The autobiography of Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow, co-authored by Bernard Wolfe, is a valuable historical document in the history of jazz, but it is also a work that touches on sociology, race relations, language, drug abuse — a partial but detailed portrait of America between the wars. Mezzrow's jazz snobbishness is not appealing, but a reader can surely recognize today that the further jazz moved away from Louis Armstrong, the more of a niche form it became. Mezzrow's ideal was music as a statement of defiance and vitality by black Americans. Would he have thought that rap was the natural descendant of the New Orleans music he so loved?
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