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CHAPTER 2

THE FIGHT RACKET

Fight fans have long considered Philadelphia the number-one boxing town in the country, if not the world. Its reputation goes back to the nineteenth century, but the city became the undisputed boxing capital in 1926 when it turned out a staggering one hundred thousand spectators for the Jack Dempsey/Gene Tunney championship bout. Over the decades, Philly won bragging rights to over thirty world champions, including historic figures like Joe Frazier, Joey Giardello, and Tim Witherspoon. Nowhere else was the boxing business as much a part of city life as it was in the City of Brotherly Love. Philly was the natural setting for the movie Rocky, and the authenticity of the gritty Philly cityscapes helped make it one of the most beloved films in American cinema. For a tough young son of Philly like Stan Levey, entering boxing was a natural choice.

In Philly you had extreme competition. All the different gyms had rivalries. Every ethnic group had its own favorites, and I did pretty well as a white Jewish heavyweight.

My first fight, I’m nervous, very nervous. Italian guy—Forte—and he’s a good boxer, good mover. I’m about seventeen. I’m ready. I train. Dick Kane is the trainer, he’s had a stroke and only one side works. He drags that leg and the arm, and the head is way over, but he knows what the hell he’s doing. He pushes me in the ring, training. When he trains you in the gym, he has a long yardstick. “You son of a bitch, get that left hand up!” Whack! He whacks you with that stick. He’s good, a great trainer. He trains Bob Montgomery, Ike Williams—world champions. We never get into what he thinks about my father.

Day of the fight, I keep it quiet, I don’t know if my mother knows or she doesn’t know. I’m not communicating with her. Dave’s not there.

You go in, take your clothes off, put on your athletic supporter and metal cup, get into your trunks, get taped, then the commissioner comes in and examines the wraps, then he puts his autograph on them. Then it’s okay and you’re ready, man. The gloves go on, you hit the rubbing table, and you rest. Then you got to warm up. Have to break a sweat.

Dick tells me, “Levey, you’re up!” Walk out, robe on, towel around my neck, Vaseline on my face. Showtime.

You don’t see the lights, any of that. You’re in there to go to work. It’s a hitting business. You give the hit, you take the hit. There’s no mystique about it. You’re focused on your opponent—that’s it.

You’re called to ring center. The referee says, “You know what to do, you’ve got your instructions. Keep your punches above the belt, no rabbit punching, no elbows, no stepping on the shoe.” That’s it. “Touch gloves. Let’s go.”

Not a whole lot of people on my side. But you don’t pay any attention to it. You’re there to do your work. Moving, cutting, boxing, and hitting. You never look for a knockout, you never look for that unless you see the guy get hurt; you hurt a guy and you try to do it.

He can hit, a good hitter. Doesn’t put me down, hell no. I beat him on a split decision. Four-round fight. Dick gives me a good pat on the back.

For the Mafioso, an association with the manliest of sports was practically essential. Huge money was wagered through mob-connected bookies, and the sport provided lucrative opportunities to manipulate odds and outcomes. To own a fighter, or even a piece of one, was a symbol of high status. Every wise guy in the nation wanted ringside seats and a cut of the action, but even as the various crime families jockeyed for influence and opportunities, everyone in the underworld understood that Frankie Carbo was the undisputed boss of boxing. Carbo’s right-hand man was a close associate of Dave Levey’s named Frank Palermo, a South Philly wise guy known coast to coast as “Blinky.”

He shoplifted candy bars constantly, but Blinky Palermo was no small-time crook. He had the largest stable of fighters in the country and also controlled the Boxing Managers Guild. Palermo and Dave Levey traded fighters, shared sparring partners, took turns fronting for each other as silent partners, and conspired together to throw fights. Palermo was a regular visitor to an office Dave kept at 324 North Broad Street, and theirs was a relationship that typified the culture of the Boxing Managers Guild, a group that sports historian Steven A. Riess described as “mainly either upwardly mobile Jewish businessmen or Jewish and Italian hoodlums.”

Carbo and Palermo pulled all the important strings in the business, determining who got choice bouts, controlling televised boxing, deciding where a fighter or manager could work, and choosing which venues got which fights. Under Carbo and Palermo’s supervision, the mob was one of the facts of life in boxing. Trainer Angelo Dundee confirmed, “If you were in boxing, somewhere along the line you had to do business with them.”

Everybody works through Frankie Carbo and Frankie Palermo. They control the whole thing. You don’t work with them? You don’t work.

Around the gyms, they show up with the snap-brim hat, the three-hundred-dollar overcoat. You know who they are. You just don’t talk to them. You don’t approach them. They see how the meat’s doing here today, see how the guy looks, cause they make the matches, they make the odds, they control everything.

Blinky’s forty-three—something like that. A medium-sized guy, five-seven, whatever. Slight build, pointed features. Very dark eyes. Deep pools. Frankie Carbo is Mr. Gray. Everyone calls him Mr. Gray. That’s his name—don’t wear it out. These guys in those days are the worst.

This one fight, I’m the favorite. Palermo walks in with the overcoat, and he slides his thumb behind the lapel and lays three fingers down like that. Nothing. Not a word. And he looks at me, waits to see a glimmer of understanding. I have to go in the tank in the third, that’s where the betting is, that round. I’m ready to win. I know I can beat the guy. Nothing I can do about it. You’re resigned to what you’re doing.

They run everything. You want to keep working? Do what you’re told and don’t screw up. And when you do that, you get an extra piece of money, too, cause they bet for you, see. They’re gonna lay out some money, you know, up front they’re gonna lay some money for you. So you get your purse plus the bet. A business. Not that easy, cause when you go in the tank—take a dive—the guy can’t just graze your head and you fall down and you wait ten. It don’t go that way, they’ll yank your license and everything else. You gotta go in, you gotta take that shot, or several. It’s gotta look right. And you get your head busted taking that shot, too. If you’re going down in the third, at some point in the round you’ve gotta take that shot. It’s just inches. Just drop your glove. Instead of where it’s supposed to be, it’s there.

I take two or three shots. I take two in the stomach and one up here, but I take them. And he hurts me. I can get up, but I just lay there. It looks good. I take what I have to take. I get paid for taking those three shots. About a week later, a runner comes over. They shake your hand: “Nice fight.” And boom. You’ve got the money right there. Cash. The purse is set, you don’t get more if you win or you lose. You sign, the money’s there, and that’s it.

Fighting and drumming are both all about hitting and timing. In those early years, I was boxing professionally as a heavyweight to earn a few extra dollars. I fought at Madison Square Garden and I was one of the preliminary bouts at the polo grounds in the Bronx when Joe Louis was the headliner. I carried on fighting until 1949. I boxed a lot of very good fighters . . . who beat the crap out of me! I could’ve made extra money wearing advertisements on the soles of my shoes.

American organized crime was also deep into jazz. Fellow travelers in the cultural landscape, the American Mafia and jazz music were both born in New Orleans and grew up together in Chicago, Kansas City, and New York.

Pianist Mary Lou Williams, who helped develop the Kansas City Sound and was know as the “First Lady of Jazz” remembered the K.C. scene: “Most of the jazz spots were run by politicians and hoodlums, and the town was wide open for drinking, gambling, and pretty much every form of vice. . . . Kansas City boasted everything New York had.”

That included the Mafia. The Kansas City Outfit, bound by the same pinprick to the finger and blood oath that bonded all the families, controlled the police department and operated overtly—as much a part of city life as potholes and parking meters. In the population frequenting their clubs, the gangsters saw a market for something only their well-connected network could provide: pure heroin from overseas. The K.C. family ran what was thought to be the largest ring in the country in the 1930s. They worked with native Sicilians and the Tampa family to import French Connection powder and spread it all over the Midwest. They brought it into their clubs (where musicians could be counted on as reliable consumers of intoxicants), and dumped it in the black neighborhoods, where an aspiring saxophonist named Charlie Parker was only fifteen years old when he got hooked on Mafia heroin and began pawning his mother’s appliances to get his fix.

Parker lived near Eighteenth and Vine Streets, where musicians flocked for late-night jam sessions and highly competitive “cutting contests.” Count Basie, Lester Young, Hot Lips Page, Ben Webster, Jo Jones, Jay McShann, Big Joe Turner, and other heavyweight talents traded punches in the form of fierce and emotional improvisations. Bassist Gene Ramey offered his take on the scene: “Jam sessions in a sense were constant trials of manhood. Different sections of the band would set difficult riffs behind soloists, and, sometimes, they would see if they could lose each other.”

It was at one such jam session that young Charlie Parker summoned the courage to sit in and blow. Drummer Jo Jones, acting on behalf of all the cats, abruptly ended Parker’s participation by throwing a cymbal at the teenage saxophonist. In jazz lore, it is one of the great story arcs in the history of the music—a humiliation that would later be avenged beyond anyone’s musical imagination.

“This gave Bird a big determination to play,” remembered Gene Ramey. “‘I’ll fix these cats,’ he used to say. ‘Everybody’s laughing at me now, but just wait and see.’”

When the time came, Stan Levey would be in Charlie Parker’s corner.