralded in the same manner as Mezz? Perhaps because there was a breadth of individuals that catered to the market of friends of friends. Tea pads occasionally cropped up only long enough for the pad’s operators to eke out enough money to pay their rent. In the 1920’s and 1930’s a pound of cannabis on the open market cost 37 cents. The going rate for 3 joints ranged anywhere from 25 cents to 50 cents.[62] If one lb yielded 900 half gram joints, the seller would gross $75 to $150. This is an extraordinary markup. The introduction of the marijuana tax act of 1937, called for the exorbitant tax of $100 an ounce, universally no Americans of any race would have been able to afford this tax including cannabis dealers. The goal was clearly one of eliminating use as is well documented.[63]

Dizzy first smoked cannabis in 1937 upon moving to NYC. This is the same year as the passage of the marijuana tax act, a fact which did not matter in the slightest to Dizzy and his accomplice. Dizzy’s statement about trying cannabis was “When I came to New York, in 1937, I didn’t drink nor smoke marijuana. “You gonna be a square, muthafucka!” Charlie Shavers said and turned me on to smoking pot.”[64] Charlie Shavers was a fellow trumpeter. This scene takes place one year after the release of the propaganda film Reefer Madness, which created the popular stereotype of the day, through its portrayal of the cannabis user as some insane, maniacal monster. Clearly, there were no dangers associated with cannabis presented to Dizzy, no talk of potential arrest, and none of the harms from the plant. Some jazzmen did seem to be influenced by the prominence of propaganda, as popular attitudes ranged from the use of the plant being benign to the plant could make one go crazy. This attitude seems to be a craft of prohibition and the propaganda machine and not necessarily developed through personal experience with cannabis psychosis.

What exactly did heroin do for the jazzman? Did the slowdown of mental faculties provide the user with some sense of ease surrounding their lot in life? What about all the white jazzmen that also acquired heroin habits? Were their habits developed in attempts to fit in, or did the sharp divide between the equal playing field of the jazz stage and American city streets strike these players in the same manner as the Black members of their cohort? The popular white saxophone player Art Pepper has an entire chapter dedicated to heroin in his autobiography. This chapter discusses sexual escapades fueled by pills and booze that induce states of horror in the man touring during the 1940’s and 50’s as his life as a jazz performer contrasted so starkly with his Christian upbringing. He describes his disturbing life as a peeping tom masturbating to strangers in windows, attributing his heroin addiction with killing this negative view of his bad habits. Heroin allowed him to accept himself binge drinker, benny popper, sex addict, doper, and all.[65] This description of heroin, although circulating a white user, is noteworthy in its allowance for the user to accept his role as a vampiric king of American city nightlife.

Musical protest, and policing

Many jazz musicians with or without hard drug habits achieved a level of celebrity through their musicality that presented a world of new opportunities to them. For the jazz singer Billie Holiday, her stardom granted her access to an extraordinary amount of wealth (that she did not save), but her new status as a household name allowed her to verbally critique the Jim Crow south. Through her performances of the song “strange fruit”, written by Abel Meeropol in 1937, Billie Holiday critiqued the gruesome practice of lynching night after night on stage. The lines “Pastoral scene of the gallant south/ The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth/ Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh/ Then the sudden smell of burning flesh” would trigger emotional surges in the brains of almost any Black audience member. The lyrics of this song would have certainly elicited strong responses from white audience members, ranging from sadness to anger.

The regular performance of this number did provoke the authorities, as the FBI routinely busted Holiday for her heroin habit, using these incidents to attempt the prevention of her performances. This was semi successful as the revoke of her cabaret card saw her limited in her ability to perform in select venues, but she was still requested to perform for televised events and at some exclusive shows.[66] On February 3rd, 1956, Billie Holiday and her husband were arrested in a raid. The pair were arrested on narcotics charges, and each were held on $7,500 bail. This sum is high and would have been completely unaffordable for the average Black American, but perhaps not for Billie Holiday given her connections.[67] During the 1940’s her records sold extraordinarily well, and she earned upwards of $50,000 to 60,000 a year.[68] Holiday was 46 years old in 1956, and she would die 3 years later in 1959.

Holiday had been singing her “protest” anthem since 1939. The manner in which white heroin addicted celebrities were treated presents a stark division between the treatment of Holiday and her white peers like Judy Garland. Harry Anslinger was declaring that the problem of dangerous drugs was among Blacks, “the increase [in drug addiction] is practically 100% among Negro people,”.[69] When looking at the case of Judy Garland a famous white performer popularly linked to her drug addiction, this is obviously not true. The clear difference here is that the white addict is considered treatable, but the Black addict is not. Garland lost contract after contract for her problems with heroin and prescription pills but there was always someone in the industry willing to pay her to be in a film or two.[70] The divide between white and Black drug users is arbitrary. When looking at the case of jazz musicians, whites like Mezz used and sold cannabis. Art Pepper and many other white jazz players became addicted to heroin. The drugs were a part of the larger showbiz scene and did not discriminate based on a user's race.

Concentric Rings

Miles Davis started his musical career with Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane started his with Miles Davis. In each case, the scene's elder statesman served as the mentor for the younger jazzman, likely influencing the music and their personal habits. This parallel demonstrates the small inclusive in-group nature of jazz music, all three ultimately would use heroin. Miles’ “demons” first emerged in 1949 after touring France and being adored by all, including white women. The adoration of white women is a universal thread in the jazz world. Miles and other musicians experienced depression upon returning from European tours and serving as American cultural ambassadors, where these men felt they earned an amount of due respect. Instead, they were rewarded with the harsh jostling that was their welcome back to the USA.

John Coltrane’s entrance into the jazz world witnessed his pairing with Miles Davis in The Miles Davis Quintet in 1957. Coltrane drinks excessively and mainlines heroin, but unlike his comrade Miles, who has rows with his wife while intoxicated, no one complains about Coltrane’s altered states.[71] Indicating that the personalities behind the drug using jazz musician is not uniform. Coltrane is occasionally unreliable and appears disheveled, which presents a problem for Davis the hipster king. Coltrane and Davis not only mimicked Charlie Parker’s drug habits in an attempt to chase the bird, but they also mimed his musicality as did many other jazz musicians. When Coltrane quit drinking alcohol he reported that it greatly improved his playing. Alcohol and heroin intoxication changed a musical user’s energy and shaped the direction of the improvisation. Miles has the reputation of allowing everyone in the band to play an equal part and Coltrane sometimes even plays longer than invited “everyone in the band had their own voice”, and often this voice would have been intoxicated. When discussing his experience playing with the Miles Davis Quintet, Ron Carter, the bass player, breaks down the live development of the “integrity of a song”. He states that someone in the group always had to hold it all together given the level of “harmonic, rhythmic, and dynamic experimentation”.[72] The riffs of these individual players collide and build off one another, the pieces are seemingly capable of collapsing at any moment.

In 1964 after recording his album “A Love Supreme” which Carlos Santana refers to as “opening a vortex of possibilities” upon listening to the album, Coltrane promoted the album on tour.[73] In one memorable performance recorded in Seattle, the extended jams were potentially influenced by interaction with potent LSD from California. The flurry of noise the players present on this -live- album sonically resembles the Grateful Dead, although Coltrane’s band is arguably of greater skill. The drums are particularly chaotic as well as the additional percussive flair, no instrument is tame, and they are certainly speaking for themselves (Coltrane must have learned how to operate a band from miles). The instrumentation at times is frantic, and the horns sound as if they are a flurry of wails. The action behind producing this extensive sound gives the listener the impression this performance could have killed Coltrane and the other members of his band.

Coltrane rented a house in Washington state, in 1965, where he recorded the bizarre album “Om” featuring a single track that swarms the listeners ears for about 30 minutes. The track begins with messages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. New age spiritualism and esotericism fascinated Coltrane. There is further evidence for Coltrane’s pursuit of spiritualism in his albums titled “The Believer” “Meditations” and “First Meditations” released in 1964, 1966, and 1977. This example of Coltrane and potentially other members of his band ingesting LSD recording, writing, arranging, and performing demonstrates how music is shaped by spatiality and the particular space the music is created. This extends from the stage to the street. Heroin use rampant in the northeastern cities bled into the sonic texture of bebop jazz, or so many musicians claimed it did. LSD appears to have made its mark on jazz as well. Miles Davis’s experimental crossover album “Bitches Brew” from 1968 is another acid hinged masterpiece.[74] LSD was federally criminalized in 1968 after several years of clinical trials in the 1950’s followed by the circulation of the drug at counter-cultural events and on college campuses.[75] Acid’s penetration into the jazz world is not that surprising when one thinks about the fact that “the heads” of the Grateful Dead adored jazz and were known to perform routinely under the influence of LSD.[76] Perhaps this adoption of LSD into the repertoire of jazz represents a collision between countercultures and demonstrates how Miles Davis remained the king of cool for over 20+years.

Bill Clinton describes one of John Coltrane’s songs “Alabama” as “a masterful elegy” against the civil rights crimes occurring in 1950’s Alabama. The melody developed from a Martin Luther King Jr. speech demonstrates how jazzmen always coded messages into their music. These men were not just blowing air into horns. Every breath had intention. Carlos Santana says “you hear all that struggle, but you also hear progress” meaning even in a directly political song released in the tumultuous year of 1964, there is still progress to be commented on.[77] The title track to A Love Supreme is the only song released during Coltrane’s life to feature his voice. He bellows the words “A Love Supreme” in a deep bass voice, and the discerned ear can hear these words echo over and over in the tones of the saxophone and the accompanying instruments. This example demonstrates the artistry and political jabbing’s of one of jazz music’s greats. If the vocal of “A Love Supreme” can be heard in the musical notes, then one can attempt to decode the messages buried within thousands of jazz songs produced by oppressed -Black- jazz musicians. Many of their white musical comrades borrowed their flair from the Blacks, perhaps this is why their stylings were “cleaner”. When discussing saxophone playing in jazz music when there are words, Jimmy Heath a flute and saxophone player states that he knew performers who refused to play on a song without knowing the words. This indicates jazz horns are talking, and all one must do is listen.[78]

Today in 2021, music composed by Black Americans still falls victim to the purview of the critical eye of the media and the police. Rap music has taken the place of jazz as the subversive genre of the drug user. Rap artists are frequently arrested on guns, drugs, and scandalous sexual misconduct charges, and the policing of rappers provides a mirror to the policing of jazz musicians. This is not to say that jazz music has escaped persecution. Modern jazz musicians are occasionally still harassed by the police. The themes of modern jazz even connect with the protest message of the 1940s and 1950s. The song “Ku Klux Police Department” by the trumpet player Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah immortalizes an incident where the police department in New Orleans harassed him.[79] This harkens back to works like Coltrane’s political number “Alabama”. The musical expression of jazz players allows them to have a loud voice, one that shouts challenges at oppression from the stage, radio waves, record players, and digital streaming services. Jazz music never succeeded in transcending its status as a marginalized form of entertainment as the art is inseparable from the individuals who meticulously designed it. The traumatic experiences of Black Americans triumphed through their musicality transformed the genre into one of America’s greatest cultural commodities.

1. “Immersing Deep Into Jazz--and Heroin.” PRWeb Newswire. 2010.

2. Schneider, Eric C. Smack : Heroin and the American City . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

3. Singer, Merrill, and Greg Mirhej. “High Notes: The Role of Drugs in the Making of Jazz.” Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 5, no. 4 (2006): 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1300/J233v05n04_01.

4. Spunt, Barry. Heroin and Music in New York City . First edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

5. Hanson, Bill. Life with Heroin : Voices from the Inner City . Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1985.

6. Russonello, Gini. “Jazz: The Story of the Great Migration Is Set to Song.” The New York Times. 2019.

7. JACK S. BLOCKER. A Little More Freedom: African Americans Enter the Urban Midwest, 1860–1930. Ohio State University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16b77k9.

8. Campbell, Marne L. “Composing Metropolis: New Approaches to African American Urbanization in the Late Twentieth century.(The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles)(L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present)(Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century)(Book Review).” Journal of Urban History. Sage Publications, Inc, 2009.

9. Kunnes, Richard. The American Heroin Empire; Power, Profits, and Politics. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973.

10. Muller, Thaddeus. “Chicago, Jazz and Marijuana: Howard Becker on Outsiders.” Symbolic Interaction 37, no. 4 (2014): 576–94. https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.119.

11. Haddix, Chuck. Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker. Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.5406/j.ctt3fh60s.

12. Campbell, Marne L. “Review Essay: Composing Metropolis: New Approaches to African American Urbanization in the Late Twentieth Century.” Journal of Urban History 35, no. 2 (2009): 306–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144208327359.

13. Ogren, Kathy J. The Jazz Revolution : Twenties America & the Meaning of Jazz . New York, New York ;: Oxford University Press, 1989.

14. Mezzrow, Mezz, and Bernard Wolfe. Really the Blues . First Citadel Underground ed. New York: Citadel Underground, 1990.(first published 1946)

15. Sloman, Larry. Reefer Madness : the History of Marijuana in America . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

16. Baldwin, Davarian L. Chicago’s New Negroes Modernity, the Great Migration, & Black Urban Life . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

17. Arora, Sabina G. The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance . First edition. New York, New York: Britannica Educational Publishing in association with Rosen Educational Services, 2016.

18. Becker, Howard Saul. Outsiders : Studies in the Sociology of Deviance . New York: Free Press, 1991.

19. Davis, M., & Troupe, Q. (2012). Miles: The autobiography. Amazon. Retrieved October 14, 2021.

20. Pepper, A., & Pepper, L. (1994). Straight life: The story of art pepper. Da Capo Press.

21. ggTorgoff, M. (2017). Bop apocalypse: Jazz, race, the beats, and Drugs. Da Capo Press.

22. Hari, J. (2016). Chasing the scream. Bloomsbury.

23. Winick, Charles. “The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians.” Social Problems (Berkeley, Calif.) 7, no. 3 (1959): 240–53. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.1959.7.3.03a00090.

24. Nelson, Scott (2006) Steel Drivin’ Man -John Henry- The Untold Story of an American Legend Otxford University Press. New York.

25. Gillespie, Dizzy with Al Frazer. (1979) To Be, or not To Bop University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis.

26. Williams, Monnica T., Daniel C. Rosen, Jonathan W. Kanter, and Patricia Arredondo. Eliminating Race-Based Mental Health Disparities : Promoting Equity and Culturally Responsive Care Across Settings . Oakland, CA: Context Press, an imprint of New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2019.

27. Vulliamy, Graham. Jazz & Blues . London ;: Routledge, 2016. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315624051.

28. Berendt, Joachim-Ernst, H. Bredigkeit, B. Bredigkeit, and Dan Morgenstern. The Jazz Book : from Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond . Completely rev. Westport, Conn: L. Hill, 1982.

29. “Morton, Jelly Roll.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc, 2020.

30. Gluck, Bob. “‘Bitches Brew,’ in the Studio and on the Road.” In The Miles Davis Lost Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles, 35–56. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226303390-004.

31. Edwards, Anne. Judy Garland a Biography . 1st Taylor Trade ed. London: Taylor Trade Pub., 2013.

32. Stein, Daniel. Music Is My Life: Louis Armstrong, Autobiography, and American Jazz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.2871999.

33. Gushee, Lawrence. “The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz.” Black Music Research Journal 22, no. 1 (2002): 151–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/1519947.

34. Wirth, Louis. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 1 (1938): 1–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2768119.

35. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders : DSM-5. 5th ed. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

36. Spillane, Joseph F. Cocaine : from Medical Marvel to Modern Menace in the United States, 1884-1920 . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

37. Higgins, Stephen T., and Jonathan L. Katz. Cocaine Abuse Behavior, Pharmacology, and Clinical Applications . San Diego: Academic Press, 1998.

38. McAllister, William B. “Harry Anslinger Saves the World: National Security Imperatives and the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.” The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 33, no. 1 (2019): 37–62. https://doi.org/10.1086/702692.

39. London, Jeffrey Matthew. How the Use of Marijuana Was Criminalized and Medicalized, 1906-2004 A Foucaultian History of Legislation in America. 1st ed. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.

40. Courtwright, David T. Dark Paradise a History of Opiate Addiction in America . Enl. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

41. Macy, Beth. Dopesick : Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America . First Back Bay paperback edition. New York, NY: Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company, 2019.

42. Schroeder-Lein, Glenna R. The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine . Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2008.

43. Morgan, H. Wayne. Drugs in America : a Social History, 1800-1980 . 1st ed. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1981.

44. Ebin, David. The Drug Experience; First Person Accounts of Addicts, Writers, Scientists and Others. New York: Orion Press, 1961.

45. Rohan, Rebecca Carey. Billie Holiday : Singer . New York, New York: Cavendish Square, 2017.

46. Stein, Daniel. Music Is My Life: Louis Armstrong, Autobiography, and American Jazz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.2871999.

47. Chase, L. C. “The Social Program of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs: One Index of Fifty Years of Progress.” Social Forces 1, no. 4 (1923): 465–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/3004968.

48. "ATTACKS IMMORAL ART.: DR. VAN DYKE ALSO TELLS EDUCATORS THAT DEMON INVENTED JAZZ." New York Times (1857-1922), Feb 28 1921, p. 10. ProQuest. Web. 22 Nov. 2021 .

49. Chilton, John. Billie’s Blues : the Billie Holiday Story, 1933-1959 . New York, New York: Da Capo, 1975.

50. Burks, A. (2018, May 22). Louis Armstrong, White Women, and Uncle Toms. Medium. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://medium.com/@ArnoldBurks/louis-armstrong-white-women-and-uncle-toms-916fd1981fad.

51. Jarenwattananon, P. (n.d.). From NPR Music, Two Jazz Performances That Wrestle With Race And Policing. NPR. Retrieved from Burks, A. (2018, May 22). Louis Armstrong, White Women, and Uncle Toms. Medium. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://medium.com/@ArnoldBurks/louis-armstrong-white-women-and-uncle-toms-916fd1981fad. .

52. Kelley, Robin D. G. Thelonious Monk : the Life and Times of an American Original . 1st Free Press hardcover ed. New York: Free Press, 2009.

53. Flowe, Douglas J. “Folklore, Urban Insurrection, and the Killing of the Black Hero in the Turn of the Century South.” The Mississippi Quarterly 67, no. 4 (2014): 581–604. https://doi.org/10.1353/mss.2014.0031.

Newspapers-

1. "BILLIE HOLIDAY HELD: NARCOTICS SQUAD SAYS SINGER HAD HEROIN IN HOSPITAL." New York Times (1923-), Jun 13 1959, p. 12. ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2021 .

2. "Night Club 'Dope' Ring Believed Smashed; Jazz Band Players among 24 Arrested." New York Times (1923-), Jul 10 1945, p. 13. ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2021 .

3. "TRUMPETER ARRESTED: CHET BAKER IS CHARGED WITH POSSESSING MARIJUANA." New York Times (1923-), Feb 21 1959, p. 24. ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2021 .

4. Advertisement. (1969, October 31). Crusader, XX (1), p. 3. Available from Readex: African American Newspapers: https://infoweb-newsbank-com.nuncio.cofc.edu/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12EEDB052B4D6360%40EANAAA-12F0C925BB3E6D78%402440526-12F0C3E984560410%402-13C7CB1A2C347432%40Advertisement. (this one says marijuana at 14 and musician at 17)

Interviews

1.Carter, R. (2011). Ron Carter. other. Retrieved from https://americanhistory.si.edu/smithsonian-jazz/collections-and-archives/smithsonian-jazz-oral-history-program.

2. Heath, J. (1996). Jimmy Heath. New York Public Library. other.

3. Hamilton, C. (1996). Louis Armstrong Jazz Oral History Project. other.

4. Barron, K. (2011). Smithsonian Jazz collection. other.

Documentaries

1. PBS. (2000). Gumbo: Ken Burns' jazz, part 1-9. Jazz. Retrieved 2021.

2. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool. (2019).

3. Billie. (2020).

4. Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary. (2016).

5. Eastwood, C. (n.d.). Thelonious Monk--straight, No Chaser.

Songs

1. Dr. Jeckyll by Miles Davis Quintet 1958

2. Alabama by John Coltrane 1963

3. A Love Supreme by John Coltrane 1964

4. Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday

[1] Winick, Charles. “The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians.” Social Problems (Berkeley, Calif.) 7, no. 3 (1959): 240–53.

[2] Haddix, Chuck. Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker. Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 2013

[3] Singer, Merrill, and Greg Mirhej. “High Notes: The Role of Drugs in the Making of Jazz.” Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 5, no. 4 (2006): 1–38.

[4] Davis, M., & Troupe, Q. (2012). Miles: The autobiography. Amazon. Retrieved October 14, 2021.

[5] PBS. (2000). Gumbo: Ken Burns' jazz, part 1-9. Jazz. Retrieved 2021.

[6] Gushee, Lawrence. “The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz.” Black Music Research Journal 22, no. 1 (2002): 151–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/1519947.

[7] Haddix, Chuck. Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker. Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 2013.

[8] JACK S. BLOCKER. A Little More Freedom: African Americans Enter the Urban Midwest, 1860–1930. Ohio State University Press, 2020.

[9] Nelson, Scott (2006) Steel Drivin’ Man -John Henry- The Untold Story of an American Legend Oxford University Press. New York.

[10] Barron, K. (2011). Smithsonian Jazz collection. other.

[11] Vulliamy, Graham. Jazz & Blues . London ;: Routledge, 2016. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315624051.

[12] Trice, Patricia Johnson. Choral Arrangements of the African-American Spirituals : Historical Overview and Annotated Listings . Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998.

[13] Berendt, Joachim-Ernst, H. Bredigkeit, B. Bredigkeit, and Dan Morgenstern. The Jazz Book : from Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond . Completely rev. Westport, Conn: L. Hill, 1982.

[14] “Morton, Jelly Roll.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc, 2020.

[15] Gillespie, Dizzy with Al Frazer. (1979) To Be, or not To Bop University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis:

[16] Gillespie, Dizzy with Al Frazer. (1979) To Be, or not To Bop University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis:

[17] Muller, Thaddeus. “Chicago, Jazz and Marijuana: Howard Becker on Outsiders.” Symbolic Interaction 37, no. 4 (2014): 576–94.

[18] Russonello, Gini. “Jazz: The Story of the Great Migration Is Set to Song.” The New York Times. 2019.

[19] Wirth, Louis. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 1 (1938): 1–24.

[20] PBS. (2000). Gumbo: Ken Burns' jazz, part 1-9. Jazz. Retrieved 2021.

[21] PBS. (2000). Gumbo: Ken Burns' jazz, part 1-9. Jazz. Retrieved 2021.

[22] Williams, Monnica T., Daniel C. Rosen, Jonathan W. Kanter, and Patricia Arredondo. Eliminating Race-Based Mental Health Disparities : Promoting Equity and Culturally Responsive Care Across Settings . Oakland, CA: Context Press, an imprint of New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2019.

[23] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders : DSM-5. 5th ed. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

[24] Eastwood, C. (n.d.). Thelonious Monk--straight, No Chaser.

[25] Stein, Daniel. Music Is My Life: Louis Armstrong, Autobiography, and American Jazz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.2871999.

[26] https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.65437/title.kodak-black-violated-probation-by-testing-positive-for-2-different-drugs-but-will-perform-at-rolling-loud-ny#signup

[27] McAllister, William B. “Harry Anslinger Saves the World: National Security Imperatives and the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.” The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 33, no. 1 (2019): 37–62.

[28] Sloman, Larry. Reefer Madness : the History of Marijuana in America . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

[29] Flowe, Douglas J. “Folklore, Urban Insurrection, and the Killing of the Black Hero in the Turn of the Century South.” The Mississippi Quarterly 67, no. 4 (2014): 581–604.

[30] Courtwright, David T. Dark Paradise a History of Opiate Addiction in America . Enl. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

[31] Sloman, Larry. Reefer Madness : the History of Marijuana in America . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

[32] Haddix, Chuck. Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker. Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 2013

[33] Singer, Merrill, and Greg Mirhej. “High Notes: The Role of Drugs in the Making of Jazz.” Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 5, no. 4 (2006): 1–38.

[34] Davis, M., & Troupe, Q. (2012). Miles: The autobiography. Amazon. Retrieved October 14, 2021.

[35] Singer, Merrill, and Greg Mirhej. “High Notes: The Role of Drugs in the Making of Jazz.” Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 5, no. 4 (2006): 1–38.

[36] London, Jeffrey Matthew. How the Use of Marijuana Was Criminalized and Medicalized, 1906-2004 A Foucaultian History of Legislation in America. 1st ed. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.

[37] Singer, Merrill, and Greg Mirhej. “High Notes: The Role of Drugs in the Making of Jazz.” Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 5, no. 4 (2006): 1–38.

[38] Sheryl Rich-Kern. “Intergenerational Trauma Complicates Healing After Loss for African Americans.” Business NH Magazine 38, no. 9 (2021): 48–51.

[39] PBS. (2000). Gumbo: Ken Burns' jazz, part 1-9. Jazz. Retrieved 2021.

[40] Davis, M., & Troupe, Q. (2012). Miles: The autobiography. Amazon. Retrieved October 14, 2021.

[41] Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary. (2016).

[42]PBS. (2000). Gumbo: Ken Burns' jazz, part 1-9. Jazz. Retrieved 2021.

[43] Gillespie, Dizzy with Al Frazer. (1979) To Be, or not To Bop University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis.

[44] "ATTACKS IMMORAL ART.: DR. VAN DYKE ALSO TELLS EDUCATORS THAT DEMON INVENTED JAZZ." New York Times (1857-1922), Feb 28 1921, p. 10. ProQuest. Web. 22 Nov. 2021 .

[45] Chase, L. C. “The Social Program of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs: One Index of Fifty Years of Progress.” Social Forces 1, no. 4 (1923): 465–69.

[46] Burks, A. (2018, May 22). Louis Armstrong, White Women, and Uncle Toms. Medium. Retrieved November 22, 2021

[47] Hamilton, C. (1996). Louis Armstrong Jazz Oral History Project. other.

[48] Ebin, David. The Drug Experience; First Person Accounts of Addicts, Writers, Scientists and Others. New York: Orion Press, 1961.

[49] PBS. (2000). Gumbo: Ken Burns' jazz, part 1-9. Jazz. Retrieved 2021.

[50] Jarnow, Jesse Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. Da Capo Press, 2016.

[51] Mezzrow, Mezz, and Bernard Wolfe. Really the Blues . First Citadel Underground ed. New York: Citadel Underground, 1990.(first published 1946)

[52] Becker, Howard Saul. Outsiders : Studies in the Sociology of Deviance . New York: Free Press, 1991.

[53] Mezzrow, Mezz, and Bernard Wolfe. Really the Blues . First Citadel Underground ed. New York: Citadel Underground, 1990.(first published 1946)

[54] Sloman, Larry. Reefer Madness : the History of Marijuana in America . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

[55] Singer, Merrill, and Greg Mirhej. “High Notes: The Role of Drugs in the Making of Jazz.” Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 5, no. 4 (2006): 1–38.

[56] Winick, C. (1959). The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians. Social Problems, 7(3), 240–253.

[57] Gillespie, Dizzy with Al Frazer. (1979) To Be, or not To Bop University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis.

[58] Sloman, Larry. Reefer Madness : the History of Marijuana in America . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

[59] Winick, Charles. “The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians.” Social Problems (Berkeley, Calif.) 7, no. 3 (1959): 240–53.

[60] Mezzrow, Mezz, and Bernard Wolfe. Really the Blues . First Citadel Underground ed. New York: Citadel Underground, 1990.(first published 1946)

[61] Winick, Charles. “The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians.” Social Problems (Berkeley, Calif.) 7, no. 3 (1959): 240–53.

[62] Sloman, Larry. Reefer Madness : the History of Marijuana in America . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

[63] Sloman, Larry. Reefer Madness : the History of Marijuana in America . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

[64] Gillespie, Dizzy with Al Frazer. (1979) To Be, or not To Bop University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis.

[65] Pepper, A., & Pepper, L. (1994). Straight life: The story of art pepper. Da Capo Press.

[66] Rohan, Rebecca Carey. Billie Holiday : Singer . New York, New York: Cavendish Square, 2017.

[67] Billie. (2020).

[68] Chilton, John. Billie’s Blues : the Billie Holiday Story, 1933-1959 . New York, New York: Da Capo, 1975.

[69] Hari, J. (2016). Chasing the scream. Bloomsbury.

[70] Edwards, Anne. Judy Garland a Biography . 1st Taylor Trade ed. London: Taylor Trade Pub., 2013.

[71] Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary. (2016).

[72] Carter, R. (2011). Ron Carter. other. Retrieved from https://americanhistory.si.edu/smithsonian-jazz/collections-and-archives/smithsonian-jazz-oral-history-program.

[73] Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary. (2016).

[74] Gluck, Bob. “‘Bitches Brew,’ in the Studio and on the Road.” In The Miles Davis Lost Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles, 35–56. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226303390-004.

[75] Dyck, Erika. Psychedelic Psychiatry : LSD from Clinic to Campus . Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

[76] Jarnow, Jesse Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. Da Capo Press, 2016.

[77] Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary. (2016).

[78] Heath, J. (1996). Jimmy Heath. New York Public Library. other.

[79] Jarenwattananon, P. (n.d.). From NPR Music, Two Jazz Performances That Wrestle With Race And Policing. NPR. Retrieved from Burks, A. (2018, May 22).

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