Jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader, born in Gulfport, Louisiana, USA. He worked as a gambler and pimp as well as a piano entertainer. His genius as a jazz pioneer is revealed in the recordings he made (19237) while living in Chicago. His unaccompanied piano solos made best sellers of such tunes as King Porter Stomp, Wolverine Blues, and Jelly Roll Blues. His orchestral arrangements for his band, the Red Hot Peppers, blended lyricism with stomping rhythms, and ensemble subtlety with improvisation. He died, all but forgotten, in Los Angeles, but his recordings were rediscovered with considerable fanfare a few years later.
Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton (born 1885- 1890 – died July 10, 1941) was an American virtuoso pianist, a bandleader, and a composer who some call the first true composer of jazz music.
Birth
Ferdinand Joseph La Methe was born into a Creole community in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana around 1885 or 1890. however Morton himself and his half-sisters claimed the date of his birth to be September 20, 1885.
New Orleans
He was, along with Tony Jackson, one of the best regarded pianists in the Storyville District early in the 20th century.
Touring
After leaving New Orleans, Morton traveled widely in North America, spending several years in California before moving to Chicago in 1923, where he released the first of his commercial recordings, both as a piano soloist and with various jazz bands.
Victor Company
In 1926, Morton succeeded in getting a contract to make recordings for the US's largest and most prestigious company, Victor. These recordings by Jelly Roll Morton & Jelly Roll Morton &
New York City
Morton moved to New York City in 1928, where he continued to record for Victor. His piano solos and trio recordings are well regarded, but his band recordings suffer in comparison with the Chicago sides where Morton could draw on many great New Orleans musicians for sidemen. In New York, Morton had trouble finding musicians who wanted to play his style of jazz. With the Great Depression and the near collapse of the phonograph record industry, Morton's recording contract was not renewed by Victor for 1931. Morton continued playing less prosperously in New York, briefly had a radio show in 1934, then was reduced to touring in the band of a traveling burlesque act. He wound up in Washington D.C., where folklorist Alan Lomax first heard Morton playing solo piano in a dive in an African American neighborhood. (Morton was also the master of ceremonies, manager, and bartender of the place he played.)
The Library of Congress interviews
In May 1938, Alan Lomax began recording interviews with Morton for the Library of Congress. The sessions, originally intended as a short interview with musical examples for use by music researchers in the Library of Congress, soon expanded to record more than eight hours of Morton talking and playing piano, in addition to longer interviews which Lomax took notes on but did not record. These interviews helped assure Morton's place in jazz history.
Lomax was very interested in Morton's Storyville days and some of the off-color songs played in Storyville. Morton was reluctant to recount and record these, but eventually obliged Lomax. Morton's "Jelly Roll" nickname is a sexual reference and many of his lyrics from his Storyville days were vulgar.
Morton was aware that having been born in 1890, he was slightly too young to make a good case for himself as the actual inventor of jazz, and so presented himself as five years older. Research has shown that Morton placed the dates of some early incidents of his life (and probably the dates when he first composed his early tunes) a few years too early, and his statement that Buddy Bolden played ragtime but not jazz is contradicted by other New Orleans contemporaries.
Later years
During the period when he was recording his interviews, Morton was seriously injured by knife wounds when a fight broke out at the Washington, D.C. Morton made a new series of commercial recordings in New York, several recounting tunes from his early years that he had been talking about in his Library of Congress Interviews.
Death
He then moved to Los Angeles, California with a series of manuscripts of new tunes and arrangements, planning to form a new band and restart his career.
Compositions
Morton wrote dozens of songs, including "Wolverine Blues", "The Pearls", "Mama Nita", "Froggie More", "Black Bottom Stomp", "London Blues", "Sweet Substitute", "Creepy Feeling", "Good Old New York", "Sidewalk Blues", "Tank Town Bump", "Kansas City Stop", "Freakish", "Shake It", "Doctor Jazz Stomp," "Burnin' The Iceberg", "Ganjam", "Pacific Rag", "My Home Is In A Southern Town", "Turtle Twist", "Why?", "New Orleans Bump", "Fickle Fay Creep", "Cracker Man", "Stratford Hunch", "Shreveport Stomp", "Milneberg Joys", "Red Hot Pepper", "Jungle Blues", "Mint Julep", "Pontchartrain", "Pep", "Someday Sweetheart", "The Finger Buster", "The Crave", and "Grandpa's Spells".
Several of Morton's compositions were musical tributes to himself, including "Whinin' Boy", "The Original Jelly-Roll Blues" and "Mister Jelly Lord". In the Big Band era, his "King Porter Stomp" which Morton had written decades earlier, was a big hit for Fletcher Henderson and Benny Goodman, and became a standard covered by most other swing bands of that time. Morton also claimed to have written some tunes that were copyrighted by others, including "Alabama Bound" and "Tiger Rag".
Morton categorized his compositions in three groups as blues, stomps, and Spanish Tinge, for those with habanera rhythms.. The first draws heavily on Morton's own words and stories from the Library of Congress interviews. The latter show has created considerable controversy with its very fictionalized and unsympathetic portrayal of Morton, and the creator has been sued by Morton's family. For decades the only important book on Morton, contains a biography based on Morton's Library of Congress interviews interspersed with interviews with other contemporary musicians. The 2001 edition adds an afterword by Lawrence Gushee focussing largely on Morton's ancestry and other historical questions not fully explored by Lomax. Mostly a detailed discography, focusing on Morton's recordings. A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook by William Russell (1999 Jazz Media ApS, Copenhagen). Jazz historian William Russell spent over 40 years compiling this book, containing interviews with musicans, relatives, and others who knew and worked with Morton, in addition to Morton's own writings and letters. Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West by Phil Pastras (2001 University of California Press) Focuses on Morton's previously largely neglected years in California and his relationship with Anita Gonzales Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton by Howard Reich & A revisionist account of Morton's life based in part on newly acquired historical sources, this book provides insight into Morton's later years detailing the events surrounding his decline, his struggle for popular redemption and his death. Reich and Gaines are sympathetic to Morton's plight and attempt to update common notions of the arrogant, self-serving and single-minded performer with stories of an artist, optimist, and deeply complex man who, late in life, fell victim to racism and circumstance.
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