Jelly Roll Morton (3)












 













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It's hard to believe that Morton didn't come to
Chicago with a plan in mind-he had scored a hit with "Wolverine
Blues", a tune he'd written and which had been published by
Chicago's Melrose Publishing, a local operation run by two brothers,
Walter and Lester. Now he appeared at their South Side music store,
announcing himself and beginning a two-hour monologue that mostly
concerned how great he was and the number of songs he'd composed
over the years that could now make a lot of money as sheet
music. He proved that what he said was true the way
he always had: he sat at the piano and played, song after song,
songs to go with his many stories, songs that could only have come
from a man that had been everywhere in the country and seen
everything there was to see.
The unique sounds that were embedded in his treasure
trove of music were a virtual history of the birth of jazz,
everything from vaudeville and theatre music to marches, opera,
blues, ragtime, and anything else that was in the air. Needless to
say, the Melrose brothers were impressed.
Morton was certainly busy that first year in Chicago;
he recorded more than thirty sides in that single year, including
solo piano works and duets with King Oliver, as well as trios with
Oliver and clarinetist Volly de Faut. And there were five tunes with
the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a white band playing the New Orleans
style favored by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Morton recorded
with the Rhythm Kings for Gennett Records. Interestingly, Gannett was
located in Richmond, Indiana, a headquarters for the local Ku Klux
Klan. Morton passed himself off as being of Italian descent to avoid
any trouble while he was in town. Jelly was absolutely everhwhere.
Earl Hines was around too, and he told jazz critic Stanley Dance:




"Jelly Roll Mortonwas the most popular
underworld pianist aroundHe had written any number of tunes and
everybody thought a lot of him. Whenever he needed money, he'd
write a tune and sell it to one of the downtown publishers like
Melrose for fifty or seventy-five dollars."
The Melrose brothers were not always a "downtown
publisher". When Morton entered their music store in 1923 it was
located on South Cottage Grove Avenue on Chicago's South Side. The
store had never done particularly well, but Walter was focused on
the music publishing business as a way to success. Walter fancied
himself a songwriter, though the songs that he copyrighted in his
name, including "Since I Lost You", were uniformly dreadful and
completely unheard and unrecorded. Morton's arrival changed all
that, of course, and by the end of 1923, Walter was able to move the
music publishing business to downtown Chicago, while his brother,
Lester, continued to run the music store with a new partner. Two
years later Lester quit the store and Walter closed the store and
bought Lester's interest in the publishing business.
Walter Melrose advertised that Jelly Roll Morton was
now Melrose Publishing's staff writer, and published such classic
Morton tunes as "Grandpa's Spells", "London Blues", "The Pearls",
and "Wolverine Blues". Morton was unhappy that Melrose changed the
title of his "The Wolverines" to "Wolverine Blues", particularly
since the song is in no way a blues number, but the incident passed.
Within two years of Morton's first appearance at the Melrose music
store, Melrose publishing had become a major music publisher,
putting out compositions such as "King Porter Stomp" and "New
Orleans Blues"-tunes Jelly Roll Morton had first composed two
decades previous. Morton also claimed to have helped the company to
success in other ways, such as recommending that the company acquire
rights to songs by W.C. Handy (whom Morton had met back in 1908) and
Louis Armstrong.
By 1926, Walter Melrose had another bright idea. In
order to bolster the popularity (and therefore sales) of Morton's
music, he helped put together a contract for Morton with Victor. In
the nine months that followed Jelly Roll Morton recorded sixteen
sides with a group that went by the name of Jelly
Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers. The group was composed of a
variety of New Orleans musicians, and Morton used two separate
lineups on the records: George Mitchell played cornet, either Omer
Simeon or Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Kid Ory or George Bryant on
trombone, Stump Evans playing alto sax on several sides, Johnny St.
Cyr or Bud Scott on the banjo, John Lindsay playing bass or Quinn
Wilson on tuba, and Andrew Hilaire or Baby Dodds on drums. Morton
meticulously arranged the numbers for the group and taught the
musicians how to play the songs exactly as he had written them.
These recordings are arrangements that focus on the ensemble, doing
for contrapuntal New Orleans group dynamics what Louis Armstrong had
done for the soloist. To put it simply, Morton arrived at much the
same place that a youthful Duke Ellington was arriving at and would
demonstrate only a few months later.
While Gary Giddins has claimed that such early
Ellington works as "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" and "Black and Tan
Fantasy" dated the Morton recordings, placing them forever in the
past, that is a bit of an overstatement. Giddins also is suspicious
of the fact that Morton's Red Hot Peppers sides are held up as one
of the premier examples of recorded New Orleans jazz at its height
even though they were recorded in Chicago. But the same might be
said of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens recordings. The
availability of work had helped relocate many New Orleans musicians
to Chicago and now the record companies were finding that they had
an audience for the work of these artists. Besides, Jelly Roll
Morton had been travelling the country for twenty years, never
settling in one place for long. The music of the Red Hot Peppers is
New Orleans music by virtue of Morton's ear, memory, and ability to
arrange music for the ensemble rather than by virtue of the location
of its recording.


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