The Raid at the Music Hall
A North Carolina man is sentenced to eighteen months in prison for running bot accounts against hundreds of thousands of machine made songs, and the government's own figures show him out-streaming Taylor Swift's whole catalogue in a single month. Today's record is Immanuel Wilkins live at the Village Vanguard, and The Bridge goes to Houston in 1955.
LioraA man used machines to write songs and bots to play them, and this week he was sentenced to eighteen months. Today's record is Immanuel Wilkins at the Vanguard. Later, Houston, 1955, and a vice squad in Ella Fitzgerald's dressing room. It's Thursday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Thursday, October 8th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: Michael Smith of Cornelius, North Carolina
LioraMichael Smith is fifty four, of Cornelius, North Carolina. On Tuesday the Justice Department said he has been sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
The Justice Department calls it its first criminally charged super intelligence assisted music streaming fraud. That is the subhead's phrase. The body of the same page says AI-generated.
From 2017 to 2024, in the government's telling, he opened thousands of fake accounts on Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music. Software made them play songs he owned, and he collected the royalties.
He needed songs, so he made them. Hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs.
LioraNow the number. In April of 2023, Taylor Swift's entire catalogue drew nine point three million family plan streams on YouTube Music. That same month, Smith's bots streamed his own machine made music eighty point nine million times.
He took in more than eight million dollars.
The release says royalties are paid out of a pool of funds, proportionately. So the fraud diverts funds from the musicians and songwriters whose songs real consumers legitimately streamed. Every working player is paid out of that same pool.
The United States Attorney, Jamie McDonald, says Smith "robbed millions in royalty payments from genuine artists and their fans."
Two. Listen to This: Immanuel Wilkins, twenty nine, is a new MacArthur fellow
LioraImmanuel Wilkins is twenty nine, an alto player and composer in Brooklyn, and a new MacArthur fellow. WBGO has the terms: eight hundred thousand dollars over five years, no strings.
The foundation's citation is one sentence. "Blending traditional jazz motifs with modern textures in works that reflect on the ongoing reverberations of historical events."
The foundation also walks his records in order, and the last is today's record. Blue Note's "Live At The Village Vanguard, Volume Three," out in May.
The tip is from Tina M. Campt's liner notes for Volume One. She calls the project "a bold endeavor to summon the Vanguard's sonic history and make it audible." So listen to the room, not just the horn.
One for the calendar. Joshua Redman's Sonny Rollins record lands on Blue Note November twentieth.
LioraNow go back seventy one years. On The Bridge: Houston, 1955. Norman Granz takes down the signs that split the Music Hall's restrooms by race, and between sets the vice squad bursts into Ella Fitzgerald's dressing room. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Houston, 1955. Norman Granz takes down the signs that split the Music Hall's restrooms by
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasHouston, Texas. Early October 1955. The Music Hall, downtown. Jazz at the Philharmonic is in town, the touring show of the promoter Norman Granz. On the bill are Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and the tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet.
Granz is Ella's manager, and his tours run on one rule: mixed seating, or no show. In his words, "You sit where I sit you. You don't want to sit next to a black, here's your money back."
In Houston he makes sure of it. Before the show, he takes down the signs that split the Music Hall's restrooms by race. He keeps tickets from being sold in blocks, so the crowd can't sort itself by race. By one count, about twenty-two hundred people.
Before the second set, the police will arrest five people from this show. One of them is Ella Fitzgerald.
LioraElla Fitzgerald? Arrested for what?
SilasGambling. It's the break between sets, backstage, in Ella's dressing room. Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet are shooting dice. Ella is drinking coffee with her assistant, Georgiana Henry. One account adds a piece of pie.
Plainclothes detectives from the vice squad burst in. They arrest the two men at the dice. They arrest Ella, and Georgiana Henry, and Norman Granz. Five people, all for gambling.
LioraWait. Ella wasn't even in the game.
SilasShe wasn't. The game itself was real, though. Gillespie and Jacquet really were shooting dice. For Jacquet, this is the city where he grew up.
Two Houston magazines report that Granz suspected worse, that the officers meant to plant drugs. One of them says he confronted an officer heading for the bathroom.
Why the vice squad came at all is the part in dispute. Granz believed the raid was aimed at his mixed audience. Houstonia magazine's own read is that the detectives "likely intended to embarrass Jacquet and the others." A JazzTimes review of Granz's biography calls the gambling charge "trumped-up," and the arrest "obviously carried out" to keep his concert from playing before an integrated crowd. No Houston police official is on record admitting that motive.
LioraWhat about the second set?
SilasAll five are booked. A fine is paid, and that same night they're released, in time to play it.
Granz fought the case. He spent more than two thousand dollars to have all the charges dropped. By one account, the stakes in that dice game were only a dollar. Later, Granz summed it up: "The whole thing was just jive." He kept touring, and kept "insisting that club owners suspend their segregation policies," as NPR put it.
The Music Hall, a New Deal building from 1937, came down in 1998. The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts opened on the site in 2003. In 2026, Houston's Forward Times remembered that night as a stand: Jacquet integrating the Music Hall, alongside Gillespie and Fitzgerald. It doesn't mention the arrest.
LioraThe dice were real. So was that crowd, sitting together. I know which one I'd remember.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Tonight's ticket is the Thad Wilson Jazz Orchestra saluting Billy Eckstine and Sarah
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Baltimore.
Keystone Korner has the Thad Wilson Jazz Orchestra celebrating Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan. One show, seven o'clock. The club prints no price of its own. Its box office has it at forty five to fifty five dollars plus a fee. The club adds a two item food and drink minimum, per person.
Now the sweep.
In Chicago, the Green Mill runs its Thursday pair. Andy Brown from five, no cover charge. Then Alan Gresik's Swing Orchestra, eight to midnight, ten dollars.
In Philadelphia, Chris' Jazz Cafe has the drummer Logan Bogdan and his septet at half past seven and at nine, twenty dollars. Then the saxophonist Nisarg Shah and his trio from half past ten, fifteen.
LioraIn Detroit, Cliff Bell's has the Planet D Nonet at half past seven and half past nine, twenty five dollars. A Duke Ellington salute, and the first of two nights.
And in Austin, the Elephant Room has the Sarah Sharp Quintet at six, then the Waxahachie Horns at nine. The house Thursday cover is seven dollars, and none before eight.
Five. One More Note: On October 8, 1945, Duke Ellington cut both sides of one Victor record in a single New
LioraOctober eighth, 1945, in New York.
Duke Ellington took his orchestra into a Victor studio and cut both sides of one record in one afternoon, both with the singer Joya Sherrill.
The chairs: Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Tricky Sam Nanton, Ellington at the piano. And then the surprise, Sid Catlett on drums.
"Tell ya what I'm gonna do" and "Come to baby, do!" Both went out on Victor 20-1748. One session, one disc, two sides.
And from the ledger: "Messers. Case and Oberstein, present."
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Thursday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.