Mister Jelly Roll

Alan Lomax's seminal biography of Jelly Roll Morton, Mister Jelly Roll The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz" is a fascinating read. Based on his interviews with Jelly Roll at the Library of Congress in the late 1930s, Lomax manages to capture much of Jelly Roll's voice in his prose, including additional interludes and other interview materials to paint a fuller picture of Jelly Roll Morton's life and works. As a product of a folklorist who, in the case of some of his field recordings and research abroad in places like Haiti, Lomax demonstrates a persistent interest in the historical and folkloric elements that contributed to the rise of jazz. Part of that interest carries into a keen attention paid to the Louisiana Creoles of Color and the particular social factors that led many to gravitate to music, with less of the primitivist lens used by others who studied "hot jazz" (although the attention Lomax pays to "voodoo" and "hoodoo" may be a remnant of his interest in the exotic cultures he experienced in nations like Haiti, where some of Morton's ancestors came from).

Unfortunately, Alan Lomax was obsessed with the wedge between Creole blacks and non-Creole blacks. Relying on rough generalizations of Creole sophistication meeting black pathos and soul to create jazz music, he pushes a narrative of black/mulatto dichotomy that was already breaking down by the time of Jelly Roll's career. Indeed, as Jelly Roll's own words make clear, he knew and experienced racism across the South (including the infamous chain gangs and fear of lynchings), and was very well aware of the racism in the music industry. However, Jelly Roll Morton and other Creoles interviewed by Lomax for the work were occasionally colorist and dismissive of non-Creole African Americans. Calling him a racist or insinuating he was accepting of Jim Crow is unfair. Especially after Jelly Roll's own experiences with race riots, segregation, a threat of lynchings, and his later marginalization by the seizure of jazz by white-dominated groups in music publishing and the record industry. Like future generations of jazz artists, such as Charles Mingus, Morton lived long enough to see whites make way more money than he ever dreamed of from playing black music. Without a doubt, Morton was critical of the Jim Crowed jazz industry and hoped serious, professional black musicians could maintain some status and protection from its rapacity. 

Of course, Lomax was right, in a sense, about the origins of jazz msuic. Jazz was a union of sorts of downtown Creole sensibilities and "rougher" or bluesier African American uptown music. But such a statement could be made about African American music generally (a combination of "refined" and formal musical training with folk, blues, spirituals, work-songs, and others with African influences). Today, it is easier to pinpoint the problems of assuming a New Orleans origin of the music, just as one can be skeptical about Morton's claims to have been the first jazz artist. Clearly, in several cities across the US, the seeds for early jazz were sown by a plethora of different African American musicians active in black musical theater, vaudeville, ragtime, popular music, and blues. Nonetheless, one cannot deny the prominence of New Orleans musicians and their influence in early jazz, especially for Chicago. Morton was, perhaps, the finest composer of the bunch, and had traveled widely earlier than many of them. He may not have "invented" jazz, but Morton was one of the early ones to perfect its form and record some of the best "hot jazz" in the New Orleans style in the 1920s

Unfortunately, with the exception of Johnny St. Cyr and a few other bandmates of Morton, like Omer Simeon, the reader does not find more information about how exactly the Red Hot Peppers excelled so often in the recording studio. The statements of St. Cyr and Omer Simeon reveal Morton to have been a flexible bandleader who allowed members to express themselves on their solos and during breaks, but Morton struggled to maintain a consistent band by the end of the 1920s. Refusing to allow them to drink and excepting a certain degree of professionalism, plus his ego, may have irritated too many bandmates. Things allegedly reached the point where Morton expected the band to play just as he wrote the music, although some of these difficulties may have been due to working with a number of musicians untrained in the New Orleans style. Indeed, from the 1930s through the end of his life, Morton struggled and was considered old-fashioned by the rising swing generation of musicians. However, no one can deny that Morton's mastery of the New Orleans style has bequeathed some gems to the jazz standard repertoire, while showcasing the importance of composition and arrangement in early jazz to create sophisticated, multilayered pieces. 

Overall, Alan Lomax's biography lives up to its reputation. Despite the editorial assertions and unfair characterizations by Lomax, this is undoubtedly the closest thing to how Morton would have liked to be remembered. Despite the many gaps in its narrative structure or lack of details for certain moments in his life, Morton's life from a Creole childhood in New Orleans to his unfortunate death in Los Angeles, are vividly brought to life. The gambling dens, brothels, low-lives, hustlers, musicians, failed businesses, wives, girlfriends, and good living made for a storied life, even if Morton embellished or exaggerated. His high opinion of himself, musical genius, and belief that everyone was cheating him must have inspired Charles Mingus, and resonated with other luminaries of the jazz world who sought to escape the confines of the Jim Crow musical industry.