Thanks for posting about this, tblue. I had no idea about any of it - found this linked later on in the thread. Apparently, vice cops showed up that night looking for any excuse. Poor Ella cried at the police station. The charges were later dropped, and even the police chief admitted that the arrests were an overreaction. Fortunately, the ugly incident failed to stop the second show.
https://blog.chron.com/bayoucityhistory/2011/01/on-integration-jazz-and-the-arrest-of-ella-fitzgerald-and-dizzy-gillespie-in-houston/
Basically, what you see are extraordinary people caught in an extraordinary situation. In this instance it’s jazz great Ella Fitzgerald at a Houston police station. She, along with Dizzy Gillespie, Houstonian Illinois Jacquet, jazz impresario Norman Granz and Georgiana Henry were arrested on Oct. 7, 1955, for shooting dice in Fitzgerald’s dressing room at the Music Hall.
The incident was recently the subject of an article in Houston History magazine. Aimee L’Heureux has
written a detailed account of the arrests and how the concert played a role in Jacquet and Granz’s efforts to integrate audiences here. (It’s also worth noting that the Houston Press did a fine write-up on Jacquet and the incident in a 1999 article.)
Fitzgerald and Gillespie were performing in Houston at the Music Hall as part of Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic tour, which included other jazz legends like Buddy Rich, Oscar Peterson, Gene Krupa and Lester Young. Saxophonist Jacquet — also on the bill — was the prime mover in bringing the show to Houston and making sure the concert (which featured both black and white musicians) would be integrated. [snip]
Of course, one finds it highly suspicious that vice officers would bust the five of them on a night meant to show how smoothly Houston audiences could integrate. The vice officers weren’t the only officers at the concert as eight other uniformed officers were hired to work security that night. In Gillespie’s autobiography, Granz says one of the vice officers even threatened him during the raid after he accused the officer of trying to plant drugs in a bathroom at the Music Hall. [more]
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