Morton's 1923-24 recordings of piano solos introduced his style, repertoire and brilliance. He played in Los Angeles from 1917-1922 and then moved to Chicago where, for the next six years, he was at his peak. The chances are good that in 1915 Morton had few competitors among pianists and he was an important transition figure between ragtime and early jazz. He spent time in other professions (as a gambler, pool player, vaudeville comedian and even a pimp) but always returned to music. He started playing piano when he was ten, worked in the bordellos of Storyville while a teenager (for which some of his relatives disowned him) and by 1904 was traveling throughout the South. Jelly Roll Morton's pre-1923 activities are shrouded in legend. Although he only took one vocal on records in the 1920s ("Doctor Jazz"), Morton in his late-'30s recordings proved to be an effective vocalist. He was a greatly underrated pianist who had his own individual style. Jelly Roll," "Shreveport Stomp," "Milenburg Joys," "Black Bottom Stomp," "The Chant," "Original Jelly Roll Blues," "Doctor Jazz," "Wild Man Blues," "Winin' Boy Blues," "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," "Don't You Leave Me Here," and "Sweet Substitute." He was a talented arranger (1926's "Black Bottom Stomp" is remarkable), getting the most out of the three-minute limitations of the 78 record by emphasizing changing instrumentation, concise solos and dynamics. Morton was jazz's first great composer, writing such songs as "King Porter Stomp," "Grandpa's Spells," "Wolverine Blues," "The Pearls," "Mr. Morton's accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth. One of the very first giants of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth, claiming to have invented jazz in 1902. Nonetheless, it is beyond denying that Morton, in his nomadic wanderings during the early twentieth century, codified a wealth of influences into a music that broke from the stiffness of ragtime to fashion a nascent jazz that was greater than the sum of its parts. It is always a tricky thing in jazz to declare “firsts” and ascribe invention to anyone because so much of the music in its early years took place away from the recording horn and out of earshot. It is evidently known, beyond contradiction that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.” Morton signed his letter and titled himself the “Originator of Jazz and Stomps, Victor Artist, World’s Greatest Hot Tune Writer.” Ripley,” wrote Morton, “you have done me a great injustice and you have almost misled many of your fans…. Handy is a liar,” was the headline of the Baltimore paper. Louis Blues,” “Memphis,” and “Beale Street Blues.” When Handy was introduced as the originator of jazz and the blues, Morton went uncorked and fired off a 4000-word screed to the Baltimore Afro-American and Downbeat magazine. Handy, the man who composed or set down some of the most popular blues tunes of all-notably the “St. Pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton, who had once known far better times, tuned in his radio to Robert Ripley’s popular broadcast, “Believe It Or Not.” Ripley’s guest was W.C. It’s evening in Washington, D.C., and the year is 1938. THE DOZENS: JELLY ROLL MORTON by Rob Bamberger There's also a joyful exuberance to this work that lies just on the cusp of total anarchy and chaos but is tightly structured enough to come barreling through in one piece. This raised eyebrow and lick of the lips became diluted as jazz was passed into the hands of white people in the northern cities.Īctually, as he told Lomax some years later, Morton had to write incredibly racy, saucy lines or else people would take him - a slender, long-fingered piano-player (piano was considered a lady's instrument at the time) - to be of the queer, effeet variety, and that would have been (carreer) suicide. There is a strutting quality to New Orleans jazz, as well as a dark and primal power that can be found in Jelly Roll Morton's music. Well, ok, some songs were about reefer, but most of the rest really were about sex, or if not nominally about sex, it was an ever-present undercurrent. But over the ensuing years, I became more familiar with New Orleans music and early 20th Century American music in general, I realized it was true. I remember one day, probably over the dinner table, and seemingly out of nowhere, my dad said to me, "So you know, Jazz is basically all about sex." Such a thought had never occurred to me, nor did it make much sense at the time, since my notion of jazz was mostly the abstracted bebop of New York. Jelly Roll Morton Centennial: His Complete Victor.David Grisman & Svend Asmussen - Svingin' with Svend.