Birth of the Hot

Jelly Roll Morton

album cover

The Best from the First Great Jazz Composer

Jelly Roll Morton claimed that he single-handedly invented jazz in 1902, one example among many of his inclination toward grandiose mythmaking. In several of the spry, ragtime-influenced songs he wrote later, the Creole pianist from New Orleans loudly touted his own talent: "His melodies have made him Lord of Ivories," goes one original song. "Just a simple little chord, now at home as well as abroad, they call him Mr. Jelly Lord."

Morton (1885–1941) might have been a braggart, but he could back it up at the piano. He developed a wildcatting style that had elements of ragtime and his city's parade rhythms, and he wrote a stack of tunes that are both marvelously sweet and alive with rhythm. His legend began in the opulent bordellos of New Orleans's Storyville neighborhood, where he'd play for ladies of the evening and their clients. After bouncing around a bit (and taking work with minstrel shows), Morton arrived in Chicago in 1926, and began recording with a group he called the Red Hot Peppers. These zippy, boundlessly joyful performances—"Black Bottom Stomp," "The Pearls," "Wild Man Blues," "Wolverine Blues" and others included on this excellent single-disc survey—established Morton as the first great jazz composer.

Morton was also an innovative arranger. Rather than assign an entire melody to a single instrument, Morton would divide his themes into little sections punctuated by stop-time breaks and brief solos. By the end of one of his tightly choreographed tunes, which usually last under three minutes because of the limitations of recording equipment, he's taken listeners through fantastic jubilees and complex duet passages, with, naturally, some hot jazz soloing on the side.

Morton recorded for Victor until 1930, when the rise of the swing big bands shoved him to the sidelines. Unprepared for such a turn, he toiled, mostly unknown, in piano bars. When musicologist Alan Lomax tracked him down in 1938, Morton was working as bartender, cook, and pianist at the Jungle Inn in Washington, D.C.

Lomax got him to reminisce, for a series called the Library of Congress Recordings, about the origins of his tunes as well as the way he transformed a ragtime piano piece like "Tiger Rag" into jazz. Though he'd fallen far, old Jelly Lord sounds plenty animated as he recalls, with characteristic bravado, how he created jazz.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 2000, RCA/Bluebird (Original recordings made between 1926 and 1930.)
Key Tracks: "Black Bottom Stomp," "Wolverine Blues," "Dead Man Blues," "Grandpa's Spells"
Catalog Choice: Kansas City Stomp: The Library of Congress Recordings, Vol. 1.
Next Stop: Louis Armstrong: The Complete Hot Fives and Hot Sevens
After That: Eubie Blake: Early Rare Recordings, Vol. 1.
Book Pages: 524–525