Biography of Jelly Roll Morton

Piano, composer. Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton is widely regarded as the first great composer in the jazz idiom, witnessed especially in his Red Hot Peppers recordings made for Victor in 1926-1930. A Creole-of-color pianist who was extremely proud of his French heritage, he earned the disapproval of his family by beginning his career in the bawdy houses of Storyville, the famed Red Light distict of New Orleans, where he is said to have earned $100 a night entertaining the patrons of places such as the Hilma Burt House while still in his teens. Jelly's early years were spent traveling the nation solo and with various tent shows and vaudeville troupes. During World War I he settled in Chicago, where he began to assemble bands to record his compositions and other traditional New Orleans fare. In 1923 he participated in recording sessions with The New Orleans Rhythm Kings (NORK -- a White outfit) for the Gennett label, located in Richmond, IN. At that time Indiana was the scene for a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan activity, and integrated recording sessions were risky business. According to NORK trombonist George Brunies, Jelly was passed off as a Spaniard -- apparently accepted without question because of the diamond inlay which the pianist flashed with his broad smile. For the next five years Morton toured with various outfits from his home base in Chicago, including stints with Fate Marable, W. C. Handy, and The Alabamians. He also worked as a staff writer for the Melrose Publishing House, which covered many of his most famous compositions. For The Red Hot Peppers sessions he recruited a number of talented New Orleans sidemen, including Omer Simeon, Kid Ory, and the Dodds brothers. By 1930, however, it seemed that changing fashions (and a depressed recording market) had passed Jelly Roll by, and he was dropped from the Victor roster. As was the case for many of the older New Orleans players, the Depression years were unkind to Morton, and by the end of the decade he was living in obscurity in Washington, DC, waiting tables at a shoe-box nightclub called the Band Box. A series of oral history recordings made by Alan Lomax for the Archive of American Folksong at the Library of Congress in 1938 returned Jelly to national attention for a time (especially among a cadre of "hot" record collectors), but his death in 1941 ended his illustrious career before he was able to benefit from the New Orleans revival of the 40s.Morton was certainly one of the most colorful characters in jazz history. His bravura and penchant for self-promotion (including the claim that he personally invented jazz) may have won some friends, but also made him many enemies. As a solo pianist, he was capable of milking the instrument completely, with the ability to make a piano sound like an entire band. As a composer, arranger, and bandleader, he demanded absolute adherence to his vision of the principle of traditional collective improvisation. The Red Hot Peppers records especially drew on a wide variety of musical elements, simultaneously restating themes from ragtime and presaging the syncopated section work that later became the hallmark of the swing era. ~ Bruce Boyd Raeburn