Mezz Mezzrow

Milton Mesirow, more known under the name of Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow , Clarinettist and Saxophonist, born with Chicago the November 9th 1899, deceased the August 5th 1972.

Biography

This musician for several reasons occupies a particular place in the history of the Jazz.

He left a biography, Really The Blues (published in 1946), which had the honor of a foreword by Henry Miller and was translated into French, under the bad title the rage of living , by Marcel Duhamel and Madeleine Gautier, the secretary of Hugues Panassié (the creator of Hot Jazz, which was a large friend of Mezz). It described there, in detail, forty years of the life of the jazz in the United States and, more quickly, certain episodes of the importation of the New Yorkean jazz in Europe.

American of Jewish origin, born in a family of the lower middle class, it tests as of his adolescence an absolute passion for the Afro-américain S and their music. This passion will make of him the “bridge” between the black and white jazzmen. Imprisoned for traffic of Drug, it will require to be placed in the section of the blacks - and will create an orchestra on the occasion.

Familiar of the black musicians of Blues and New-Orleans, it devotes a share essential of its energy to try to maintain the style original of the jazz, going until recording, in studio, two successive catches of the same compositions: one in the style of the day, the following one in “the old” New-Orleans style.

It is one of the very first jazzmen to be founded, as of 1933, a mixed orchestra (black musicians and white).

It is probably also the first to assume, in its autobiography, a statute of “bad lot”: stays in prison; intensive consumption, then sale of grass (as surprising as it is, it were not an offense at the time of Prohibition). The pages where it describes its feelings the first time where it plays “under influence” would have given even to Herbert von Karajan the desire for testing. But it falls into the opium addiction, alcoholism… It also describes, in an impressive way, how it gets rid of these “demons” and revival its career.

Its relative success, compared with those of a Sidney Bechet or a Louis Armstrong, inspires the following justification to him, disarming naivety: “If I play less better, it is that I am not committed also often…”

Remarkable melodist, he is the type-setter of famous standards such Gone Away Blues , Really The Blues or Out Of The Gallion .

But the essence of its contribution to the recorded music undoubtedly lies in its teaching activity, in the two fields of the rate/rhythm and the Harmonie. If its usual instruments are the Clarinette and the Saxophone (viola or tenor), he learns with the Batteur S from his orchestras the old style (the pages where he curses the invention of the Cymbale “Charleston” are worth their heavy mustard), and shows to the instrumentalists the melody lines suitable to emphasize the soloist - that he is not always.

Discography

The King Jazz Story Vol.1, Storyville (the best of Bechet-Mezzrow) with Cousin Joe

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