Renaissance ballrooms battled for the crowds-the Savoy introduced such attractions as Thursday
Kitchen Mechanics' Nights, bathing beauty contests, and a new car given away each Saturday
night. They had bands from all across the country in the ballrooms and the Apollo and Lafayette
theaters. They had colorful bandleaders like 'Fess Williams in his diamond-studded suit and top
hat, and Cab Calloway in his white zoot suit to end all zoots, and his wide-brimmed white hat and
string tie, setting Harlem afire with "Tiger Rag" and "St. James Infirmary" and "Minnie the
Moocher."
Blacktown crawled with white people, with pimps, prostitutes, bootleggers, with hustlers of all
kinds, with colorful characters, and with police and prohibition agents. Negroes danced like they
never have anywhere before or since. I guess I must have heard twenty-five of the old-timers in
Small's swear to me that they had been the first to dance in the Savoy the "Lindy Hop" which was
born there in 1927, named for Lindbergh, who had just made his flight to Paris.
Even the little cellar places with only piano space had fabulous keyboard artists such as James P.
Johnson and Jelly Roll Morton, and singers such as Ethel Waters. And at four A.M., when all the
legitimate clubs had to close, from all over town the white and Negro musicians would come to
some prearranged Harlem after-hours spot and have thirty-and forty-piece jam sessions that
would last into the next day.
When it all ended with the stock market crash in 1929, Harlem had a world reputation as
America's Casbah. Small's had been a part of all that. There, I heard the old-timers reminisce
about all those great times.
Every day I listened raptly to customers who felt like talking, and it all added to my education. My
ears soaked it up like sponges when one of them, in a rare burst of confidence, or a little beyond
his usual number of drinks, would tell me inside things about the particular form of hustling that he
pursued as a wayof life. I was thus schooled well, by experts in such hustles as the numbers,
pimping, con games of many kinds, peddling dope, and thievery of all sorts, including armed
robbery.
CHAPTER SIX
DETROIT RED
Every day, I would gamble all of my tips-as high as fifteen and twenty dollars-on the numbers,
and dream of what I would do when I hit.
I saw people on their long, wild spending sprees, after big hits. I don't mean just hustlers who
always had some money. I mean ordinary working people, the kind that we otherwise almost
never saw in a bar like Small's, who, with a good enough hit, had quit their jobs working
somewhere downtown for the white man. Often they had bought a Cadillac, and sometimes for
three and four days, they were setting up drinks and buying steaks for all their friends. I would
have to pull two tables together into one, and they would be throwing me two-and three-dollar tips
each time I came with my tray.
Hundreds of thousands of New York City Negroes, every day but Sunday, would play from a
penny on up to large sums on three-digit numbers. A hit meant duplicating the last three figures of
the Stock Exchange's printed daily total of U.S. domestic and foreign sales.
With the odds at six hundred to one, a penny hit won $6, a dollar won $600, and so on. On $15,
the hit would mean $9,000. Famous hits like that had bought controlling interests in lots of
Harlem's bars and restaurants, or even bought some of them outright. The chances of hitting
were a thousand to one. Many players practiced what was called "combinating." For example six