Jelly Roll Morton (4)












 














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In the fall of 1925, Okeh Records began a program of
recording black musicians in Chicago, particularly Louis Armstrong's
Hot Five. Early in 1926, Vocalion released its recordings by King
Oliver's Syncopators, and by July of the same year, Columbia Records
was putting out sides by Lil Armstrong's group under the name "New
Orleans Wanderers." The trend clearly pointed to the commercial
possibilities of recording New Orleans music by native musicians who
had migrated to Chicago. The principal audience for these recordings
were blacks from New Orleans and nearby who had also moved North and
now populated Chicago in large numbers, but the music was also
catching on with white audiences. King Oliver made a splash in
Chicago with his band that included Louis and Lil Armstrong, and now
Louis was releasing significant recordings under his own name that
were selling to black and white audiences alike.
Walter Melrose's idea of recording Jelly Roll Morton
was of interest to Victor Records, who had recently hired one Ralph
Peer to assist them in finding suitable "race" and "hillbilly"
performers to record for these specialty markets. Music publishers
and record companies often collaborated to ensure that artists and songs
received the most exposure possible via both records and published
sheet music, so there was nothing unusual about this arrangement.
This was Morton's big chance to connect with a wide audience and
provide ensemble recordings of some of his best material for
posterity. Jelly was up to the challenge: he created arrangements so
skilled and complex that they are really more like whole new
compositions when compared to the original solo piano versions. To
play them, he assembled musicians who were both very familiar with
the New Orleans style of playing and able to read music with
facility. Although Morton was meticulous about the playing of
ensemble passages, intros, and endings, he was open to the
suggestions of his fellow musicians as well as willing to allow them
freedom in their solo passages. The results are a unique balance of
composed ensemble work and free ranging solo expression generally
not found in jazz music. Only the compositions/arrangements of Duke
Ellington and Charles Mingus come anywhere near the balancing act
between soloist and ensemble demonstrated on the Red Hot Peppers
recordings.
There were rehearsals at Morton's South Side apartment
where he ran the group through the ensemble passages, transitions,
and other sections of his meticulous arrangements. The first
recording session was held on September 15th in the Webster Hotel on
the city's north side. This location was used because Victor did not
yet have its own studio in Chicago. Three takes of three seperate
tunes were recorded during the four hour session: "Black Bottom
Stomp", "The Chant", and "Smokehouse
Blues". "Black
Bottom Stomp" and "The Chant" immediately mark these recordings
as something special. The ensemble passage that begins "Black Bottom
Stomp" is clean and crisp, followed by a bridge that features nice
contrapuntnal work between clarinet and trumpet, followed by Omer
Simeon's jaunty clarinet solo and Morton's own very hot piano
statement. Many of the Red Hot Peppers sides equal this performance,
but none surpass it. "The Chant" was composed by Mel Stitzel, a
Melrose Publishing staff writer, but Morton's arrangement provides a
sense of utter modernity that was most likely missing from the
original version of this Charleston-sounding number. Simeon again
sparkles, and the spiraling swoops of some of the ensemble passages
will make you catch your breat like a rollercoaster.
Three more tracks were recorded a week later: "Sidewalk
Blues", "Dead
Man's Blues", and "Steamboat Stomp." All contained dialogue or
sound effects that have usually been dismissed as hokey, and they
have even been deleted from reissues of the recordings from time to
time. Such detractors fail to take into account two things. First,
Morton had a long and extensive background playing minstrel shows
and the vaudeville circuit, which meant that he was perfectly
capable of using slapstick humor even in a "serious" muscial number.
He had been exposed to so much music of various types that he likely
never distinguished between "high" and "low" music or
humor--ragtime, showtunes, marches, opera--it was all one in the
gumbo that was New Orleans early in the twentieth century. Second,
in the case of a song like "Dead Man's Blues", which is meant to
evoke the joyous sounds of a New Orleans jazz funeral, it was
intended to help audiences with no familiarity with New Orleans and
its culture (meaning most of the rest of the country) understand the
intent of the song and its arrangement. "Sidewalk Blues" and "Dead
Man's Blues" are noteworthy because Morton brought in two more
clarinet players to realize his vision of a clarinet trio, a
hitherto unknown device that works to great effect.
On December 16th, the group reconvened to record five
more tunes. These include "Someday Sweetheart" (generally despised
as "syrupy", but interesting for its use of bass clarinet), "Grandpa's
Spells" (one of Morton's more difficult-to-play piano pieces
given an energetic arrangement), "Original Jelly-Roll Blues",
"Cannon Ball Blues", and "Doctor
Jazz". "Doctor Jazz" is interesting because it features Morton's
singing which was seldom heard on recordings. On the Library of
Congress recordings Morton apologizes for his voice at one point,
saying he could sing better when he was younger. This raises an
interesting question: why didn't Morton record more vocal numbers, a
move that would almost certainly have increased his popularity. Only
on the Library of Congress recordings and some very late record
dates does he vocalize despite his clear ability to do so. In any
case, no further recordings were done by the group until June of
1947, this time taking place in the new Victor Talking Machine
Recording Laboratory. Here we get two novelty sound-effects numbers
"Hyena Stomp" and "Billy
Goat Stomp" that feature the vocal "talents" of one "Laughing
Lew" Lamar; it is possible that Lamar, an old vaudevillian,
comissioned Morton to write these tunes. There is also "Wild Man
Blues", a song credited to Morton and Louis Armstrong and which had
been recorded by Armstrong. The track went unreleased by Victor
until 1939. "Jungle
Blues" is a direct challenge to Duke Ellington, who had been
crowned "King of Jungle Music", a title that Morton felt he
deserved.
From 1927 to 1930 Morton recorded around 58 more tunes
for Victor in their New York studios, many of them with a larger
band using three saxophones and sometimes three brass as well.
Morton was continuing to explore new musical concepts, but he never
had a group that was able to execute his arrangements as
sympathetically as the Red Hot Peppers. In 1930, Victor failed to
renew Morton's contract, and he literally fell off the map for a
time, even though his Victor catalog of recordings stayed in release
throughout the 30s. Morton himself turned up in Washington D.C. and
New York City, destitute and dishevelled. Until recently this was a
mystery--how could a performer as popular as Morton simply drop out
of public sight so quickly, and how could he be broke when his music
continued to sell so well and be recorded by popular swing artists
like Benny Goodman? As recently as 1998, Gary Giddins wrote in Visions
of Jazz: The First Century:



"The 30s were years in which Armstrong,
Ellington, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Waters enjoyed
unprecedented success. A man with the performing abilities of
Morton as a bandleader, pianist, and singer should have been able
to negotiate his way through that crest in black entertainment.
The success of 'King Porter Stomp' alone ought to have revived his
fortunes to the point where he could at least finance a band and
get decent work. By all accounts, the problem seems to have been
one of character--his and that of onlookers wh enjoyed seeing him
brought low. The stubborn, loudmouthed dandy with diamond tooth
and stickpin was due for a comeuppance. Jelly was temperamentally
unsuited to the era, and no one helped him turn the
corner."
But recent evidence uncovered by Chicago Tribune
writers Howard Reich and William Gaines show that sadly, not only
did no one help Morton, many were actively seeking to do him harm an
helping themselves to money that was due him. And no one helped
himself to more than Walter Melrose.
>>Down and Out
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