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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 22, 2016

Swingin’ with Mezz and Menck

February 22, 2016 by Terry Teachout

Mezz-MezzrowMezz Mezzrow is one of those fascinating, exceedingly odd figures in jazz history about whom I could write instructively and at length if I felt so moved. Alas, I don’t, at least not today, so I’ll leave it to Wikipedia to briefly tell his story. Suffice it for now to say that Mezzrow wasn’t quite the worst clarinetist in the world, that he is widely and plausibly believed to have introduced Louis Armstrong to marijuana in 1928, and that (yes, I’m really going somewhere with this) he wrote a self-aggrandizing but nonetheless immensely readable autobiography called Really the Blues, originally published in 1946 and newly reprinted by New York Review Books, that I found altogether invaluable back when I was writing Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.

WK-AV248_BOOKRV_DV_20100901172006The reason why I bring him up now is that I ran across this passage, about which I’d completely forgotten, while rereading Really the Blues over the weekend. The date is 1926, the “Dave” referred to in the first sentence is the great jazz drummer Dave Tough, the Austin High Gang was a group of young white jazz musicians from Chicago that also included Tough and Bud Freeman, and “muta” and “muggles” are, of course, marijuana, of which Mezzrow was a celebrated dealer:

It was little Dave who gave me a knockdown to George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken, two guys who could mess with the King’s English too. Dave used to read The American Mercury from cover to cover, especially the section called “Americana” where all the bluenoses, bigots, and two-faced killjoys in this land-of-the-free got a going-over they never forgot. That Mercury really got to be the Austin High Gang’s Bible. It looked to us like Mencken was yelling the same message in his magazine that we were trying to get across in our music; his words were practically lyrics to our hot jazz. I dug him all the way, because The Mercury gave you the same straight-seeing perspective that muta does—to me that hard-cutting magazine was a load of literary muggles.

How could I possibly have failed to include that paragraph in my Mencken biography? Ah, well, you can’t think of everything….

* * *

Tommy Ladnier and His Orchestra play “Weary Blues” in 1938. Ladnier is the trumpeter, and the performance also features Sidney Bechet on clarinet and soprano saxophone and Mezz Mezzrow on clarinet:

Just because: Darius Milhaud talks about jazz in the Twenties

February 22, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAThe French composer Darius Milhaud makes a rare TV appearance in which he talks about jazz in the Twenties, followed by a performance of his jazz-influenced composition Caramel Mou, Shimmy pour Jazz-band, Op. 68, written in 1920. An English translation of the text is read by Madeleine Milhaud, the composer’s wife. Dave Brubeck, who studied with Milhaud, is also seen briefly in this clip, which is drawn from a documentary originally telecast by KQED-TV in 1965. The actual performance took place at Mills College in 1963:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)

Almanac: Darius Milhaud on suffering and the artist

February 22, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“In 1962 I was asked to talk about myself at an American college. I recalled my parents, who were so understanding, my wife, my son and his children, who have brought me nothing but joy. In short, I said that I was a happy man. At that moment I sensed general consternation—almost panic—in the hall. Some students came to talk to me after the conference: how had I been able to create in these conditions? An artist needs to suffer! I replied that I had managed to arrange things differently.”

Darius Milhaud, My Happy Life

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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