An engaging personal account of the jazz scene in Paris in the ’80s and ’90s In his Beat-like jaunt through the Parisian and European jazz scene, Mike Zwerin is not unlike Jack Kerouac, Mezz Mezzrow, or Hunter S. Thompson—writers to whom, for different reasons, he owes some allegiance. What makes him special is his devotion to the troubled musicians he idolizes, and a passion for music that is blessedly contagious.
 Many jazz fans will know Mike Zwerin for his witty, irreverent, and undeniably hip music reviews and articles in the International Herald Tribune that have entertained us for decades. Based in Paris, or, rather, stuck there, as Zwerin likes to say, he has been a music critic for the Trib since 1979. Zwerin also had a distinguished career as a trombonist. When he was just eighteen years old, he was invited by Miles Davis to play alongside Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, and Max Roach in the band that was immortalized as The Birth of the Cool.
 The Parisian Jazz Chronicles offers an engaging personal account of the jazz scene in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s. Zwerin writes lovingly but unsparingly about figures he knew and interviewed— such as Dexter Gordon, Freddy Heineken, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Chet Baker, Wayne Shorter, and Melvin Van Peebles. Against this background, Zwerin tells about his own life—split allegiances to journalism and music, and to America and France, his solitary battle for sobriety, a failing marriage, and fatherhood.

The Parisian Jazz Chronicles: An Improvisational Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Zwerin, Mike

Arts & Literature

Yale University Press

From dust jacket notes: "For a brief time in a Europe threatened and then occupied by Nazi Germany, jazz was heard everywhere - as ubiquitous as rock 'n' roll is today. In a personal search for the story of that time - which those who experienced it call 'The Golden Age of Jazz' - Mike Zwerin, musician and jazz critic, spent two years traveling across eastern and western Europe talking with the survivors who loved and played jazz under the Nazis. He discovered a cultural resistance to the German edicts, slogans, and guns that was fought with drums, horns, and guitars. Mike Zwerin tells the story with the vigor and intensity of his own involvement with the music, an emotional and intellectual commitment that enables him to re-create the memories and creative moments of these singular and unlikely jazzmen under Hitler: the Ghetto Swingers, a jazz band of Jewish prisoners that 'toured' Auschwitz and Theresienstadt; the Luftwaffe pilot who switched on the BBC 'hoping to catch a few bars of Glenn Miller' before bombing its antenna; the suave black bandleader who was the toast of Warsaw during the occupation; and Django Reinhardt, the brilliant guitarist and quintessential gypsy who played and lived as if there were no war and refused to leave France even as thousands of his people were shipped to concentration camps. When the Nazis banned jazz outright as entartete - decadent - musicians responded by changing the titles of American songs - 'St. Louis Blues' became 'La Tristesse de Saint Louis' - setting the stage for a confrontation that endured through the war and liberated the spirit of a conquered Europe...."

La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Jazz Under the Nazis

Arts & Photography

Zwerin, Michael

Music

Beech Tree Paperback Book

For a brief time in a Europe threatened and then occupied by Nazi Germany, jazz was heard as ubiquitously as rock ' n' roll is today. In a personal search for the story of that time, Mike Zwerin spent two years traveling across Europe talking with individuals who performed and enjoyed jazz in Hitler's dark shadow, including the Ghetto Swingers, a Jewish jazz band that "toured" Auschwitz and Theresienstadt; the Luftwaffe pilot who listened to Glenn Miller while bombing London; Django Reinhardt, the brilliant guitarist who refused to flee Nazi-controlled France; and many others.

Swing Under the Nazis: Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom

Cooper Square Press

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