No one wanted to kill him; they just wanted him to play the piano

[Fats] Waller’s playing was so special that it became a threat to his own safety. Leaving a show in Chicago in 1926, he was grabbed and bundled into a car, then ordered inside a place called the Hawthorne Inn with a gun in his back. Sweating, terrified, he was rather surprised to be pushed through the doors and find a party in full swing. He was the unwitting ‘surprise guest’ at Al Capone’s birthday bash. No one wanted to kill him; they just wanted him to play the piano. Making the most of a tricky situation, Waller stayed at the Hawthorne Inn for three days, drank the place dry and earned thousands of dollars in cash-money tips from Capone and his cronies.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 265