Author: Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow

Cited by

• Jeff Skvorecky (1)
  • IN: The Cowards (1958) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: There was a revolution simmering in Chicago, led by a gang of pink-cheeked high school kids. These rebels in plus-fours, huddled on a bandstand instead of a soap-box, passed out riffs instead of handbills, but the effect was the same. Their jazz was a collectively improvised nosethumbing at all pillars of all communities, one big syncopated Bronx cheer for the righteous squares everywhere. Jazz was the only language they could find to preach their fire-eating message. These upstart smalll-fries... started hatching their plots way out in... a well-to-do suburb where all the days were Sabbaths, a sleepy-time neighbourhood big as a yawn and just about as lively, loaded with shade-trees and clipped lawns and a groggy-eyed population that never came out of its coma except to turn over... They wanted to blast every highminded citizen clear out of his easy chair with their yarddog growls and gully-low howls.
    FROM: Really the Blues, (1946), Book, US