This Week in Music History
by Adam Goldstein
The Metropolitan 
The day and month of his birth are definite: Sept. 20. Yet, the year,
like so many other aspects of the life of Ferdinand "Jelly Roll"
Morton, is shrouded in myth, hearsay, and conflicting accounts.
Recent genealogical research suggests an 1890 year of birth for Morton,
although the musician himself always claimed to have been born in 1885.
The earlier date would have given him the proper age in 1902 to support
his other, more outlandish and notorious assertion-that he invented the
musical genre that came to be known as jazz.
New Orleans at the turn of the century was both a haven for haute culture
and refined artistic tradition, and a cradle of vice, depravity, and lawlessness.
These two distinct social landscapes would intertwine to foster a cultural
explosion that forever altered the face of popular music in America.
A former French colony, a major port that served as a main market for
slave traders and a renowned bastion for debauchery, New Orleans boasted
a unique cultural ambience. Music was everywhere: street vendors sang
stridently of their wares, ragtime piano played in the bars and brothels
of the red-light district of Storyville and throngs of musicians would
accompany the recently departed as funeral marches wound their way through
the city.
New Orleans typified the melting pot of America at its most diverse,
and Morton's musical identity would be molded by the city's cultural contours
and nuances.
Morton, a Creole of French and Haitian descent, showed an early interest in music, experimenting with several instruments before finally settling on the piano. After the death of his mother, the 14-year-old was sent to live with his great-grandmother who viewed popular music as unequivocally evil. Lured by the night life, Morton secretly took a job at a brothel as a piano player.
It was in this salacious environment that Morton developed his unique musical identity. He peered through the brothel's peepholes, he mixed with whores, pimps, and gangsters, and he immersed himself in the seedy scene. His moniker, Jelly Roll, came from a lewd term used to describe an expertly executed sexual move. His bawdy lyrics and lively rhythmic punctuation, inspired in part by what he watched through the peepholes, broke from the rigidity of ragtime. His compositions combined the theory of European classical music with the improvised spontaneity that came to define jazz music. What's more, he was the first jazz artist to write his compositions down on paper.
When Morton's great-grandmother finally discovered what he was doing with his nights, he was permanently expelled from the house and launched into a career of roving and wandering that would last the rest of his days. He criss-crossed the country, making money as a pimp, a pool shark and a Vaudeville comic. He peddled an elixir he claimed cured consumption: a saccharine mixture of salt and Coca-Cola.
All the while, he played piano and wrote new compositions. In September of 1926, in Chicago, he recorded with his Red Hot Peppers group. These historic sessions became jazz gems, encapsulating the early New Orleans sound and displaying an expert balance between inspired improvisation and well-defined structure.
For all his contributions, Morton was never properly recognized. He
did not enjoy great commercial success and he struggled in relative anonymity
until his death in 1942. Morton had been an unabashed braggart. He wore
a diamond in his front tooth and sported outlandish clothes. More significantly,
he freely told anyone willing to listen that he had invented jazz, and
even had the claim printed on his business cards. It was this arrogance
that earned him the scorn and resentment of many of his contemporaries.
Although he was the first jazz composer to write his music down, the
claim that he had invented jazz was overblown. Its origins involved a
myriad of different innovators in different cities. Yet, no matter where
or when he played, Morton's compositions always retained the passion,
the complexity, and the vibrancy that distinguished the early New Orleans
sound.
His innovations helped bridge the gap between ragtime and jazz, and he
contributed a number of compositions that became jazz standards. Throughout
his life, Morton remained a living epitome of those early days, when an
American art form that would break barriers and set new standards was
born in backhouse brothels and seedy saloons.
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