Milton Mesirow (November 9, 1899 – August 5, 1972), better known as Mezz Mezzrow, was an American jazz clarinetist and saxophonist from Chicago, Illinois who occupies an odd and unique place in jazz history. Although an enthusiastic clarinetist, he was never much of a player, sounding best on the blues. A passionate propagandist for Chicago and New Orleans jazz and the rights of blacks (he meant well, but tended to overstate his case).
He is well known for organizing and financing historic recording sessions with Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. He also recorded a number of times with Bechet and briefly acted as manager for Louis Armstrong.
Mezz was born in Chicago to a poor Jewish immigrant family. As a juvenile delinquent, he was in and out of reformatory schools and prisons where he was exposed to jazz and blues music. He began to play the clarinet and decided to adopt the African American culture as his own. He became a ubiquitous figure on the Chicago jazz scene of the 1920’s and ran in the circles of musicians that included King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Jimmy Noone, Al Jolson, Baby Dodds, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Bellson and many others. He admired Armstrong so much that after the release of "Heebie Jeebies", he, along with Teschemacher, drove 53 miles to Indiana in order to play it for Bix Beiderbecke.
Mezz was an advocate for the pure New Orleans jazz style. Mezz became close friends with Louis Armstrong and later became his personal assistant. In the late thirties, Mezz moved to Harlem in New York City and married an African American woman. He continued to play and also organize recording sessions with many great artists. Mezz Mezzrow also became famous as a marijuana dealer and advocated for the use of the herb as a healthy alternative to alcohol and other drugs. His product was so well known in the jazz community that musicians called it “mezz”, “the mighty mezz” or “mezz-rolls”, as in marijuana cigarettes.
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| Mezz Mezzrow & Sidney Bechet |
He was also known as the Muggles King, the word muggles being slang for marijuana at that time; the title of the 1928 Louis Armstrong recording "Muggles" refers to this. Armstrong was one of his biggest customers. A letter from 1932, written by Armstrong, demonstrates this relationship; while in England, Armstrong details in this letter about where and how Mezzrow should send marijuana.
Mezzrow married an African American woman, Mae (also known as Johnnie Mae), moved to Harlem, New York, and declared himself a "voluntary Negro". He believed that "he had definitely 'crossed the line' that divided white and black identities".
Mezz Mezzrow, Louis Armstrong
Claude Luter and Duke Ellington
In 1940 he was arrested in possession of sixty joints while 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.
In the mid-1940s Mezzrow started his own record label, King Jazz Records, featuring himself with groups, usually including Sidney Bechet and often including the trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page. He also played on six recordings by Fats Waller.
Mezzrow is equally well remembered as a colourful character, as portrayed in his autobiography, Really the Blues (which takes its title from a Bechet composition), co-written with Bernard Wolfe and published in 1946. This book chronicles his life as a musician, marijuana smoker, and dealer. Written in African-American dialect it features a long glossary of “jive,” including most of the slang terms for marijuana — such as “gauge,” “grass,” “grefa,” “gunga,” “hay,” “hemp,” “muggles,” “muta,” “reefer,” “tea,” and “weed” — that would later become part and parcel of the Beat vocabulary.
Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Mezz Mezzrow and others at jam session
He appeared at the 1948 Nice Jazz Festival, following which he made his home in France and organized many bands that included French musicians like Claude Luter and visiting Americans, such as Buck Clayton, Peanuts Holland, Jimmy Archey, Kansas Fields and Lionel Hampton. Mezzrow was lifelong friends with the French jazz critic Hugues Panassié and spent the last 20 years of his life in Pariswhere he worked as an entrepreneur, organizing all-star touring bands. With ex-Basie trumpeter Buck Clayton, he made a recording of the Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" in Paris in 1953. He recorded his final album in 1959.
Above everything Mezz Mezzrow was an advocate for integration and equal rights at time well before the movement of the 1960’s.
Eddie Condon said of Mezz Mezzrow: “When he fell through the Mason-Dixie line he just kept going". Mezz was the original hipster, slang master, jazz musician and bohemian spirit.
He died after sustaining complications from a fall on August 5, 1972 in Paris, France and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. (Edited from Wikipedia, Mezzrow.com & L.A Review Of Books)