Show me your license, Daddy-O: how New York City tried to regulate bebop to death.

• Author: Kjorness, Chris
• Position: Culture and Reviews - New York's Cabaret Law

IN MAY 1951, the famed saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker stepped onstage at Birdland, the Manhattan club named in his honor, to do some guest solo work for a band led by the Afro-Cuban percussionist Machito. It would be 15 months before Parker would grace a New York City stage again.

While his Harlem peers were busy laying the foundation for a new generation of jazz music, Parker was forced to go on the road, rehashing old standards with big bands and pickup rhythm sections. The reason: Bird had been stripped of his cabaret card, a license then required of all persons working in New York City nightclubs.

For more than two decades musicians, comedians, and anyone else employed by a Gotham nightclub would be fingerprinted, photographed, and interviewed by police in exchange for a license to work. The card had to be renewed every two years, and it could be revoked at the whim of the police. The story of the cabaret card illustrates how small men with a little bit of power can inhibit creative expression, stifle artistic growth, and humiliate individual citizens, all in the name of the "public good."

The cabaret card had its origins in the roaring '20s. Prohibition made outlaws out of ordinary Americans, and the allure of booze, jazz, and debauchery brought the upper and lower classes together in clandestine after-hours spots. It was the height of the Harlem Renaissance, and white New Yorkers frequently made the trip uptown, looking for adventure and an escape from the tight moral constraints of downtown society.

In 1926, New York City passed the Cabaret Law, legislation intended not only to curb the growing influence of the Prohibition-fueled mob but also to preserve the morality of innocent people who might fall sway to the shady characters of the night scene. (As the Alderman's Committee suggested in its report on the bill: "the 'wild' stranger and the foolish native should have the check-reign applied a little bit") The Cabaret Law required a special license for any establishment offering "any musical entertainment, singing, dancing, or other similar amusement" in connection with food or drink service. This broad definition of cabaret would apply to just about any entertainment venue other than formal theaters and concert halls. There was, unsurprisingly, an exception made for large, lucrative hotels.

New York nightlife thrived unabated throughout the '20s, and even the Great Depression couldn't stop the City That Never Sleeps. But in 1931 responsibility for cabaret licensing was shifted from the Department of Licensing to the New York City Police Department. With the shift came a new emphasis on stringent enforcement and more careful scrutiny of everyone involved in the operation of a cabaret, from the owners to the busboys.

The federal repeal of Prohibition in December 1933 would lift the blinds on the city's thriving night scene. Swing music was coming into being and New Yorkers had become accustomed to the jazz life. Clandestine speakeasies--like those that populated a four-block stretch of 52nd Street, later known to jazz...