[2] Additionally, Zwerin also worked with Maynard Ferguson, Claude Thornhill, Archie Shepp and Bill Russo, among many others.
[5] Michael Zwerin was born into an affluent family in Queens, New York City, United States, where his father was president of the Capitol Steel Corporation.
[6] Zwerin studied at the High School of Music and Art, and began leading bands in his teens, in which he employed several up-and-coming musicians.
[6] At the age of 18, while on his summer holidays from the University of Miami, Mike Zwerin was the trombonist in Miles Davis's nonet at the Royal Roost club in New York[6] This band was famously to record its music the following year in the album that became immortalized as Birth of the Cool, but by then Zwerin had graduated and gone into his father's steel business.
[6] He combined this with jazz, and worked in John Lewis's big band Orchestra USA, with whom he recorded and directed a small group.
[6] In his autobiography, Close Enough for Jazz (1983), he lampooned this period of his life, which lasted four years (1960–64), by turning the usual biographical note on its head: "In his spare time, Mike Zwerin is president of Dome Steel Corporation.
[1] The great man's approach is sometimes stated as "I like your sound", but Mike's hipper version was: "You keep pretty good time ... for a white cat".
[1] Before moving permanently to Paris in 1969, he was jazz critic for the Village Voice and focusing on journalism, writing for Down Beat, Rolling Stone and Penthouse before joining the International Herald Tribune.
[1] He also translated the jazz writings of Boris Vian (Round About Close to Midnight, 1988), who was, like Zwerin, both writer and musician.