a Jew-boy from the Bronx converted to a mambo freak

epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer

Talk about good-time urban corruption! The atmosphere was as thrilling as a James M. Cain novel. Swing was everywhere. And we made the scene, Patty and I, from the Reno Club, where John Hammond had scooped up Count Basie, to Dante’s Inferno, where bottomless topless waitresses held my full attention. Here in the Wild West, the juke joints and blues clubs were in full cry. At the Elks I heard Joe Turner, that magnificent shouter, then a singing bartender, whom twenty-five years later I wound up producing. The big bands were roaring: Bennie Moten’s, led by his accordion-playing brother Bus; Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy; Harlan Leonard and the Rockets. In our room at the Puritan Hotel — no lie — Patty and I left the window open so the late-night sounds from the street, the blistering jazz of wide-open Kansas City, would fuel the fire of our lovemaking.