Re: JEWISH-MUSIC digest 1278/ in defense of Mezz

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

farfl's house wrote:

> >I don't believe that any recordings will surface that will reflect Mezzrow's
> "true" background,

Who Mezz was came out in every note he played.

> because he actually believed that he was African-American, or
> rather he had physically metamorphosized into an African American,

I  beg to differ.Mezzrow preferred Black culture to his own, and, given his 
career
choice,
spent a lot of time with Blacks on their turf.
As a youngster, he spent  a lot of time the reformatory and became, as have
others,"transcultural".  (I think that's a good thing, by the way, in this 
case).
In prison Mezzrow insisted on being housed with the Black guys, -- and he was.
I believe he married a Black woman.  So?

You, like many in his own day, appear to  see these things as craziness.
You are actually impugning the man's sanity.
I don't think you have the right to disprespect him based on your subjective
judgements and personally limited perceptions.

Can you educate us about his music first and them proceed to tear him down?
I think he was passable. He was not the premier practitioner of his istrument
in his era, but I'm not qualified to lecture on the subject.

> reads his ridiculous autobiography, the fact that he was Jewish was mentioned
> only to fill in his early beginnings.

What is ridiculous about it?Do you mean that you can't relate?
Or that you stand in judgement of his life and oeuvre?
If so, are you licensed for that?

>  > Years and years ago, in 1971, my first Real
> > Hippie-Type Trip Overseas, (aside from the previous summer hitching through
> > ex-Yugoslavia) I was in Paris, and a Canadian friend ended up in the
> > American Hospital with appendicitis.I went to see him every day for a few
> > days, and his room-mate was none other than Mezz Mezzrow!
>
> Your poor, unfortunate friend! Could they not have found a nice, semi-private
> stairwell for Mezzrow?

Your capacity for <rakhmones> is very revealing.

Good thing for OHIP (That's a Toronto joke, folks).

>  > At the time I
> > wasn't particularly interested in klezmer or Sephardi music, and didn't even
> > know who he was,
>
> He often didn't know who he was, being so involved in the participation in
> various opium dens,

Please.  He paid for his excesses.
If all the musicians who indulged were likewise silenced and imprisoned,
there'd be very little good swingin' music in this world.

> and he certainly wasn't too sure, as evidenced by
> recordings, which end of the clarinet to affix a reed to.

A perfect place to tell us something, anything about him as a msuician, personal
habits aside! He may not have been the  greatest talent,  but he lived his life 
on
his terms.
The entire jazz community appreciated Mezz.
He was a bridge-builder and a networker, before the word existed.

And -- he has achieved mythic status, if not immortality.
Folklorists and ethno-linguists many appreciate that,
in Harlem and elsewhere in the "subculture" of its time,
a fat "spliff " was called a "Mezzeroll" and
potent recreational marijuana, "the Mighty Mezz".
Viz. the song: "If You're A Viper".

> > but he wasn't timid about rectifying the last-mentioned of
> > my various levels of ignorance.
>
> He spewed out so many fictional events for others (paraphrased: "I taught Gene
> Krupa how to play drums in the style of the great African-American
> drummers......") that he eventually thought them to be the gospel himself.

"Vas you dere, Charlie"?
Maybe he did turn Krupa onto a style of drumming.
Krupa certainly didn't learn it in the seminary he was attending before turning
pro.
Both were early victims of the Drug War, by the way -- Gene Krupa, after his
arrest  was paraded across the headlines as a savage hemp user.  His wild,
jungle-rhythm drumming was always part of the story. Krupa was pivotal in 
expanding
the white audience for jazz and enjoyed matinee-idol status,
but I digress.

> > Anyway, I had a couple of recorders with me,
> > and he asked me to bring them; the nurses were dubious, but he had me play
> > medieval and French Canadian tunes for him every day and criticized my level
> > of soul.....
>
> Don't take his opinion as having any sort of substance.

As we are supposed to do with yours...

Your lack of <derekherets> for this Judaeo-American original puzzles me more 
than
anything.

Long live Mezz, Jewish "angel-headed hipster"!

Best wishes,

Wolf Krakowski

http://www.kamea.com

>
>
> Regards,
> Lederman
>



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