Mezz Mezzrow
Encyclopedia
Milton Mesirow, better known as Mezz Mezzrow (November 9, 1899 – August 5, 1972) was an American
jazz
clarinet
ist and saxophonist
from Chicago
, Illinois
. Mezzrow is well known for organizing and financing historic recording sessions with Tommy Ladnier
and Sidney Bechet
. Mezzrow also recorded a number of times with Bechet and briefly acted as manager for Louis Armstrong
. However, he is remembered as much for being a colorful character in his autobiography Really The Blues as for his music. It takes its title from a musical piece by Sidney Bechet
. The book was co-written by Bernard Wolfe
and first published in 1946.
, Teddy Wilson
, Frankie Newton, Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. Mezzrow's 1938 sessions for the French jazz critic Hugues Panassie
involved Bechet and Ladnier and helped spark the 'New Orleans revival'.
In the mid-1940s Mezzrow started his own record label
, King Jazz Records, featuring himself in groups that usually included Sidney Bechet and, often, trumpeter Oran 'Hot Lips' Page. Mezzrow also can be found and heard playing on six recordings by Fats Waller
. He appeared at the 1948 Nice Jazz Festival
.
Following that, he made his home in France and organized many bands that included French musicians like Claude Luter
, as well as visiting Americans such as Buck Clayton
, Peanuts Holland
, Jimmy Archey
, Kansas Fields
and Lionel Hampton
. In 1953, in Paris with ex-Basie trumpeter Buck Clayton
, he made a recording of the Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues
."
that "Mezz" became slang for marijuana, a reference used in the Stuff Smith
song, "If You're a Viper
". He was also known as the "Muggles King," the word "muggles" (also the title of a 1928 Louis Armstrong recording), being slang for marijuana at that time.
Mezzrow praised and admired the African-American style. In his autobiography Really The Blues, Mezzrow writes that from the moment he heard jazz he "was going to be a Negro musician, hipping [teaching] the world about the blues the way only Negroes can."
Mezzrow married a black woman, Mae (also known as Johnnie Mae), moved to Harlem
, New York
, and declared himself a "voluntary Negro." In 1940 he was caught by the police to be in possession of sixty joints
trying to enter a jazz club at the 1939 New York World's Fair
, with intent to distribute. When he was sent to jail, he insisted to the guards that he was black
and was transferred to the segregated prison's black section. He wrote (in Really the Blues):
"Just as we were having our pictures taken for the rogues' gallery, along came Mr. Slattery the deputy and I nailed him and began to talk fast. 'Mr. Slattery,' I said, 'I'm colored, even if I don't look it, and I don't think I'd get along in the white blocks, and besides, there might be some friends of mine in Block Six and they'd keep me out of trouble'. Mr. Slattery jumped back, astounded, and studied my features real hard. He seemed a little relieved when he saw my nappy head. 'I guess we can arrange that,' he said. 'Well, well, so you're Mezzrow. I read about you in the papers long ago and I've been wondering when you'd get here. We need a good leader for our band and I think you're just the man for the job'. He slipped me a card with 'Block Six' written on it. I felt like I'd got a reprieve."
Mezzrow was lifelong friends with French jazz critic Hugues Panassié
and spent the last 20 years of his life in Paris. Mezzrow's autobiography, Really the Blues, was co-authored by Bernard Wolfe and published in 1946.
Eddie Condon
said of him (We Called It Music, London; Peter Davis 1948): "When he fell through the Mason-Dixie line he just kept going".
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
ist and saxophonist
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
from Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. Mezzrow is well known for organizing and financing historic recording sessions with Tommy Ladnier
Tommy Ladnier
Thomas J. "Tommy" Ladnier was an American jazz trumpeter. Clarinetist/writer Mezz Mezzrow rated him second only to Louis Armstrong....
and Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...
. Mezzrow also recorded a number of times with Bechet and briefly acted as manager for Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
. However, he is remembered as much for being a colorful character in his autobiography Really The Blues as for his music. It takes its title from a musical piece by Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...
. The book was co-written by Bernard Wolfe
Bernard Wolfe
Bernard Wolfe was an American writer. He was educated at Yale University, and worked in the United States Merchant Marine during the 1930s. Wolfe worked briefly as secretary and bodyguard to Leon Trotsky during the latter's exile in Mexico...
and first published in 1946.
Music career
Mezzrow organized and took part in recording sessions involving black musicians in the 1930s and 1940s including Benny CarterBenny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King...
, Teddy Wilson
Teddy Wilson
Theodore Shaw "Teddy" Wilson was an American jazz pianist whose sophisticated and elegant style was featured on the records of many of the biggest names in jazz, including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.-Biography:Wilson was born in Austin, Texas in...
, Frankie Newton, Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. Mezzrow's 1938 sessions for the French jazz critic Hugues Panassie
Hugues Panassié
Hugues Panassié was a French jazz critic and producer. His most famous works were Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music and The Real Jazz, published in 1936 and 1942, respectively....
involved Bechet and Ladnier and helped spark the 'New Orleans revival'.
In the mid-1940s Mezzrow started his own record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
, King Jazz Records, featuring himself in groups that usually included Sidney Bechet and, often, trumpeter Oran 'Hot Lips' Page. Mezzrow also can be found and heard playing on six recordings by Fats Waller
Fats Waller
Fats Waller , born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer...
. He appeared at the 1948 Nice Jazz Festival
Nice Jazz Festival
The Nice Jazz Festival, held annually since 1948 in Nice, on the French Riviera, is "the first jazz festival of international significance." At the inaugural festival, Louis Armstrong and his All Stars were the headliners...
.
Following that, he made his home in France and organized many bands that included French musicians like Claude Luter
Claude Luter
Claude Luter 23 July 1923, Paris – 6 October 2006, Paris) was a jazz clarinetist who also doubled on soprano saxophone.He began on trumpet, but switched to clarinet. He might be best known for being an accompanist to Sidney Bechet when he was in Paris, but he also worked with Barney Bigard...
, as well as visiting Americans such as Buck Clayton
Buck Clayton
Buck Clayton was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie’s "Old Testament" orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong...
, Peanuts Holland
Peanuts Holland
Herbert Lee "Peanuts" Holland was an American jazz trumpeter best known for his contributions in swing jazz. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia and died in Stockholm, Sweden....
, Jimmy Archey
Jimmy Archey
Jimmy Archey was an American jazz trombonist born in Norfolk, Virginia, perhaps most noteworthy for his work in several prominent jazz orchestras and big bands of his time . He performed and recorded with the James P...
, Kansas Fields
Kansas Fields
Carl Donnell "Kansas" Fields was an American jazz drummer.Fields played in Chicago beginning in the late 1920s, and worked with King Kolax and Jimmie Noone in the 1930s. In 1940 he joined Roy Eldridge's group for a year; he returned to play with Eldridge again later in the 1940s...
and Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...
. In 1953, in Paris with ex-Basie trumpeter Buck Clayton
Buck Clayton
Buck Clayton was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie’s "Old Testament" orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong...
, he made a recording of the Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues
West End Blues
"West End Blues" is a multi-strain 12 bar blues composition by Joe "King" Oliver. It is most commonly performed as an instrumental, although it has lyrics added by Clarence Williams....
."
Personal life
Mezzrow became better-known for his drug-dealing than his music. In his time, he was so well known in the jazz community for selling marijuanaCannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
that "Mezz" became slang for marijuana, a reference used in the Stuff Smith
Stuff Smith
Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith , better known as Stuff Smith, was a jazz violinist. He is known well for the song "If You're a Viper".-Biography:...
song, "If You're a Viper
If You're a Viper
"If You're a Viper" is a jazz song composed by Stuff Smith. It was first recorded by Smith and his Onyx Club Boys in 1936....
". He was also known as the "Muggles King," the word "muggles" (also the title of a 1928 Louis Armstrong recording), being slang for marijuana at that time.
Mezzrow praised and admired the African-American style. In his autobiography Really The Blues, Mezzrow writes that from the moment he heard jazz he "was going to be a Negro musician, hipping [teaching] the world about the blues the way only Negroes can."
Mezzrow married a black woman, Mae (also known as Johnnie Mae), moved to Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and declared himself a "voluntary Negro." In 1940 he was caught by the police to be in possession of sixty joints
Joint (cannabis)
Joint is a slang term for a cigarette rolled using cannabis. Rolling papers are the most common rolling medium among industrialized countries, however brown paper, cigarettes with the tobacco removed, and newspaper are commonly used in developing countries. Modern papers are now made from a wide...
trying to enter a jazz club at the 1939 New York World's Fair
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...
, with intent to distribute. When he was sent to jail, he insisted to the guards that he was black
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
and was transferred to the segregated prison's black section. He wrote (in Really the Blues):
"Just as we were having our pictures taken for the rogues' gallery, along came Mr. Slattery the deputy and I nailed him and began to talk fast. 'Mr. Slattery,' I said, 'I'm colored, even if I don't look it, and I don't think I'd get along in the white blocks, and besides, there might be some friends of mine in Block Six and they'd keep me out of trouble'. Mr. Slattery jumped back, astounded, and studied my features real hard. He seemed a little relieved when he saw my nappy head. 'I guess we can arrange that,' he said. 'Well, well, so you're Mezzrow. I read about you in the papers long ago and I've been wondering when you'd get here. We need a good leader for our band and I think you're just the man for the job'. He slipped me a card with 'Block Six' written on it. I felt like I'd got a reprieve."
Mezzrow was lifelong friends with French jazz critic Hugues Panassié
Hugues Panassié
Hugues Panassié was a French jazz critic and producer. His most famous works were Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music and The Real Jazz, published in 1936 and 1942, respectively....
and spent the last 20 years of his life in Paris. Mezzrow's autobiography, Really the Blues, was co-authored by Bernard Wolfe and published in 1946.
Eddie Condon
Eddie Condon
Albert Edwin Condon , better known as Eddie Condon, was a jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in the so-called "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion....
said of him (We Called It Music, London; Peter Davis 1948): "When he fell through the Mason-Dixie line he just kept going".