Labor: Yesterday’s Tune

The little old man laughed at the notion of a rank-and-file revolt. To James C. (“Little Caesar”) Petrillo, 70, onetime autocratic overlord of 260,000 U.S. musicians, it seemed like a piccolo challenging a calliope. “Everything is tops,” cried Petrillo.

But everything was far from fine—at least to the members of Local 10, the Chicago Federation of Musicians, which has played syncopated sycophant to Petrillo since 1923. The local had gone all that time under Petrillo’s presidency without a meaningful challenge to his reign. Now it dared to rebel. “Jimmy, why don’t you cut out?” demanded a folk singer at a Local 10 meeting last month. Jimmy, who voluntarily quit in 1958 as czar of the American Federation of Musicians, amid an arpeggio of tears, could not see leaving his $26,000 job as the head of Local 10. “I don’t think they have any problems,” he said.

Jimmy was wrong. They had problems —and so did he. Long gone were the days when he was the music world’s national tyrant (“I’m gettin’ a repetition for bein’ a dictator”). His own musical taste had always been earthy: “Personally, I go for a good brass band.” But his secret of success was eminently practical: “Music is good as long as it gives a union man a job.”

In his heyday, Jimmy certainly delivered jobs—and pay. In the 19403 he seriously crippled the recording industry for 27 months, refusing to let his musicians cut so much as one groove until record companies popped with handsome royalties, which now bring millions a year to the A.F.M. He forced network stations to pay “live” musicians whether they were needed or not, proudly claims that he raised musicmen’s income 200% while he held the baton.

But back at Local 10, Petrillo in recent years has had trouble producing jobs.

The local now lists 11,500 members—with only about 1,000 of them at work. Several times Petrillo autocratically ordered a raise for sidemen without consulting either musicians or management. Result: bandleaders lopped off players to hold down costs; the Edgewater Beach Hotel, for one, slashed its 18-man orchestra to a five-man combo.

Last week the musicians kicked Petrillo out, electing in his place Society Pianist Bernard (“Barney”) Richards, 57. For the first time since his daddy bought him a trumpet in 1900, Jimmy Petrillo found himself on the shelf along with the rest of yesterday’s tunes.