Really the Blues

by Mezz Mezzrow

  He was kind of stout then—that was many years before Hollywood made him reduce for that picture he made with Bing Crosby—and he had the most magnetic personality I ever saw. Those sparkling teeth of his, white as a cotton ball, reminded me of the record where Bessie Smith sings “My man’s got teeth shine like a lighthouse on the sea.” What a warm, good-hearted, down-to-earth gem of a human being was Louis. With all the money and success that came to him, you could still talk behind him because he never said anything he didn’t mean and didn’t speak any foolishness. He always looked at the humorous side of life and if he saw anybody angry he’d look the situation over and say gently, “Well, he hasn’t dug life yet but he’s a good cat at heart.” He never lowrated anybody, always believed the best about his fellow-man. A lot of people, mostly white, took plenty of advantage of Louis’ good heart, but he never once came up evil about it. He was a prince. Hell, he was king of the tribe.

  One of my friends, a fine musician, cornered me one day and we began to discuss our outcome with the tea. I wasn’t selling it yet, and we tried to analyze the difference there was between gauge and whisky.

  “Man, they can say what they want about us vipers,” he said, “but you just dig them lushhounds with their old antique jive, always comin’ up loud and wrong, whippin’ their old ladies and wastin’ up all their pay, and then the next day your head feels like all the hammers in the piano is beatin’ out a tune on your brain. Just look at the difference between you and them other cats, that come uptown juiced to the gills, crackin’ out of line and passin’ out in anybody’s hallway. Don’t nobody come up thataway when he picks up on some good grass.”

  I sure knew what he was talking about. The very same thing, that contrast between the lushies and the vipers, had hit me hard way back in Chicago and Detroit, and I told him so.

  “Yeah,” he said, “and then for instance you take a lot of ofay liquor-heads, when they come up here and pass the jug around. Half of them will say they had enough ’cause some spade just took a drink out of it, and those that do take it will hem and haw, tryin’ to rub the top off the bottle so’s you can’t see them, ’fore they put it to their chops. Now with vipers it’s different. You don’t have to pass a roach to a viper, he’ll take it right out of your hand and go to puffin’ on it not even thinkin’ about who had it in his chops before. Them Indians must of had some gauge in that pipe of peace that they passed around, at least they had the right idea, ha ha! Now, far as hurtin’ anybody is concerned, you know and I know that we can wake up the next day and go on about our business, marihuana or mary-don’t-wanna, and that’s that. It ain’t against the law and you told me they couldn’t put it under the Harrison Act because it wasn’t habit-forming, so let’s carry on from here. We’ll both smoke it every day for about two or three months and then one of us’ll quit for a while and find out for ourselves what happens.”

  That’s exactly what we did. I was the first one to stop for a trial, and I have yet to find any bad after-effects, outside of a twenty-month jail sentence.

  (Before I go any further I want to make one thing clear: I never advocated that anybody should use marihuana, and I sure don’t mean to start now. Even during the years when I sold the stuff I never “pushed” it like a salesman pushes vacuum cleaners or Fuller brushes. I had it for anybody who came asking, if he was a friend of mine. I didn’t promote it anywhere, and I never gave it to kids, not even to little Frankie Walker. I sold it to grown-up friends of mine who had got to using it on their own, just like I did; it was a family affair, not any high-pressure business. Sort of everybody to their own notion, that was the whole spirit. I laid off five years ago, and if anybody asks my advice today, I tell them straight to steer clear of it because it carries a rap. That’s my final word to all the cats: today I know of one very bad thing the tea can do to you—it can put you in jail. ’Nuff said.)

  Most of us were getting our tea from some Spanish boys, and one day they showed up with a guy who pushed the stuff in Detroit when I was there. He wasn’t selling it any more, but he put us in touch with another cat who kept coming up from Mexico with real golden-leaf, the best that could be had. As soon as we got some of that Mexican bush we almost blew our tops. Poppa, you never smacked your chops on anything sweeter in all your days of viping. It had such a wonderful smell and the kick you got was really out of this world. Guys used to say it tasted like chocolate candy, a brand Hershey never even thought of. I laid it on the cats in the Barbeque, and pretty soon all Harlem was after me to light them up. I wasn’t working then and didn’t have much money left to gaycat with, but I couldn’t refuse to light my friends up. Before I knew it I had to write to our connection for a large supply, because everybody I knew wanted some. “Man, you can be ridin’ on rubber in no time with that stuff, and it ain’t against the law neither,” the cats told me. “Just think how many cats you can make happy,” they kept saying. Before I knew it, I was standing on The Corner pushing gauge. Only I did no pushing. I just stood under the Tree of Hope, my pokes full up, and the cats came and went, and so did all my golden-leaf.

  Overnight I was the most popular man in Harlem. New words came into being to meet the situation: the mezz and the mighty mezz, referring, I blush to say, to me and to the tea both; mezzroll, to describe the kind of fat, well-packed and clean cigarette I used to roll (this word later got corrupted to meserole and it’s still used to mean a certain size and shape of reefer, which is different from the so-called panatella); the hard-cuttin’ mezz and the righteous bush. Some of those phrases really found a permanent place in Harlemese, and even crept out to color American slang in general. I was knocked out the other day when I picked up a copy of Cab Calloway’s Hipster’s Dictionary and found mezz defined there as “anything supreme, genuine”; and in Dan Hurley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive the same word is defined as meaning “tops, sincere”!

  Stuff Smith wrote a song, later recorded by Rosetta Howard for Decca under the name of If You’re a Viper, that started out

  Dreamed about a reefer five foot long

  The mighty mezz but not too strong,

  You’ll be high but not for long

  If you’re a viper.

  The words lozies and lozeerose were coined so guys could refer to my gauge without having anybody else dig it, and some of our musician pals used to stick these hip phrases into their songs when they broadcast over the radio, because they knew we’d be huddled around the radio in the Barbeque and that was their way of saying hello to me and all the vipers. That mellow Mexican leaf really started something in Harlem—a whole new language, almost a whole new culture. The hard-cuttin’ mezz really cut a brand-new one in this old world, through no fault of mine.

  I’m standing under the Tree of Hope, pushing my gauge. The vipers come up, one by one.[1]

  FIRST CAT: Hey there Poppa Mezz, is you anywhere?

  ME: Man I’m down with it, stickin’ like a honky.

  FIRST CAT: Lay a trey on me, ole man.

  ME: Got to do it, slot. (Pointing to a man standing in front of Big John’s ginmill.) Gun the snatcher on your left raise—the head mixer laid a bundle his ways, he’s posin’ back like crime sure pays.

  FIRST CAT: Father grab him, I ain’t payin’ him no rabbit. Jim, this jive you got is a gasser, I’m goin’ up to my dommy and dig that new mess Pops laid down for Okeh. I hear he rifled back on Zackly. Pick you up at The Track when the kitchen mechanics romp.

  SECOND CAT: Hey Mezzie, lay some of that hard-cuttin’ mess on me. I’m short a deuce of blips but I’ll straighten you later.

  ME: Righteous, gizz, you’re a poor boy but a good boy—now don’t come up crummy.

  SECOND CAT: Never no crummy, chummy. I’m gonna lay a drape under the trey of knockers for Tenth Street and I’ll be on the scene wearin’ the green.

  THIRD CAT (Coming up with his chick): Baby this is that powerful man with that good grass that’ll make you tip through the highways and byways like a Maltese kitten. Mezz, this is my
new dinner and she’s a solid viper.

  GIRL: All the chicks is always talkin’ ’bout you and Pops. Sure it ain’t somethin’ freakish goin’ down ’tween you two? You sure got the ups on us pigeons, we been on a frantic kick tryin’ to divide who’s who. But everybody love Pops and we know just how your bloodstream’s runnin’.

  FOURTH CAT (Coming up with a stranger): Mezz, this here is Sonny Thompson, he one of the regular cats on The Avenue and can lay some iron too. Sonny’s hip from way back and solid can blow some gauge, so lay an ace on us and let us get gay. He and Pops been knowin’ each other for years.

  ME: Solid man, any stud that’s all right with Pops must really be in there. Here, pick up Sonny, the climb’s on me.

  SONNY (To his friend): Man, you know one thing? This cat should of been born J. B., he collars all jive and comes on like a spaginzy. (Turning to me.) Boy, is you sure it ain’t some of us in your family way down the line? Boy you’re too much, stay with it, you got to git it.

  FIFTH CAT: Hey Poppa Mezz! Stickin’?

  ME: Like the chinaberry trees in Aunt Hagar’s backyard.

  FIFTH CAT: Lay an ace on me so’s I can elevate myself and I’ll pick you up on the late watch.

  SIXTH CAT (Seeing me hand the reefers to Cat Number Five): Ow, I know I’m gonna get straight now, I know you gonna put me on.

  FIFTH CAT: Back up boy, forty-five feet. Always lookin’ for a freebie. Jim why don’t you let up sometime, hawk’s out here with his axe and me with this lead sheet on, tryin’ to scuffle up those two’s and fews for uncle so’s I can bail out my full orchestration.

  SIXTH CAT: Aw, come on and bust your vest, what you goin’ to make out of sportin’ life? You know you took the last chorus with me.

  FIFTH CAT: Looks like he got me Mezz, but this cat wouldn’t feed grass to a horse in a concrete pasture. He’s so tight he wouldn’t buy a pair of shorts for a flea. Man, just look at him, dig that vine all offtime and his strollers look like he’s ready to jump. This cat’s playin’ ketch-up and I got to tighten his wig. Hold it down, Jim, and I’ll come up with line two like I said. Come on Jack, let’s final to my main stash.

  SEVENTH CAT: Mash me a trey gate, so’s I can go bust my conk. What is this hangin’ out with you? (Nodding towards Frankie Walter.)

  FRANKIE: Don’t pay that razor-legged axe-handled slew-footed motherferyer no mind, Milton. He’s a Jeff Davis from down under and ain’t been up here a hot minute. Look at them cuckaburrs sittin’ up there coverin’ his fusebox that blew out long ago. If the drip ever hit him in his kitchen it would roll up like a window shade, you ole hankachief-head signifyin’ half-hipped square from Delaware, you’re just like Jack the Bear, ain’t nowhere, and like his brother No Fu’ther. You snapped your cap long ago.

  SEVENTH CAT: Your boy’s too much, Mezz, but he better join the bird family else I’ll get somethin’ from him.

  EIGHTH CAT (Yelling to passing friend): Hey rough, give it up tough, you’ve had it long enough.

  HIS FRIEND: Hey, homey! Man, ain’t nothin’ to it, just here. Saw that dinner up the street guzzlin’ foam in the drink den and the sharks was droppin’ shucks like the Yellow Kid, tryin’ to tighten her, and weavin’ the four F’s all ’round her.

  EIGHTH CAT: Huh, I nixed her out long ago, man she’s too sometimey, she will and she won’t, she do and she don’t, always on the fence and sleeps with her glasses on. Man she’s faust to me, so skip it and fergit it. Knock me some of that righteous bush, Poppa Mezz, so we can get tall and have a ball. Hey buddy ghee, why don’t you put it with me and we’ll cop a deuceways, don’t you see, and take some of this weight right off’n me.

  HIS FRIEND: Solid ole man, pick up on this rock, and it didn’t come from no mudkicker in the block—I had to bring time for it don’t you see, so raise up Jack and let me be. How’m I doin’ Poppa Mezz, am I rhymin’ or am I rhymin’.

  ME: You ain’t climbin’, you’re really chimin’, if you ain’t timin’ a hawk can’t see. Came on like Little Children and went off like A-and-A.

  EIGHTH CAT: Listen at ole Mezz, cappin’ and on time. Jim you really in there, and fine as May wine. This hemp that you’re pushin’ is groovy studdy, so tell all the cats light up and be somebody. Well Jim, I’m goin’ to knock a fade up the main stroll and see what’s on the rail for the lizard.

  NINTH CAT: Czaro! Whatcha puttin’ out?

  ME: Nothin’ but my laundry.

  NINTH CAT: And you gets it back starched and clean, solid ole man. You know one thing, I wrastled some shake-up last night with some unbooted wren, blowin’ salt and pepper till my hair hurts. I ain’t greased since the big bean collared a nod in the early black, and I gotta stretch my chippy’s playground. I know I’m gonna call some hogs soon as I hit my roost, so pick up on this dime note and call it even-steven so’s I can widen. I’m gonna lay dead till half past the unlucky comes on, and dig ole Satch when he goes upstairs.

  TENTH CAT: The mighty Mezz, what you puttin’ down poppa?

  ME: Punks and skunks, and hey Jim, your main saw on the hitch just trailed down the cruncher about tick twenty and you better quit it ’cause they’re talkin’ about goin’ to Slice City.

  TENTH CAT: Well tell a green man somethin’, Jack. I know they’re briny ’cause they dug me with a brace of browns the other fish-black, coppin’ a squat in my boy’s rubber, and we sold out. They been raisin’ sand ever since. I haven’t even seen my dreamers in a deuce of brights and the other dim, when the Head Knock turned on the splash that was most anxious ole man, they were on that frantic tip again. I don’t much runnin’ into some unglamorous action by that frompy queen, but if push comes to shove I’ll bet I’ll become a cage of apes to them. Nayo hoss, I ain’t fer it. Lemme pick up on some of that hard-cuttin’ jive ’cause all I got left is a roach no longer than a pretty chick’s memory. I’m gonna breeze to my personal snatch-pad and switch my dry goods while they’re out on the turf, and thanks for pullin’ my coat, ole man. See ya, hear. . . .

  What weird kind of polyglot patois was this, that they slung around my head on The Corner? It was nothing but the “new poetry of the proletariat.” Dan Burley, famous old Negro newspaperman and editor of Harlem’s Amsterdam News, describes jive that way, and I got a feeling he’s right. It’s the language of action, says Dan, “which comes from the bars, the dancehalls, the prisons, honkytonks, ginmills, etc., wherever people are busy living, loving, fighting, working or conniving to get the better of one another.” But don’t think that it’s a kind of petty patter, reserved for small talk. Uh, uh. In it the cats discuss “politics, religion, science, war, dancing, business, love, economics, and the occult.” Jive, I found out, is not only a strange linguistic mixture of dream and deed; it’s a whole new attitude towards life.

  In the snatches of viper conversation up above, and in the bits of jive scattered over some other pages of this story, you don’t get the full flavor of this street-corner poetry. This lingo has to be heard, not seen, because its free-flowing rhythms and intonations and easy elisions, all following a kind of instinctive musical pattern just like Bessie Smith’s mangling of the English language, can only hit the ear, not the eye. Besides, if I wrote the hip language straight, most everything I said would sound like plain gibberish. (The word jive probably comes from the old English word jibe, out of which came the words jibberish and gibberish, describing sounds without meaning, speech that isn’t intelligible.) This jive is a private affair, a secret inner-circle code cooked up partly to mystify the outsiders, while it brings those in the know closer together because they alone have the key to the puzzle. The hipster’s lingo is a private kind of folk-poetry, meant for the ears of the brethren alone.

  How can any outsider latch on to the real flavor of a secret code in which tick twenty means ten o’clock and line forty means the price is twenty dollars; friends are addressed as gate or slot, verbal shorthand for gatemouth and slotmouth, which are inner-circle racial jokes to begin with; they or them people means, not two or mo
re persons, but a man’s wife or mistress; Tenth Street isn’t a city thoroughfare but a ten-dollar bill; specific places are known by special nicknames—New York City as The Apple, Seventh Avenue as The Stroll, the Savoy Ballroom as The Track; doubletalk nonsense-syllables like lozeerose, that resemble no regular words in any regular language, are invented to refer to private matters like marihuana? Guys talk that way when they don’t want to be spied on, resent eavesdroppers; when they’re jealously guarding their private lives, which are lived under great pressure, and don’t want the details known to outsiders—detectives, square ofay musicians, informers, rivals from white show business, thrill-hungry tourists who come slumming up to “savage” and “primitive” Harlem to eyeball and gape.

  Another well-known author and journalist, Earl Conrad, talks about jive as a kind of caricatured twist the Negro gives to the language that was foisted on him. “White America perpetrated a new and foreign language on the Africans it enslaved. Slowly, over the generations, Negro America, living by and large in its own segregated world, with its own thoughts, found its own way of expression, found its own way of handling English, as it had to find its own way in handling many other aspects of a white, hostile world. Jive is one of the end-results. . . . Jive talk may have been originally a kind of ‘pig Latin’ that the slaves talked with each other, a code—when they were in the presence of whites. Take the word ‘ofay.’ Ninety million white Americans right now probably don’t know that that means ‘a white,’ but Negroes know it. Negroes needed to have a word like that in their language, needed to create it in self-defense.” Ofay, of course, is pig Latin for foe.

  Conrad’s right a hundred times over, but I think you have to make a big distinction between the Southern Negro’s strictly cautious and defensive private lingo and the high-spirited, belligerent jive of the younger Northern Negroes. Down South, before the Civil War and for long decades after it, right up to today, the colored folks had to nurse their wounds in private, never show their hurts and resentments, and talk among themselves in conspiratorial whispers. The language was mostly a self-protective code to them, and so it wasn’t very elaborate or full of bubbling energy and unshackled invention; it was the tongue of a beaten people. But once the big migration got under way and the more adventurous Negroes started trekking northward up the Mississippi, a lot of their pent-up feelings busted out and romped all over the place. They brought their New Orleans music with them, and it exploded over Chicago and the whole North with one hell of a roar. And their talk got more explosive too, more animated, filled with a little hope and spirit. That’s when jive as we know it today really got going.