Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton

by Howard Reich

Book Overview

Jelly's Blues vividly recounts the tumultuous life of Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941), born Ferdinand Joseph Lamonthe to a large, extended family in New Orleans. A virtuoso pianist with a larger-than-life personality, he composed such influential early jazz pieces as "Kansas City Stomp" and "New Orleans Blues." But by the late 1930s, Jelly Roll Morton was nearly forgotten as a visionary jazz composer. Instead, he was caricatured as a braggart,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0306813505
• ISBN13: 9780306813504
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Greatest Jazz Composer, Mr. Jelly Lord

This is an excellent book which gives us a full picture of the life of Jelly Roll Morton, one of the most important figures in early Jazz. Though Morton is remembered by many critics and fans as a bitter man who claimed he "invented Jazz", a pimp, a card shark, a liar, and an all-around lousy human being, after reading this book, I have come to think of him as an American musical genius and a man with great strength and pride in his work. "Black Bottom Stomp" is one of the most wonderful pieces of music in history; I have never heard such amazing musicianship in such a short song. The tune is literally crammed with ideas. "Deep Creek" is Jelly Roll's masterpiece in my opinion, and "Dead Man Blues" and "Pretty Lil" are not far behind. The author does an excellent job of discussing all of these tunes, and how Jelly Roll was able to read, write, and compose music, as well as tell all of his band members exactly (and we mean exactly!) how to play their instruments. I enjoy his music even more than that of Louis Armstrong, and feel that he is a truly under-appreciated genius in the field of Jazz, and American music in general. Lester Melrose is a real s.o.b. and really robbed Jelly Roll. He cheated him out of countless dollars. The author does a wonderful job of helping Mr. Morton redeem himself. Until the very end of his life, Jelly Roll Morton tried to record music that was light years ahead of what everyone else was writing and playing. This book is excellently written, fun, tragic, and highly recommended!

Chapters Six through Eight Make This Book

The great trumpeter Rafael Mendez once said that he lived by one golden rule his father taught him: "Never boast. Someone better than you may be lurking around the corner, waiting to take your place." This was a lesson that Jelly Roll Morton (1886-1941) didn't learn until bad luck, lack of opportunity and rivals who DID take his place (particularly Ellington and Art Tatum) humbled him into reassessing his talent and his place in contemporary music. But, as this remarkable book points out, he not only learned his lessons but learned from them, remaking both his image and his music in the face of near-total indifference. When reading through this bio, I had reached about page 148 and had some reservations as to its worth over Alan Lomax's half-bio, half-autobiography, "Mister Jelly Lord." It seemed to me that the authors had bent over backward to excuse Morton's past as a pimp, gambler and hustler simply because he was the first to codify jazz in written music, and indeed even seemed to claim his superiority as a jazz musician over such luminaries as Bunk Johnson, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet. Chapter Five, in particular, had several errors in both fact and judgment, consistently referring to Morton making his early acoustic recordings in front of "microphones" (they used a big metal horn to focus the sound into a steel cutting needle, no microphones were used at all, hence the term "acoustic"), renaming Bing Crosby as Bill (a typo so glaring that even a modern yuppie proofreader should have spotted it), and their astounding demotion of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings to "a rinky-dink ensemble" in their records without Morton. (In plain truth, the NORK was the first band to actually swing on records, even from their very first records in 1922, by virtue of their rolling, "loping" beat, similar in feel to that of Sidney Bechet's New Orleans Feetwarmers of a decade later. Listen and hear for yourself.) At this point, then, I was going to give this book 3 stars, mostly for factual accuracy but not for value judgments or style. But then something happened. They began chronicling, in full detail, the meeting and eventual partnership of Morton and Roy Carew. They fully documented, as Lomax had not, all of Morton's personal, medical and legal battles with their results in his lifetime and after. They described in full Morton's second and last stay in New York, quoted what he really said to black musicians on the street corners of Harlem, and told just how he re-evaluated the musical value of contemporary musicians and planned to compete with them. And they described in detail his sad last months in California and the creative new music he had written for large orchestra, something far beyond his greatest accomplishments of the 1920s. Morton, then, is truly given his just due as a man and musician. The loudmouthed "braggart" is revealed as a man who did not proselytize his music above all others in Harlem, but warned younger black musici

A sad tale of genius, robbed by Melrose

I've read a good bit about Morton, how he was a "braggart" and a story-teller. Indeed, he was a story-teller but once you read this book, telling how Jelly was robbed by his music publishers as well as his on again/off again wife, you'll have a greater and deeper appreciation of the artist known as Jelly Roll Morton. A wonderful read, a sad story and thank goodness all the papers were found in that apartment/home in New Orleans less Morton end up no more or no less respected than his former reputation. The inventor of jazz? Pretty darned close. Now, if someone would only release the COMPLETE Lomax LOC recordings - that would be something! Mosaic, where are you when we need you?

Jelly Roll Rests His Case

For much of his life, and in the decades since his death, Jelly Roll Morton has had the reputation of a flashy braggart (he claimed he invented jazz--a claim this book goes a long way in validating), a pontificator, a pimp, a card shark, a pool hustler, a pathological liar, a racist, a cliche', a brute and a bully. I'd never bothered to learn about Morton or his music because he was seldom referenced in anything but a disparaging manner. It was my loss, because Jelly Roll Morton was one of the first true pioneers of jazz. "Jelly's Blues" attempts to set the record straight and salvage Morton's reputation. The 1992 death of New Orleans jazz collector William Russell unearthed a 65,000-item collection of Jelly Roll Morton memorabilia that sheds much-needed new light on the life of Jelly Roll Morton; it is the reason this book was written. The collection contained many never-before-seen compositions Morton penned late in life. It also included his correspondence with friend and business partner Roy Carew, who he met in 1938. In the last three years of Morton's life, Carew worked to restore him to his former place of glory and collect the royalties that were owed him. There are essentially two parts to this book. The first describes Morton's childhood and adolescence in New Orleans, where he split his time between playing piano in the brothels, pimping, card sharking, and hustling pool. He eventually abandoned his vices to concentrate on music and had some early successes as a burgeoning composer and performer. He traveled the U.S. extensively in his adolescence. He published his first composition during World War 1 before settling in Chicago to perform, compose and record. The early chapters of Jelly's Blues highlight Jelly Roll's amazing piano playing skills, innovative compositions, and ingenuity in devising a way to set improvisational music down on paper--something Morton was the first to do. Also chronicled are his first recording sessions. The second half of "Jelly's Blues" deals with the last fourteen years of his life, in which Morton suffered one setback after another. His health began to suffer. He struggled to find work, recording or playing, and took jobs that were beneath a man of his talents. He battled with his publishers, the Melrose brothers, who paid him nothing even though they had been releasing his scores and profiting from them for years. He also took on ASCAP, which for years barred blacks from becoming members (even when Morton was finally admitted into ASCAP near the end of his life, the pay scale was an insult; ASCAP gave approximately $16,000 a year to well-known white composers such as Berlin and Rodgers, while placing black composers in its lowest category, paying them $120 per year). Morton was never at a loss for people who were willing to take advantage of him. He suffered one inequity after another at the hands of the music industry. His compositions were widely recorded during the 20's and 30's,

The Biography That Reads Like a Mystery Story

This tragic tale of the life of Jelly Roll Morton is a real page turner. You just have to read "one more chapter" to find out: How did he get that name? How did he rise to musical glory? What caused his down fall? Will things turn out better in the end? There is history, music, licentious tales (New Orleans was really wild!) and life lessons to be found within these pages.This biography is based on a cache of newly found documents which lends an immediacy to the telling. The authors are professionals who have researched every possible collaborating document. You can trust that you are getting the true telling of this gifted, yet flawed and ultimately tragic figure. You'll enjoy the read and be haunted by the story for some time to come.