Really the Blues (Barnes & Noble Rediscovers Series)

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Really the Blues (First Citadel Underground Edition) Pub. Date: 12/28/2001 Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
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Really the Blues (Barnes & Noble Rediscovers Series) Pub. Date: 6/25/2009 Publisher: Barnes & Noble

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Overview

First published in 1946, Really the Blues was a stunning departure from the frequently and understandably sanitized pop music and jazz autobiographies that had begun appearing in the previous decade. Its author, Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, was the son of a Chicago drugstore owner, a Jew, and a journeyman clarinet and sax player. He was also a bootlegger and the peddler of the finest smoke in Harlem. Mezzrow had two passions: hot music and reefer. (“Mezz,” in fact, became a slang word for marijuana.)

Liberally sprinkling his prose with the jive lingo he was most accustomed to using, Mezz writes here of his upbringing—a white kid who fell in love with black culture, learning to blow clarinet in reform school (stolen car), brothels, and the honky-tonks of his youth. Drawn by the revelation of the blues, he followed the music: Chicago, New Orleans, New York. He spent two years in jail for possession of marijuana with intent to sell. During processing, he insisted on being classified as a “Negro” and spent his jail time in the segregated, black cellblock. Later, living in Harlem, he married a black woman, “Johnnie Mae,” with whom he had a son.

But Mezz was more than an outrageous social rebel. In New York in 1930, he attempted to organize the first integrated jazz band—years before John Hammond succeeded. He also financed and produced some of the most important Sidney Bechet recordings of the 1930s and ’40s. Among his many friends and fellow musicians who populate these pages are Louis Armstrong (whom Mezz briefly managed), Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Carter, Eddie Condon, GeneKrupa, King Oliver, and Fats Waller.

It may justifiably be said that Really the Blues is a relic of another time, celebrating aspects of American cultural and social life that owed their existence partly to entrenched racism—hardly to be held up as models for our time. Yet the book is a celebration, as it was once also a Bohemian manifesto—a rousing call to another life for many trapped in the choking choices of postwar America. As Barry Gifford wrote in 1990: “It’s still worth reading, not just for the history but the point of view.”

Praise for Really the Blues and its author:

“This perfectly marvelous book conveys a powerful, vital message of unadulterated joy.”—Henry Miller

“Really the Blues is the scatological soup bone of New Orleans…Mezz Mezzrow took me to Storyville.”—Tom Waits

"For me, the first signal into white culture of the underground black, hip culture."—Allen Ginsberg

“Mezz translated the experience for young cats of the ’40s and ’50s like Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and John Clellon Holmes, and inspired them not only in their lives but their writing, a valuable legacy.”—Barry Gifford

“When [Mezz] fell through the Mason-Dixie line, he just kept going.” —Eddie Condon

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781435104471
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Publication date: 6/25/2009
Pages: 448
Series: Barnes & Noble Rediscovers Series
Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.50 (d)

Meet the Author

Mezz Mezzrow (1899–1972) was born Milton Mesirow in Chicago. Beginning in the 1920s, he had a sometime career as a sideman in jazz groups. As a backer and producer of significant recordings (by Frankie Newton, Teddy Wilson, Sidney Bechet, and Tommy Ladnier, among others), he helped to spark the New Orleans revival of the late 1930s. In the 1940s Mezzrow started his own record label, King Jazz Records. He spent the last twenty years of his life in Paris.

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bluenotes

Posted February 9, 2011

Delightful Autobiography

Found in the discount pile of books, I got "Really the Blues" home and read the jacket. I didn't want to put it down; I gobbled it from Chapter 1 past the index all the way through the Afterword written by Bernard Wolf. At first it was hard to catch on but after the first chapter or so I was immersed in Mezz's era. His descriptions of so many famous musicians brought them to life and made them dance and sing in front of me. His description of Bessie Smith brought home to me a depth that I had not read before and the way he spoke of her death was genuine. "They took her and murdered her down South--murdered her in cold blood because, like she said, she wasn't no high yaller, just a beginner brown, and more real woman than those Jim Crow mammyjamming whites would know what to do with." I kept looking up musician names, groups and song titles in You Tube just to listen to the music Mezzrow was writing about.
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Really the Blues (Barnes & Noble Rediscovers Series)

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