The Best of Sidney Bechet - Mezz Mezzrow Recordings

1. Tommy's Blues - 0:00 2. Really the Blues - 5:04 3. Gone Away Blues - 8:42 4. Old Stack O'Lee Blues - 11:28 5. Out of the Gallion - 15:41 From the 4-CD Box Set "Sidney Bechet Story". https://www.oldies.com/product-view/31152M.html "Three decades before Norman Mailer in 1957 drew attention to the social phenomenon of the "white negro," Mezz Mezzrow claimed to be just that. To use his own terminology, he was "a voluntary negro." Actually an American Jew, he played clarinet in the 1930s and 40s, often, as here, alongside Sidney Bechet. He supplemented his meager earnings as a musician by supplying marijuana to fellow jazzmen, including—famously—Louis Armstrong. He sold so much that for a while a joint came to be known in Harlem as a "mezz." When the law caught up with Mezzrow and he was jailed, he insisted on serving his time in the prison's negro wing. An autobiography, "Really The Blues," documenting his experiences, became a bestseller. He achieved a measure of respectability, when from 1945-47 he became "Mezz the Prez," head of a New York-based record company, King Jazz, the entire catalog of which is re-released here as a magnificent five-CD box set by Storyville Records, of Copenhagen." https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-king-jazz-records-story-sidney-bechet-storyville-records-review-by-chris-mosey.php?width=1536

Added 14 Jun 2026