Cab Calloway, 'The Reeferman' |
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Cab Calloway
(1907 -1994)
American jazz musician, band leader.
writer of the song 'Reeferman'
After National marijuana prohibition became law in America, Commissioner Anslinger found out that a certain group of people - all of whom were identifiable by their shared occupation - were flagrantly violating the law by continuing to smoke pot. What the transgressors had in common was that they had rhythm. In fact, they included all the key geniuses of Jazz: Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Count Basie, Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Cab Calloway, to name a choice selection.
From the early 1930s, the Commissioner compiled a dossier that would later be known as the 'Marijuana and Musicians' file, noting each and every marijuana case involving a member of the musical fraternity. Documents from the Anslinger papers and the DEA Library in Washington DC reveal that, from 1943 to 1948, Anslinger plotted a pogrom of jazz and swing musicians, ordering all his agents throughout the USA to watch and keep criminal files on all the musicians in their areas so that they could all be rounded-up in one fell swoop.
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