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Really The Blues

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Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow was a white jewish kid who was born in Chicago in 1899. In his late teens he discovered the jazz music that was being played around the south side of Chicago in those days. "Mezz" fell in love with the sound of early jazz and with the excitement of the music scene. Chicago was a jazz center then, and Mezzrow heard many of the great pioneers of the music including Freddie Keppard, Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong and many others. Soon he bought a clarinet and began trying to play like his heroes.

The club owners who employed Mezzrow were prohibition era gangsters including Al Capone. The gangsters were interesting louts. Capone once wanted Mezzrow to fire a girl singer who was developing a romantic relationship with Capone's younger brother. Capone said, "she can't sing anyway." Mezzrow was so upset that he told Capone, "why, you couldn't even tell good whisky if you smelled it and that's your racket, so how do you figure to tell me about music." (sic) Feisty!

Mezzrow wrote this book in 1946, and he uses 20's era slang to tell his story. This is as groovie as a 10 cent movie, jack. It's also fun.

Mezzrow's maniacal enthusiasm for early jazz is endearing. Not many people who were actually present at the time considered jazz music to be important enough to write books about. Part of Mezzrow's purpose is to convince the reader that jazz music is important. One of the earlier reviewers compares Mezzrow's book unfavorably to Louis Armstrong's autobiography, Satchmo. Armstong's book is good, but Mezzrow's book is more honest than Armstrong's. Armstrong was born into dire poverty. His mother may have been a prostitute, and he was placed in an orphanage at an early age. His book cleans up the criminals and murders in his story so that they are merely "colorful characters", and he leaves out as much unpleasantness as possible. Mezzrow tells more of the whole story. He candidly discusses his drug experiences, and his jail sentences as well as his happier times.

An added bonus to this book is that Mezzrow leaves out all that boring background information that plauges other books, like who his grand parents were and what his childhood was like. Mezzrow's book starts right off with his discovery of music in Pontiac reform school.

If you like this book, or Louis Armstong's book, another good book by an early jazz musician is Jelly Roll Morton's book, Mr. Jelly Roll.

I was just lucky enough to be given a batch of discarded books on music because I teach a course in music appreciation. I thumbed thru the box and stumbled across Really the Blues, printed 1946, first edition, great condition. What started out as a simply read turned into an obsession and I read the entire book in two settings. It is a journey that few people have ever taken and even fewer have written about. The lingo alone is worth the price of the book. For those who have ever wondered what the smell of jazz was like in the 20s-30s and 40s, read this book. It rips at your sense of justice, morality, and involvement in the human race. Milton Mezzrow gets my vote for one of the top spots in american music history as well as one of the top spots among those who have given back to the world much more than they ever took. The book smolders with intensity and describes a journey into ones self that takes the reader from the recording studios of Harlem, across the world of music, into the flophouses and whorehouses that featured jazz in the early years, on thru jails, prisons, and work gangs. The life and times of Milton Mezzrow should under no circumstances be left out of the history of jazz. I found it satifying to hear that in slang Mezz has come to mean the best as this is surely the best story that I have read in so long that it defies comparison to anything that I can remember. If you do not read another book for the remainder of the year, when this one is available, grab it, a slightly warm beer and find a very comfortable spot to enter a world that reads like science fiction and yet is indeed music fact. Good reading and enjoy the beer too.

Often considered a highly unreliable autobiography, 'Really the Blues' is really an insight into the personality of Mezz Mezzrow rather than a factual retelling of his life events. Milton 'Mezz' Mesirow was a Jewish-American jazz clarinetist born in 1899 in Chicago. Mezz quickly showed a penchant for jazz music, like his mentor Louis Armstrong, for whom he briefly may have served as manager.

Although Milton "Mezz" Mesirow is generally remembered as one of the best jazz musicians, Mesirow was in-fact a very technically skilled clarinetist and quite knowledgable about the workings of the jazz music industry. Milton's life was often a product of the demands of the music industry which he found himself.

His personality could best be viewed as a reflection of the rough-and-tumble environment of mob-controlled, Prohibition-era Chicago. Due to the uncertainty of the circumstances abound, Mezz was a fearless rebel-rouser. He took risks, such as smuggling some twenty joints into a New York night club. He was stopped and caught by the police, a violation for which he was arrested and taken to jail. When he arrived, Mezzrow successfully persuaded the officials to let him stay in a black section of the segregated prison by convincing them that he was African American.

In addition to music, race-relations emerges as a theme in the autobiography. Mezz married a black woman, played music like a black person, and was more interested in black culture than in white culture. Mezz also dealt marijuana in spades. His marijuana dealing perhaps earned him higher distinction than his jazz playing. In the lingo of the time, "Mezz" became slang for marijuana. Milton also gained the nickname "Muggles King," at the time "muggles" being a slang word for marijuana.

The writing style featured by Mezz and Bernard Wolfe makes 'Really the Blues' a fast-paced and entertaining read. Mezz's narrative style in 'Really the Blues' is self-assuring, reading as if Mezz were in the room and actively trying to engage the reader. Consequently, the insight that the reader gets into Mesirow's psyche comes not just from the stories, but in large part from the narrative style itself. Mesirow is revealed to the reader through his contemporary grammar, liberal syntax, and the nonchalant method by which he organizes his book.

Reading 'Really the Blues' is an experience unto itself. Mezz takes the reader on a ride through another time, an era defined largely by the times. The reader is also given an entertaining educational look at the life of an important, if somewhat marginalized early jazz musician, Milton "Mezz" Mesirow.

* You may have noticed that my last name, Mesirow, is the same as that of Milton Mesirow. There actually is a familial relationship. My grandfather was a first cousin of Mezz (although Mezz was two decades older). My grandfather kept up on what Mezz was doing and introduced me to the legacy of Mezz Mezzrow.

the hippest trip around...this book will grab you by the soul and spin you around. reading it changed my life.

This is quite a yarn. I leave it to others to debate Mezzrow's place in jazz history. I found it interesting as a social study. Tales of 1920s gangsters and prohibition, the Chicago and Harlem music scene, and race relations. Of course, it's not always clear how much of this is true and how much may be a product of Mezzrow's (or Wolfe's) desire to make the story better.

For me, Mezzrow came across as the ultimate wannabe. He wanted to be a black jazz musician from New Orleans. He was a Russian Jew, born in Chicago. He lived the life, the music *was* his life (except when opium was his life), but he could never fully be what he wasn't.

Compare, for example, Louis Armstrong's autobiography "Satchmo." Armstrong matter-of-factly tells about his life, not wanting it to be anything else. Mezzrow is always trying to be something he isn't and never can be. He was an interesting character.

It's a good read.

I bought this book a few years back. I loaned that copy to Sam a friend of mine. I loved this book. I read it twice before ol' Sammy got his paws to clutching it. This book speaks of the love of music. Jazz in particular. Sam still has my copy of that book. He ended up taking to Amsterdam, where he lives now. I found another copy, a first edition, for a dollar in a used book store. I gave the man his dollar and got out quick. I'm sorry to see this book (at time of writing) is out of print. If it ends up in print. It's worth the read. If ol' Amazon.com can't get it for you, you could look up my good friend Sam.

Poppa Mezz tells it like it was in the beginning of the melting pot of music from New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City & the fields of Mississippi into the clubs in Harlem. A white man who hung & played with the best, & fronted the 1st integrated band. Undoubtedly the truest & most humorous translation of the language of the street, & the life that beat with the Beat. Catch ya on the back side of the Tree, Slot!

For years I thought this was an LP not a book then one day I find it for 4 bucks at the a shop can't believe it, buy it before I'm a quarter through I'm back buying it for a pal who I know needs it in his life too. I keep it at my bedside and pray my kids don't tear it up on me. Mezz is the man of the century.

This is one of the great American memoirs - both idiosyncratic and iconoclastic. Mezz Mezzrow's real name was Milton Mesirow. He was the son of Russian Jew immigrants. Born in 1899, he grew up in Chicago. A jazz musician, he played the clarinet and the saxophone, but he never was regarded as one of the greats. He did, however, rub shoulders - and share bandstands - with many of the greats, including Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, the Austin High Gang, Jimmy Noone, Jack Teagarden, Fats Waller, Tommy Ladnier, Zutty Singleton, Sidney Bechet, and Louis Armstrong. While Mezzrow merits mention in any comprehensive history of jazz, it is this fabulously rich memoir that is his real legacy.

REALLY THE BLUES (the title of a song Mezzrow wrote and performed with Sidney Bechet) was first published in 1946. It covers developments in jazz from about 1915, when it swept into Chicago from its origins in New Orleans, through 1945, just as bebop began to radically change the genre forever. But REALLY THE BLUES is much more than a jazz book. It also is a documentary on drug use (at least marijuana and opium) and it provides a wonderful window on life in urban America (particularly Chicago and Harlem) in the years between 1915 and 1945. Most of all, it is a landmark book on race relations and Jim Crow in the United States of that period.

The book is written in an informal, hip style, and it is laden with jargon and jive. Some of the outré similes don't work at all (e.g., "We got so close to each other that we made the Siamese twins look like they were standing on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon") and the style can at times become rather annoying. On the other hand, Mezzrow does get off more than a fair share of zingers, and he is always on the prowl for a chuckle, often with success.

The music that particularly captivated Mezzrow was New Orleans jazz. In a highly perceptive analysis, he explains how New Orleans jazz became "tangent" and lost focus as it was first modified by the "Chicago style" (of which he was one of the progenitors) and then adulterated altogether by commercial pressures and producers in the East, primarily New York. Mezzrow may not have been a first-rate jazz performer, but his jazz intellect and understanding were top-shelf.

He also made a name for himself through his use and advocacy of marijuana. (In addition, for four years he was hooked on opium and the book includes a harrowing account of his breaking the addiction.) There are numerous passages in REALLY THE BLUES about marijuana use and culture. Mezzrow at one time was a famous source of supply of muta among musicians and in Harlem. Indeed, so appreciated was his product in Harlem that the best marijuana was known as "the mezz" or "the mighty mezz" and the fat, well-packed, and clean cigarette he packaged was known as a "mezzroll". Stuff Smith even wrote a song, recorded by Decca, that started: "Dreamed about a reefer five foot long/The mighty mezz but not too strong." Mezz ended up serving 17 months in New York City jails after being busted at the 1939 World's Fair with 60 "muggles" (marijuana cigarettes).

But Mezzrow is most notable for his attitude towards Negroes (the term he preferred), his appreciation of the history, culture, jive, and music of the American Negro, and for his resolution to become himself as Negro as he could. Among other things, he persuaded the prison authorities to jail him in the colored block, he moved to Harlem, and his second wife was a Negro, with whom he fathered a son. His "negrophilia" began at the age of fifteen, when he spent a stretch of time in a reformatory and was incarcerated with, and befriended by, Negroes. "By the time I reached home, I knew that I was going to spend all my time from then on sticking close to Negroes. They were my kind of people. And I was going to learn their music and play it for the rest of my days. I was going to be a musician, a Negro musician * * *."

I have hardly begun to scratch the surface of this fascinating piece of Americana. I will close with one of the many memorable anecdotes from the book, this one of the time Mezz accompanied Louis Armstrong to the RCA recording studio in Camden, New Jersey:

"In the dead of night we drove up to a large red brick church. I wondered if we were going to have a special prayer service * * *, but when we went through the chapel door I saw it was a recording studio. `This is funny, ain't it, Mezz,' Louis said, `jammin' in a ole church.' I came back with `Where else should Gabriel blow?'"

Published in the late 1940s, this book had to be a huge influence on the Beat Generation writers - and yet, that comes as a surprise because who's heard of this man or his book? Presented here is the life of Mezz Mezzrow - "the guy, behind the guy" in the Jazz world. Drug addict, drug pusher, and good friends with - and musical director of - Louis Armstrong, Mezz tells the story behind the scenes of the jazz explosion of the 20s and beyond. Written in Harlem vernacular, you don't need to understand jive to dig his story, you can simply dig the language itself; however, if you're not a jazz aficionado, the many people/musicians Mezz writes about will be completely foreign and seem somewhat insignificant to the plot-line - but how can one equate one's life with a plot-line anyway? All in all, a good document of the counterculture of the 20s.