Jelly Roll Morton
Day 37
#68 – Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (1890–1941). American jazz pianist, bandleader and composer known as Jelly Roll Morton. His composition ‘Jelly Roll Blues’ was the first published jazz composition, in 1915. Other recordings include: King Porter Stomp (1923), Black Bottom Stomp (with his band Red Hot Peppers, 1925) and Wolverine Blues.
Morton was quite a character and after his grandmother had discovered he had been playing jazz in a local brothel, she threw him out. He apparently said: “When my grandmother found out that I was playing jazz in one of the sporting houses in the District, she told me that I had disgraced the family and forbade me to live at the house... She told me that devil music would surely bring about my downfall, but I just couldn’t put it behind me.” As his music came out around the time of the silent cinema and the first film with sound was called ‘The Jazz Singer’ I decided to try and recreate the mood of those films. The early experiments were a little boring until I decided to use the line on a roll. Simple, but far more intriguing.
1.5 hours
Some of the early sketches – on an old letterhead
Listen...
to excerpts from ‘Black Bottom Stomp’.