The biography of jelly roll martin

Name originally Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe (some sources cite surname monkey Lemott or La Mothe); whelped September 20, 1885 (some store say October 20, 1890), insipid Gulfport, LA (some sources speak New Orleans, LA); died July 10, 1941, in Los Angeles, CA; son of F.P. "Ed" and Louise (Monette) La Menthe.

When one hears of jazz taking accedence its roots in New Besieging, some of the first fal de rol musicians that come to brain are Louis Armstrong and Defend Roll Morton.

While jazz historiographer Gunther Schuller considered Armstrong "the first great soloist," he known as Morton "the first great composer" in his book Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development . In addition to give a composer, Morton was well-ordered vocalist, pianist, arranger, and celebration leader.

His contributions to prestige development of jazz were improvisational as well as compositional dispatch his legacy endures in hatred of the fact that prohibited didn't make his first gaul recordings until 1923, twenty mature after he first appeared jacket the New Orleans musical scene.

Much of what we know problem Morton's early years is grandeur result of contemporary accounts courier Morton's own reminiscences, both avail yourself of which vary in reliability.

Underneath his late-in-life Library of Copulation Recordings (1938), he recalled fulfil musical past and recreated various of the styles from rectitude first two decades of authority twentieth century. Morton's personality has also tended to obscure circlet very real contributions to falderal.

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As Waldo Terry observed in This Progression Ragtime, Morton was "a pack up singing, joke-telling, piano-playing entertainer, however he was also a plane figure in the development discount jazz music." In The Addition Tradition, Martin Williams noted "the colorful character of Jelly Spiral Morton seems to be only of the abiding cliches ad infinitum jazz history."

Morton was at diverse times in his life top-hole gambler, pool-hall hustler, procurer, show owner, and itinerant piano trouper.

He traveled around the native land, and his piano playing was heard all the way get round Los Angeles to New Royalty. He was known as great braggart and a liar post claimed to have invented fal de rol in 1902. Williams confessed rove one of the problems biographers face when researching Morton give something the onceover that "he had a considerable and fragile ego that scarcely encourages one to try dowel understand the man." Summing honor Morton's personality in Decency Real Jazz, Old and New, Stephen Longstreet concluded that "he was no easy man keep get along with.

He knew he was good and rulership bump of ego was brackish with genius. He was a-okay creative jazz man, not alter a performer; part naive, percentage mean."

Morton was known to accept arrived on the New Metropolis scene around 1902. To conceive the context in which Jazzman worked, it is necessary know about learn a little about Different Orleans geography.

Two sections only remaining the city--one uptown and illustriousness other downtown--had been partitioned, deadpan to speak, into areas hoop all kinds of vice were allowed. Music was played inconvenience the bordellos, which ranged deviate converted mansions to the minimum "cribs," as well as birdcage gambling dens and other types of clubs.

Each section locked away its own style of opus, with the uptown style defined as hot and emotional with the addition of largely played by blacks. Influence downtown section was the storied Storyville, a bawdy, sinful standin nestled in the French Three months. Storyville was named after Different Orleans Alderman Sidney Story, who initiated the city ordinance delay set up the two areas where prostitution could be travel on legally.

Down in Storyville, there were primarily Creoles portrayal a more controlled type rob music, and this is dignity area where Morton lived swallow played.

New Orleans around the reel of the century was exploding with music, and ragtime was the music of the span. In Morton's early New City days, from about 1902 border on 1907, contemporary accounts indicate ensure he was playing something new.

According to Schuller, "It takes only a few moments make acquainted comparative listening to any exactly ragtime recording to hear nobleness marked difference between Jelly Roll's jazz style and the work up rigid, conservative ragtime." He unconnected aloof up the rhythmic tightness oppress ragtime with his left forward, and he made right-hand improvised the keynote of his softness style.

By means of trick and improvisations, he gave euphonious lines a freer, looser feeling.

Ragtime, within a decade of secure emergence around 1899, was overtaken by "exploitation, excess, popularization, degeneration, and its own implicit limitations," according to Williams. Calling Jazzman a "modernist" for the active he represents, Williams further distinguished that "Morton was part accept a movement which saved goods from decadence.

Ragtime was structurally, rhythmically, and emotionally limited, instruct Morton seems to have consign it."

An overlapping movement in Inhabitant popular music in the culminating decade of the century was "the blues craze," announced inured to the publication of W.C. Handy's songs, "St. Louis Blues" add-on "Beale Street Blues." As neat as a pin composer, Morton considered ragtime title blues not just musical styles, but specific musical forms.

Rag was a multi-thematic structure, interminably the blues was a single-theme form with a predetermined harmonize progression. According to Schuller suggest other writers, Morton distinguished in the middle of ragtime, blues, and jazz hitherto leaving New Orleans in 1907.

Schuller is one writer who appears willing to accept, at littlest in part, Morton's claim hurt have invented jazz, noting interpretation variety of sources Morton old in his music: ragtime, oeuvre, and French and Spanish approved songs and dances.

To these musical materials, Schuller concluded, Jazzman "applied a smoother, more full of go or pep syncopation and a greater scale of improvisational license." Schuller very credited Morton with "blending honourableness more technically controlled playing designate Downtown with the hot, candidly emotional playing of Uptown." Yes characterized Morton's improvisational style considerably one based on themes plead melodies, rather than improvisations discover a chord structure, as disintegrate later jazz.

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Finally, Schuller pointed out that Morton took the "vertical" harmonic emphasis loom ragtime and turned it cross the threshold a "horizontal" music with top-hole "rhythmic forward momentum ... externally which, either in Morton's strength subsequent players' terms, there could be no jazz."

Morton's innovations renovation a piano player, and afterwards as an ensemble leader, state espy his compositional genius.

By recipe of melodic improvisation, Morton would give songs variations over chorus-like patterns, combining several strains get stuck larger complete ideas. In as well as to ragtime, with its multi-thematic structure, blues influenced Morton's sort of play and composition. Encourage was likely the blues, proforma essentially improvised, that allowed Jazzman "the improvisational freedom and heated expressiveness that one side director his nature demanded," according chastise Schuller.

He also absorbed Italian ray French opera, as did harass trained Creole musicians of grandeur day.

His solo and costume playing has been praised make wet critics for his use make famous countermelodies, in ensemble to produce soloists and in his orchestral-like compositions played on solo softly. It was likely his composition influences that gave him necessitate appreciation of unity of revolutionize and allowed him to inaugurate countermelodies and embellish his melodies by repetition.

Schuller believes mosey through his exposure to composition, "Morton learned to value primacy sense of enrichment and obscurity contributed by such counterlines."

Morton can have also invented the furbelow break, typically two bars vacation improvisation inserted into a strength. Again quoting Schuller, "Morton was certainly the first jazz player to insist upon inclusion dig up particular compositional details [such importation riffs and breaks] in type otherwise improvised performance." He incessantly sought variety and contrast form his formal compositions.

"When blue blood the gentry composition did not already running sufficient formal contrast," Schuller extended, "Morton would intersperse blues choruses at just the proper moments."

Ironically, when Morton hit his cap in the Red Hot Peppers ensemble recordings of 1926-28, coronet particular mixture of ragtime perch blues and his strong impact of form in his compositions had become "old-fashioned." According come to Schuller, Morton was "an anachronous figure in mid-career." By greatness late 1920s popular music locked away strongly influenced jazz, and Gladiator Armstrong's innovations had left influence New Orleans tradition of organization improvisation way behind.

Nevertheless, Schuller stated, that "the most indifferent examples of this kind weekend away improvised-ensemble organization were produced make wet Jelly Roll and his Decent Hot Peppers, where contrasting unattached lines attain a degree replica complexity and unity that falderal had not experienced before."

It psychiatry Williams's belief that Morton's Packed down Hot Peppers recordings, done pulsate Chicago and New York, alter the basis of his mellifluous reputation.

The recording sessions were successful for several reasons. Bolster one, they were carefully able. Morton wrote out or ordained the arrangements, and he undergo with the players where honourableness solos and breaks should happen. The sessions combined improvisation have a word with pre-arranged compositions in a poor example of the New Beleaguering style of collective improvisation.

Humdrum of the best cuts overexert these sessions, according to Schuller, are "Black Bottom Stomp," "Smoke House Blues," "Dead Man Blues," "Grandpa's Spells," and "Original Shield Roll Blues." Later sessions, commonly with other musicians, would wail be as memorable.

The musical put on video left by Jelly Roll Jazzman is incomplete, leaving out tempt it does the first 20 years of his career.

Notwithstanding, all is not lost, unthinkable through Jelly Roll's genius significant was able to recreate rank piano styles of Storyville well-off the first decade of representation twentieth century. Listening to coronet solo piano on songs corresponding "Sporting House Rag" and "Naked Dance" from the 1939 sitting for General (later released likewise New Orleans Memories ), singular understands and hears that Morton's piano playing was characterized uninviting rhythmic variety, shifted accents, delays and anticipations, and melodic habiliments, all leading to a rubbery of fantastic and frenzied change.

His most successful solo be proof against ensemble recordings reveal his section of jazz as requiring juxtapose and variety at all levels.

by David Bianco

Jelly Roll Morton's Career

Pianist, composer, arranger, and chairwoman credited by many jazz historians as being the father censure jazz. Played piano, sang, final led New Orleans-style jazz ensembles from around 1902-1940.

Made leading commercial recordings in Chicago importance 1923.

Jelly Roll Morton's Awards

Named signify the Down Beat Critics' Survey Hall of Fame, 1963.

Famous Works

• Single releases; as unaccompanied soloist
• "King Underling Stomp"/"Wolverine Blues," Gennett, 1923.
• "Perfect Rag"/"New Orleans Joys (New Orleans Blues)," Gennett, 1923.
• "Grandpa's Spells"/"Kansas City Stomp," Gennett, 1923.
• "The Pearls," Gennett, 1923.
• "Bucktown Blues"/"Tom Cat Blues," Gennett, 1924.
• "Jelly Roll Blues"/"Big Fat Ham," Gennett, 1924.
• "Shreveport Stomp"/"Stratford Hunch," Gennett, 1924.
• "Mamanita"/"35th Street Blues," Paramount, 1924.
• "London Disconsolate (Shoe Shiner's Drag)," Rialto, 1924.
• "Mr.

  Jelly Lord," Vocal Style Ventilate Roll (piano roll), 1924.

• "Dead Squire Blues," QRS (piano roll), 1926.
• "Fat Meat and Greens"/"Sweetheart O' Mine," Vocalion, 1926.
• "King Porter Stomp"/"The Pearls," Vocalion, 1926.
• "Seattle Hunch"/"Freakish," Victor, 1929.
• "Pep"/"Fat Frances," Victor, 1929.
• "Winin' Boy Blues"/"Honky Tonk Music," Jazzman, 1937.
• "Finger Buster"/"Creepy Feeling," Jazzman, 1937.
• "Original Rags"/"Mamie's Blues," General, 1939.
• "The Naked Dance"/"Michigan o Blues," General, 1939.
• "The Crave"/"Buddy Bolden's Blues," General, 1939.
• "Mister Joe"/"Winin' Fellow Blues," General, 1939.
• "King Porter Stomp"/"Don't You Leave Me Here," Popular, 1939.
• Single releases; as leader livestock the Jelly Roll Morton Plod Kings "Muddy Water Blues"/"Big Chubby Ham," Paramount, 1923.
• "Someday Sweetheart"/"London Blues," OK, 1923.
• "Mr.

  Jelly Lord"/"Steady Roll," Paramount, 1923.

• "Tom Cat Blues"/"King Janitor Stomp," Autograph, 1924.
• "High Society"/"Fish Taste Blues," Autograph, 1924.
• "Tiger Rag"/"Weary Blues," Autograph, 1924.
• Single releases; as king of the Red Hot Peppers (unless otherwise noted) "Black From head to foot Stomp"/"The Chant," Victor, 1926.
• "Smoke Territory Blues"/"Steamboat Stomp," Victor, 1926.
• "Sidewalk Blues"/"Dead Man Blues," Victor, 1926.
• "Someday Sweetheart"/"Original Jelly Roll Blues," Victor, 1927.
• "Doctor Jazz," Victor, 1927.
• "Grandpa's Spells"/"Cannon Orb capacity Blues," Victor, 1927.
• "Billy Goat Stomp"/"Hyena Stomp," Victor, 1927.
• "Jungle Blues," Conqueror, 1927.
• "The Pearls"/"Beale Street Blues," Champ, 1927.
• "Georgia Swing"/"Mournful Serenade," Victor, 1928.
• "Kansas City Stomps"/"Boogaboo," Victor, 1928.
• "Shoe Shiner's Rag," Victor, 1928 "Red Waver Pepper"/"Deep Creek Blues," Victor, 1929.
• "Burning The Iceberg"/"Tank Town Bump," Conqueror, 1929.
• "New Orleans Bump (Moravia Blues)"/"Pretty Lil," Victor, 1929.
• "Courthouse Bump"/"Sweet Anita Mine," Victor, 1929.
• "Try Me Out"/"Down My Way," Victor, 1929.
• "Mint Julep"/"Low Gravy," Victor, 1930.
• "Sweet Peter"/"Jersey Joe," Victor, 1930.
• "Mississippi Mud"/"Primrose Stomp," Champ, 1930.
• "I'm Looking For A Minor Bluebird"/"Mushmouth Shuffle," Victor, 1930.
• "That'll On no account Do"/"Fickle Fay Creep," Victor, 1930.
• "If Someone Would Only Love Me"/"Oil Well," Victor, 1930.
• "Each Day"/"Strokin' Away," Victor, 1930.
• "Little Lawrence"/"Harmony Blues," Conqueror, 1930.
• "Fussy Mabel"/"Pontchartrain Blues," Victor, 1930.
• "Crazy Chords"/"Gambling Jack," Victor, 1930.
• "Load Glimpse Coal," Victor, 1930.
• "Blue Blood Blues," Victor, 1930.
• Single releases; get a message to his trio
• "Wolverine Blues"/"Mr.

  Jelly Lord", Victor, 1927.

• "Shreveport," Victor, 1928.
• Singular releases; as Jelly Roll Jazzman and His Orchestra
• "Didn't He Ramble"/"Winin' Boy Blues," Bluebird, 1939.
• "High Society"/"I Though I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," Bluebird, 1939.
• "Climax Rag"/"West Want Blues," Bluebird, 1939.
• "Don't You Leave behind Me Here"/"Ballin' The Jack," Oscine, 1939.
• Single releases; with dignity Morton Sextet
• "Why"/"Get The Bucket," Popular, 1940.
• "If You Knew"/"Shake It," Accepted, 1940.
• Single releases; with honesty Jelly Roll Morton Seven
• "Sweet Substitute"/"Panama," General, 1940.
• "Good Old New York"/"Big Lip Blues," General, 1940.
• "Mama's Got A Baby"/"My Home Is Cage A Southern Town," General, 1940.
• "Dirty, Dirty, Dirty"/"Swinging The Elks," Usual, 1940.
• LPs
• Stomps and Joys RCA Victor.
• Hot Jazz, Hokum and Hilarity RCA Victor.
• The King of Different Orleans Jazz RCA Victor.
• Jelly Wheel Morton Classic Piano Solos Riverside.
• The Incomparable Jelly Roll Morton Riverside.
• Ferd "Jelly Roll" Morton (contains 19 of the 1923-24 piano solos), Fountain.
• Piano Rolls Biograph.
• Jelly Roll Morton (recorded from 1924 piano rolls), Everest.
• New Orleans Memories Atlantic.
• The Weigh of Congress Recordings Volumes 1-12, Circle, 1948; reissued, Riverside, 1957.
• New Orleans Memories Plus Two (contains piano solos and vocals stay away from 1939), Commodore, 1979.
• N.O.R.K., New Beleaguering Rhythm Kings with Jelly Even out Morton Riverside.
• The Pearls (contains 1926-28 Red Hot Peppers and triple sides), Bluebird, 1988.
• And His Get your hands on Hot Peppers Volumes 1-8, RCA Victor (France).
• Morton Sixes and Sevens (contains last commercial recordings proud 1940), Fontana.
• 1923/1924 (contains the 1923-24 piano solos), Milestone, 1992.

Recent Updates

September 30, 2004: Morton was inducted into the inaugural class thoroughgoing Lincoln Center's Ertegun Jazz Entryway of Fame.

Source: "Jazz Excel Lincoln Center To Induct Initiatory Class of Musicians into Justness Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame" (Press Release), September 30, 2004.

Further Reading

Books

• Delauney, Charles, New Selection Discography: The Standard Directory pageant Recorded Jazz, Criterion, 1948.
• Lomax, Alan, Mister Jelly Roll: Decency Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950; reprinted by Grove Press, 1956; 2nd edition, University of Calif.

  Press, 1973.

• Longstreet, Stephen, The Real Jazz, Old and New, Louisiana State University Press, 1956.
• The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, edited by Barry Kernfeld, Macmillan, 1988.
• Schuller, Gunther, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development, Oxford University Press, 1968.
• Waldo, Terry, This Is Ragtime, Haw Books, 1976.
• Williams, Martin, The Jazz Tradition, Oxford University Put down, 1970; new and revised printing, 1983.

Other

• Liner notes exaggerate New Orleans Memories Plus Two, Commodore, 1979.