01. Bucktown Blues
02. Tom Cat Blues
03. Stratford Hunch
04. Perfect Rag
05. King Porter Stomp
06. Tom Cat Blues
07. The Pearls
08. Sweetheart O’mine
09. Fat Meat And Greens
10. King Porter Stomp
11. Black Bottom Stomp
12. Smoke-House Blues
13. The Chant
14. Sidewalk Blues
15. Dead Man Blues
16. Steamboat Stomp
17. Someday, Sweetheart
18. Grandpa’s Spells
19. Original Jelly Roll Blues
20. Doctor Jazz
21. Cannon Ball Blues
22. Hyena Stomp
23. Billy Goat Stomp
24. Wild Man Blues
25. Jungle Blues 

Jelly Roll Morton was the first great composer and piano player of Jazz. He was a talented arranger who wrote special scores that took advantage of the three-minute limitations of the 78 rpm records. But more than all these things, he was a real character whose spirit shines brightly through history, like his diamond studded smile. As a teenager Jelly Roll Morton worked in the whorehouses of Storyville as a piano player. From 1904 to 1917 Jelly Roll rambled around the South. He worked as a gambler, pool shark, pimp, vaudeville comedian and as a pianist. He was an important transitional figure between ragtime and jazz piano styles. He played on the West Coast from 1917 to 1922 and then moved to Chicago and where he hit his stride. Morton's 1923 and 1924 recordings of piano solos for the Gennett label were very popular and influential. He formed the band the Red Hot Peppers and made a series of classic records for Victor. The recordings he made in Chicago featured some of the best New Orleans sidemen like Kid Ory, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dodds, Johnny St. Cyr and Baby Dodds. Morton relocated to New York in 1928 and continued to record for Victor until 1930. His New York version of The Red Hot Peppers featured sidemen like Bubber Miley, Pops Foster and Zutty Singleton. Like so many of the Hot Jazz musicians, the Depression was hard on Jelly Roll. Hot Jazz was out of style. The public preferred the smoother sounds of the big bands. He fell upon hard times after 1930 and even lost the diamond he had in his front tooth, but ended up playing piano in a dive bar in Washington D.C. In 1938 Alan Lomax recorded him in for series of interviews about early Jazz for the Library of Congress, but it wasn't until a decade later that these interviews were released to the public. Jelly Roll died just before the Dixieland revival rescued so many of his peers from musical obscurity. He blamed his declining health on a voodoo spell. ---redhotjazz.com

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01. Beale Street Blues
02. The Pearls
03. Wolverine Blues
04. Mr. Jelly Lord
05. Georgia Swing
06. Kansas City Stomps
07. Shoe Shiner’s Drag (London Blues )
08. Boogaboo
09. Shreveport Stomp
10. Mournful Serenade
11. Red Hot Pepper (Stomp)
12. Deep Creek (Blues)
13. Pep
14. Frances (Fat Frances)
15. Freakish
16. Burnin’ The Iceberg
17. Sweet Anita Mine
18. New Orleans Bump (Monrovia)
19. Tank Town Bump
20. Sweet Peter
21. Jersey Joe
22. Mississippi Mildred
23. Mint Julep
24. Smilin’ The Blues Away
25. Turtle Twist

Jelly Roll Morton grew up in New Orleans and started to learn piano at the age of ten. By 1902, he was working in the bordellos of Storyville, playing ragtime, French quadrilles, and other popular dances and songs, as well as a few light (mostly operatic) classics. Nothing is known of his formal musical training, but his major youthful influence appears to have been Tony Jackson.

Around 1904, Morton became an itinerant pianist, working in many cities in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. He was also apparently quite active as a gambler, pool player, and procurer, though music remained his first "line of business." Retaining New Orleans as his base, he later extended his travels to Memphis, St. Louis, and Kansas City, frequently working for prolonged periods in minstrel shows. Eventually he traveled as far east as New York (where Jaynes P. Johnson heard Morton play his Jelly Roll Blues in 1911), and as far west as Los Angeles, where he arrived in 1917. During these dozen years of travel, Morton apparently fused a variety of black musical idioms — ragtime, vocal and instrumental blues, items from the minstrel show repertory, field and levee hollers, religious hymns, and spirituals — with Hispanic music from the Caribbean and white popular songs, creating a musical amalgam that bore a very close resemblance to the music then beginning to be called "jazz."

Morton enjoyed such success in Los Angeles that he remained there for five years. In 1922, however, he moved to Chicago, the new center of jazz activity. His first recordings were made there in 1923: two performances with a sextet (Big Foot Ham and Muddy Water Blues) and a series of solo piano renditions of his own works. The compositional maturity and the advanced conception of the ensemble and solo writing revealed in these recordings suggest that Morton's style must have crystallized many years previously. By 1926-7, Morton was recording with his Red Hot Peppers, a seven- or eight- piece band organized for recording purposes and comprised of colleagues well-versed in the New Orleans style and familiar with Morton's music. The resultant recordings were a triumphant fusion of composition and improvisation. Pieces like Grandpa's Spells, Black Bottom Stomp, and The Pearls are masterly examples of Morton's creative talents not only as a composer and arranger, but also as a pianist. These works were ingeniously conceived so as to yield a maximum variety of texture and timbre without sacrificing clarity of form; furthermore, unlike most jazz performances in those days, they were carefully rehearsed. Particularly noteworthy is the manner in which Morton provides opportunities for all the performers to contribute significant solos (usually climaxing in exultant two-bar breaks) without losing sight of overall structural unity and a balance between solo and ensemble.

As a pianist, Morton contributed not only some of his most inspired solos, such as those on Smoke-house Blues and Black Bottom Stomp, but also sensitive countermelodies that were without precedent in 1920s jazz; similar ideas were taken up only by Earl Hines and, some years later, Art Tatum.

In 1928, Morton moved to New York. There he continued to record such pieces (not necessarily his own) as Kansas City Stomp, Tank Town Bump, Low Gravy, and Blue Blood Blues. He gradually made use of such "modern" devices as homophonically harmonized ensembles and laid a greater emphasis on solo improvisation. However, he remained at heart true to the New Orleans spirit of collective improvisation and was never able to assimilate the new orchestral styles advanced in the late 1920s by Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, and John Nesbitt. By 1930, Morton's style, both as arranger and pianist, came to be regarded as antiquated. Ironically, some of his compositions, such as Wolverine Blues, Milenberg Joys, and especially King Porter Stomp continued to be performed regularly, remaining as influential pieces in the repertory throughout the 1930s. Indeed, it was Benny Goodman's performance of the last-named title, in Fletcher Henderson's updated arrangement (1935), which was largely responsible for ushering in the swing era.

In the early 1930s, Morton drifted into obscurity. He settled in Washington, DC, where he managed a jazz club and also played intermittently. In 1938, the folklorist Alan Lomax, later Morton's biographer, recorded him in an extensive series of interviews held at the Library of Congress (issued on disc in 1948 and reissued in 1957). In this invaluable oral history, Morton recalled in words and performances his early days in New Orleans, recreating the styles of many of his turn-of-the-century contemporaries. His accounts, both verbal and pianistic, have the ring of authenticity and revealed Morton as jazz's earliest musician-historian and a perceptive theorist and analyst of the music. The Library of Congress recordings rekindled public interest in Morton, eventually leading to further recording sessions in 1939-40 and, in tandem with the New Orleans revival, a renewed career. This was cut short in 1940, however, owing to his ill health. ---pbs.org

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01. My Little Dixie Home
02. That’s Like It Ought To Be
03. Each Day
04. If Someone Would Only Love Me
05. That’ll Never Do
06. I’m Looking For A Little Bluebird
07. Little Lawrence
08. Harmony Blues
09. Fussy Mabel
10. Pontchartrain Blues
11. Oil Well
12. Load Of Coal
13. Crazy Chords
14. Primrose Stomp
15. Low Gravy
16. Strokin’ Away
17. Blue Blood Blues
18. Musmouth Shuffle
19. Gambling Jack
20. Fickle Fay Creep (Soap Suds)
21. Winin’ Boy Blues
22. Ballin’ The Jack
23. Don’t You Leave Me Here
24. Mamie’s Blues
25. Michigan Water Blues

Jelly Roll Morton - Composer, Piano, Spoken Word, Vocals
Jelly Roll Morton's Jazz Band 	
Jelly Roll Morton's New Orleans Jazzmen 
Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers 	
Jelly Roll Morton's Steamboat Four 	
Jelly Roll Morton's Stomp Kings or Jazz Kids 	
Jelly Roll Morton Trio 	
New Orleans Rhythm Kings 	
Bernard Addison - Guitar
Barney Alexander - Banjo
Henry "Red" Allen - Trumpet
Ed Anderson - Trumpet
George Baquet - Clarinet
Paul Barbarin - Drums
Bill Beason - Drums
Sidney Bechet - Sax (Soprano)
Bill Benford - Brass Band, Tuba
Tommy Benford - Drums
Barney Bigard - Clarinet
Pete Biggs - Tuba
Lee Blair - Banjo, Guitar
Jerry Blake - Clarinet, Clarinet (Bass)
Wellman Braud - Bass
George Brunies - Trombone
Ernie Bullock - Clarinet, Clarinet (Bass)
W.E. Burton - Drums, Kazoo
Happy Caldwell -Sax (Tenor)
William Cato - Trombone
Cozy Cole - Drums
Sidney DeParis - Trumpet
Wilbur De Paris - Trombone
Baby Dodds - Drums
Johnny Dodds - Clarinet
Natty Dominique - Cornet
Horace Eubanks - Clarinet
Geechie Fields - Trombone
Pops Foster - Bass
Joe Garland - Sax (Tenor)
Arville Harris - Sax (Alto)
J.C. Higginbotham - Trombone
Andrew Hilaire - Drums
Howard Hill - Glockenspiel
Charlie Holmes - Clarinet, Sax (Alto)
Darnell Howard - Clarinet, Violin
Charlie Irvis - Trumpet
Manzie Johnson - Drums
Claude Jones - Sax (Soprano), Trombone
King Oliver - Cornet
William Laws - Drums
Lew LeMar - Effects
John Lindsay - Bass
Lawrence Lucie - Guitar
Paul Mares - Cornet
Chink Martin - 	Tuba
Bubber Miley - Trumpet
Bass Moore - Bass, Brass
Albert Nicholas - Clarinet
Kid Ory 	- Trombone
Jack Pettis - Sax (C-Melody)
Ward Pinkett - Trumpet
Ben Pollack - Drums
Russell Procope - Clarinet, Sax (Alto)
Gerald Reeves - Trombone
Zue Robertson - Trombone
Fred "Rodriguez" Robinson - Trombone
Rod Rodriguez - Piano
Leon Roppolo - Clarinet
Boyd "Red" Rossiter - Trumpet
Eddie Scarpa - Clarinet
Bud Scott - Guitar
Glen Scoville - Sax (Alto), Sax (Tenor)
Boyd Senter - Banjo, Clarinet, Composer, Kazoo, Sax (Alto)
Omer Simeon- 	Clarinet, Clarinet (Bass), Drums
Zutty Singleton - Drums
Johnny St. Cyr - Banjo, Guitar, Spoken Word
Edwin Swayzee- 	Trumpet
Jasper Taylor - Wood Block
Joe "Cornbread" Thomas - Clarinet, Sax (Alto), Sax (Tenor)
Walter Thomas - Clarinet, Sax (Baritone), Sax (Tenor)
Lorenzo Tio, Jr. - Clarinet
Wilson Townes - Clarinet
Quinn Wilson – Tuba

Born Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe in New Orleans (his year of birth is recorded variously as 1885 and 1890), he was the son of racially mixed Creole parents; he later took his stepfather’s last name, Morton, as his own. Young Ferdinand learned to play the piano as a boy, and by the age of 12 he was performing in the bordellos of Storyville, New Orleans’ famous red-light district. Talented and precocious, Morton blended the popular music styles of ragtime, minstrelsy and the blues and flavored the mixture with Caribbean dance rhythms; the result was a hybrid that resembled a then-emerging style later known as “jazz.”

Morton left home and went on the road at 17, traveling to cities around the country to perform his music; he also earned money as a vaudeville comic, gambler, pimp, pool shark and door-to-door salesman. He was keenly aware of his own talent and never hesitated to promote himself, insisting on being called by his nickname, Jelly Roll (which had sexual connotations), and claiming to have “invented” jazz. Such claims were false, but he was in fact the first great jazz musician to write his music down.

Morton lived for a time in Los Angeles and Chicago, and around 1923 began making his first recordings. He performed with a sextet (on such numbers as “Big Foot Ham” and “Muddy Water Blues”) and won acclaim for a series of piano solos of his own compositions. Around 1926, Morton began recording and performing with his seven- or eight-piece band, the Red Hot Peppers. Morton’s arranging and performing style was more formal than early Dixieland jazz; the performances were a mixture of composition and improvisation, and were carefully rehearsed. As a composer, some of his best-known works were “Black Bottom Stomp,” “King Porter Stomp,” “Shoe Shiner’s Drag” and “Dead Man Blues,” which became jazz standards.

Morton’s career declined in the early 1930s, and emerging artists such as Louis Armstrong exceeded him in popularity and influence. He moved from New York to Washington, D.C., where he managed a jazz club and occasionally performed. In 1938, Morton gave a series of oral interviews in which he recalled the early days of jazz in New Orleans and revealed himself to be an astute historian of the genre. The interviews sparked renewed interest in Morton; he recorded again briefly in 1939-40 but was by then in failing health (which he blamed on a voodoo curse). Morton died before the great Dixieland revival; his eventful life later became the subject of the acclaimed musical “Jelly’s Last Jam,” performed on Broadway in 1992 with Gregory Hines in the title role. ---history.com

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01. Big Fat Ham
02. Muddy Water Blues
03. Sobbin’ Blues
04. King Porter Stomp
05. New Orleans Joys
06. Clarinet Marmalade
07. Mr. Jelly Lord
08. Grandpa’s Spells
09. Kansas City Stomps
10. Wolverine Blues
11. The Pearls
12. London Blues
13. Milenberg Joys
14. Someday, Sweetheart
15. London Blues
16. Mr. Jelly Roll
17. Steady Roll
18. Thirty-Fifth Street Blues
19. Mamanita
20. Froggie Moore
21. London Blues
22. Tia Juana
23. Shreveport Stomps
24. Mamamita
25. Jelly Roll Blues
26. Big Foot Ham (Big Fat Ham)

One of the very first giants of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth, claiming to have invented jazz in 1902. Morton's accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth.

Morton was jazz's first great composer, writing such songs as "King Porter Stomp," "Grandpa's Spells," "Wolverine Blues," "The Pearls," "Mr. Jelly Roll," "Shreveport Stomp," "Milenburg Joys," "Black Bottom Stomp," "The Chant," "Original Jelly Roll Blues," "Doctor Jazz," "Wild Man Blues," "Winin' Boy Blues," "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," "Don't You Leave Me Here," and "Sweet Substitute." He was a talented arranger (1926's "Black Bottom Stomp" is remarkable), getting the most out of the three-minute limitations of the 78 record by emphasizing changing instrumentation, concise solos and dynamics. He was a greatly underrated pianist who had his own individual style. Although he only took one vocal on records in the 1920s ("Doctor Jazz"), Morton in his late-'30s recordings proved to be an effective vocalist. And he was a true character.

Jelly Roll Morton's pre-1923 activities are shrouded in legend. He started playing piano when he was ten, worked in the bordellos of Storyville while a teenager (for which some of his relatives disowned him) and by 1904 was traveling throughout the South. He spent time in other professions (as a gambler, pool player, vaudeville comedian and even a pimp) but always returned to music. The chances are good that in 1915 Morton had few competitors among pianists and he was an important transition figure between ragtime and early jazz. He played in Los Angeles from 1917-1922 and then moved to Chicago where, for the next six years, he was at his peak. Morton's 1923-24 recordings of piano solos introduced his style, repertoire and brilliance. Although his earliest band sides were quite primitive, his 1926-27 recordings for Victor with his Red Hot Peppers are among the most exciting of his career. With such sidemen as cornetist George Mitchell, Kid Ory or Gerald Reeves on trombone, clarinetists Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, Darnell Howard or Johnny Dodds, occasionally Stomp Evans on C-melody, Johnny St. Cyr or Bud Scott on banjo, bassist John Lindsay and either Andrew Hilaire or Baby Dodds on drums, Morton had the perfect ensembles for his ideas. He also recorded some exciting trios with Johnny and Baby Dodds.

With the center of jazz shifting to New York by 1928, Morton relocated. His bragging ways unfortunately hurt his career and he was not able to always get the sidemen he wanted. His Victor recordings continued through 1930 and, although some of the performances are sloppy or erratic, there were also a few more classics. Among the musicians Morton was able to use on his New York records were trumpeters Ward Pinkett, Red Allen and Bubber Miley, trombonists Geechie Fields, Charles Irvis and J.C. Higginbotham, clarinetists Omer Simeon, Albert Nicholas and Barney Bigard, banjoist Lee Blair, guitarist Bernard Addison, Bill Benford on tuba, bassist Pops Foster and drummers Tommy Benford, Paul Barbarin and Zutty Singleton.

But with the rise of the Depression, Jelly Roll Morton drifted into obscurity. He had made few friends in New York, his music was considered old-fashioned and he did not have the temperament to work as a sideman. During 1931-37 his only appearance on records was on a little-known Wingy Manone date. He ended up playing in a Washington D.C. dive for patrons who had little idea of his contributions. Ironically Morton's "King Porter Stomp" became one of the most popular songs of the swing era, but few knew that he wrote it. However in 1938 Alan Lomax recorded him in an extensive and fascinating series of musical interviews for the Library of Congress. Morton's storytelling was colorful and his piano playing in generally fine form as he reminisced about old New Orleans and demonstrated the other piano styles of the era. A decade later the results would finally be released on albums.

Morton arrived in New York in 1939 determined to make a comeback. He did lead a few band sessions with such sidemen as Sidney Bechet, Red Allen and Albert Nicholas and recorded some wonderful solo sides but none of those were big sellers. In late 1940, an ailing Morton decided to head out to Los Angeles but, when he died at the age of 50, he seemed like an old man. Ironically his music soon became popular again as the New Orleans jazz revivalist movement caught fire and, if he had lived just a few more years, the chances are good that he would have been restored to his former prominence (as was Kid Ory). ---Scott Yanow, Rovi

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