Gene Krupa in Jail
The Melbourne International Jazz Festival opens its first full day with the Rebirth Brass Band making its Australian debut at the head of a free parade from Southbank to Fed Square, then a ticketed evening at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl where The Teskey Brothers play their debut record in full. Then Corners, the new ECM album on which all six of Enrico Rava's Fearless Five and Joe Lovano carry composer credits, six rooms from Chicago to New York, Duke Ellington's Mood Indigo cut on this date in 1930, and the 1943 guilty plea that undid Gene Krupa.
LioraToday Melbourne opens its jazz festival with a New Orleans parade. Today's record has nine tracks, and every player on it has a writing credit. Later, six rooms, and a drummer who went to jail in 1943. It's Saturday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Saturday, October 17th. 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: The Melbourne International Jazz Festival opens its first full day with a free Second
LioraToday in Melbourne, the festival that calls itself Australia's largest opens its first full day. The run started yesterday. Its own program lists nothing before today.
It starts with a parade. One o'clock, the Second Line Street Party leaves the Red Stair Amphitheatre on Southbank Boulevard. Free, the festival marks it, and family. Come early, the page says. The route is step free.
At the front, the Rebirth Brass Band of New Orleans, making its Australian debut. The festival names eight. Two trumpets, two trombones, saxophone, sousaphone, bass drum, snare. Keith Frazier on that bass drum.
The march ends at Fed Square, and that afternoon costs nothing. Rebirth on the stage at a quarter to two. BIGYUKI at half past two, off a residency at the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio. Allysha Joy at a quarter to four.
LioraThen the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Gates at three. Emily Wurramara at four. Fred Wesley and the New JBs at half past five. The Teskey Brothers at a quarter past seven, playing their first record in full, ten years on. From ninety nine dollars ninety.
Two. Listen to This: Corners, credited to Enrico Rava, Fearless Five with Joe Lovano
LioraToday's record is "Corners," credited to Enrico Rava, Fearless Five, with Joe Lovano. ECM, catalog number 2868, out yesterday.
Rava on trumpet and flugelhorn. Matteo Paggi, trombone. Francesco Diodati, guitar. Francesco Ponticelli, double bass. Evita Polidoro, drums and vocals. Lovano on tenor.
Nine tracks, and all six of them wrote. Rava wrote three.
Here is Rava on why. As they all have their own bands, where they are leaders and composers, he says, I thought it makes sense to let each one of us contribute tunes to that new album.
ECM says the band's name comes from a Rava tune first heard on a 1978 album of his.
Here is the tip. Play "Sun Rava." Ten minutes forty three. Lovano wrote it, and the title carries the leader's name.
LioraOne more, and it points at tonight's story. The National Endowment for the Arts keeps the page on Roy Eldridge, and it names a record: "Let Me Off Uptown," 1941, Eldridge singing with Anita O'Day in Gene Krupa's band.
Now San Francisco, 1943. Gene Krupa pleads guilty to a small charge and goes to jail. Tonight on The Bridge: how that same plea undid the big one. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: In 1943 Gene Krupa pleaded guilty to a small charge and went to jail
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasSan Francisco. January 18th, 1943. Gene Krupa, the drummer who left Benny Goodman's band in 1938 to lead his own, is playing a theater in town. Federal narcotics agents have had tips about marijuana. They come to his dressing room. Krupa says he has none. They find nothing. So they head for his hotel.
LioraAnd what's at the hotel?
SilasA coat. Here's the story the court tells. As the agents leave, Krupa catches up with his valet, John Pateakos, partway up the stairs. He tells him to go get an envelope from his coat pocket at the hotel. The hotel is the St. Francis. A bellboy lets Pateakos into the room. In a coat in the closet, an envelope: 37 marijuana cigarettes. Two and a half more in a desk drawer. He takes both envelopes, and the agents stop him as he tries to leave. Krupa would deny, under oath, that he ever sent him. The next day, January 19th, Krupa is arrested.
LioraHow old is this valet?
SilasTwenty. But California then counted anyone under 21 as a minor. That one word shapes everything. The District Attorney files two charges. A felony, the serious kind: using a minor to transport narcotics. And a misdemeanor, a lesser crime: contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Krupa pleads guilty to the misdemeanor. His lawyer, Jake Ehrlich, told it this way in his memoir: "In my pocket were five $100 bills for the payment of the fine that Judge Foley and I had discussed." That's the lawyer's side. Judge Foley gives Krupa the $500 fine and 90 days in the county jail. Then the court rules that this plea does not block a trial on the felony.
LioraSo he pleads guilty, and they still try him on the big one?
SilasJune 29th, in front of a jury. Pateakos had testified against him at an early hearing. Then, in the court's words, he "shortly afterwards disappeared, and was unavailable at the trial." Krupa takes the stand. He says the cigarettes were all his, brought from Los Angeles in clothes the valet looked after. He denies sending him for them. The jury finds him guilty. TIME reports the sentence: one to six years in San Quentin.
LioraDoes he go to San Quentin?
SilasTIME reported that he did. But Billboard and the San Francisco sheriff's own history describe county jail time only, and nothing else we found puts him in San Quentin. He served about 84 days by most accounts, though Billboard that summer said 90. He got out in August, with the felony on appeal. By one account, his ex-wife Ethel was the only one waiting. His band had broken up, his savings spent on lawyers.
Then two things happened. In October, Benny Goodman's band opened at the Hotel New Yorker. Five days later, Billboard reported, Krupa rejoined Goodman, five years after they first split.
In 1944, the appeals court ruled, two to one. The felony, it said, "inevitably and necessarily involves" the misdemeanor. He had already pleaded guilty to that, so he could not be tried again for the same act. The felony conviction was reversed. The plea, the fine, and the jail time all stood. The small guilty plea that cost him those months is the very thing that undid the big one.
LioraGuilty on the small charge, and that's what saved him on the big one. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: The Green Mill in Chicago has the Matt Ulery Nonet from eight to midnight at twenty
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Chicago.
The Green Mill has the Matt Ulery Nonet, eight to midnight, twenty dollars. Ulery on bass, three reeds, two trumpets, a trombone. The same club opens the day free, with Paper Machete at three.
Now the sweep.
In Philadelphia, Chris' Jazz Cafe has the Benny Benack III Sextet with guest vocalist Kieran Brown, seven thirty and nine thirty, thirty five dollars.
In Baltimore, Keystone Korner has the Blackbyrds, six and nine. The club prints no price for the night.
In Denver, Dazzle has Eric Benny Bloom's Michael Jackson tribute, six thirty and nine. Then Micah Miller and Camilla Vaitaitis at half past ten, no cover.
In Austin, the Elephant Room has Michael Malone NUJAZZSWING at nine. Ten dollars, the club's standing Saturday line.
LioraIn New York, the Blue Note has the Robert Glasper OG Acoustic Piano Trio, eight and ten thirty. No admission price on the page, only a twenty dollar minimum per person.
Five. One More Note: On October 17, 1930, the UC Santa Barbara archive logs Mood Indigo and Runnin' Wild cut
LioraOn this date in 1930, Duke Ellington's men were in a Brunswick studio. The UC Santa Barbara archive logs two ten inch masters from that shop that day. "Runnin' Wild," credited to the Jungle Band. "Mood Indigo," credited to the Duke Ellington Famous Orchestra.
Two credits, one day. The archive lists them as two separate performers and says nothing more.
One last page. October seventeenth, 1943, the year of tonight's story. It carries one line. No masters documented in discography for this day.
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 Saturday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.