Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Milton Mesirow, better known as Mezz Mezzrow was born November 9, 1899 in Chicago, Illinois. The clarinetist and saxophonist has never been ranked as one of the best jazz musicians, organizing and taking part in some magnificent recording sessions involving the best black musicians of the 1930s/40s, including Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Frankie Newton, Tommy Ladnier and most importantly Sidney Bechet. His 1938 sessions for the French jazz critic Hugues Panassie, which he is well-known for organizing and financing, involved Bechet and Ladnier and helped spark the “New Orleans revival”.
Mezzrow became better known for his drug-dealing of marijuana than his music. His nicknames “Mezz” and “Muggles” that became slang for marijuana were used in song, the former in the Stuff Smith tune “If You’re A Viper” and the later was the title of a 1928 Louis Armstrong recording and for a brief time was his manager.
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 and his appearance at the 1948 Nice Jazz Festival was a surprise hit.
Following that appearance he made his home in Paris, France and organized many bands that included French musicians like Claude Luter, as well as visiting American artists like Peanuts Holland, Jimmy Archey, Kansas Fields, Lionel Hampton and Buck Clayton, with whom in 1953 he made what is probably his best ever recording: a version of the Louis Armstrong classic “West End Blues”.
Mezz Mezzrow, clarinetist, saxophonist, author and colorful character died on August 5, 1972 in Paris, France.