The History of Jazz: It Starts with Jelly Roll Morton

When people think of jazz music today, if they think of it at all, they think of greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. They think of Charlie "Bird" Parker and his amazing feats with the saxophone. Some think of John Coltrane and the paths he created with his sax. That is, indeed, what modern jazz has become. Wynton Marsalis owes much of his sound to people like Diz, Miles and Trane. However, before any of those people could become what they became and taken the music to where it is today, there had to be a man name Jelly Roll Morton.

The man who would become Jelly Roll Morton was actually born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe. He was born in New Orleans in a predominantly Creole community in 1890. However, as was common at the time, there is debate over his actual date of birth and even the exact spelling of his real last name. Some say he was born in 1885. There are others who say his last name was Lemott, LaMotte or even LaMenthe. His birth certificate was issues in 1894 which would have been years after his birth even if he was born in 1890.
His parents were F.P. Lamothe and Louise Monette. His parents were common-law husband and wife but had never been officially married in a court of law. Sometime during his life Ferdinand changed his last name to the more Anglican Morton to make things easier for those who thought he might be a foreigner.
Growing up in a city as renowned, even then, for its music, it was only a matter of time before the skinny young man would take to the scene. By the age of fourteen Ferdinand was one of the most famous and well-regarded pianists in the Storyville District by the time the early 1900s came around. He started out working as a piano player in a brothel, which was also not entirely uncommon for young musicians in the New Orleans area. He was living with his religious and very conservative great-grandmother at the time and he told her he was making barrels at a factory. When she finally found out where he was really spending his time, she kicked him out of the house.

Once Morton was kicked out of the house he started to wander all over the South. Being African-American he ran into the prejudices of the times. However, he was a tremendous talent at the keys. Another jazz legend of the time, Tony Jackson, claimed that Jelly Roll Morton was the only keyboardist who played better than he could. His fame began to grow and he began playing shows all over the South. He also began writing.
One of the first tunes he created that started to garner him some fame was "Jelly Roll Blues." This tune has since become a jazz legend and a staple of the times. However, it was new and exciting in the early 1900s. This was the also the time of Ragtime and some of Jelly Roll's early compositions reflect that. He also composed tunes like "New Orleans Blues," "Frog-I-More Rag", "Animule Dance" and the famous "King Porter Stomp."
In 1910, Jelly Roll Morton made his way up the Mississippi to another town that would become legendary for Jazz: Chicago. He composed more tunes there and then moved on to New York in 1912. During 1912 and through the year of 1914 he began touring with his girlfriend Rosa Brown with a vaudeville act and then settled, for a time, in Chicago. He finally started learning how to write out his music and began writing the compositions he had been playing all over the country. By many jazz historians the tune "Jelly Roll Blues" is the very first jazz composition ever. Once his music was now available for sale as sheet music, Jelly Roll Morton's fame began to grow and his music began to catch on.
Jelly Roll Morton continued to develop as an artist and composer. His fame was growing by leaps and bounds and just before 1920, his fame had even reached north of the border into Canada. He was invited to play a new jazz club in Vancouver called The Patricia. It was a steady form of employment for him and he took up residence there. Rumors about exactly what Jelly Roll did there have become legendary. Some say, in addition to become the club's resident jazz pianist, he also was a gambler, hustler and pimp. Whatever he was, his skills at the piano continued to improve and he eventually decided it was time to move back to the States in 1923.

Morton moved back to the growing jazz metropolis Chicago. When he set up his home there this time he also set about trying to start recording some of the compositions he was now famous for playing. He managed to secure a recording contract with the largest record label at that time, Victor.
Victor had the most prestigious recording studio in Chicago at that time. Jelly Roll had enough of a reputation that he convinced Victor to let him bring in a professional, well-rehearsed orchestra for those recordings. The group was known as "Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers" and they soon set about recording what are considered essentials and classics of early jazz. The group was soon booked to tour the country by MCA and they became a huge hit. Morton, however, still had a wandering spirit and he was soon to move from the Windy City
It was 1928 and Morton was now married to Mabel Bertrand and the couple decided it was time to move back to New York City. He continued to record, but his music changed when he was forced to find new musicians in the new city. Many who are fans of jazz consider his solo works as improved, but his works with orchestras were much less exciting or profound as his recordings with the Red Hot Peppers in Chicago. In New York he had less access to musicians from New Orleans, being as far from the Mississippi as he was. So, musicians in New York were unfamiliar with his style of jazz and he found them less able to play it. Although he played with some great musicians, he did not produce any hits during his time in New York.
Morton found himself hit by the Great Depression as much as anyone else at the time. He was still trying to create hits and still having trouble. As such, he began having to play more and more live shows and at less and less respectable places. He managed to get a radio show on the air for a time in 1934, but he was still struggling.
Morton was eventually reduced to touring with a burlesque act while his recordings were remade and covered by more popular musicians like Fletcher Henderson and Benny Goodman. Given the nature of music contracts back then, however, Morton received no royalties for these recordings.
in 1935 Morton moved to Washington D.C. so he could manage a bar and become the resident piano player. The bar was in the predominantly African-American neighborhood known as Shaw. While running the bar Morton wore several hats. He was the M.C., bouncer, bartender as well as the piano player and manager. The bar changed names several times and the female owner did not run the business well and it was only a matter of time before the venture failed.

While Morton was only in Washington D.C. for a short time, his stay there was important as far as jazz history goes. A man named Alan Lomax heard Morton playing at the bar and he invited him down to record music and do some interview for the Library of Congress. Morton agreed and Lomax and Morton ended up recording eight hours of interview, music and more. Here Morton told stories of his early days and these recordings have become invaluable for fans of jazz, jazz history and American history. Without them, the name of Jelly Roll Morton might have vanished.
Moron claimed, throughout much of the interviews, that he was the inventor of jazz. While there are those who dispute this, it is known that he was key in creating the early sound of the genre. Others were also playing music in the Ragtime mode, which sounds very much like early jazz. So, Morton may ultimately share that title with other musicians. However, it is known, and not disputed, that he was one of the first to make jazz popular and without him, jazz would never have taken off as the popular music form it became. Without Morton, modern jazz would not have existed.

Morton found himself in rough situations throughout the remainder of his life. His place in history would not be absolutely secured until after his death. His money situations never really panned out. While working at the bar in Washington D.C., he was stabbed while trying to break up a knife fight and the closest hospital, an all-white hospital, refused to treat him. While he eventually was able to get up and around, the poor quality of treatment he got at the hospital that would admit him never did heal properly. He would often be ill and short of breath thereafter.

The wounds eventually lead to an asthmatic condition that worsened at one point so much that he went to seek medical help in New York. He was there for three months. He kept playing and traveling, however, despite the pain, and while in Los Angeles he grew gravely ill. He had been trying to put together new recordings and a new band at the time, but he ended up in Los Angeles County Hospital instead. He was there for eleven days before passing away in 1941.
Jelly Roll Morton has now secured his place in jazz history. He has even been portrayed in fiction such as the Broadway musical "Jelly's Last Jam." A fictional Jelly Roll Morton, in a very unsympathetic portrayal, shows up in the movie "The Legend of 1900."
Some still like to debate whether or not he really was the "inventor of jazz." He reportedly carried business cards in his later years with that title beneath his name. Where there is no dispute is how he helped lead jazz into the mainstream and helped make the new music as popular as it became. Without Jelly Roll Morton, there might not have been a Louis Armstrong. Without Armstrong, there probably wouldn't have been a Miles Davis and on and on it goes.
Listening to his music today it seems to bear no resemblance to the modern form of jazz that most musicians and jazz lovers are familiar with. The music sounds "quaint" and very old fashioned. They may be, however, but at the time they were new and the sound had never been heard before. They electrified the country and helped popularize the very American genre of jazz.