by Mezz Mezzrow
Through all these friendly but lively competitions you could see the Negro’s appreciation of real talent and merit, his demand for fair play, and his ardor for the best man wins and don’t you come around here with no jive. Boasting doesn’t cut any ice; if you think you’ve got something, don’t waste time talking yourself up, go to work and prove it. If you have the stuff the other cats will recognize it frankly, with solid admiration. That’s especially true in the field of music, which has a double importance to the Negro because that’s where he really shines, where his inventiveness and artistry come through in full force. The colored boys prove their musical talents in those competitions called cutting contests, and there it really is the best man wins, because the Negro audience is extra critical when it comes to music and won’t accept anything second-rate. These cutting contests are just a musical version of the verbal duels. They’re staged to see which performer can snag and cap all the others musically. And by the way, these battles have helped to produce some of the race’s greatest musicians.
The contests generally happened in the early morning, after the musicians came uptown from their various jobs. There was always some small private club or speakeasy that had a piano in it, and when some new musician came to town he was obliged to come up with his instrument and get off for the other musicians. If he didn’t show, that proved he wasn’t sure of himself in the fast company around Harlem. The one that rated best on his particular instrument was told, “Hey man, So-and-So’s in town and he was looking for you at Such-and-Such’s this morning.” All the contenders for the title were worked up that way, each being told the others were looking for him because they wanted to cut him down—that is, prove they were the best in the field. Things really got stirred up that way, and before the night was over all the cats were in some smoky room, really blowing up a breeze. If it was a close call—say, for instance, Lester Young and Ben Webster and Don Byas were all blowing their saxes, and the people couldn’t come to much decision about who was best—then somebody would sneak out and get Coleman Hawkins, and when he unwrapped his horn it settled all arguments and sent the boys back to practise some more.
These contests taught the musicians never to rest on their laurels, to keep on woodshedding and improving themselves. Dancers had the same kind of competitions, and so did most other kinds of entertainers. Many’s the time some hoofer would be strutting his stuff in the alley outside the Lafayette Theater, with a crowd around him, and Bubbles would wander up and jump in the circle and lay some hot iron that lowrated the guy, then walk off saying, “Go on home and wrastle with that one, Jim.” There wasn’t any room for complacency. Bubbles wasn’t just showing off. He was making that cat work harder.
One morning a sensational cutting contest took place, just between piano players. Fats Waller picked up a gang of us at some café—Eddie Condon, Jack Bland, me and a couple of other whites, and two other colored piano players, Willie “The Lion” Smith and Corky Williams—and we went up to his house about four A.M.. Fats was a wonderful guy, one of the most jovial persons I have ever met, always bubbling with jokes so it was impossible to feel brought down in his company. He stood about six foot tall and weighed well over two hundred pounds, and his feet, that were a stylish size fifteen, he referred to as his “pedal extremities.” He was always coming around to play for me and my friends down in the Riverside Towers (it was down there, after I’d been urging him to play the blues, that he wrote his famous Ain’t Misbehavin’). He’d sit at the piano all night long, and sometimes part of the next day, without even getting up to see that man about that canine. We’d set up quart after quart of bathtub gin for him—one on top of the piano, so when he was playing treble he could reach up with his left hand, and another at his foot, so while he beat out the bass he could reach down and grab the jug with his right hand. . . . Well, this morning out came several quarts of liquor, and it was on.
Corky sat down and started to play Tea for Two, a number that Willie The Lion could give a fit. All of a sudden Willie jumped up and said to Corky, “Git up from there you no-piano-playin’ son of a bitch, I got it,” and with that he sat down next to Corky. As Corky slid over, Willie started to play just the treble, while Corky still kept up the bass, and then he picked up with his left hand too, the tempo not even wavering and without missing a beat. Willie played for a while and then Fats took over, sliding into the seat the same way Willie had done. He played for a while, looking up at Willie and signifying every time he made a new or tricky passage. It went on like that, the music more and more frantic, that piano not resting for even a fraction of a second, until finally Fats said “I’m goin’ to settle this argument good.” He went into a huddle with his chauffeur, who left and returned about an hour later, but not alone. Fats had telephoned to Jamaica, Long Island, and woke up James P. Johnson out of his bed. When the chauffeur brought Jimmy in he was still rubbing his eyes, but as soon as he sat down at the piano that was all. He played so much piano you didn’t have to yell “Put out all the lights and call the law,” because the law came up by request of the neighbors. “We been sittin’ downstairs enjoying this music,” the cops told us, “when we got a call from the station house to see who was disturbing the peace around here. Some people ain’t got no appreciation for music at all. Fats, just close them windows and pour us a drink, and take up where you left off.” So for the rest of the morning the contest went on, with these two coppers lolling around drinking our liquor and listening to our fine music. It was great.
1. A translation of this passage is given in Appendix 2.
13. ONCE MORE, AGAIN, AND ANOTHER TIME
IT WAS A FINE SPRING NIGHT IN 1931. WE WERE JIVING AND thriving lightly; up above, the leaves on the Tree of Hope carried on their own rustling doubletalk. Up the tree trunk snaked the grapevine and plugged into my receivers. “Yeah man,” it buzzed, “they got your boy all messed up down in Memphis.”
Louis Armstrong had swung down to New Orleans and then headed back up to Memphis. Mrs. Collins, his manager’s wife, was in charge of their transportation, and she had chartered a big shiny new Greyhound bus so they could get through the Murder Belt without riding in dirty spine-cracking Jim-Crow coaches. She always sat up front with Mike McKendricks, the guitar player, who helped her with luggage and things like that.
When that bus pulled into Memphis the pecks all crowded around goggle-eyed, staring at the well-dressed colored boys in this streamlined buggy, and especially at the one colored boy up front who was, God forbid, sitting there actually talking to a white woman cool as pie, just like he was human. They couldn’t let that go down. The stink they raised was so funky that the manager at the bus terminal tried to shift the whole party to a dirty creaky old crate. Naturally, the boys sat tight, refusing to budge off their dusters. Next thing they knew, the police were on their necks, carting them off to be fingerprinted and locked up like common thieves. They got out just in time to make their regular broadcast.
All us vipers rushed into the Barbeque that night to hear the program come over the radio. When they hit the air, Louis started off with some doubletalk, and right in the middle of it he greeted me with a happy “How-de-do Lozeerose.” Halfway through the broadcast he announced that he wanted to dedicate his next number to the Chief of Police of Memphis, Tennessee. “Dig this, Mezzeerola,” he warbled while the band played his intro. Then he started to sing I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You.
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With Louis gallivanting round the country, there was a hole in my life big as the Grand Canyon. Soon, though, I was hanging out with Zutty Singleton. Most every night, after he got through at Connie’s Inn, we’d have a bite to eat and then make the rounds together. Zutty was well liked by everybody, and he had a cheery way of greeting people by referring to their face—like if you had on a new tie or a set of drapes he’d call you “Tie Face” or “Suit Face,” and other times he’d come up with names like “Boat Face” and “Boot Nose” and “Gizzard.” Later on everybody
started using the expression “Face” as a greeting: you’d say “Watcha know, Face,” and the answer would come back, “Nothin’ to it, Face.” Zutty and I were always going around visiting friends in Harlem, and no matter where we went we’d always find everybody, from grandpa to the two-year-olds, able to do his number. What kicks I used to get when we’d puff our way up to some crummy walk-up tenement flat and find a tot, hardly able to walk, getting up to do a lively time-step and then break. And from the old folks’ shuffle to the Suzie-Q and Sand, wasn’t none of them steps new to grandpa—just the names were different. Pops could tell you about cutting them same steps when he was a kid barefooted. Everybody danced.
Monday mornings, about five A.M., we’d shoot over to the Lenox Club on 144th Street for the weekly breakfast dance. Here we’d always find most of the performers and musicians, ready to have a ball after working all night, and if you got home by noon you were lucky. Almost every bigtime act that was in town would get up and do their number; week after week, on one bill there, you’d see some of the biggest headliners in show business. It wasn’t unusual to see, all in one morning, the Berry Brothers (one of the greatest dance teams that ever hit the boards), Buck and Bubbles, Ada Brown, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the Whitman Sisters’ show (out of which came some of the finest acts the race ever had), Nina Mae McKinney, Valaida Snow, Ethel Waters, Batie and Foster with some fine comedy and dancing, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway (he didn’t have his own band yet, he was singing in “Hot Chocolates”), Earl “Snakehips” Tucker (originator of the snakehip dance), Freddie “Snakehips” Taylor, Bessie Dudley (one of the greatest women tap and snake dancers of the day), and Louise Cook. It really romped.
The midnight shows at the Lafayette Theater were another great institution that the boys from downtown will never forget. Every Friday night I’d reserve the whole first three or four rows, and most of the musicians I knew would come up with their friends to gape at the goings-on. Acres of marihuana went up in smoke at every show there—and man, many a time even the performers would come on the stage and do some comedy routine about vipers, and they’d light up too, right in front of everybody. The most interesting part of the show was the race’s reaction to the movies that filled in between stage shows. The pretentious acting in those beat-up Hollywood epics, which had always kept me away from the movies (to me the flickers were just a mild Minsky’s on celluloid), was the ridicule of all Harlem. When a dramatic scene hit the screen that dripped with phony dressed-up sentimentalism, showing some lushhead writer’s soap-opera idea of life with a capital L, all the kids would begin laughing and hooting, yelling “Man, why don’t they go ’head with that ole stuff,” and when a man in some love scene fell for the jive some chick was putting down, you’d hear the kids calling out “Don’t go home and try to put that stuff down baby, ’cause you’ll get your head whipped.” The audience would roar so loud the picture was all forgotten for a few minutes.
When Louis came out of Connie’s Inn and went on the road, one of the greatest teams in jazz history was broken up. Connie had bought a set of tunable tomtoms for Zutty and raised his salary, so when Louis asked him to go along with the roadshow he said, “Well Pops, you know friendship is one thing and business is another.” He was a great artist himself, and felt maybe he’d get further on his own, and some day have his own band, so he stayed in Connie’s. Louis swore from that day on Zutty would never play with him again, even though he was the only drummer in the world that could hold him up every inch of the way. That split-up hurt me more than either one of them, because it was such a great loss to the music. To this day those two wonderful artists don’t realize how important it is for them to be together.
After Louis started his road tour he sent me a letter telling me the whole story of his break with Zutty, and even though I loved Zutty I began to feel guilty about hanging out with him, because to me Pops was the greatest of them all. Buck was also a close friend of Louis’, and he would rib Zutty now and then about leaving Louis, so that put me on a complex even more. Pretty soon I was running with Buck, and didn’t see much of Zutty. The cats on the avenue were all aware of what took place, because we were all one big family around The Corner, and they sort of sanctioned my move and respected my loyalty to Louis. Buck had the cornet that Louis used to play back in Chicago in the Sunset, and almost every day he’d wake me by calling me on the phone and then, without saying a word, play some chorus that Louis had just recorded. Sometimes he would sound just like Pops, especially when he played muted. He had such a wonderful ear, he played all Louis’ slurs and little subtle inflections that to this day nobody else has ever captured.
He had a funny way of beating on people that is still the talk of The Avenue. If somebody passed a remark that wasn’t in line, he’d start singing and beating on the offtime cat, catching the explosions on his head and back and every other part of his anatomy. You couldn’t get away from him either. He slapped you easy enough, but the steady beating, with all eyes on you, made you stand there and take it. “Shoot the liquor to him John boy,” he’d sing (a phrase that later got famous on records), and then he’d scat some riffs like “Riboppity-bop-bam, riboppity-bop-bam, riboppity-zhiboppity, riboppity-bop-face”—like a drummer catching an explosion on a cymbal and on the last word he’d slap your face from some fancy angle. This went on for as long as he felt you deserved it, and you either ran out of the place hot as a pistol or laughed till the tears came, but one thing sure, you never forgot it and you never repeated the remark that brought on this punishment. What a down-to-earth guy Buck was. If he was headlining at Loew’s State at three thousand per week, he’d still walk up to the corner stand and eat his hotdog. His partner Bubbles was a great cat too—he danced without any set routine, all improvisation, so you never knew when he was going to cut a new step that all the dancers in Harlem would be trying to imitate the next morning, if they were sharp enough.
In fact, they were all wonderful guys, the gang around The Corner and the Lafayette and the Breakfast Dances, and if I’d had any sense I would never have drifted one single inch away from them. Looks like I keep a yen for trouble. Listen at what happened to me now.
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Remember that room back in the Detroit hotel, with a wet sheet hanging over the door? Well, this is where I walked back in there, never to leave for four long years. And this time, like I said, I had to crawl out on all fours, with my whiskers scraping the floor.
You might ask, why in hell did I have to go and get hooked on hop right then, and you’d have a right to ask, buddy. Wasn’t I doing all right for myself, at last? Wasn’t I home, after all those years of knocking around on foreign territory, living with the people I loved the best, having the kind of life I always dreamed of having ever since Pontiac reform school? Sure. But there were complications. They weren’t Harlem’s fault, that’s one thing sure, and some of them weren’t even my fault, or anybody’s; but there sure were complications. Seems like the millennium is just another word in the dictionary after all, even though at a few great moments in your life you feel like you really get close to it. I was plenty happy in Harlem, really blowing my top for joy. But it wasn’t the millennium yet. For one thing, I wasn’t making any music.
How come I get myself right smack in the middle of the greatest Negro community in the world—and then lay away my horns? It’s like this. My mainstay had been Gene Krupa, and now he was tied up with that Red Nichols (along with Benny Goodman, who he went with later on when Goodman started out for himself). So Gene was away from me. Of my other oldtime friends, who’d at least been schooled in the same idiom as me, Condon and McKenzie were together with the squeak-and-gargle Blue Blowers, and Tesch and them had gone back to Chicago, and I couldn’t blow note one with the corny white bands around New York. To me all the fay outfits that might hire me were just fancier versions of the Minsky pit band, and I wasn’t having any more of that offtime jive.
Why didn’t I play with the colored boys?
Sounds like a reasonable question—the music I was hot for was strictly a Negro creation, and all the top colored artists were my personal friends. Well, the colored bands around New York had plenty of virtuoso musicians in them, but they didn’t play the New Orleans music that I was crazy about; they had an entirely different pulse and flavor and I couldn’t have chimed in worth a damn. New Orleans hadn’t come East yet, that was the sad fact of the matter. Louis had had a big band with him, sure, and that right away was a departure from the strict New Orleans tradition, but still and all he had Zutty behind him to give the ensemble a New Orleans rock and drive, and although the band played written arrangements they still made organ effects with the reeds and brasses, not holding Louis back, helping to give depth and richness to Louis’ soaring horn. And besides, Louis was a genius and could make great music with nothing behind him but a washboard and a kazoo. I was no Louis. I needed a friendlier musical environment.
And another thing—the race made me feel inferior, started me thinking that maybe I wasn’t worth beans as a musician or any kind of artist, in spite of all my big ideas. The tremendous inventiveness, the spur-of-the-moment creativeness that I saw gushing out in all aspects of Harlem life, in the basketball games, the prizefights, the cutting contests, the fast and furious games of rhyming and snagging on The Corner—it all dazzled me, made me doubt if I was even in the running with these boys. Practically everybody I knew was a virtuoso, popping with creative talents. Even though the musicians didn’t play New Orleans style, yet and still they had so much on the ball, such brilliant technique and inventive inflections to brighten up even the dullest arrangements. I just said to myself, even if it isn’t my kind of music I better listen close and learn some more about this, because no matter what they’re doing they do it so good. I thought of the records I made with Condon and all the guys back in Chicago, and I was ashamed of how feeble and scrawny they were compared with what the colored boys in Harlem played every day in the week. I sure didn’t want to go back to “Chicago style”—but I didn’t know how to go forward either. Maybe, I thought, well Jesus, maybe after all I was cut out to be the philosopher, like Tiny Hunt had once named me, and not a musician at all. Some wise cat once said that those who can’t, teach. Maybe I couldn’t. Maybe I had to become the philosopher out of desperation.