Jelly roll morton biography alan

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      • Jelly roll morton biography alan

    About the Book

    When it appeared in , this biography of Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton became an instant classic of jazz literature. Now back in print and updated with a new afterword by Lawrence Gushee, Mister Jelly Roll will enchant a new generation of readers with the fascinating story of one of the world's most influential composers of jazz. Jelly Roll's voice spins out his life in something close to song, each sentence rich with the sound and atmosphere of the period in which Morton, and jazz, exploded on the American and international scene. This edition includes scores of Jelly Roll's own arrangements, a discography and an updated bibliography, a chronology of his compositions, a new genealogical tree of Jelly Roll's forebears, and Alan Lomax's preface from the hard-to-find edition of this classic work. Lawrence Gushee's afterword provides new factual information and reasserts the importance of this work of African American biography to the study of jazz and American culture.

    About the Author

    Alan Lomax, with his father John A. Lomax, created the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress and published many anthologies, including American Ballads and Folk Songs and The Folk Songs of North America. Lomax produced the first albums of American folk song in and has edited more than a hundred recordings from all parts of the world. He received the National Medal of Arts in Lawrence Gushee is Professor Emeritus at the School of Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

    Table of Contents

    Preface to the Edition
    Preface to the Edition
    Prelude

    LOUISIANA TOWN
    My Folks Was All Frenchmans
    Really Tremendous Sports
    Money in the Tenderloin

    INTERLUDE ONE: The Family

    STORYVILLE
    Where the Birth of Jazz Originated From
    Uptown-Downtown
    Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm
    INTERLUDE TWO: The Boys in the Bands

    ALABAMA BOUND
    Half-hand Bigshot
    Those Battles of Music
    The Lion Broke Down the Door
    Jack the Bear
    Can't Remembe

    Mister Jelly Roll

    June 3,
    I had the pleasure of performing playwright George C. Wolfe's Tony winning musical "Jelly's Last Jam" for several weeks this past Spring as a member of the pit band. Ironically, while trying to find some novel or other in my mostly uncatalogued personal library, I came across Alan Lomax's book. Its origins are fairly well known. In the early 50's, Texan folklorist Alan Lomax spent weeks interviewing and audiotaping Morton at the Library of Congress - time spent watching Morton playing, singing, and telling his own story. Lomax uses Morton's own words and other research to recount the facts (at least up to that time) of the pianist/composer's life as well as highlighting the conflicts and the contradictions in his personal life and career, contradictions that George C. Wolfe also develops in the musical in a completely different manner. Ferdinand Le Menthe Morton,pianist, composer/arranger, bandleader, known as "Jelly Roll" was indisputably one of the most important jazz pioneers from New Orleans,a young teenager playing in the bars and brothels in the first decade of jazz, long before the early recordings of the 's. His life reads like a travelogue, a "beat" odyssey, a colorful lesson in American History as he traveled, sometimes working as a musician, sometimes hustling pool or running other scams from New Orleans across the South, north to Chicago, west to Los Angeles,and east to New York City. His life story, and the story of jazz which Morton claimed to have invented is one of precocity, genius, bravado, as well as a story of rejections, disappointments, and heartbreak. The edition I own is an earlier one. I would love to hear from readers who have the later edition with additional material, especially those who may be familiar with the musical "Jelly's Last Jam" as well. A colorful and at the same time thought-provoking read.

    Jelly Roll Morton

    American ragtime and jazz musician (–)

    Musical artist

    Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (néLemott, later Morton; c. September 20, – July 10, ), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American blues and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer of Louisiana Creole descent. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in , was one of the first published jazz compositions. He also claimed to have invented the genre.

    Morton also wrote "King Porter Stomp", "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say", the last being a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century.

    Morton's claim to have invented jazz in was criticized. Music critic Scott Yanow wrote, "Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth Morton's accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth."Gunther Schuller says of Morton's "hyperbolic assertions" that there is "no proof to the contrary" and that Morton's "considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation.”

    Biography

    Early life

    Morton was born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (or Lemott), into the Creole community in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans around ; he claimed to have been born in on his WWI draft registration card in Both parents traced their Creole ancestry four generations to the 18th century. Morton's birth date and year of birth are uncertain, given that no birth certificate was ever issued for him. The law requiring birth certificates for citizens was not enforced until His parents were Martin-Edouard Joseph Lamothe, also known as Edward Joseph Lamothe, a

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    • “It is to jazz what the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is to American history — only more fun.” 

    —Wall Street Journal

    “An incredible achievement, as if Mark Twain happened to also be a masterful pianist.” 

    —New York Times

    Recorded in by Alan Lomax

    Produced by Jeffrey A. Greenberg and Anna Lomax Wood

    Mastering Producers: Steve Rosenthal and Adam Ayan

    “Doctor Jazz” essay by John Szwed, with additional material, transcriptions, and notes edited by Anna Lomax Wood and Nathan Salsburg

    New Orleans composer, pianist, and occasional pool shark Jelly Roll Morton was one of the key figures in the creation of jazz. Alan Lomax was a visionary young folklorist. Together, at the Library of Congress in , they made the first recorded oral history in jazz. Jelly Roll’s picaresque and remarkably detailed stories of the milieu of jazz’s formative years are accompanied by his musical illustrations, his flawless, haunting singing, and stunning solo piano versions of his best-known compositions. The dandies, piano players, prostitutes, hustlers, and musical legends of Jelly Roll’s world come to life in his riveting narrative, which is an essential document of American culture.

    Jelly Roll Morton saw these sessions as an opportunity to affirm his role in early jazz, which he does with great dignity, scrupulously crediting other composers and virtuosi in the field. “He made clear by word and example that he wanted to be seen as a winner: jazz was an art, and he was a pianist of the highest order, having developed a style that was rhythmically virtuosic and orchestral in its detail and fullness,” writes John Szwed. “He was the first composer in jazz, and a modernist.” Indeed, Morton’s central role in the emergence of compositional jazz as we know it today cannot be overstated. As he said himself, “Jazz is a style that can be applied to any type of music.”

    **Grammy for Best Historical Album of



    **Grammy for Best Album Notes of



    “It’s a