To a passerby, the entrance to New York City’s Birdland was unimpressive, inconspicuous even. A simple awning extended onto the sidewalk of Broadway just around the corner from 52nd Street, home of the once thriving “Swing Street.” A single word, in stark white letters, adorned the awning: BIRDLAND. The uninitiated would simply walk by. Those in the know, however, stopped. They were drawn to the bright lights flooding from the open door plastered with posters and playbills and, most important, the music that spilled out onto the sidewalk. Insiders knew that the unusual name was, in fact, a reference to the bebop saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker and that this was a jazz club. Dubbed the “Jazz Center of the World,” Birdland showcased the best in modern jazz. It was the home of the hepcats.
After passing through an entrance resembling a birdcage, patrons descended into the basement club. To the left, behind the long bar and all along the club’s side walls, glass cages housed dozens of singing birds. To the right, there was a wall of booths, and in front, a small, slightly elevated stage, barely big enough to hold a piano and drum set. Fifteen tables with red-checkered tablecloths clustered around the bandstand. Behind the tables, along the back wall, was the “bullpen,” with rows of chairs reserved for listeners—those who wanted to focus exclusively on music, without the distraction of food, drink, or socializing. For a cover of ninety-eight cents, plus minimum (for those not sitting in the bullpen), patrons could hear three acts on a continuous loop until early in the morning. In all, the club could squeeze in two hundred lovers of jazz.
Birdland opened its doors on December 15, 1949. Vaughan made her debut almost a year later on November 16, 1950, and when she returned for a ten-day stay on Thursday, March 26, 1953, it was her ninth appearance at the club. Vaughan was a favorite at Birdland—both on and off the stage. Owner Morris Levy said that he received more mail requesting her than any other artist he booked. He commissioned portraitist Miguelo Andre to paint a series of murals of Vaughan for the club’s walls, and the club’s bestselling mixed drink was the Sarah Vaughan cooler.1 When she returned five months later, management installed a new security door for her dressing room and hired a security guard to watch her designer wardrobe, reportedly worth $10,000.2 Playing Birdland was like going home, and that night in March more so than usual. She had just returned from two weeks in Paris, the final leg of her first European tour, and it was the eve of her twenty-ninth birthday. Actress Dorothy Dandridge; vocalists Eartha Kitt, Patti Page, and Thelma Carpenter; rhumba man Noro Morales; and a host of society reporters were on hand to help her celebrate. And radio audiences from coast to coast listened in as NBC broadcast her opening night on Stars of Jazz, thirty minutes of jazz live from Birdland airing Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“Sarah Vaughan, ladies and gentlemen!” announced NBC veteran Fred Collins. “Thank you. Thank you,” she called out above the audience’s applause. Then she launched into “I Get a Kick Out of You” followed by a more adventurous “I Cried for You,” two swinging rhythm numbers, both standards from her Musicraft days and both recently reissued by MGM. That night Vaughan was accompanied by her regular pianist John Malachi, mistakenly identified on air as “Jimmy Mordecai” by Collins, and drummer Fats Herd and bassist Wyatt Reuther, both on loan from Erroll Garner’s trio. “Wonderful Sarah,” said Collins, as she finished singing. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” Vaughan shouted again as the crowd clapped, whistled, and shouted their approval.3
“But tonight is not a night for crying here at Birdland,” Collins interrupted. “All hail fellows well met, welcoming Sarah Vaughan and wishing her a . . . very, very happy birthday! They just brought up here on the bandstand one of the most beautiful cakes I’ve ever seen in my life, Sarah,” Collins said above more applause and whistles. “Thank you very much, darling,” a coy Vaughan replied. “I’m umm . . . twenty-one years old.” She giggled, and the audience laughed along. “Bless your heart,” said Collins. Vaughan giggled again. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a little bit unusual. But Sarah has done so much for us by way of this wonderful entertainment. Could we make an exception? Tonight you sing to her. I don’t think we even have to hit it.” They didn’t. Led by Collin’s authoritative if slightly out-of-tune baritone, the audience enthusiastically sang “Happy Birthday.” Then Vaughan, standing next to the multitiered, frosted cake, bent down to blow out the candles, all three of them. “She just blew out the candles,” Collins told his listeners in radioland. “All nineteen of them? Twenty-one. Well,” he said, playing along with Vaughan’s earlier joke. “Three of them!” yelled Vaughan, correcting him. “This is a terrible thing to do after singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and everything else, Sarah,” Collins continued. “But we have about two and a half, three minutes, something like that. Could you do us the favor of singing ‘Body and Soul?’” “Alright. Love to.”4
Vaughan was in the midst of the second crossover phase of her career: her journey from a bebop singer, favored by black audiences and in-the-know jazz intelligentsia, to a pop artist, with a larger, more mainstream following. In the six years since appearing on Dave Garroway’s radio programs, she had achieved her first successes on the pop record charts, graduated from a small independent record label to one of the major players, and steadily improved the stature and prestige of the venues where she performed. She still played intimate jazz clubs like Birdland, but she also became a regular fixture of the exclusive supper club circuit, the lucrative movie palaces, and the more elegant concert halls, venues that had often been off-limits to all but the most popular and successful black artists. During these years, Vaughan streamlined her vocal style, reining in her more esoteric mannerisms and harmonic excursions, remnants of her early bebop days with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. She did not sing “straighter,” per se; rather, she added another layer of polish and sophistication. Her interpretations became more eloquent and seamless, less superficially experimental or avant-garde yet still engaging and compelling studies in vocal improvisation. “Headliner Sarah Vaughan has unique pulling power,” Variety critic Herman Schoenfeld explained in 1953. “The squarer customers dig her, via her pop disk releases, and she’s still caviar for the cognoscenti because of her tricky stylistic attack.”5
Vaughan, however, had to continue to fight to have her voice heard and sing the way that she wanted. She battled a dysfunctional record label. She endured overbearing record producers, the censure of jazz critics, and the demeaning requests of club owners. Motivated by personal agendas, often with the bottom line in mind, they pressured her to change the way that she sang. Vaughan stood up to all of them, in her own quiet yet firm way. She possessed a keen awareness of her responsibilities as an artist and black woman. She understood the impact of her voice and balked when asked to sing material she found racially demeaning or artistically beneath her. She held firm to her musical vision and integrity. And as the 1950s progressed, she found a way to balance the competing demands of commercial pop stardom with her desire to remain a jazz artist. In the process, she changed the way that white America heard and understood the black female voice while simultaneously presenting an example of black female genius and creativity to the world.
That night at Birdland in 1953, on the eve of her twenty-ninth birthday, demonstrated the high esteem and regard that audiences had for Vaughan. But that same night also revealed challenges in her life offstage. After finishing the NBC simulcast and her last set, after her birthday party, and after schmoozing with the celebrities and fans in the audience, Vaughan and her husband, George Treadwell, went to the Veteran’s Club, an after-hours spot in Harlem. When she arrived at 5:25 A.M., the place was packed, standing room only, much like her sets at Birdland earlier in the evening. A young man gave up his seat at the bar, and she sat down, had a drink, and relaxed. Then the man sitting next to her, a twenty-five-year-old newsstand operator named Edmund Johnson, asked if he could introduce Vaughan to his female friend. She declined, telling Johnson, “I am just too tired to meet anybody.”
What happened next is unclear. According to Johnson, he thanked Vaughan, turned his back, and continued socializing with his friends. Then Treadwell, standing a few feet away, rushed over and accosted Johnson, “Man, you have insulted my wife.” Surprised, Johnson spun around and replied, “Are you kidding, champ? All I asked your wife was to give me a chance to introduce her to this lady with us.” Johnson told the New York Amsterdam News that he then heard Treadwell mutter, “You are one of these wise guys, aren’t you?” “No sense in me arguing with you, man,” Johnson said and walked away.6
As he turned to walk away, Johnson said that someone held him from behind, and Treadwell lunged forward and smashed a highball glass in his face. Before Johnson could retaliate, a crowd of people pulled Treadwell away. Johnson needed twenty-two stiches in his left cheek and multiple hospital visits. He filed assault charges against Treadwell, and Johnson’s lawyer planned a civil suit for $250,000. The police sought Treadwell for questioning and issued a warrant for his arrest, but they couldn’t find him. He had disappeared.7
Vaughan told a different story. “First of all, let me explain that George is entirely innocent of this assault charge,” she said to Alvin Webb of the Amsterdam News on Tuesday, March 31, five days after the incident. “He is in Philly now, but I expect him back here tomorrow.” When Vaughan gave her comment, she was between sets at Birdland, and earlier in the night she’d done another coast-to-coast simulcast on NBC radio.
“My girlfriend and I were being annoyed by Johnson and his companions and George came over to the bar to reprimand them about molesting us,” she explained. “This fellow, Johnson, reached in his pocket as if he were trying to pull out a weapon of some kind, and one of George’s friends hit him in the face with a glass. I’m not going to call any names, but I swear to God it wasn’t George.” After finishing the near-midnight interview, she went back out onstage and according to the Amsterdam News began her next set with “Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?).”8
Treadwell returned from Philadelphia Wednesday night. The police booked and questioned him. He denied any wrongdoing, insisting that he had not assaulted Johnson, nor had he eluded the police, and he promised to provide an affidavit from the man who did attack Johnson.9 “Guy became abusive,” said Treadwell during a press conference at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem. Then he lashed out at the press. “[He] took the position that the newsmen should have come to him before printing the police’s and the other guy’s story,” James Hicks wrote in the Baltimore Afro-American. “I have news for George. Every newsman in town was looking for him to get his side of the story. But that’s not all. The police were looking for George, too!”10
Two weeks later, on Tuesday morning, April 14, 1953, Treadwell appeared in Manhattan’s felony court. Johnson did not. For the second time in a row he failed to appear. Without a witness, the assault charges against Treadwell were dropped. Neither Johnson nor his lawyer could be found for comment; both seemed to have left town for the week. Rumors circulated that Johnson had been “taken care of” and advised “to take a short trip until things cool off.”11
Treadwell loved publicity, for his wife and himself. In the years since he became Vaughan’s manager, he had become a master of shaping her public image and, by extension, his own. He initiated aggressive publicity campaigns that portrayed Vaughan as a stylish and increasingly affluent modern woman who, when she wasn’t working, was a domestic homebody. He was a savvy businessman and self-sacrificing, hardworking husband completely devoted to his wife’s career. Their marriage was strong and their home life happy. This portrait of traditional gender roles and domestic bliss was, in fact, an important prerequisite for Vaughan’s crossover pop successes. And tales of an after-hours bar fight, possibly fueled by jealousy; an arrest after eluding the police; and dates in felony court threatened Treadwell’s carefully crafted picture, suggesting that all was not well behind the scenes.