_Mezzrow_(?), "marijuana cigarette"

[Jonathan Lighter]

_Mezzroll_ is a folk-ety form of _mezzrow_ from Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow,
distinguished jazz clarinetist,  hepcat, and "viper," whose career is
detailed in his autobio (with Bernard Wolfe) _Really the Blues_ (1946).

_RTB_ is to American memoir as Francois Villons's "Straight Tip to all
Cross Coves"  is to French poesy.

JL

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 4:30 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      _Mezzrow_(?), "marijuana cigarette"
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> HDAS has
>
> _mezzroll_ "a marijuana cigarette"
>
> from 1944.
>
> The song, Weed, recorded by Bea Foote and released in 1938, has the line,
>
> "All vipers love their _mezzrow_"
>
>
> The record is quite scratchy and the fi is low. It could very well be
> the case that she actually does say "mezzroll." But, WTF? I've been
> familiar with _mezz(row)_ for over sixty years, now. But I was unaware
> of the existence of _mezzroll_ till a few minutes ago, when I checked
> HDAS. I only half-assed a Google search for the words, since my
> previous experience has been that lyrics are normally eared from the
> recordings themselves and not read from a copy of the sheetmusic.
> Like, I did find a transcription the lyrics, but the guy made gross
> errors like transcribing "my weed" as "maui" and "mezzrow" as "mauro."
>
> "Hurt my nose open, and that's no lie," <har! har!> as Mick Jagger
complains.
>
> WRT to dialect, she's r-full and pronounces "weed, need" as "wee-id,
> nee-id." In my *extremely* limited experience - a single speaker -
> this kind of breaking is characteristic of the BE of Virginia.
> Otherwise, her speech-pattern is ordinary BE. Well, the r-fulness is
> kinda out of place. Or should that be "out-of-place"? ;-)
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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