Word: petrillos
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...Chicago rang with a rumor that Petrillo had been kidnaped from a suburban nightclub and that other union officers had seen fit to buy him back for $50,000. Jimmy issued shrill denials, distributed a C.P.A. report on the union's finances which showed no $50,000 deduction. But he took to riding in a $25,000 armored car, and recruited a force of bodyguards which included two city detectives...
...next year Petrillo was elected international president of the A.F.M. With grandiose magnanimity, he gave his predecessor, 73-year-old Joseph Weber, a $20,000-a-year pension for life...
...Petrillo had already begun his war on canned music. Talking pictures had thrown 18,000 U.S. theater musicians out of work. Petrillo listened to radio broadcasts of recorded music as though he heard the rumble of doom. "Electric refrigerators put the iceman out of work," he screamed, "but the iceman didn't have to make them. The musician is being asked to destroy himself." In 1936, unabashed by the fact that he was simply the head of one local union, he announced that union musicians would no longer make records in Chicago. He also forced radio stations to hire...
Both practices set off public protest, but both worked. Petrillo had one vast advantage over other labor leaders. A music strike, unlike a coal strike, caused little or no public suffering; in fact it hardly diluted the endless flow of recorded sound which dinned daily in the nation's ears. As international president of A.F.M., Petrillo assumed unlimited power. The union's bylaws solemnly assert: "It shall be his duty ... to (a) enforce the constitution, bylaws, standing resolutions or other laws and resolutions or (b) annul or set aside same or any portion thereof . . . and substitute other . . . provisions...
Indeed, as far as Petrillo is concerned, there is no difference at all. Such is his power that any person who wants to play any instrument for profit must be a member of his union-or just play for his friends. This means everyone from Spike Jones, whose City Slickers would rather murder a tune than play it, to Concert Violinist Joseph Szigeti; from Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong, the king of swing trumpeters, to Susan Reed, who plays a polite zither in nightclubs. Arturo Toscanini is an honorary member but other symphony conductors, like the men in their orchestras, are obedient...