![]() ![]() As the story unfolds we learn a lot about all three. ![]() He learned how to play the clarinet and immersed himself in the jazz world of the 1920s, a world that, for him, revolved around three big Ms – musicians, mobsters and marijuana. A wild child from the beginning, he landed in reform school at the age of 15 where he discovered and became completely enamored of black culture in general and New Orleans jazz in particular. Mezzrow, a white Jewish kid, was born in 1899. So says Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow in the opening chapter of his strange but fascinating autobiography, Really the Blues. “Poppa, have you got any idea how a man took to jazz in the early days? Do you know how he spent years watching the droopy chicks in cathouses, listening to his cellmates moaning low behind the bars, digging the riffs the wheels were knocking out when he rode the rods – and then all of a sudden picked up a horn and began to tell the whole story in music? I’m going to explain that.” It’s “Lost in the Stacks” week, and Bud is back with another post: ![]()
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