REALLY THE BLUES  1946

SIGNED by MILTON “MEZZ” MEZZROW 

SIGNED by BERNARD WOLFE

By MILTON “MEZZ” MEZZROW & BERNARD WOLFE

Published by Random House, New York : 

1946 FIRST EDITION

This book is a HARDCOVER with blue cloth lettered in white, with 388 pages and dust jacket.

A beautiful copy of this book, jacket not price-clipped, just a few very small nicks to the jacked spine edges and a small stain on one leaf.

First Edition, inscribed by the legendary jazz musician and his co-author to the girlfriend of another legendary white jazz performer and bandleader, Eddie Condon.

“For ----------, Eddie’s friend from California. Here’s hopin’ you dig this issue, above the half hipped squares. 

Milton ‘Mezz’ Mezzrow” 

“For ----------, If you’re a friend of Eddie’s—you’re solid.  Bernie Wolfe”

Bernard Wolfe was himself a distinguished novelist, the author of nine novels including the futuristic classic, Limbo.

ALSO, Laid in is a newspaper clipping from 1947 about a jazz show in Chicago based upon Mezzrow’s just published book, featuring jazz musicians, including Eddie Condon, at which Mezz narrated and played clarinet. A joke he made about Condon at the event is in the article.

It's pretty clear  Mezzrow and Wolfe inscribed the book to the lady after this show, at which Condon also performed. Condon, another white jazz man like Mezzrow, was one of the pioneers of Chicago Dixieland along with Mezzrow.

Really the Blues is generally considered one of the GREATEST BOOKS  ever written about the jazz world, spanning the years from the early 1920s to the end of World War II primarily in Chicago, New Orleans and New York City. Henry Miller considered it one of the greatest American autobiographies.

 Mezzrow’s book is equally notable for it’s portrayal of  drug use in the jazz world. Mezzrow himself was an on-and-off opium smoker (and did time in prison for it), but it was marijuana that is most associated with him. During a time of fierce prohibition, the Reefer Madness period, he personally supplied other musicians and jazz followers with the finest quality cannabis, which was colloquially called “Mezz” after him, perhaps the only time in history that a drug became literally synonymous with an individual. “Mighty Mezz” is in the lyrics of the jazz standard, “If You’re a Viper.”  His description of playing jazz while under the influence of marijuana is memorable. 

“All the notes came easing out of my horn like they’d already been made up, greased and stuffed into the bell, so all I had to do was blow a little and send them on their way, one right after the other, never missing, never behind time, all without an ounce of effort.  The phrases seemed to have more continuity to them and I was sticking to the theme without every going tangent.  I felt I could go on playing for years without running out of ideas and energy….  I began to preach my millennium with my horn, leading all the sinners on to glory.”

Mezzrow on Marijuana: “It’s a funny thing about marijuana—when you first begin smoking you see things in a wonderful, soothing, easygoing new light.  All of a sudden the world is stripped of its dirty shrouds and becomes one big bellyful of giggles…. Nothing leaves you cold anymore.  There’s a humorous tickle and great meaning in the least little thing… and every sensation, when it comes, is the most exciting one you’ve ever had.  You can’t get enough of anything—you want to gobble up the whole goddamned universe just for an appetizer.  Them first kicks are a killer, Jim.”

Other notable features are the “Translation of the Jive Section” from the book:

“Second Cat:  Hey Mezzie, lay some of that hard-cuttin’ mess on me. I’m short a deuce of blips but I’ll straighten you out later.”

Translation: “Second Cat:  Hello, Mezz, give me some of the marihuana that makes all the others look silly.  I’m short ten cents but will pay you later.”

There is a glossary of jive talk from Mezzrow’s era containing around 400 terms, including scores for marijuana alone. “The mezzroll:  fat sticks of marijuana, hand-rolled, with the ends tucked in.” 

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE: A NOTHIN' BUT A CHILD

1. Don't Cry, Ma

2. Not Too Far Tangent

3. The Band House, The Band House

4. Quit Foolin' with That Comb

BOOK TWO: CHICAGO, CHICAGO

5. They Found the Body in a Ditch

6. Them First Kicks Are a Killer   

7. Tea Don't Do You That Way     

8. Got the Heebies, Got the Jeebies       

9. Forgottenest Man in Town

BOOK THREE : THE BIG APPLE

10. If You Can't Make Money

11. Vo-do-de-o and a Minsky Pizzicato

12. Tell a Green Man Something

13. Once More, Again, and Another Time

14. Tough Scuffle, Mezzie

15. Crawl 'fore You Can Walk

BOOK FOUR : BASIN STREET IS THE STREET

16. God Sure Don't Like Ugly

17. Out of the Gallion

APPENDICES

1. New Orleans and Chicago: the Root and the Branch

2. Translation of the Jive Section

3. A Note on the Panassié Recordings

4. Glossary

5. Index

MORE ABOUT = Milton Mesirow better known as Mezz Mezzrow (November 9, 1899 – August 5, 1972) was an American jazz clarinetist 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. He is equally well remembered, however, for being a colorful character, as clearly portrayed in his autobiography Really The Blues, as for his music. The book, which takes its title from a Bechet musical piece, was co-written by Bernard Wolfe 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 Carter, 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."

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 marijuana 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" being slang for marijuana at that time; the title of the 1928 Louis Armstrong recording "Muggles" refers to this.

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".

Selected discography

1947: Really the Blues, Jazz Archives (France)

1951: Mezz Mezzrow & His Band Featuring Collins & Singleton", Blue Note

1954: Mezz Mezzrow

1954: Mezz Mezzrow with Frankie Newton, Victor Records

1954: Mezz Mezzrow's Swing Session X Records

1954: Mezzin' Around, RCA

1955: Mezz Mezzrow, Disques Swing

1955: Paris 1955, Vol. 1, Disques Swing

1955: Mezz Mezzrow in Paris, 1955, Jazz Time Records

1956: Mezz Mezzrow a La Scholas Cantorum

1995: Makin' Friends, EPM

2007: Tells the King Jazz Story, Crisler

2012: Mezzrow and Bechet Remastered, Gralin Music  

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