FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE ‘CABARET’ LAW
After 91 years, New York City is getting rid of a law that stifled Ray Charles and infuriated Frank Sinatra.
1 ALL THAT JAZZ
Since the high-water mark of the gin- and jazz-soaked Roaring Twenties, it has technically been illegal for three or more people to dance in New York City restaurants and bars unless the establishment has a special “cabaret license.” The original Cabaret Act was passed in 1926 as a response to the popularity of Harlem jazz clubs that drew mixed-race crowds. “Well, there has been altogether too much ‘running wild’ in some of these night clubs and, in the judgment of your Committee, the ‘wild’ stranger and the foolish native should have the check-rein applied a little bit,” the Board of Alderman’s Committee on Local Laws wrote in the 1920s.
2 IN SPOTLIGHT
The original law just required clubs to obtain licenses. In 1943, the statute was amended so musicians also had to obtain “cabaret cards” to perform. The cards were issued every two years by the police department after each artist was fingerprinted and questioned about their background and any past criminal history. Numerous greats — from Ray Charles to Billie Holiday — had their cards pulled after run-ins with the law. In 1953, jazz great Charlie Parker lost his card and was forced to plead to be reinstated. “My right to pursue my chosen profession has been taken away, and my wife and three children who are innocent of any wrongdoing are suffering,”
3 OL’ BLUE EYES
In 1957, Frank Sinatra refused to play in New York. “I will not seek a cabaret card in New York because of the indignity of being fingerprinted, mugged and quizzed about my past,” Sinatra said at the time.
4 CARDS OF SHAME
Critics charge the legislation had racist roots and had arbitrarily been applied to minority and controversial performers, historic names like Holiday and Thelonious Monk. “What opportunities were stymied by the cabaret card?” Jazz Times asked in 2012. “How much sooner might Monk have found recognition, and what would the effect have been on his psyche? What if Miles Davis hadn’t lost his card in 1959, after being clubbed outside of Birdland.”
5 A MESSAGE FROM RUDY
Thanks to high-profile pressure from Sinatra and others, the musician card system was cut from the law in 1967. The statute mainly gathered dust until the 1990s, when then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s quality of life task forces evoked the statute when shutting down grimy clubs and after-hours spots. In more recent years, the statute has been the subject of legal challenges, protests and online petitions. Now the law is finally going to be repealed.