Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, And Redemption Of Jelly Roll Morton [Hardcover]

Howard Reich (Author), William M. Gaines (Author), William Gaines (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 13, 2003

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, a hustler, and, worst of all, a has-been. He was ridiculed by the white popular press and robbed of due royalties by unscrupulous music publishers. His reputation at rock bottom, Jelly Roll Morton seemed destined to be remembered more as a flamboyant, diamond-toothed rounder than as the brilliant architect of that new American musical idiom: Jazz.In 1992, the death of a New Orleans memorabilia collector unearthed a startling archive. Here were unknown later compositions as well as correspondence, court and copyright records, all detailing Morton's struggle to salvage his reputation, recover lost royalties, and protect the publishing rights of black musicians. Morton was a much more complex and passionate man than many had realized, fiercely dedicated to his art and possessing an unwavering belief in his own genius, even as he toiled in poverty and obscurity. An especially immediate and visceral look into the jazz worlds of New Orleans and Chicago, Jelly's Blues is the definitive biography of a jazz icon, and a long overdue look at one of the twentieth century's most important composers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There has been a resurgence of interest in Jelly Roll Morton (1890- 1941) in recent years, much of it highlighting the unattractive characteristics of the legendary Creole jazz pianist, composer and bandleader, such as his flashy clothes, diamond-studded tooth, boastfulness and denial of his race. In their sympathetic biography, Reich, jazz critic of the Chicago Tribune, and Gaines, an investigative reporter who retired from the Chicago Tribune in 2001, play down these aspects of Morton's personality and concentrate on his musicianship, keyboard virtuosity, innovative compositions and ingenuity in devising a way to set improvisational music down on paper. The authors also highlight the redemptive qualities of Morton's last years, basing their discussion on letters, documents and scores from the voluminous archive of Morton material in the collection of New Orleans jazz historian William Russell that became available after Russell's death in 1992. They show that at the end of his life Morton composed revolutionary new works, though he couldn't get anyone to play or record them. At the same time, he kept up a running battle with his publishers, who had exploited him for years, and launched a crusade against ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), which collected royalties for composers and robbed black songwriters of what was due them by denying them membership. Morton's correspondence with the Justice Department concerning his case against ASCAP and his music publishers is included in the book (though not seen by PW), as an annotated discography.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Thanks to music educator William Russell's 65,000-item collection relating to the musician with whom he was obsessed, Reich and Gaines finally sift reality from hype about Jelly Roll Morton (1885?-1941). They demonstrate that Morton's long-derided claim to have invented jazz holds a lot of water. By 1905, Morton had formulated pieces that remain in the jazz repertoire, and he published the standards "Jelly Roll Blues" and "Frog-I-More Rag" while World War I raged. Meanwhile he extended his performing arena from New Orleans-Biloxi-Mobile to Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Flush in 1923, he recorded the first great jazz piano solos and, in 1926, with his carefully picked Red Hot Peppers, the best pre-swing jazz-group recordings. Cheated unto destitution by white publishers, and gravely ill at the last, Morton continued writing, producing big band charts that anticipated 1950s innovations, and battling music-industry exploitation of black artists. Despite much poor wording and some grammatical groaners, this is a revisionist milestone in jazz studies, a book on which more than just future Morton biographies will depend. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (May 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306812096
• ISBN-13: 978-0306812095
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,924,433 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #56 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Composers & Musicians > Rhythm & Blues

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chapters Six through Eight Make This Book, June 4, 2005

By 

madamemusico "madamemusico" (Cincinnati, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, And Redemption Of Jelly Roll Morton (Hardcover)

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 musicians not to trust the powers that be in the music business of their time because they would get railroaded as he had. The quixotic dreamer who Lomax described as wanting to create carbon-copy Red Hot Peppers bands across America to push his name above all others is shown as a man who truly cared about finding work in the Depression for good musicians who deserved better. And the "moldy fig" whose stomps and blues were already outdated by 1939 is shown as a vital creator who was still coming up with startling new material. So much is already evident to Morton fans from a few of the 1939-40 General recordings, but this book also describes his innovative large-band scores "Mr. Joe," "Oh Baby" (not to be confused with the pop `20s song of the same name), "Why?" and especially "Ganjam." More satisfyingly for the reader, it chronicles how Morton's "loudmouthed" complaints of the early 1940s eventually led to real reform in the 1950s and `60s of the entire music business and the rules it had to follow.

As a result, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Forget the sometimes stiff and schoolbookish writing style. Forget the occasional errors in fact and judgment. The overall picture it paints of Mr. Jelly Lord, especially in his last years, is a fine and noble one. If you think you know the Morton story, I'm here to tell you you DON'T, at least not until you read this book. I always had the utmost respect for Morton's musical mind, one of those rare organs that was able to remember with photographic precision everything it heard and synthesize it into a unique and personal style. Now I have respect for Morton the person as well, at least the Morton of his last years. Jelly Roll had indeed redeemed himself, and you WILL be startled by some of the things you read here. I guarantee it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jelly Roll Rests His Case, July 10, 2004

By 

David F. Reddig (Twin Falls, ID USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, And Redemption Of Jelly Roll Morton (Hardcover)

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, yet he never received a dime in royalties.

There are passages in the last chapters of this book that are heartbreaking. Morton tirelessly looked to reclaim his former status and successes and to collect the royalties that were rightfully his. He had little to no success in either regard, and yet what comes through most in the later pages of "Jelly's Blues" is the story of a man who had unbridled faith in himself, enduring confidence in his abilities as a pianist and composer, and a refusal to give up. Right up to the time of his death in 1941 from heart failure, he was composing innovative and complex new scores that pointed toward the avant-garde, still a decade away.

Shortly after Morton's death, Downbeat Magazine published an article entitled "Jelly Roll Rests His Case". "Jelly's Blues" may finally make this claim a reality. I can think of no other figure in jazz who is more deserving of redress.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sad tale of genius, robbed by Melrose, August 29, 2004

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G. Whiz (Earth) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, And Redemption Of Jelly Roll Morton (Hardcover)

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?