Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West [Paperback]

Phil Pastras (Author)

Book Description

Series: Music of the African Diaspora | Publication Date: January 6, 2003

When Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton sat at the piano in the Library of Congress in May of 1938 to begin his monumental series of interviews with Alan Lomax, he spoke of his years on the West Coast with the nostalgia of a man recalling a golden age, a lost Eden. He had arrived in Los Angeles more than twenty years earlier, but he recounted his losses as vividly as though they had occurred just recently. The greatest loss was his separation from Anita Gonzales, by his own account "the only woman I ever loved," to whom he left almost all of his royalties in his will.
In Dead Man Blues, Phil Pastras sets the record straight on the two periods (1917-1923 and 1940-1941) that Jelly Roll Morton spent on the West Coast. In addition to rechecking sources, correcting mistakes in scholarly accounts, and situating eyewitness narratives within the histories of New Orleans or Los Angeles, Pastras offers a fresh interpretation of the life and work of Morton, one of the most important and influential early practitioners of jazz. Pastras's discovery of a previously unknown collection of memorabilia--including a 58-page scrapbook compiled by Morton himself--sheds new light on Morton's personal and artistic development, as well as on the crucial role played by Anita Gonzales.
In a rich, fast-moving, and fascinating narrative, Pastras traces Morton's artistic development as a pianist, composer, and bandleader. Among many other topics, Pastras discusses the complexities of racial identity for Morton and his circle, his belief in voodoo, his relationships with women, his style of performance, and his roots in black musical traditions. Not only does Dead Man Blues restore to the historical record invaluable information about one of the great innovators of jazz, it also brings to life one of the most colorful and fascinating periods of musical transformation on the West Coast.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"`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,'" responded Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton to an assertion that W.C. Handy originated jazz and the blues. Pastras (co-editor and co-translator of The New Oresteia of Yannis Ritsos), assistant English professor at Pasadena City College, zeroes in on the great pianist and composer's two Los Angeles tenures (1917-1923 and 1940-1941). His dense, academic study relies heavily on disputing previous Jelly Roll scholarship, such as Alan Lomax's biography (he simultaneously expresses gratitude toward his predecessors). Pastras discovered a scrapbook of Morton's that brings new information to light, particularly illuminating his romance with Anita Gonzales, the love of his life. Jelly left his future royalties to Gonzales, who was his companion for only four or five years, including the last nine months of his life. Pastras details Jelly Roll's relationship to club owners (Ada "Bricktop" Smith says, "He couldn't decide whether to be a pimp or a piano player. I told him to be both") and the music industry. Pastras's distant tone (occasionally tempered by a bubbling enthusiasm), his discussion of other scholarship and his narrow focus on one part of Jelly Roll's career render the book somewhat inaccessible to the general reader. 22 b&w photos. (July)Forecast: This book should prove valuable to music libraries and jazz scholars, as well as to avid Jelly Roll fans, but its specialized approach will appeal only to this small audience.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Pastras (English, Pasadena City Coll.) takes another look at two critical periods in the life of jazz pioneer Morton (1890-1941), n Ferdinand Lamothe. Using Alan Lomax's definitive Mister Jelly Roll (1950) as his foundation, the author begins with a brief overview of the big-spending, rough-and-tumble, self-satisfied Creole pianist, who desperately tried to shed his African heritage yet fervently believed in voodoo practices despite his Catholic upbringing. He focuses on Morton's first stay on the West Coast (1917-23), where he made the transition from a pool-hustling pimp with an interest in the piano to a major musician. He spends another chapter on a newly discovered scrapbook of letters, clippings, flyers, and documents that Morton himself assembled. In the last section, Pastras deals with the last two years of Morton's life, when he traveled to the West Coast to visit his dying godmother and to rekindle his smoldering love affair with Anita Gonzales. Though leaving some questions still unanswered, Pastras adds some interesting detail and critical analysis to the Jelly Roll Morton story and provides a supplemental text to Lomax's standard biography. Recommended for jazz fans. Dave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (January 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520236874
• ISBN-13: 978-0520236875
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,564,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insight into a Complex Man, June 26, 2001

By 

Kevin Fontenot (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West (Hardcover)

Jelly Roll Morton, the self proclaimed "inventor of Jazz," remains one of the most complex figures in American music. Largely forgotten by the time of his death, Morton had pioneered the early New Orleans style jazz on record and seemed to be on the comeback trail and to be experimenting with the dominant swing style of the 1930s. Pastras provides an insight into Morton by examining his years on the West Coast(roughly the late teens to early twenties and then again in the early 1940s). The first period was among Morton's most satisfying both musically and personally, and the second seems to indicate an attempt at a comeback. Pastras sheds light on Morton's relationships with his godmother and his long time companaion Anita Gonzales and in the process examines the roles played by voodoo and "passing for white" among the Creole community. While the contributions of this book are many, one of the main thrusts is the often conflicting and, at times untrustworthy, nature of oral history as evidenced by Alan Lomax's previous oral history biography of Morton. In the end Lomax's book is more folklore than history. However this does not negate Lomax's contribution, but rather illuminates the pitfalls of not balancing oral history with other evidence if such evidence exists. It is Morton as he wished to present himself to the world. Pastras' text is not only interesting but instructive to those dealing with oral history, but the average reader may want to start with Lomax's book and then move to Pastras' more compelling investigation.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jelly Roll Morton--Only in America!, February 11, 2003

By 

Walter Five (13th Floor Elevator, Enron Hubbard Bldg. Houston Texxas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West (Paperback)

WOW. After Alan Lomax's _Mr._Jelly_Roll_, this is THE book to get to understand the most boastful musical genius to grace the 1st half of the 20th Century. Jelly Roll Morton claimed to be the "Father of Jazz", and it seems certain that if he wasn't it's father, he was at least waiting in the delivery room at it's birth. This book covers the critical "lost years" of 1916-1922, and has a lot of material that escaped Mr. Lomax's attention when his book was published in 1950--in 53 years, enough has surfaced to justify a treatment like this, and Morton certainly deserves it. Until the transcriptions of his complete Library of Congress Recordings are published, this and Mr. Lomax's book are crucial to understanding this almost-forgotten genius, to whom modern music owes so much.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a full picture but useful, especially for the specialist, December 5, 2007

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West (Hardcover)

This would be a difficult book to understand for someone not already familiar with the life of Jelly Roll Morton. Focusing on the years Morton spent in California in the 1910s and 1930s, particularly at the beginning, the book focuses on how recent information on Jelly's life on the West Coast sheds new light's personal life on Morton and adds to consensus that despite harrowing conditions, illness that would become fatal, that in the late 1930s Morton was writing some very advanced music that was unfortunately neither recorded nor performed in his lifetime.

Be brave and muscle your way through the first part of this book which contains a bit more speculation than this reader would have preferred.

The book to start on Morton is _Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton_by Howard Reich