Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry

If there’s money to be made, chances are organized crime will want a piece of it…call it the mob, the mafia, the costa nostra, or “this thing of ours,” these groups, these families are close to the action in some way…

Construction, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, protection rackets, gambling, loan sharking, tax fraud, stock manipulation, corruption of public officials, porn—you name it and there’s a boss and a family that’s looking for a taste if not for outright control…

One thing that I didn’t include on that list is the entertainment industry…I mean, just look at the stories involving Vegas and Atlantic City…stories about movies and studios…and mobsters who are fans of the music industry…

The mob has been involved in music almost since the beginning…as soon crime families began to evolve, consolidate, and exercise power in the late 1800s, hooks were put into performers, composers, venues, and later, record labels…

Money came from shakedowns, skims, theft of copyright, counterfeiting, and fraudulent bookkeeping…businesses, careers, and lives were ruined…people got hurt…and some people died…

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Website: ajournalofmusicalthings.com

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At around 7:30 on the cold, rainy evening of Wednesday, October 30, 2002, someone walked into the lounge of a recording studio in Jamaica, Queens, New York and fatally shot Jason Mizell with a 40-calbire gun: once to the body and another to the head…he died instantly…and whoever pulled the trigger just walked away…

This was big news…Mizell was better known as Jam Master Jay, the DJ behind Run-DMC—one of the group’s founders in 1982—and one of the most important hip-hop artists in the known universe…

There were been witnesses—but they disagree on what actually happened…there may have been leads—but they all went nowhere…what happened to the security camera footage?…was it tampered with?...and why didn’t the police follow up properly?...for more than two decades, this cold-blooded murder has gone unsolved…

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X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross

Website: ajournalofmusicalthings.com

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The old days of air travel were quite risky…compared to today, the chances of your flight going down were far greater …every airport had kiosks and coin-operating vending machines where you could buy life insurance before you headed to the gate—you know, just in case you thought you weren’t going to make it to your final destination…

1977 was one of the worst years for accidents in aviation history…in addition to several violent hijackings every month—sometimes with fatal results—There were also passenger plane crashes with great loss of life…including the worst aviation disaster of all time when two 747s planes collided on a runway in the Canary Islands, killing 583 people.

Frank Sinatra’s mother, the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, and all but one member of the University of Evansville basketball team died in crashes…

But then there were the events of October 20, 1977, when a rickety chartered plane went down in a swamp in Mississippi…on board were members of Lynyrd Skynyrd…six of the 24 passengers died, including singer Ronnie Van Zandt, guitarist Steve Gaines, backup singer Cassie Gaines, and assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick…both pilots also died…

What happened?

Have I got a story for you...

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X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross

Website: ajournalofmusicalthings.com

Email: [email protected]

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In this one-of-a-kind true crime podcast, award-winning music historian and host of the chart topping Ongoing History of New Music, Alan Cross, takes you inside unbelievable stories from murder, to fatal plane crashes, to court battles, and even run-ins with the mob! You’ll hear about the dark side of world of music.

Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry available every other week starting October 24.

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