Dexter Gordon’s Wikipedia page mentioned that he was unable to perform in New York City bars or dancehalls – essentially any place that served alcohol, more importantly the places that jazz musicians would earn their living – without a cabaret card.
Apparently, New York City controlled who could perform – and more importantly, who couldn’t – by issuing and revoking these cards, often revoked for drug charges and morality reasons without necessarily consistency or reasonable justification. Gordon couldn’t get his card due to his drug use, but plenty of other musicians had drug charges used against him. It wouldn’t surprise me if racial profiling was used as well.
Regardless, police could revoke someone’s card at any point, for any whim, without justification, and withhold it for an arbitrary period of time…and then just as arbitrarily hand it back. Speculation exists that the money paid to receive a card went directly into the police pension fund, which is hard to corroborate but does feel consistent to how the department was known to be run at that time.
