Really the Blues
by Mezz Mezzrow, Bernard Wolfe
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bernard Wolfe, Mezz MezzrowIntroduction: Barry Gifford
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1990-01-01
ISBN: 0806512059
Number of pages: 424
Publisher: Citadel Underground
Book Reviews of Really the Blues
Book Review: A Russian Jew on jazz, muggles, and Jim Crow America: a classic memoir
Summary: 5 Stars
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?'"
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