JRM (Eng)
JRM (Eng)
JRM (Eng)
M888L &3-07597
Mistier Jelly Roll
"INVENTOR OF JAZZ"
By ALAN LOMAX
DRAWINGS BY
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1950, BY ALAN LOMAX
CTTY PUBLIC
T' 6307597
Contents
LOUISIANA TOWN 1
STORYVILLE 39
Uptown-Downtown 40
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm 61
Jelly
RoU Blues 1<0
itwas only in fancy that the long said, 'Make Mister Jelly a
Lord,' he knew that his New Orleans jazz had warmed up
the
Street to Buckingham
atmosphere all the way from Basin
Palace . . .
xu
the last like the eddies of a big sleepy Southern river where
the power hides below a quiet brown surface.
That hot May afternoon, in the Library of Congress a
way of writing history began history with music cues,
music evoking recollection and poignant feeling histey
toned out of the heart of one man, sparkling witk x
and purple with ego. Names of friends long dead
honkey-tonks quiet for
a half century, songs and tunes
precise musical styles
of early New Orleans musicians
but Morton he recalled these things as
gotten, by everyone
if they were of the day before, smoothly filling
in
Jelly Roll's life story spans the whole of the "jazz age,'' from
the street bands of NewOrleans to the sweet bands of New
York.With him we can leave behind the marketplaces of
stirrer, the pot-watcher for this gumbo was the New Orleans
colored Creole. There were 400,000 free colored Creoles in
Louisiana at the time of the 1860 census. Their capitol was
New Orleans, where for a hundred years they raised the most
beautiful girls,
who cooked up the tastiest dishes and were
courted with the hottest music of any place in the Mississippi
Valley.
It within the folHife of these Creoles that the emotional
is
Jelly Roll and his fellows were aware that they had par
For
ticipated in one of the rare moments of ecstasy by means of
which cultural transmutations take place. They spoke of this
experience with the special feeling of men who have lived
through an earthquake or witnessed a dance of the elephants.
They were, indeed, the children of a golden age, and, because
they were part folk, they recalled the emotions of those bright
days in vivid feeling. This volume is, I hope, a testimony to
their eloquence and their sensitivity.
With Jelly Roll the days of the interview flowed on into a
month; scores of records stacked up onstage at the Library of
Congress in a rich evocation of underground America.* It
has proved vain to try to check or correct Jelly's story. Jazz
musicians are strong on downbeats but weak on dates. There
are almost as many versions of every happening as there were
men in the band. The big outlines of his story are solid and
true to Hfe; if there is niggling about facts, there is unanimity
among the feelings of Jelly and the other boys .in -the bands.
In fairness to Morton, I have tried to give his narrative as
much inner consistency as possible, something he would cer
tainly have done if he had been able to write this story him
self. Otherwise Morton and the
boys in the bands tell the story
their own way. Sometimes they brag; sometimes they remem-
* Twelve albums
of these records have been beautifully published by Circle
Records. See appendix 2.
PRELUDE xvii
grandfather. My
great-grandfather's
name was Emile Pechet
he was considered one of the largest jewelers in the South.
nobody's business and the third one she rattled off sounded
about like the first one.
So began to get wise and wouldn't take lessons any further.
I
*
The family isn't sure whether young Ferd left school after the eighth or
the fourth grade.
My Folks Was AU Frenchmans 9
Shell Beach, Lake Ponchartrain, Spanish
Fort, Milneburg, Al
giers, Gretna,
all considered New
Orleans suburbs, and I was
convinced this was the whole world: the names on the map,
such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Hong Kong,
were just there to fill the map out that was my
etcetra, idea
untilmy great-grandmother Mimi took a trip around the world.
She brought back toys for every one of the kids but me and
she told me in French, "Never mind, when I go again, 111
bring you something real nice." She never did go again and
my heart was broken. It was then I decided that I wanted to
work for money, see the world on my own, get the things I
wanted for myself and not have to ask anyone for anything.
My first job was dishwasher after school, with permission
from my mother. Just to please me, she agreed. The salary was
seventy-five cents a week, three dollars payable monthly.
At
the end of the month my boss said I ate enough for my pay and
would not pay me. That broke my heart, until my mother gave
me the money. She said she had collected it, but later I could
understand she, herself, had given it to me.
I was about eleven years old at the time and used to stay
with my godmother, Eulalie Echo, who spoiled me and gave
me a little freedom. When school closed, she permitted me to
I could
go to pick berries at the strawberry farm. I thought
eat up the whole strawberry farm and ate enough to get sick
a
and so returned back home, about forty-five mile trip.
Then
I was convinced that the world was a little larger than New
Orleans.
a handsome woman,
My godmother, Eulalie Echo, wasn't
but she was very intelligent, had a pleasant personality and
to monkey around with this spiritual
plenty money. She used
business. There were glasses of
water around her house and
voices would come out of those glasses. Very prominent people
would consult my godmother and she would give them stuff
like uncooked turtle heart-cottfem* she'd have them swallow
for her to be out. They talked for a minute and she asked him
to see her home. When they got to the graveyard, the gate
opened and she walked in and nay uncle started running.
I was very, very much afraid of those things. In fact I was
worried with spirits when I was a kid. Our family home, lo
cated on the corner of Frenchman and Robinson, seemed to
be full of them., We heard dishes rattling at night, people walk
ing around, the sewing-machine running, chains, rattling, etcet
era, and we used to keep the house filled up with holy water.
I had it tied all around my bed. Even then it seemed like those
spirits would touch ray toes. I'd look up over the covers and
see them and take one jump aixd be in my mother's bed. Those
spirits at home was one of the most horrible things that ever
happened to me.
Really Tremendous Sports
. Those days I often used to like to stay with niy god
. .
mother. She kept boxes of jewels in the house and I always had
some kind of diamond on. Through her I came to be consid
ered the best dresser, and this caused me to get my invitation
to be an honorary member of the Broadway Swells when I
was still in short pants. The members figured I was a smart
Md, so, in order to beat the other clubs, they decided to dis
play a lad as an aide.
"What do you think about it, lad?" they said, "Do you think
you could get a horse that would cost you five dollars for
the day? You'd have to have a streamer, too. But then you'd be
an honorary member of the Broadway Swells."
I thought that was a swell idea and I personally accepted.
You see, New Orleans was very organization-minded. I have
never seen such beautiful clubs as they had there the Broad
way Swells, the High Arts, the Orleans Aides, the Bulls and
Bears, the Tramps, the Iroquois, the Allegroes that was just
a few of them, and those clubs would parade at least once a
week. They'd have a great big band. The grand niarshall would
ride in front with his aides behind him, all with expensive
sashes and streamers.
The members that could afford it would have a barrel of
beer and plenty of sandwiches and a lot of whiskey and gin
waiting at their houses. And, wherever these supplies would
be, the parade would stage a grand salute. The grand marshall
would lead his boys up one side of the street and down the
other while the band played on the front steps. Then the boys
would go inside and get their drinks .and hare a hell of a time.
11
12 LOUISIANA TOWN
The day I rode with the Broadway Swells my horse wasn't
exactly up to the minute. I thought I should have a small
horse, since I wasn't nothing but a kid, and so the boys around
that was jealous of me
called my horse a goat and picked him
up by his knees and hollered, *We can truck this horse on our
back. . . shouldn't be riding the horse ... he should be
. You
riding you/' I got angry two or three times
at the way my poor
old pony was moving and I tried to beat him to death to show
them that he could run Until this day one of the things
fast.
I feel most sorry for is the way I beat that poor horse.
Those parades were really tremendous things. The drums
would the trumpets and trombones rolling into some
start off,
thing like Stars and Stripes or The National Anthem and every
body would strut off down the street, the bass-drum player
twirling his beater in the air, the snare drummer throwing his
sticks up and bouncing them off the
ground, the kids jumping
and hollering, the grand marshall and his aides in their expen
sive uniforms moving along dignified, women on top of women
"This is- a town that would break up a show. What I mean, several shows
came- in here and the people fall so much in love with the town that they miss
their train and didn't even try to catch u|K When the Dixie Minstrels, came Mere
oaa. t*hfi&r second* triiz^ half the men stayed eaa* m
New OrleaaQSj-just crazy about
then* Creole girls.'
** Tune
6, Appendix 1'.
RecAly Tremendous Sports 15
to the Mountain.
In New
Orleans very seldom they would bury them in the
deep in the mud. They would always bury um in a vault. . . .
ing ...
Didnt he ramble?
He rambled.
Rambled all around,
In and out the town.
Didnt he ramble?
He rambled.
He rambled till the butchers cut him down.
That would be the last of the dead man. He's gone and
everybody came back home, singing. In New Orleans they be-
18 LOUISIANA TOWN
lieved truly to stick right close to die Scripture. That means
rejoice at the death and cry
at the birth. . . .
thing.
kind of Sunday suit you'd wear today. You was
It wasn't the
considered way out of line if your coat and pants matched.
Many a time they would kid me, "Boy you must be from the
country. Here you got trousers on the same as your suit."
These guys wouldn't wear anything but a blue coat and
some kind of stripe in their trousers and those trousers had to
be very, very tight. They'd fit urn like a sausage. I'm telling you
it was
very seldom you could button the top button of a per
son's trousers those
days in New Orleans. They'd leave the top
button open and they wore very loud suspenders of course
they really didn't need suspenders, because the trousers was so
tight and one suspender was always hanging down. If
you
wanted to talk to one of those guys, he would find the nearest
post, stiffen his arm out and hold himself as far away as pos
sible from that
post he's leaning on. That was to keep those
Really Tremendous Sports 19
I want a gal
that works in the white folks' yard,
A pretty gal that works in the white folks* yard.
Do you see that fly crawling up the wall,
She's going up there to get her ashes hauled.
I got a woman lives right back of the jail,
She got a sign on her window Pussy For Sale.
But the one blues I never can forget out of those early days
happened to be played by a woman that lived next door to my
godmother's in the Garden District. The name of this musician
was Mamie Desdoumes. Two middle fingers of her right hand
had been cut off, so she played the blues with only three
fingers on her right hand. She only knew this one tune and
Really Tremendous Sports 21
"I knew Mamie Desdoumes real well. Played many a concert with her
singing those same blues. She was pretty good looking quite fair and with a
nice head of hair. She was a hustlin' woman. A blues-singing poor gal. Used
to play pretty passable piano around them dance halls on Perdido Street.
"When Hattie Rogers or Lulu White would put it out that Mamie was going
to be singing at their place, the white men would turn out in bunches and
them whores would clean up."
** Tune 1.
1, Appendix
Money in the Tenderloin
two hundred and ten pounds. So the suit was tried and did not
fit me
anywhere. All the kids had holiday clothes but me. I
was so peeved at my uncle and his wife that I tried to kill their
cat, Bricktop.
The older generations were
passing away and friends were
vanishing. The estate was being mortgaged and grandfather
was losing his liquor business. favorite horse, Torn, died
My
during a very drastic September electric storm, and things
were generally going bad,
I had heard of some boys getting jobs in the cooperage, lin
ing barrels, making not less than two dollars a week, more than
I had ever made working. (Lining is the small strip nailed
around the head of a sugar barrel to make it secure two strips
to each head five cents to each strip.) School closed. I went
to the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, was hired and, positively
green to the job, made three dollars the first week. My heart
was jumping with joy. I could see success by my own hands.
I finally
got to be one of the best in the shop and was promoted
to higher departments to learn the trade of cooper.
seven feet wide and a chippie is a dress that women wore, knee
length and very easy to disrobe.
One Saturday night whilst on one of the
wild jaunts, we
heard that one of the houses was stuck for a pianist. My friends
encouraged me to for the job, but my fear was so great that
go
the only way I would go was if my friends would go with me.
I felt sure it was a plot to kidnap me, since I had had a narrow
So they finally agreed to take the other upstarts along and put
them into a rear room where I could see them but their guests
could not.
I was so frightened when touched the piano, the girls
I first
decided to let me go immediately. One of my friends spoke
7
up, "Go ahead and show these people you can play/ That en
couraged me greatly and I pulled myself together and started
playing with the confidence of being in my own circle. "That
boy is marvelous" this was the remarks of the inmates. Money
was plentiful and they tipped me about $20, which I did not
want to accept because I was not taught that way.
They wanted to give me the job of regular professor, but I
could not see the idea. I was making about $15 legitimately,
and furthermore I knew that if my folks were ever to find out
I had even passed through the tenderloin, they would deal
with me drastically. I asked what salary they would pay.
"One dollar a night is the regular salary/' was the landlady's
answer. I flatly refused.
Then my friends showed me how I had made $20 in tips in
maybe an hour's playing. "You see, the $1 is a guarantee in
case there happens to be some kind of a bad night, so you will
be sure of some salary," the landlady explained. "But I will
guarantee you $5 a night, if you don't make it in tips."
My friends coaxed me. I thought of all the incidents that
The Family
The boy stood at the gate, hearing the cold snap of the
lock inside the door and staring at the pleasant house of his
childhood. The morning sunlight gleamed on the white
early
clapboard walls and there, among the little gray railroad cot
tages of
Frenchman Street, his old home looked very fine. In
his mind it became a mansion with fluted columns and a noble
broad gallery,
a mansion that hid the real storey-and-a-half
house with its narrow porch and its small square columns.
For young Ferdinand Morton the door had closed upon the
27
28 INTERLUDE ONE
secure, secret, and confined Creole family life. The beauty and
glory of this life (indeed, for
American Negro, it was a com
an
rich, one) were forever lost to him.
paratively Already an
orphan, he became a wanderer, searching for a golden world
that existed only in the memories and prejudices of respectable
old Creole ladies like his grandmother.
He turned and walked away down
the sunny street, the
largements on the wall it was quite easy to pick out Mimi the
30 INTERLUDE ONE
strong-minded fine old French lady with a determined mouth
and a big twist of hair high up. "What eyes she had," Am&de
laughed. "She never had to tell us to do anything. Just open
her eyes at us and we'd move. See, when my Mama died we
went to live with grandmother Mimi. My real mother I don't
even remember You could say the same thing about Jelly
. . .
only five. Jelly never told us if he had any hard times, but we
would know from the amount of money. Just a week before
he died he sent ten dollars, and never even told us' he was
sick. He didn't have to do that, but he knew I had a husband
. . .
see, M. Colas has been sick along, not able to work so
"
much. . .
From
the bedroom that opened on the front parlor came an
apologetic coughing and in shambled M. Colas, wearing his
paint-spattered carpenter's overalls. He looked for all the
world a white crane out of a bayou tall and stooped, the
like
hollows of his cheeks and temples showing dark against silvery
skin, and up towards the ceiling a swatch of silvery hair a
silver crane with a Cajun accent.
"That Ferd. He was a gentleman. You know? Sho he was/'
Tuberculosis has so deepened and softened his voice that M.
Colas habitually wags his big, saw-marked forefinger for em
phasis. "When he heard about me, he sent me clothes shirts,
suits, socks, everything. One time he sent five overcoats, brand
new. Ten pairs of shoes, the very best. Ferd would wear his
things a couple of times and buy new and send me the old. I
didn't have to buy anything for years. He was a man. He un
derstood I had it hard because of my chest. /' .
The Family 31
among his ten children. Five lived to be men and women and
five died. . . .**
*
"I thought hees name was Smile," Amede remarked.
"No, no, Emile was old Pierre's son his only son, and a
*
Henry's statement shows that both Jelly Roll and his sister had confused
Emile and Pierre.
** Not
Henri, as Jelly remembered the name.
The Family 33
"Well, that's all news to me," said Amede. "It all happened
before I went to live in the Monette home."
"You keep talking about the Monette home! It wasn't ours,"
Uncle Henry said. "We rent it so long, everybody think it be
long to us. ... Don't look at me, Amede. This young man
want the facts and I ain't
gonna lie."
thought she was smart till I found out who she was gonna
marry."
"You mean Ed La Menthe?" said Colas.
"That's who, F. P. La Menthe-Jelly Roll Morton's father-a
nice-lookin* light brown-skin Creole, but wild." Old Henry
wagged his head, "Very wild."
"Ed had himself a good livin*, too," Colas sighed. "Carpen
he did. to the
"
all die and . . He
his if. It fust
"Why, it,
to me!"
"Hey, old you about?'' from Colas*
*That s the into this boy. Listen Ed La
was a player! Played a slidin ixambone!
I
every line of which one can find the voice of the "slidin tram-
bone" was a search for his lost father and a triumph over him.
but the old parish church had burnt with all the birth records."
Old Henry chuckled, "Don't worry. You wouldn't find
"After that," Amede said "Ferd stayed most of the time with
his godmother, Eulalie Echo. Used to love to stay Uptown with
her. Lalee, he called her/*
"Did you know her, M. Monette?" I asked Henry.
"I reckon so/* he grinned. "I knew her so well, the first child
I had birthed, she birthed it for me! She was a friend of
girl
mine for three years while she lived next door to the Monette
house. Then she went back to Paul Echo and they moved in
the Garden District.* I believe later on she married this Ed
Hunter, drove a coal cart. ." . .
"It's real sad to me," said Amede, "That I never heard Ferd
in person but one time in my life. He came by the house and
I asked him to go across the street to a neighbor's and play for
me. That day I remember Ferd was
wearing a loud silk candy-
striped shirt and loud suspenders. ." . .
"I always used to tell Amede I wished Jelly could have come
back home. There's no place like New Orleans, after all," said
M. Colas.
"Well, I reckon you have to hustle to get as far as Ferd did,"
said old Henry with a dry chuckle, seeming very pleased with
himself that he had never tried to get away.
called it," said Amede.
"Hustling was just what grandmother
"She told Ferd that anybody who went on the stage, doing
things in public,
was just common. And she raised us not to
boast about Ferd's playing. Of course, now I'm real proud of
my brother. .'. ."
go,
attended
I the Grand Theatre and saw a play in which they
ball, which has made him crazy till this day. Then I moved
on to a job in Meridian, Mississippi. Mississippi was always
my bad-luck state. I came down with typhoid fever and re
turned to Biloxi on a stretcher. My godmother fed me for three
weeks on a diet of whiskey and milk, which almost ended me
with liquor entirely. (I never took another drink, except occa
sionally. Lord, this whiskey is just lovely!)
. . .
41
42 STORYVILLE
country and most times you couldn't get in. So this place
would go on at a tremendous rate of speed plenty money,
drinks of all kinds from four o'clock in the morning until
jobs for pianists than any other ten places in the world.
The
sporting-houses needed professors, and we had so many differ
ent styles that whenever you came to New Orleans, it wouldn't
make any difference that you just came from Paris or any part
of England, Europe, or any place whatever your tunes were
over there,we played them in New Orleans.
I might mention some of our pianists Sammy Davis, . . .
and Albert Cahill, they were both great pianists and both of
them were colored. Poor Alfred Wilson, the girls taken to him
and showed him a point where he didn't have to work. He
finally came
to be a dope fiend and smoked so much dope till
he died. Albert Cahill didn't smoke dope, but he ruined his
eyes staying up all night, gambling. Albert
was known as the
show that ever was in existence as I can re
greatest player
member. Then there was Kid Ross, a white boy and one of the
outstanding hot players of the country.
All these men were hard to beat, but when Tony Jackson
walked in, any one of them would get up from the piano stool.
If he didn't, somebody was liable to say, "Get up from that
was real
piano. You hurting feelings. Let Tony play/' Tony
its
Tony was considered among all who knew him the greatest
in the world.* His memory seemed
single-handed entertainer
like something nobody's ever heard of in the music world. He
was known as the man of a thousand songs. There was no
tune that come up from any opera or any show of any kind
or anything that was wrote on paper that Tony couldn't play.
He had such a beautiful voice and a marvelous range. His
voice on an opera tune was exactly as an opera singer. His
my* story.
that be won by making Tony nervous, leaning
Jelly Roll told Roy Carew
close and whispering, "Tony, you can't sing now. You can't sing now."
46 STORTVILLE
When I first got back to New Orleans from Biloxi, I had a
run of bad luck. I felt sick and bad. Something seemed to be
wrong with my hands. When jobs came up in the district, they
didn't come my way. One afternoon I was sitting around 25's
and wondering if my grandmother hadn't been right after all,
when old man Sona walked up to me.
"Son, you are sick/'
somebody must have put some
"That's right, Papa Sona,
Just touch me. In three days you will have that job."
I took Papa Sona past Hilma Burt's house, which was one of
the highest class mansions in the District, and did as he had
requested. Three days later at two o'clock in the afternoon
I
"Where the Birth of Jazz Originated from 47
was sitting around 25*s and a maid from Miss Btirt's house
walked in and said their regular piano player was sick. "Would
I like to make a few dollars?"
Of course, I accepted and you never saw such a well man
as I was that night when I sat down at the grand piano in
Hilma Burfs mansion. Right away Miss Burt liked my style of
music and she told me, "If you thinlc you can come steady, I
will be glad to have you."
In a week I had plenty money, but I never thought of
paying Papa Sona for what he did, because I never really
believed he had helped me. I should have realized that he
used some very powerful ingredients. I should have been
more appreciative, for I have lived to regret
this ungrateful
action,
Hilma Burt's was on the corner of Custom House and Basin
Street, nextdoor to Tom Anderson's SaloonTom Anderson
was the king of the district and ran the Louisiana legislature,
and Hilma Burt was supposed to be his old lady. Hers was no
doubt one of the best-paying places in the city and I thought I
had a very bad night when I made under a hundred dollars.
Very often a man would come into the house and
hand you a
like a match. Beer
twenty- or forty- or a fifty-dollar note, just
sold for a dollar a bottle. Wine from five to ten, depending on
the kind you bought. Wine flowed much more than water
the kind of wine I'm speaking about I don't mean sauterne or
such as Cliquot and
nothing like that, I mean champagne,
Mumm's Extra Dry. And right there was where I got my new
nameWining Boy.*
When the place was closing down, it was my habit to pour
these partly finished bottles of wine together and make up a
* to Winding,
Wining (pronounced with a long I) is the term Jelly preferred
for reasons that Johnny St. Cyr makes quite clear. In fact Johnny
was more
than a shade embarrassed when asked what the nick-name meant. He said,
Let's see how could I put it-
**. ..
Winding Boy is a bit on the vulgar side.
means a fellow that makes good jazz with the women. See JeUy lived a pretty
fast Me. In fact, most of those fellows round the District did. They
were all
tune was in
halfway pimps anyway . . .
Jellys Winding Boy mighty popular
the early days."
48 STORYV7LLE
new bottle from the mixture. That fine drink gave me a name
and from that I made a tune that was very, very popular in
those days . . .
like Willie the Pleaser, Bob Rowe (the kingpin of the District) ,
guy's clothes, cribs that rented for about five dollars a day and
had just about room enough for a bed, small-time houses where
the price was from fifty cents to a dollar and they put on naked
dances, circuses, and jive. Then, of course, we had the man
sions where everything was of the very highest class. These
houses were filled up with the most expensive furniture and
paintings. Three of them had mirror parlors where you
couldn't find the door for the mirrors, the one at Lula White's
costing $30,000. Mirrors stood at the foot and head of all the
beds. It was in these mansions that the best of the piano
players worked.
Kid Ross was the steady player at Lula White's. Tony Jack
son played at Gypsy SchaefFer's, one of the most notoriety
women I've ever seen in a highclass way. She was the notoriety
kind that everybody liked. She didn't hesitate about spending
her money and her main drink was champagne and, if you
couldn't buy it, she'd buy it for you in abundance. Walk into
their fine evening gowns and ask the customer if he would care
to drink wine. They would call for the "professor" and, while
Not all the piano players in the District were of the same
type and class as Tony Jackson. At that time, back in 1901 and
1902, we had a lot of great blues players that didn't know
nothing but the blues . . .
I could sit
right here and think a thousand miles away
Yes, I could sit right here and think a thousand miles away,
I got the blues so bad I cannot remember the day . . .
nothing) would rush about ten straight cans of beer and get
about a quart of whiskey. The wtole doggone thing wouldn't
cost him over two and made him a big sport for a
dollars
whole evening at a good-time house. And there was the Game
Kid playing the blues and just swilling all the lush in the
world. He was a howler, I'm telling you, the best there was
in the section when it came to playing blues. Of course, we had
another man that was a very good blues player, too
old
that could really play those blues and
Buddy Carter a man
those thing we call stomps today.
* Tune hours
3, Appendix I, takes one back to those dark and impassioned
at the westerns when a ragtime piano provided the soundtrack for the noble
loves of Wm. S. Hart.
52 STOBYVILLE
Game Kid and Buddy Carter played around honkey-tonks
like Kaiser's and the Red Onion and Spano's. I'll tell you the
fact, I don't think some of those places were swept up in
months. Gambling went on night and day among a lot of
rough people who made it dangerous for anyone that would go
in there that didn't know what it was all about. Sometimes
guy in the world until Aaron Harris showed up, but, when
Aaron entered, Sheep Eye would become the nicest little boy
anywhere just lovely.
Aaron was the toughest of them all a known and dangerous
killer that had very little to say. The policemen wanted Aaron,
but they couldn't afford to say much to Tn'm unless they in
tended to kill him. They were afraid to try that, because it
seemed he never missed any time he got ready to kill anyone.
Man or woman, it made no difference to Aaron. He had eleven
killings to his credit, including his sister and his brother-in-
law. I believe Aaron Harris was, no doubt, the most heartless
man I've ever heard of or ever seen. Later on, as 111 tell you,
I got toknow him personally,
It was known that Madame Papaloos always backed hrm
when he got in trouble not with funds or anything like that
money wasn't really in it. Madame Papaloos was a hoodoo
woman. She was supposed, from certain evidences, to tumble
up Aaron's house to discourage the judge from prosecuting
take all the sheets off the bed, turn the mattresses over, hang
sheets in front of the mirrors, turn the chairs over, which was
said and known to confuse the judge. Then she would get
lamb and beef and veal tongues from the markets and stick
pins and needles all through
them in order to tie the tongues
of the prosecuting attorney and the witnesses and the juries
so couldn't talk against
they whoever the victim's supposed to
k e __n ot the victim, but the one that's arrested. ITiat way,
Aaron Harris, the ready killer, was always successful in getting
out of his troubles . . .
Sunday, the newspapers were full of it. Then the riot broke
out. Men were beat up on streetcars both white and colored.
Charles riot took place, that I heard all the great blues piano
players. Yes, it was some terrible environments that I went
through in those days, inhabited by some very tough babies.
Of course, wherever there is money, there is a lot of tough
people, no getting around that, but a lot of swell people, too.
Speaking of swell people, I might mention Buddy Bolden,
the most powerful trumpet player IVe ever heard or that was
known and the absolute favorite of all the hangarounders in
the Garden District.* Buddy played at most of the rough places
like the Masonic Hall on Perdido and Rampart, at the Globe
Hall in the downtown section on St. Peter and St. Claude, and
husky guy steps on this little guy's foot ( I was just in between
them) and they got into an argument and the little guy didn't
want to stand for it and pulled out a great big gun, almost
as long as he was old, and shot, and if I hadn't pulled my
stomach back, I wouldn't be here to tell you the history of jazz.
This big guy laid there on the floor, dead, and, my good
ness, Buddy Bolden he was up on the balcony with the
band started blazing away with his trumpet, trying to keep
the crowd together. Many of us realized it was a killing and we
started breaking out windows and through doors and just run
over the policemen they had there.
After I got on the outside, I felt that I was safe and I decided
I would look on and see what would happen. When the patrol
pulled up, they took the dead man and laid him in the bottom
of the patrol wagon and then here comes the little cripple man
that shot him, and, finally, Buddy Bolden. I've often won
dered why they would put Mister Bolden in the patrol when
he was up there blowing high notes to keep everyone quiet.
Of course, things like this killing weren't taken too seriously
in New Orleans in those periods. It was a law in New
Orleans
that anyone could carry a gun that wanted to, almost; the fine
was only ten dollars or thirty days in the market, your job
being to clean up the market in the morning. Most of prisoners
ran away, so the thirty days didn't mean anything.
We all felt fanny when we saw Buddy Bolden riding the
calaboose, because he was our favorite in die Garden District.*
*
Bunk Johnson, who played with Bolden, confirmed this, adding . . .
"Of course the whites said, 'We don't want no King Bolden. Robechaux's
the hand/ John Robechaux had a note-reading band that play the hotels and
all the big places.
They called Bolden's Band a 'routineer' bunch, a bunoh of
-art
60 STORYVILLE
This tune was wrote about 1902, but, later on, was, I guess
111have to say it, stolen by some author and published under
the title of the St. Louis Tickle. Plenty old musicians, though,
know it belonged to Buddy Bolden, the great ragtime trumpet
man.
amongst the Negroes, Buddy Bolden could close a Robichaud
lakers,' But,
dance up by 10:30 at night. Old King Bolden played the music the Negro
public liked. He could step out right today, play his own style, and be called
not/ Old Buddy ruled in them days just like Louis Armstrong rules today/*
*
Another old-time jazzman said of Bolden, "That fellow studied too hard
always trying to think up something to bring out. He could hear you play
something and keep it in his head then go home and think up parts. . /* .
* 90.
See Louis Nelson's story, Interlude II, p.
61
62 STORJVILLE
they started playing this little thing they would really whoop
it
up everybody got hot and threw their hats away. . , .
play very well, would have the inspiration they were doing
okay if they kept increasing the tempo during a piece.** I
*
Various ways to translate this: Can-can cucumber the dance of that name
gossip. Pay& pay shut up. Tune 7, Appendix II. "There seems to be a
vulgar meaning which I never understood," said Jelly Roll.
** Which is a West African
way of doing things. Here Jelly imposes the
European metronome idea of tempo upon the more fluid African idea of fceat,
just as he imposed rigid and intricate European harmony upon
a simpler folk
pattern.
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm 63
got into the dictionary that jazz was considered a lot of blatant
noises and discordant tones, something that would be even
harmful to the ears. The fact of it is that every musician in
America had the wrong understanding of jazz music. I know
many times that I'd be playing against different orchestras and
I would notice some of the patrons get near an orchestra and
put their hands over their ears. (Of course, I wouldn't permit
mine to play that way.) Anyhow, I heard a funny fellow say
once: "If that fellow blows any louder, hell knock ear my
drums down." Even Germany and Italy don't want this dis
cordant type of jazz, because of the noise.
Jazz music be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm. When
is to
bald, toothless, going on eighty, but every inch of his six feet
erect a red-hot bass player, seventy-nine years old, a proud
Creole.
"Albert Glenny, painter by trade. Pleased to make your ac
quaintance, Mr. Lomax."
He looked at me shyly, squinting out of his hooded eyes. I
held the work-hardened, bass-toughened, old hand, and asked
about Jelly Roll. "Well, I heard of him, but I never seen him
that I remember," said Glenny, "That boy come along in late
years/*
Glenny, the oldest living hot jazzman, went wool-gathering
about early Creole musicians. I had difficulty in traveling along
with his Creole-thickened English, but there was one proudly
descriptive phrase that kept ringing through "painter by trade
.
plasterer by trade
. .
cigarmaker by trade." Apparently
. . .
money as contractor.
Ferdinand Morton (LaMenthe), disdained manual
labor.
Manuel Perez, the favorite Creole trumpeter, also knew
how to make cigars.
Alphonse Picou, composer of High Society, tinsmith by
trade.
Piron, composer of Sister Kate, his barber shop was a
musicians' center.
Johnny St. Cyr, the best hot guitarist, plasterer by trade.
Papa Tio, classical clarinet, cigarmaker by trade.
Lorenzo Tio, son, taught clarinet,
cigarmaker by
trade . . .
the old quadrilles from eiglit to four and a set would last two
tours.
"In those days the girls were crazy about musicians. They
all fight to carry your case home. Then they ask you to their
house to take *a little rest/ You see, you feel so tired you
couldn't carry your own instrument home." Picou said this
in a plaintive tone and then laughed as if perhaps some young
girl had carried
his clarinet home only the night before. There
came a rustling and sniffling from the ladies in the dining
room. . . .
Quand la misere prends chaudieres-yl When trouble takes hold of the pots.
Toutes chaudieres cap cote. All the pots are turned upside down.
La misere, la misere, Yes, the depression, the depres
C'est qui-chose quitte-il? sion,
Is there anyway to get rid of
it?
J?os6 pas ta pot,
Nave pas cafe,
Dont put on the pot9
Pou demain matin, mon cher ami, We dont have any coffee
Quand n* va leve. For tomorrow morning, my dear,
Prend le vieux cafe When we get up.
Sfahe'-li dans soled, Then take the grounds,
S*il-n*y-a pas du sucre, mon Dry them in the sun
cher ami, If there's no sugar, my friend,
Servi du sel. Serve salt instead.
M'pas gaignin I'argent vien prochaine I'm broke, come back next week."
semaine. He put a little notice on the
Li mette ti notice-la, dans la chiffonere, when I read that
chiffonier, little notice,
Comme m* gard ti-notice-la9 U It said I had to move out of
dit moin de'me'nage. the house
O it's the
depression, depression . . .
E ,cest la mis&re, Yes, the depression, the depressions
La misere pou toutes alU, everywhere,
Comme un chien, comme un chat, Even the dogs and the cats, too,
Toutes gaigin la misere. Everybody's got troubles.
professional jobs.
Freedmen of color helped to win the Battle
of New Orleans under Andy Jackson. Before 1861, these
colored Creoles accumulated fifteen million dollars worth of
property, much of it
in slaves; they organized literary societies
and musicales and published their own newspapers, while
the craftsmen them built the lovely churches and
amongst
76 INTERLUDE TWO
homes of New Orleans and cast the lacy ironwork for its
balconiesand doorways.
The Civil War reminded the Creoles that they were Negroes
and second-class citizens. A Creole lady welcomed Union
General Butler to New Orleans with these words: No **. . .
style of the French Academy. "I studied music for two years
and then I chose my instrument," he will tell you pridefully.
Even if this old gentleman has no technical knowledge of
music, he has for it the passionate enthusiasm of a Harlemite
for baseball and can bore you to death with the esoterica of
longshoring.
80 INTERLUDE TWO
Bud Scott, the guitarist who bested Jelly . . .
just a
musician.
real black, got bad (kinky) hair /* or, "He's a real nice-
. .
I thought of the girl, her creamy face heavy with scorn for
her somewhat darker little uncle. She had barely turned from
the television set in the plushy living room where Paul had
dragged me to prove his policy-making brother's prosperity.
"And she's got a good education, too," added Paul, very
humbly. "You see, we Downtown people, wetry to be
intelli
..*......... , . .
............ . . .
. . . , . .
*
. . , .
,...,......... . . . .
........... . . . . the
this
to "black"
to "black* as an to
and to *lblacif as a
Yet the . . .
f no in,
my fen,
is fTO slie
I
H CO'tf 1O1>OOG>O -* CSICO * K)O t- 00 O
86 INTERLUDE TWO
working one or two nights a week for two dollars and a half a
night. The 25*5 here in Storyville pay you a dollar and a quar
ter and tips, but you working seven nights. Naturally, wouldn't
I quit the Olympia and go to this tonk? Wouldn't I?"
Itmade you feel like running all the way. The Arteezan Hall
the Arteezan Hall? Was it a secret order or an outlandish
Creole name?
"You standing right in front of it, mister,"' the young fellow
jerked his thumb toward a weathered gray building. There
above the sagging door was the dvm insigne a muscled arm
holding a hammer, below this, a square-rule, and, underneath,
the words ARTISANS HALL.
The hall where the artisans carpenters, plasterers, iron
workers, tin-smithshad met to deliberate and then to dance
was quiet and deserted. The floor sagged and the gavel marks
on the rostrum had gathered dust. Presently, a slight brown
woman peeped out of the inner door.
"Mr. Nelson is
mighty sick," she said, "but I reckon you can
come up if
you don't stay long."
She led the way up the bare, poor stairs to the bare, poor
room, where, flanked by medicine bottles, the old man ky
upon his hard pillows. The door closed behind the woman. Big
Eye Louis and I stared at each other.
"What you want-history?" he muttered. 'Well, I know it"
'Were you acquainted with Jelly Roll Morton?"
I started him," he snapped. "I started him. Round
"Why
about nineteen eight or nine.
"When Jelly Roll came around the he knew note
district
job.
"Maybe he had worked in one of those sporting-houses/*
added Louis, vigorously, "but before I took him over he hadn't
never been on a bandstand. ."
Right from the start, then,
. ,
in the American
"Uptown, part, other side of Canal Street,
the people had different
way. They worked in white folks*
houses or down along the river.
They were more sociable and
more like entertainers. They played more rougher, more head
music, more blues. The blues? Ain't no first blues. The
. . .
his bunch would rip out one of those old quadrilles which in
duce so much And he could play the Anniversary
lively jazz.
Song would
so the tears run right out of your eyes.
"Well, I stood there and listen at Payton on that corjun. He
say, 'Come in, son/ but I was afraid and I told him, 1 ain't
comin in, but I can play the corjun you got.' He say, ''Come on
in and try her.* That way he entice me in. I couldn't make it
on that corjun the first time, but I kept comin back till I got
so I could fool with it. One of them old musicians passed me
used to tell the cops, "That's my boy.'
off as his son,
"Robert Charles got away, but they had his friend in the
parish prison. When the jailer refuse to give him up to the
mob, the mob said they was going down round 25*s and loll
all the Negroes.
down. That's how riffs come about. You must handle your tone.
The Boys in the Bands 93
He looked sick and old. Alone and sick. Yet the heart of this
man had warmed ten thousand, thousand nights for all the
world. "Do you know Sidney?" he suddenly asked, with a
smile thathad become really warm, as anyone who has ever
heard Sidney Bechet blow sunshine out of his horn would
have smiled. "Sidney," said Louis, as if this explained every
learn notes, but he was my best scholar.
thing. "He wouldn't
The son-of-a-gun was gifted. Man, he ran away with that
thing, playing
from his heart. ."
. .
Eye had said, "We never could keep our hands on that Sidney.
Regular always running off down
little devil, the alley after
them womens.") "Louis and them played that low-down
little
say, 1 would not advise you to let him stay out all night^
especially in the District/
"Sidney told him about how he always goes with some man.
Pierce I want you to do this. Listen to
Captain say, Well,
your brother. Go to school. You can go ahead and play music,
But try and stay in school. Leonard, it's no use to discour
. . .
prejudice," a person
have to go through all that rough stuff
like Sidney went through to play music like him. You have to
"We had all nations in New Orleans/' said Jelly Roll; "But
That this black and tan wedding took place in the streets of
Storyville, streets thronging with pimps, chippies, rotten police,
and Babbitts on a binge, may forever have stained this other
wise lusty and life-giving proletarian art. As Jelly and the
others have indicated, Storyville involved all the musicians in
its
principal trade. It made them guilty on the very score their
families so feareddragging the family name in the gutter. Yet
there was a toughness in jazz that laughed at all that, the
toughness of black-skinned Americans like Bolden and Bunk
Johnson who would 'Toll themselves playing so hard/' These
black Americans had no music lessons, no family name and no
The Boys in the Bands 101
sing, I always
want people around me. It gives me a warm
heart and that gets into my music .** . .
ability to beautify
a number.
**We had our own way of doing. When we'd buy the regular
stock arrangements, we would familiarize ourselves with the
melody and then add what we wanted till we sounded like we
had special orchestrations. Then we'd cut off the names at the
top of the music in order to
throw everybody off scent. It used
to make the music publishers so mad they wanted to tear up
the sidewalk. But what could they do ... ?*" Johnny's laugh
rattled the windows.
Black and tan musicians were driving the music publishers
crazy, as they pooled their ideas
and played them hot, but at
the personal level, old prejudices operated. ... "I guess the
most popular trumpet player with the mulatto race was Kep-
pard." Said Johnny, "He was brown-skin man, light-brown,
but, when you come darker than Keppard, you didn't score
with the mulattoes at all. They wouldn't invite us to none of
The Boys in the Bands 103
"So those piano players were the boys who frequented those
houses the most?"
"Yes, they were," and Johnny went on, "And they made the
best money. Nothing but money men come in those highclass
houses and they just as soon tip you a five-dollar bill as a dol
lar, if they was in the mood and the music was good. So a
Here Jelly Roll, the lone wolf, found his road. Piano keys
doors into a white world where the other
opened boys in the
bands could not follow. This bordello world gave him
money
and and raised him above his brother musicians.
fine clothes
His notoriety set him apart from the common musicians of
Stoiyville. The Frenchman's, not 25's, became his hangout.
And this was why few of the boys in the bands remembered
Jelly Roll in his New Orleans days.
"Those fellows you been talking to didn't know Jelly," af
firmed Bunk Johnson, who started working in the District in
1897* "See, Jelly played only in white houses in those
days.
They couldn't play there. But him and Tony Jackson did.
They'd have Tony one night and Jelly the next. Albert Cahill,
Freddy Washington, Harrison Ford, and Jimmy Arcey played
those places, too. All of them boys
always wore fine clothes,
had plenty money and plenty diamond rings.
"Jelly was one of the best in 1902 and after that," Bunk
went on, "Noted more so than Tony Jackson and Albert Cahill
because he played the music the whores liked.
Tony was dicty.
But Jelly would sit there and play that barrelhouse music all
night--blues and such as that. I know because I played with
him in Hattie Rogers sporting-house in 1903. She had a whole
The Boys in the Bands 105
blues till
way up in the
day and all them gals would holler,
'Listen at Winding Boy!'
"He was really a ladies' man, really stylish. But, even when
he dress up, he still look like a kid ." . .
One can almost hear what they said behind the back of this
handsome young mulatto, dressed in the best, wearing dia
monds, as he strolled down Iberville Street. The jazzmen
didn't say it to his face, for Jelly could back his brags with
red-hot piano and, when necessary,
plenty of money, plenty of
a "hard-hitting .38." Still
they could hardly love him, for Wind
ing Boy had moved into "higher circles" leaving his fellow
TTT HILE still young in years, Bertha has, nevertheless, proven her-
* V a grand woman and has also made 'good' as a conductor of a
self
s
first-class establishment.
The word of x able 5 is portrayed to the full when the name of Wein-
thai mentioned.
is
t&&&&&*^^
Jelly Roll's piano made him a person of "some importance"
and "gained him admittance" at fifteen. The "jolly good fel
lows" who ran these palaces haggled for virgins., used them,
then threw them into alleys where they were free to sit naked
behind their crib doors available for twenty-five cents to any
customer. "Fun" was a money-making word; the girls provided
the "fun"; the madams, the pimps, the police, and the politi
cians collected the money. Heroin, sadism, assassination any
thing went if you had the price.
108 INTERLUDE TWO
No matter how tougfi they might pretend to be, this cold
blooded world must have deeply wounded the young musi
cians who were sensitive enough to create jazz. "Poor Alfred
Wilson, he smoked so much dope till he died .
Tony Jackson, . .
blew his brains out through a trumpet and died in the insane
asylum ... I just don't like to be out after dark any more"
these epitaphs could be many times multiplied.
Ferdinand Morton, however, thrived. He eschewed the vices
of his associates and cultivated their business acumen. He
learned to drink moderately. And he worked hard. If, by
playing the lowdown blues, Morton could pick up a dollar
Tony Jackson scorned, he was ready to oblige. If the white
customers wanted a laugh, he had ready "some sensational
trick and surprise effects/' Whatever he played, however, it
had to be good and it had to be Morton. He had nothing but
scorn for brain pickers and imitators.
The musical currents of Uptown and Downtown came to
gether, joined in Morton's piano. He retained his Creole tech
content with his music, because jazz for nim was power, a way
out of a narrow valley of Jim Crow and Creole prejudice. He
began to look away from New Orleans, wondering if he had
the key to a larger world. After 1904 he was constantly on the
prod, using New Orleans only as a base of operations, and
nurturing ambitions mortal strange for America's first jazz
composer.
Alabama Bound
The frequent saying was in any place that you was
going you was supposed to be bound for that pkce.
So, in fact, I was Alabama Bound. . . .
Toae $, Appendix I,
A Half-hand Bigshat
... I wanted to be the champion pool
player in the world,
so I left New Orleans, where there were too many sharks, to
go to some of these little places where I could
practice on the
suckers. My system was to use the piano as a decoy. I'd get a
job at one of these
little
honkey-tonks along the Gulf Coast,
playing piano, then some of the local boys who called them
selves good would ask me to play a
game of pool. I'd play
dumb, until the bets rolled up high, then Td clean them out
My system was different from most of the piano players I met
along the coast Skinny Head Pete and Florida Sam, they
didn't work, because they were kept up by women. From time
to time two or three girls fell in love with me, but I didn't pay
much attention. I was interested in playing pool.
I made a lot of towns those
days learning how to be a half-
hand bigshot McHenry, Hattiesburg, Jackson, Vicksburg,
Greenwood, Greenville but I spent the biggest part of my
*
time in Gulfport and Biloxi. Biloxi was quite a prosperous
little
city and a great summer resort. A lot of millionaires used
to make it a kind of headquarters during the winter season
because the weather, the fishing and the oysters was all fine.
Many times I played for big parties of the men who ran the
shrimp and oyster boats. But somehow or another I had a kind
of a yen to be a halfway smart guy. Since then I have realized
*
Bunk Johnson ran into Jelly at this time. . .
open at the top, with no tie. From that dress you was consid
ered a sharpshooter. One of these sharpshooters named
Harry
Dunn was a very nice fellow that liked music .and taken & lik
ing to me. He was a tall, lanky, light-complected fellow and
considered the best Georgia Skin player in that section. He'd
clean up on those turpentine men whenever
they would come
to town for payday, because Georgia Skin was their main
game. Of all the games IVe even seen, no game has so
many
cheats right in front of your eyes, and it would have taken a
magician to catch Harry.
"Some day I'm going to make a gambler out of you," lie told
me. And, of course, that interested me because I wanted to
have the other young fellows of my class beat So
Harry taught
me some holdout tricks, meaning that you are sure to win if
you get the works in, but very dangerous if you can't get the
cards back into the deck for the next deal. He
taught me day
by day until one time he decided to make a payday at a rail
road camp at Orange, Mississippi What Harry meant
by "mak
a
ing payday" was that he was going to win all the from money
the people that had worked for it.
come up there. Ten dollars more will catch the king. Okay,
teen. Nobody standing here but you and I. I got the ace it's
better than your eight spot, what do you say? Twenty dollars
more. Okay? Bet . . ."
taking my first free ride, but the next one made successfully.
I
Itwas a deadhead, an empty mail car. When we reached our
destination and got off, Lily White heard someone coming
and said, "Look out, let's run," which I refused to do. Up came
a guy with two big pistols and carried us on down to the jail.
They claimed we had robbed a mail train, and, when we
proved out of that, they gave us a hundred days on the county
gang for carrying weapons. It seems that Lily White had a big
razor up his sleeve.
When the inmates on the gang saw us, they hollered "New
meat in the market!" Then they jumped on us and took our
Tm Alabama bound,
Alabama bound,
If the train dont run, got a mule to ride,
"My, my, play that thing, boy." And I'd say, "Well, I'll cer
jealous
me. Imagine that! But he wasn't such a good-looking
of
fellow, himself.Had some awful rubber-looking lips, I'm tell
ing you. So I said,
Alabama Bound,
Alabama bound,
One of them good looking girls told me, "Baby,
Come on and leave this town"
always had an inkling to write a tune at most any place I
I
would ever land. So when I hit Mobile in 1905, I wrote Ala
bama Bound and all my friends considered it very good. There
was Charley King from Mobile; Baby Grice and Frazier Davis
from Pensacola, Florida; Frank Racheal, supposed to be the
tops from Georgia; and Porter King, a very dear friend of mine
and a marvelous pianist now in the cold, cold ground, also
from Florida. Porter Bong was an educated gentleman with a
far better musical training than mine and he seemed to have a
wasn't really any meaning only that people would stamp their
feet. However, this tune became to be the outstanding favorite
of every great hot band throughout the world that had the ac
it has been the cause of
complishment to play it. Until today,
great bands coming to fame and outstanding tunes use the
Porter in order to make great tunes of
backgrounds of King
themselves.* In 1905, the same year as King Porter
and Ala
bama Bound, I also wrote a number called You Can Have It, I
Porter Stomp
As any student of jazz knows, this pride of Jelly's in his King
*
of jazz Benny
iswarranted by its great importance in the development
a theme for a number of years.
Goodman, for instance, used King Porter as
Tune 11, Appendix I.
122 ALABAMA BOUND
Dont Want It, a tune which was the first hit of Mister Clar
ence Williams. He got the credit for it, although I happened
to be the one that taught him how to play it
You may wonder why I didn't copyright my tunes in the old
others. The fact is
days. WeH, it was not only me, but many
that the publishers thought they could buy anything they
wanted for fifteen or twenty dollars. Now if you was a good
piano player, you had ten jobs waiting for you as soon as you
hit any town, and so fifteen or twenty dollars or a hundred
dollars didn't mean very much to us. (Those were wonderful
He*d gamble, play pool, play piano I have even known hfm to hop bells in
a dull season when they close the dance halls down."
Those Battles of Music 123
cause the boys knew there would be plenty to drink even if the
pay wasn't nothing.
All we had in a band, as a rule, was bass horn, trombone,
a baritone horn, bass, and
trumpet, an alto horn and maybe
snare drums just seven pieces, but, talking about noise, you
never heard a sixty-piece band make as much noise as we did.
Sometimes I would play trombone, sometimes bass drums or
sometimes the snares, but it really didn't matter; the main part
was the swell time we had the girls giving us the hurrah when
we passed, the boys getting drank and picking up the horses,
and the fights which we enjoyed watching. Sometimes the big
the jobs-fellows like Emanuel
organized bands would get
Perez or Buddy Bolden-and then they would always arrange
to meet and have a battle of music in the streets. Those battles
of music were something that has never been seen outside^of
New Orleans. In fact, we had the kind of fun I don't think I've
seen any other place. There may be as nice a fun, but that
particularkind there never was anywhere else on the face of
the globe. Rain didn't stop nobody. It never got cold enough
to stop nobody. musicians stayed there because we felt it
We
was the town.
I might name some of the jazz musicians I heard
around
that
that period, because these boys taught everybody the style
124 ALABAMA BOUND
has now spread New Orleans music all over the globe. . . .
Papa Tio ? who taught all the best clarinet players in New
Orleans was not a hot man himself. He played
straight classical
clarinet, sometimes at the opera house, but he and his son
Lorenzo Tio taught Omer Simeon (my favorite of all clarinet
players), Sidney Bechet, Pops Humphrey, Albert Nicholas,
George Baquet, and Big-Eye Louis Nelson. These were the
men who taught all the other guys to play clarinet. George
Baquet was the earliest jazz clarinetist. He played with Bill
Johnson's Creole Band, the first jazz band to tour East out of
New Orleans, but now he is just a corn-fed player in a Phila
delphia movie house. Lorenzo Tio came along next. He
taught the New York boys all they knew about jazz, used to
play on a riverboat running from New York to Albany, drank
too much whiskey and
caught a cold and died in New York.
He was a real swell Creole and wore his
high-top shoes till
the day he died.
I
guess the best trombone pkyers were Frankie Dusen,
Eddie Vincent, Kid Ory, and
Roy Palmer. Roy, who was no
doubt the best who ever lived on the hot trombone was a
funny
guy, very ugly and very good natured and never on time. His
main idea was not the trombone, but to be a first-class auto
mechanic, and he was always so greasy on the job that, in later
days, we used to pull the curtain so you could only hear the
trombone and not see him. time wanted to have
Every you
Roy play a job, you would have to find him; you'd look
first
for a sign in a window that said "Music
Taught On All In
struments*' that was
Roy, although he couldn't play anything
in the world but a trombone; and
you would alwayshave to
help him get his old, beat-up trombone out of hock. Even then
he wouldn't play
anything but little short jobs, because he
wanted to get back to his mechanic Work. He was the idol of
George Bruneis, the original trombone with the New Orleans
Rhythm Kings, and the best white trombone I ever heard. Of
course, George was just a kid back in 1908.
Those Battles of Music 125
know back at that period there was Ding Johnson, Joe White,
Hilaire and Deedee Chandler (he was the best and played
drains. There was Bill Johnson,
mostly with Robechaux) on
Ed Garland, Billy Marrero and Pops Foster on bass fiddle. Bud
Scott was, no doubt, the guitarist, although Gigs
Wil
great
Buddy Christian could fake when the
liams and music wasn't
too hard. Then on trumpet there was Buddy Petit, Mutt Carey,
and later on Oliver, but, at the period I'm talking about, the
great man was Freddie Keppard.
I first heard Freddie Keppard in 1907. He wasn't well known
at the time because he wasn't playing in the tenderloin district.
Freddie thought my playing was different and he was crazy
about the Indian Blues I had just wrote. This tune enticed
him to play in my style and in a year he had a big reputation
and the women were his head. He became to be the
swelling
126 ALABAMA BOUND
greatest hot trumpeter in existence. He hit
the highest and
die lowest notes on a trumpet that anybody outside of Gabriel
ever did. He had the best ear, the best tone, and the most
marvelous execution I ever heard and there was no end to his
ideas; he could play one chorus eight or ten different ways.
Freddie was a very fine fellow with plenty of cheap notoriety
always was after women and spent every dime he ever made
on whiskey. In the end he died broke in Chicago.
It was under Freddie Keppard in 1908 that there happened
to come into existence the first Dixieland combination. Freddie
was playing at the time at a big dance hall called the Tuxedo,
located in the tenderloin district on Franklin Street between
Custom House and Iberville. Billy Phillips' joint was close-by
and it created such a scandal when Lefty Louie's gang out of
New York killed him that business fell off in the place for a
while. At that time Freddie had seven pieces violin, bass,
drums, guitar, trombone, clarinet, and trumpet. To save money
he dropped the violin, bass, and guitar and added a piano.
This was the first Dixieland combination: five pieces, composed
of Edward Vincent trombone, Freddie Keppard cornet,
George Baquet D, D.
clarinet, Chandler drums, and Bud
Christian piano.* Then I wish you could have heard those boys
ramble on.
* Whatever his
pet prejudices, Jelly Roll never lost sight o ids main point:
hot jazz was the creation o New Orleans Negroes. In his view **the light,
two-beat jazz" which has come to be called "Dixieland** was the creation of
the Keppard combination. One can understand his insistence on this seemingly
small point when one remembers that the all-white Original Dixieland Jazz
Band of 1917 (by chance the first band to record jazz) is generally reckoned
the originator of "Dixieland/* And in this lies the reason for Jelly Roll's telling
this circumstantial tale of Keppard's all-Negro Tuxedo band, which antedated
the white group by a decade.
The JLion Broke Down the Itoor
. . . worked for all the houses, even Emma
Those years I
Bee-la-bah-bee-bab-a-lee-ba.
never personally seen him. Well, Aaron like to play pool and,
like many others,
thought he could play me for a sucker
because I was a musician. So I played this guy every day for
$2 a game, and nobody tells me it was Aaron Harris, who at
the time had eleven killings to his credit. Finally, I had Aaron
down to his last money and he told me, "If you make this ball
on my money, I'm going to take every bit of money in your
pocket."
I said, "A lot of people go to the graveyard for taking and
IVe got what takes to stop you."
it
I said, *A
hard-hitting .38 Special, that'll stop any living
human.* In a minute youTl have a chance to try to take my
money, because if I can make this ball, in the pocket she
goes."
I raised my cue high in the air, because my taw ball was
closeunder the cushion and I stroked this ball and into the
pocket she went. It was then that Aaron Harris found out he
had been playing a shark all the time. For some reason he de
cided to treat me square, ~Okay, kid,** he said, "You're the
best. Loan me a couple of dollars."
"Now that's the way to talk," I said, "If you want a couple
*
**It was a law in New Orleans a
person could carry a gun if they wanted
to almost. Of course, there was just a ten-dollar fine so it didn't make very
much difference. If they found you didn't have ten dollars, your sentence
would be SO days in jail; but they put you to clean up the market in the
morning and there most prisoners would run away."
132 ALABAMA BOUND
of dollars, 111 be gkd to give It to you. But don't try to take
anything away from me. Nobody ever does."
After he left, Bob Rowe walked up to me. At that time Bob
was one of the big gamblers in New Orleans. He wore a
diamond stud so big that he never could get no kind of tie
that would hold it straight up. When he died some years ago,
he owned strings of race horses. Bob was a good friend of mine
and he said, "Kid, don't play that fellow no more/*
"Why should I eliminate playing him? He brings me money
here every day. Why should I pass up money?"
Bob said, "You know who you're playing?"
"Certainly I know he's my sucker, that's who he is."
7
"Ill tell you his name/ said Bob, "And then you'll know him
better."
"He was a bigman and a real buHy, stood six feet, weighed two hundred
pounds and would draw a knife on a police officer. He was a bad, bad actor-
killed his brother-in-law, and then beat the rap. I heard I don't know it to be
a fact, but I heard that he had some protection from a hoodoo woman. He
must had something a guy could beat a cold-blooded murder rap. Then in
later years he slapped Toodlum he was a banker of the Coteh game. Toodlum
and Boar Hog waited for him at the place he always got oS the street car
on his way home and let him have it."
Jaeh the Bear
. You can understand why I was feeling rather jumpy
. .
sissippi, who had named himself Jack the Bear. I found out
laterhe should have called himself Jack the Lamb. He was a
of a guy and it seems like he must have stolen his
little bit
name from some other big guy. Very often the boys, to be
recognized as somebody, would use alias names like that.
Anyhow Jack the Bear proposed that we hobo.
I said, "No, I can't hobo. I tried that once. When I got off the
train I thought it was slowing down and I fell headforemost
and tore the knees out of the trousers of my sixty-dollar, brand-
new suit. So I don't have to do that no more."
So he said, "111 tell you what well do. You play piano very
well. . . . We can always get plenty to eat if you play."
I said, 'Tfeah, I can always play up to some food and a place
no argument about that."
to sleep, there ain't
The first town we
hit was Yazoo,
Mississippi. Immediately I
started playing piano and I made the
landlady of the house, so
that meant food for Jack and I. Of course Yazoo is one of
those bitty towns with a river running right through it
little
pin,he would walk up to him and cover the pin with his hands
and say, "I got you covered now. If you can't tell me the secret
oath of the fiftieth degree of this order, I will have to remove
your pin. You are really violating the lodge rules, and I will
have to have some money not to condemn you. ." . .
pigeons around and the blue suit I had on, it was getting
greasy then because it wasn't pressed up so much and, by
wearing the same suit all the time, I guess it had a bad odor.
So a fellow, one of these stool pigeons, marked chalk on my
back That was to designate to the policemens that I was a
stranger in town and a shark.
put more of them in jail than anybody else, because they don't
want to work."
I said, "Did you
say leave town?"
He said, "Yes ."
"Well, that will be my next move, because I don't
I said,
intend to do anything but
play music."
There was a boat leaving for Memphis
very shortly. I be
lieve the boat's name was the Natchez and it \vas no doubt
the best boat on the river. Man,
they had roustabouts on that
boat they beat with whips to make them move
up faster. They
bring down the whip and those boys would holler, "Yes, Cap'n-
boss, we comin* up with it** Those guys believed it was still
in slavery times.
We got into Memphis, all right, which Jack was supposed
to know all about. He was going to take me around and intro
duce me
to the different personnels of Memphis. But the
big,
lying dog I found out he hadn't ever been to Memphis before.
So, anyhow, after I was in Memphis, safe and sound, on the
shores of Memphis, Tennessee, I decided to go to this Beale
Street I had heard a lot of talk about. I first
inquired was
there any piano players in the city and they told me that
absolutely the best in the whole state of Tennessee was there.
I asked them had they heard about Tony Jackson, Alfred
Carroll, Albert Wilson, or Winding Boy, and they said they
had never heard of them guys. "Them guys wouldn't be able
to play with this fellow, Benny Frenchy, the best in the whole
state." Well, that land of frightened me and I wouldn't even
try
to touch a piano until I could hear Benny Frenchy.
This guy, Benny Frenchy, was playing in a place on Beale
Street, near Fourth. Nothing went into that place but pimps,
robbers, gamblers, and whores (it's really a shame to think of
some of those environments I drifted into) which it was run
play it"
Well, there was this piano right in the Monarch. Benny
Frenchy was playing it All those lowclass whores were doing
that dance. I was talking to the fellow who was running the
dice game on the daytime watch* I didn't even know who I
was talking to, only that he was the gentleman that ran the
games. I said to him it was Bad Sam, only I didn't know
who
it was I said,
you mind kttin him get down there to show what he can do?"
Jack the Sear 189
the enterprise they had in mind, which was to take the dice
them, but I did. They was my friends and they was so down on
their luck that they was taking their baths by going down to
father Mississippi and washing their feet occasionally. Well, I
staked them to a roll and warned them not to try their
loaded dice during Bad Sam's watch at the dice table; told
them they'd better go while Frazier Davis was on duty. Bad
Sam had an eye like an eagle, and, if he caught them, they
would just die on the spot. So they heeded my warning, walked
into the Monarch past all those iron bars and those guys with
artists, and they had all the nerve in the world. Just about
142
Can't Remember AM Those Towns 143
finally asked him who was he? He said he was Sweet Papa
Cream Puff, right out of the bakery
shop. That seemed to
produce a great big laugh and I was standing there, mugging,
and the thought came to me that I better
say something about
a bakery shop, so I said to him that he didn't know who he
was talking to. He wanted to get acquainted, and I told him I
was Sweet Papa Jelly Roll * with stove
pipes in my hips and
all the women in town
just dying to turn my damper down!
From then on that name stuck to me and was the cause
kter of one of my greatest numbers to be called the
Jetty Roll
Blues.
La those days I had the bad habit, which I never broke
entirely, of being a big spender when I had money. Well, the
show stranded me, broke, in Hot Springs, Arkansas. So when
Sandy proposed that we accept an offer and go to the Pastime
Theatre in Houston, I decided that since I was a
straight man,
straight man on earth.
I might as well be the best
We took Texas that year Dallas, Denison, Cuero, Yokum,
Brownsville (where I saw a bullfight), San Antonio, and more
towns I can't remember. Every place I looked
up the piano
players, and they were all terrible. In fact the
only piano
player in Texas I remember was George W. Smith, who gave
up the piano when he heard me and moved to California to
make his living as a
trumpet player,**
I tried to
organize a stock theatre in Houston, but relatives
ruined it. So I took the money I had left and
bought a tailor
shop and went after the tenderloin trade, since I was a part-
time piano player in a couple of the best houses.
I was sitting in my tailor shop one day with a great big cigar
*JeHy roll-a folk of sexual reference which antedates Morton's
simile
rechristening. See Time 12,
Appendix I.
**
"George Smith is frank to admit that Morton carved everybody,, including
himself. The thing that stuck in Smith's mind was the
way Jelly played JeUy
Roll Blues and that specialty, The Lion Roared and Broke Down the Door."
-Downbeat, April, 1938.
146 ALABAMA BOUND
in my mouth and my feet on the deskthosedays I thought in
order to be a big businessman you had to have a big desk
when Anna Mae Fritz (later in the movies) came in with my
girl friend, Rosie.
Anna Mae and I had an argument and I
slapped Rosie in the mouth and said I would murder her if she
didn't do like I told her. Later that day Detective Peyton came
into my place and threatened me. I pulled the big gun I kept
in my drawer and told him not to come any closer to me, "1
heard you say the Chief of Police can get you out of any
out of where Tm going
7'
composer and I knew them all by heart and played them right
off. They brought me James Scott's tunes and Louis Chauvin's
and I knew them all. Then Audie Mathews (the best reader
in the whole bunch) brought me his Pastimes and I played it.
So he decided to find out whether I could really read and play
piano and he brought me different light operas like Humor-
esque, the Overture -from Martha, the Miserery from III Trava-
dore and, of course, I knowed them all.
Finally they brought me the Poet and the Peasant. It seems
like in St. Louis, if you was able to play this piece correctly,
Jelly Rott Blues
you was really considered the tops. The man that brought it
was the best musician in town and he hadn't been able to
master this piece. Well, I had
played this thing in recitals for
years, but I started looking at it like I hadn't ever seen it be
fore. Then I started in. I got to a
very fast passage where I also
had to turn the page over. I couldn't turn the
page, due to the
fact I had to
manipulate this passage so fast. I went right on.
Audie Mathews grabbed the tune from in front of me and
be messing with this
said, "Hell, don't
guy. This guy is a shark!"
I told them, "Boys, I been kidding you all along. I knew all
"
these tunes anyhow. Then I swung the Miserery
Just listen
and combined it with the Anvil Chorus*
You find, though, that people act
very savage in this world.
From then on it was George Keynolds* object to
try to crush
me. He couldn*t do this, but he made so
things unpleasant
that I finally took a
job out in the German section of town. The
manager wanted a band, so I got some men together, although
there wasn't many to
pick from clarinet, trumpet, mandolin,
drums, and myself. These were not hot men, but they were
Negroes and they could read. They didn't play to suit me, but
I told them if
they played what I put down on paper, they
would be playing exactly as I wanted. Then I arranged all the
popular tunes of that time I even made a jazz arrangement of
Schnitzelbanka&d we made some pretty fair Jazz for St. Louis
in 1912.
St. Louis had been a great town for ragtime for years be
cause Stark and Company specialized in publishing Negro
music. Among the composers the Starks published were: Scott
Joplin (the greatest ragtime writer who ever lived and com
poser of Maple Leaf Rag), Tom Turpin, Louis Chauvin, Audie
Mathews, and James Scott.** But St. Louis wasn't like New
* Time
5, Appendix II.
***
For the record, Jelly Roll imitated the piano style of some of these great
old-timers. These remarkable imitations, tossed off casually twenty-five years
later, prove his phenomenal musical memory, for they faithfully mimic the
style of these long-dead pianists, and can be checked with piano rolls of the
period.
150 ALABAMA BOUND
Orleans; it was
prejudiced. I moved on to Kansas City and
found itwas like St. Louis, except it did not have one decent
pianist and didn't want any. That was why I went on to
Chicago. In Chicago at that time you could go anywhere you
wanted regardless of creed Chicago came to be
or color. So
one of the earliest places that jazz arrived, because of nice
treatment and we folks from New Orleans were used to nice
treatment.
The first siga was put out Thursday, On Sunday there was
two policemen holding the crowd back. The entertainers were
highclass, and the band, the second Dixieland combination in.
the country, was in my name Jelly Roll Morton and His In*
money for the stake. Him and I had been friends for years, so
he came to me. * . TE can beat this
*
guy."
"He's the champion of the world,** I said, "He's
got to be
good to be the champion.**
"Jelly, I can beat him, if you'll let me have fifty."
Well, I lent him the fifty and, when that game was nearly
over, I thought I wouldn't see it again. Blankenship was almost
out and he had left the Kid
very hard against the cushion. The
Kid needed eighteen balls and the shot was impossible, but
the Kid made it to beat the world's After that the
champion.
Kid South America. He went to Buenos Aires to beat
left for
all the
pool players in South America, which he did. I even
remember his address Sala Hotel, B. A.
By that time I was thinking of leaving Chicago a different
class of
people were invading the city at the time. So when a
very prominent figure around town by the name of Lovey Joe
Woodson came to me and told me they had a job for me in
Los Angeles, I didn't even wait to ask him the salary, I was so
anxious to get away.
I had a lotta clothes those
days, which I packed and shipped.
It happened to be summertime and the dust was terrible in
that tourist car; I was almost as dusty as a boll weevil when I
159
180 I TOOK CALIFORNIA
arrived in Los Angeles. It was a funny situation. They had a
brass band to meet me at the station, but, when I got off
covered inall that dust, the newcomers that didn't know me
asked was that the hot Jelly Roll people had talked so much
about? 'The first thing this guy needs is go to the cleaners.
He's got a dirty suit of clothes on.**
Well, that suit was terribly dirty, but, when I left Chicago,
It was swell, a brand new suit.
Anyway, I thought my trunks
would be there that night when I had to start work; but they
were delayed three or four days and I had to wear that dusty
suit on the job. People thought it was strange that I had come
to L.A. with only one suit, and so I was under very, very
tough criticism from the beginning* Of course, after my trunks
got there, I turned the town out. They thought I was one of
fiie movie stars, I had so many clothes.
On myopening night they had to have the police depart
ment to stop the crowd, because I had been pretty well adver
tised. Then the movie-star trade
began, and we didn't have
anything but movie stars at the Cadillac Cafe long as I stayed
*
there until my argument with Bright Red.
Bright Red, I'd known since she was a kid. She was born and
raised in Chicago, where she had learned the art of the
average entertainer that is, when she got a big bill as a tip,
to switch it and put a small bill in its place. Those days I never
looked at the keys, I always watched the entertainers. For
every move they'd make, I had them, whether they were sing-
ing or whether they were stealing. So, when Bright Red went
south in her stocking with a ten dollar bill I demanded from
the boss that she come up out of her stocking. The boss says,
"111
pay the ten dollars."
*Bill Johnson played with Jelly Rofl during this period Now manager,
counterman, dishwasher, and cashier of a cafe at the comer of Forty-fifth and
Central in L.A., he said in his dry and humorous way . .
1
"You could go by a house where Jelly Roll would be playing and you'd know
it was him because nobody did ana nobody does
pky just like hrrry He wasn't
afraid to admit it, either . . . 'Nobody playing piano I can't cut/ he used to
say. The thing was he really could do what he said. He was the best, the
very best."
The CadSl&c in Bloom 161
I said, "Don't pay it. I want to make her come up with it.
5*
You will only encourage her to steal further.
Bright Red didn't like the idea that I had caught her stealing
and she decided to try a little undercover work. She sent to
New York for the pianist, Hageman. One day, when I walked
into the Cadillac to get meals, I saw somebody at the
my
piano and I say, "Is that Hageman?" He say, "Who's talking?"
I say, "Jelly Roll." "Gee, I'm glad to see' you." (Fd always
thrown a lotta work his way, so naturally he's glad see me.)
'What you doing here?" I say, "I'm gonna work here." "You
mean at the Cadillac? That's strange. They didn't tell me any
thing about iL I'm working here.**
I asked the boss what kind of tricks he was pulling and he
was hard to get along with, not realizing that I was right
said I
and Bright Red was wrong "So I sent and got somebody as
w
good as you. I told him, okay, I would close his joint in two
weeks.
Itmight not have been two weeks, but it wasn't more than
two and a half.
There was a road house out in a little place called Watts,
about nine or ten miles from Los Angeles. The colored owner,
George Brown, wasn't doing any good, so, when I offered to
come out there, he immediately accepted. I told him I didn't
want to open until he notified Hollywood that I'd be working
there. We had invitations printed and, my opening night, all
out, myself. I had a little dance hall, but because you had to
close a dance hall at twelve o'clock, I went partners with Pops
The Cadillac in Bloom
*7 built up Leek's Lake out in Watts. Made a pile of money, too. They call
it Wayside Park today, but it's still Leek's Lake to me."
164 I TOOK CALIFORNIA
used to bring their food on the job, just like they was used
to doing in die lowdown honkey-tonks along Perdido Street.
Here come
they'd to this Wayside Park with a
every night
bucket of red beans and rice and cook it on the job. ( Man, I
wish I had some of that stuff right now. The best food in the
world! )
So anyhow, Dink and me got to kidding the boys about this,
because, as a matter of fact, this cooking on the job made us
look kind of foolish. And Buddy and Frankie blew up, threat
ened to kill us. Next day, they left town, without notice, and
went back to New Orleans. Which shows you never fool with
a New Orleans musician, as he is noted for his hot temper.
Wayside Park did so well and I made so much money that
I came into possession of a gambling club, next door to Anita's
hotel. I put Zack Williams in there to run it for me. Zack was
the first fellow to play Tarzan in the movies. He was a big,
black fellow, must have weighed three hundred pounds and
he was very expensive help. He used to demand a dollar and
a quarter steak every morning and my wife used to cook them
for him. But money was no object. In fact I used to keep the
top tray of my trunk full of bales of bills ones, twos, fives and
tens in bales. Once I told a fellow I had a trunk of money and
just opened the trunk to the top tray and he nearly passed
ut he thought the whole trunk was full.
Anita and I were getting along swell. She had three or four
for coats and I had plenty clothes, plenty diamonds. It's a day
Fd bring back. I never realized how happy I was until
like to
after I left her. There wasn't nothing under the sun that I
wanted during that time that I didn't get, but two things. One
was a yacht and the other was a cow. After I looked up the
price for yachts, I said I couldn't handle one; the upkeep was
too tremendous. But, outside of that,
everything was swell.*
thing and
I said she respected me as her husband, as few
women today respect their husbands. Aside from that, Anita
was a very beautiful woman and she dressed very handsomely
with plenty diamonds to elaborate the condition. I couldn't
wish for a finer woman than Anita. In fact, I don't believe
there was ever one born finer than Anita and I know IVe
missed an awful lot by leaving her. It was all a mistake, but
nevertheless happened, as 111 tell you.
it
America me to register,
went into the war and they wanted
even offered to make me an officer, but I said I wouldn't be
no better off as a dead officer than as a dead private. I tried
to stay out of it, like most musicians, and
played lots of bene
fitsand they didn't draft me, until just before the Armistice.
Business was booming, so much so, till George Brown, wh
was now a big politician came around and said, "If you'll pat
up $600 and your partner $600, 111 kick in the same amount
and we'll control this campaiga and run this town to suit our
selves.'* I told hf-m that I wasn't so interested in running the
town as in making some money, and that caused him to deepen
in hisanger toward me.
One day I got a telegram where I had gone on
in Frisco,
me. One morning I found her and her mother with their bags
packed.
"What's the matter?"
*Tm going to Arizona, IVe bought a restaurant out there,
You want tocome along?"
I didn't want to lose Anita and
I went with her. But that
restaurant business didn't last her
long. She got fooling around
with some phoney gold stock and lost
everything she had made
and in a few months we moved to Frisco, where we opened
The Jupiter.
I ran the entertainmentwith a ten-piece hand and ten enter
tainers and Anita handled the bar with ten waitresses and we
did a great business. It was too good. Soon the
manager of the
place across the street had us in trouble with the police. He had
fixed so we couldn't
it
get hold of a license for dancing. I fooled
around and spent a lot of money. Then I wrote a letter to the
police department and showed them my open mind. In a
couple of days Anita and I followed that letter to head
quarters.
They kept us waiting for a couple of hours and by then
our Creole was up. They didn't know Anita had a pistol in her
pocketbook when they called us in. The police chief slapped
tibe letter down, on the table "Do
you know this hand?"
"Yes, it's mine/* Anita said.
"Who dictated it?"
"Me," I said.
"You haven't the intelligence to write a letter like this."
"Say, I was going to school before you left Ireland," I told
him and he began to rave. He touched a button under his
desk and you. never saw so many six footers in your life, pop
ping in through all the doors. I began to get scared, but still
170
Diamonds Pinned to My Underwear 171
man to go. Don't miss that beat. All right, boys, let*s go/*
Tlie drummer threatened to leave, so I had to demote
Horace. He took the whole thing as a joke, "If Fm going to be
a leader. 111 be a leading son-of-a-gun!" he told me.
Horace had a lot of good offers and pretty soon he quit us.
This time I had a hell of a time getting his replacement across
the Canadian line. The opposition came from the Canadian
Musicians Union. I realized I had to break down these bar
riers, so I called up Weber, who was president of the union,
and threatened to have all the Canadian musicians thrown out
of the U.S. if he didn't let me alone. He became very nice after
our conversation. Things went well until summer, when
business slacked and I began gambling again.
One night through my boss, Patty, I got hooked up in a
game with some of the biggest gamblers in the country-
Nigger Nate, Chinese Smoke, Guy Harte, Russell Walton, and
Blackie Williams. The smallest bet on the table was $100. I
lost $2000 before I knew what happened. They broke me and
I was sitting there wondering what to do when Bricktop came
in. I asked for a loan and
Bricktop said, "All IVe got is $10
and I wouldn't loan it to my mother ."
Finally Patty gave me $5 and let me ride on his money.
He
hit eighteen straight licks and I stayed with him till I had my
$2000 again, when I began to bet for myself. At the end of
the game I had $11,000. A little guy named Jimmy had cleaned
everybody else completely out and that meant he had to pack
his winnings off in a suitcase; those guys carried their money
in bales.
Anita, who had been running a rooming-house, was feeling
restless, so we sold out, put all our cash into diamonds and
was weB again and I was so mad I raved and hollered and
left the house.
. .Fooled around and organized a band and we played
.
okay until I heard their white band was paid double what
my boys were getting. Then I
pulled my band out of that joint
with no notice!
My Bob Rowe put me onto the horses. Before
old friend,
I knew it, I owned one, a nag named Red Cloud. The owner
told me, "Red Cloud is the fastest racehorse in the world. You
can blindfold him and he can outrun anything on the tracks,
by feeling his way along.** The truth was that horse couldn't
outrun me; he wasn't even a good mule and the officials
wouldn't permit him on the track because they claimed I
wasn't feeding him. So I had to forget old Red Cloud and the
former owners had to forget the $400 they wanted me to pay.
The horses had taken me to a little place called Tia Juana on
the borders of Mexico, where I got a job in a place called the
Kansas City Bar. Tips ran as high as forty and fifty dollars a
night. An old friend, a Negro millionaire
out of Oklahoma,
owned tibte place and I taken a fancy to him I wrote a tune
and named it after his bar The Kansas City Stamps.
There was a very pretty little waitress at the Kansas City
Bar and I dedicated a new composition to her. This was The
consisting of several sections, each one matching
Pearls., the
other and contributing to the total effect of a beautiful peaii
necklace. There are very, very few pianists, if any, that cam
play The Pearls, it being the most difficult piece of fazz piano
ever written, except for my Fingerbuster.
But this good thing had an end. The owner was
to come to
a very unfortunate gentleman, even though he did have a
million dollars. It seems that he had murdered his partner
before he left Oklahoma and so the authorities caught up with
him and, with all his millions, he had to go to jail for twenty
years.
174 I TOOK CALIFORNIA
The tracks weretreating me very dirty these days and, some
how, my luck in California was running out, due mostly to
the moves of my old enemy, George Brown. Some woman in
Pasadena was arrested for stealing her employer's furniture
and, when the police asked her who was her boy friend, she
named me. Down at the jail, when I actually met the woman,
she admitted she had never seen me. One of the police told
me that it was George had helped to frame me.
that
One afternoon while I was playing pool, a policeman named
Bobo stuck a gun in my side and told me I was under arrest.
I would find out what for in That was on a Monday I
jail.
remember it well, because the charge was murder. The day
before an old groceryman had been killed on Fourteenth and
Central, and the eyewitness, a maid, described somebodv who
looked exactly like me. This time I had no alibi, but, for
tunately, when the maid saw me, she said I was not the man.
Again I discovered that it was George Brown, the half-hand
bigshot, who was responsible for naming me. I walked into his
place that evening with my hand on my gun. I told George
off and I was about to draw, when Bill (
Bojangles ) Robinson
walked in, laid his hand on my arm and said very quietly, "J
boy, what's the matter with you? You must be going crazy.*
Bill led me out the door and took me home to Anita. A
money for them both. Kid North was used to money and he
was a swell dresser, always w^ore his clothes very tight across
the chest and his word was "I wouldn't give a doflar and a
half for a diamond as big as anybody's hat.** He was just a
Since the Kid knew that I was a writer and we had been
friends for quite a while, he told me I could have that tune.
As you can see, a part of it was taken for the basis of Someday,
Sweetheart. Of course, my name
doesn't appear on that song,
but I'm not jealous. I
hope the boys write ten million other
ones like it, but, since this story is for The Archives where
you're supposed to give the facts, the truth may as well come
out. The song was practically wrote at the time Reb and I
were working together in a cabaret in Oakland, but they left
my name off it.
I'm not sore, butI did get hot about how they handled
Wolverine Blues, which they misnamed because it is not a
176 I TOOK CALIFORNIA
blues. I first wrote the Wolverines in Detroit in the early
days.* It was just one of those things that float around in my
head and one day, when I sit down at the piano, it comes out
of my fingers. The first strain was for trumpet (the basis of
one of these new tunes of today, Flat Foot Floogie), then the
trombone strain, then I made a harmony strain for the trio,
then I found that a clarinet strain would be very effective, and
in the last strain I put all the instruments in the band together
and made the piano sound as much like a band as possible.
The tune got to be famous around Chicago and Melrose "wrote
and offered a $300O advance for it. Somehow the Spikes
brothers got the letter and jumped up and wrote some words
and published my song as written by Spikes-Morton-Spikes.
Right there we had an argument, because they just wanted
to
1906. Of course 'there are two sides of this story; Reb Spikes recalls Jelly's
temperament with a chuckle, "He was the most jealous man ever lived. That's
when he was funny, when he'd get jealous. He'd hear a piece and say,
They're stealing that from me. That's mine' or "That guy's trying to play
like
me.* Jelly was so jealous he once sued ASCAP. Everybody laughed at him.
That was the only time he didn't listen to us. Imagine that suing ASCAP!
Got to think of the other side of it, too. In a way Jelly was right. Colored man
can't get a break in this music game. White guys got it all sewed up. Closed
corporatioW
Marna \ita
As a composer of melodies, Jelly Roll Morton always re
mained a Creole, his right hand stroking the treble clef with
the intense feeling of a guitarist,
evoking bright arpeggios and
langorous bursts of song. One of the tenderest of his Creole
tunes he called Mama Ntta; its theme is
extremely sensual,
yet gentle, reverent, and sad.
Anita Gonzalez, for whom he named the work, was a New
Orleans Creole, older than Jelly, always well-to-do and, ac
cording to rumor, the person who paid for the diamond in his
front tooth. Jelly Roll said, "Anita was the only woman I ever
loved." The years have deprived her story of tenderness, and
there emerges clearly the man for whom love was a threat and
for whom women, especially those he loved, were almost
enemies, . . .
Jelly could stop me, I went up and started singing and dano
ing. Right there Jelly <juit playing and, because he was the
leader, the rest of the band stopped playing, too, but I kept
straight on with my soiag. "When I finished, there was stacks of
money on the floor. Jelly was furious. He dragged me outside
and made me swear never to sing or dance again, but don't
think he hit me. Jelly was a perfect gentleman.
You married? I wonder if you can say the same thing, be
cause there's very few that can.
Well, we had a misunderstanding and he left for Chicago
in 1922. He told me, "Baby, I don't think I can live away from
you. I'd want to die first.~ He said he would send for me and
I waited. Then he wrote to me that he had a thousand dollars
amd when he got two, he'd send for me. Then he got sick. He
never did send. He went and took up with another woman.
But I was the only woman he ever loved.
CentraL Gime Me Doctor Jazz
Five years was a long time in die young life of New
Orleans jazz. Between 1917 and 1922, while Jelly Roll played
around with, "the higher-ups" of the West Coast, he lost touch
with the ripening company of New Orleans hot musicians, a
subtle human contact broken and never quite renewed. Not
that his music lagged behind theirs as a composer, he was
ing to keep track of King Joe and King Louis, who played
different trumpet choruses every night just to baffle them.
Eddie Cantor sat there, banjo-eyed -near neighbor to Al Jol-
son who was picking up what he could. Remember Jolson later
made a million-dollar success out of the Jazz Singer, a
picture
without a note of jazz in eight reels? Paul Whiteman, of the
king-size orchestra, held court there. In a couple of years he
would crown himself King of Jazz by adding a of bored couple
hot men to his elephantine band.
The Victor and Columbia Gramophone Companies had not
yet sent official scouts (they were much too dignified to notice
jazz in the early 1920's) but their outriders, the scouts of the
smaller companies, hovered in the . . Ink Williams,
offing
then of Paramount, later to own a
catalogue of thousands of
tunes, one of which he composed. The Melrose brothers, in
. . .
New Orleans style that was the way to cash in and lead the
pack.
Jelly's grin grew wider as he stood at the entrance of the
Hetto, Central Give Me Doctor Jazz 185
"Naturally, Mr. Melrose was very, very glad to see me, I sat
down and started plugging Wolverine. Soon we had musicians
hanging around and before long the crowds were stopping
traffic"
. . ,
Jelly Roll made his entrance into the Melrose establish
ment still remembered it
so dramatic that Lester Melrose
"A fellow walked into our store
vividly after twenty-five years.
with a big red bandana around his neck and a ten gallon cow
boy hat on his head and hoflored, 'Listen, everybody, I'm Jelly
Roll Morton from New Orleans, the originator of jazz!' He
talked for an hour without stopping about how good he was
and then he sat down at the piano and proved he was every bit
as good as he claimed and better. That was when Jelly Roll got
his start."
Jelly Roll, on the other hand, felt this moment had "made"
the Melrose Brothers.
"The Melrose boys had been trying to get into the music
business for some time," said Jelly. "They had worked hard
with Sugar Babe., but it had not been a success. With Wolve
rine Blues they made enough to get them started. So we were
in business together for some years ... I even had to teach
Melrose how to play because he couldn't do much more than
plunk away in F sharp. . . .**
It was
Jelly's
idea that one should be an accomplished
musician or at least a person of some talent to succeed in the
music business. It continued to be his feeling that if you
created the music, you should also reap the profits. No matter
how often or how stubbornly life showed that these were
188 INTERLUDE THREE
Walter, who took after his mother and liked to play piano,
found his metier when he rented a garage-front across from the
Tivoli Movie Palace and started a little music store, calling
Lester in to help. Jesse Crawford used to tip the boys off about
the tunes he planned to feature on his organ program; thus they
stocked up and sold what they stocked. One day Ted Lewis
told them about the new Negro music and they began hanging
around the South Side, looking for their opportunity. They
ctefrrt to have been the first to
suggest King Oliver's band and
the New Orleans Rhythm Kings to the Gennett Record Com
pany. The records sold like crazy," which caused the Melrose
boys to become very, very interested in jazz. It was at this mo
ment that Morton galloped into their store.
Those Melrose brothers just had a little old dirty shop
until Jelly came along. His tunes made them millions,** one
oldtime Chicago musician observed. "After Melrose began
publishing those numbers for Jelly Roll and other colored
"
they? Nowhere.
Certainly time and tax assessments arg^ that Lester is right.
Melrose boys have comfortable homes and fat bank ao
Hello, Central, Gfce Me Doctor Josz 187
hot music in their own fashion, they sold the tunes and talent
of the black ghettos to the record companies, linking the folk-
thing, he didn't do that. All Jelly did was to come along and
write additional numbers in the style that goes back to Scott
Joplin in the '90s. Scott Joplin was his God; and, really, things
like Maple Leaf Rag and Grace and
Beauty were his models.
Jelly always worked with two twelve-bar strains, modulating
into trio, just like Joplin. . ? .
plausible. Jelly Roll's music, like all early jazz, reflects the in-
iuence of Scott Joplin; but it is astonishing that Melrose, after
all his
experience with hot music, would deny the important
differences.
visit ... I remember one thing he told me, There's only two
of you the family down home. Stick
left in Remem
together.
ber, you must take the bitters with the sweet/ "
If any man ever lived who knew how to produce the sweet
out of die bitters, it was Jelly Roll if orton. During these lonely
years in Chicago when he was trying to scrape together "that
second thousand" so that he could send for Anita, he set down
in notes the flower of his
compositions, realizing at last the
musical plans that had taken form in his mind in
Storyville,
and Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers produced the
finest recordings of New Orleans music ever made. There may
be more deeply emotional and moving jazz records than Black
Bottom Stomp, Doctor Jazz, Stdeuxdk Blues, Granpas Spetts,
Shreveport, Turtle Twist, but none more subtly designed and
brilliantly executed, none with such a rich rhythmic and har
monic texture, none touched "with such true fire. Here Jelly
Roll, an equally remarkable composer, orchestral leader and
noid man measured up. The men who played with him on
those early Victor recording sessions have never forgotten.
Omer Simeon, born in Chicago of New Orleans Creole
194 INTERLUDE THREE
parents, instructed on the clarinet by old Lorenzo Tio, himself,
nemembers . . .
about his music and if the musicians couldn't play real New
Orleans, he'd get somebody else."
It is a
very rare experience to coine close to the creative
itself. The next few
process paragraphs bring up very close. In
them Simeon and St. Cyr describe the technique by means of
which Jelly produced the best-recorded performances in jazz.
'Til tell you how he was in
rehearsing a band." Simeon went
on, "He was exact with us. Very Jolly, very full of life all the
time, but serious. We
used to spend maybe three hours re
hearsing four sides and in that time he'd give us the effects he
wanted, like the background behind a solo he would run that
over on the piano with one finger and the guys would get
together and harmonize ... it.
lib. We
"The solos they were ad played according to how
we felt. Of course, Jelly had his ideas and sometimes we*d
listen to them and sometimes,
together with our own, we'd
make something better. For me, I'd do whatever he wanted.
In other words I just cooperated with him, where a lot of the
fellows wouldn't It was my first
big break.**
Giving cues to a roomful of New Orleans jazzmen was just
about as risky and sometimes as useless as
telling so many
fedttfighters how to execute their faenas. But in Chicago, at
Hello, Central, Give Me Doctor Juss 196
Among them was Johnny St. Cyr, the great New Orleans
string man who many Chicago sessions on Bre. Johnny felt
set
more independent than Simeon, but his respect for Jelly Roll
was no less. Having played with both King Oliver and Morton,
Johnny knew which man was more capable.
"Now Jelly was a very, very agreeable man to cut a record
with and IH tell you why. . He'd never give you any of
. .
good, he'd say Wait a minute, that don't sound so good, sec
ifyou can't make something else/
"You'd try something else and get something that sounded
good to him- Or, if you couldn't get the idea right then, why
he'd give the break to someone else.
"
"You try it on the clarinet/ or 'You try it on the trumpet/
^Reason his records are so full of tricks and changes is the
liberty he gave his men. Sometimes
we ask him we get am
idea, see and we ask him to let us play a certain break, and he
was always open for suggestions. . . /"
Cyr's and Simeon's stories that Jelly knew how to gentle his
married."
big were your diamonds, how thick was your roll, how did the
head-waiter treat you? If there were other questions, who
shouldknow the answers better than the man leading the jazz
band. Night after night, the faces turned toward him, the
Hello, Central, Gi&e Me Doctor Jazz 197
white possessive faces of the girls, the prematurely gin-ripened
and apoplectic faces of college boys; the faces followed him cm
the bandstand while he called for the answer , , .
on 10 its * . .
1 I at the in Chicago,
As as he saw me he he was going to
me, but It did.
*"You 1 you out/' he said. Tve conversed
quite a bit, you've had experi-
in the but you're different, you're very
Where are you from, anyway?"
7
Tin New Orleans/ 1 told him.
New Orleans? Where did you live?"
*On Street,"
**Why, we're from the same parish. Did you go to' school
there?"
1 told about the nunnery and I told him who my father
**Why yeah, I heard of Dr. Bertrand. Now I see how
you're different. I see why I can't make any headway with
upstate.
Now this Billy, he began to marry him, and I
insist that I
as he was much older than him IthatIwasn't no part of
told
our agreement. He could take all the money and pay me my
salary, but what chance in life would I have with a man so
much older? I was eighteen at the time.
He began to resent any small attention anybody would pay
roe. Finally, in Oklahoma City, I went to the head chief of the
Shawnees and asked for protection. After the chief had talked
to Billy and saw Billy wouldn't talk sense, he took me out to
the reservation arid hid me for a couple of months till the
whole thing blew over.
THE BITTERS WITH THE SWEET
I must admit
Billy had been good to me. He used to pay a
hundred and fifty for a costume anytime I wanted a new one,
and he put three diamonds in my teeth, like the one half-carat
Jelly always wore. That was a common thing with theatrical
people at the time. Billy had three himself. Baby Cox had one.
Butterbeans and Susie had them. Just something of the theatri
cal business.
Well, I did my tap numbers in a lot of shows after that
The Blackbirds" and then, with Florence Mills "From Dixie to
Broadway." "Shuffle Along," I was in that Worked in the 7-11
Club. Some summers I toured the South with my own planta
tion show, trained my own acts, and helped manage the show.
I did well in the theatrical business, and when Jelly met me,
I had a job in the best club in Chicago.
That evening he asked me over to his table after my number
of course, I was very, very much impressed, although I
thought he was just kidding me along. He was very pretty and
he had on the best clothes you ever saw. When he sat down,
he took out three or four thousand dollars and laid it on the
table. I said,"Somebody will stick you up." He just laughed at
me, "Not with this big .45 I have under my coat. Just let
anyone touch it," he said, "Let um touch it, I'm not afraid."
So Jelly wanted to take me out for a drive after work and I
said, "The only place for me is to go home and get a shower
and a rubdown in alcohol and go to bed."
"Aw naw, 111 take you out in my big Lincoln car and let the
cool air blow on you," he said.
I told him, "No, I still have the
teaching of my mother. A
man not going to give me anything unless he's
is
looking for
something in return. That's a known fact. When I'm on the
floor entertaining and you
give me money, that's a different
thing; but, when you say you're going to put something in my
stocking, I know you're looking for something in return."
He told me he didn't like for me to be out there dancing in
that short costume of mine in front of all those
guys. I told
him that was my profession, so what did it matter to him.
Mabel 205
"Hello?"
"Hello, who's this?** I said. I had already taken my shower
and was about to go to bed and I had left strict orders no one
was to call. I guess he paid the bellhop, maybe twenty dollars-
money didn't mean anything to him and a bellhop will do
the hotel down,
anything for twenty dollars, practically burn
"Don't remember," he said, "This is one of your many
you
admirers. You had an appointment for me to come up tonight.'*
"You don't have any appointment with me. I think you have
the wrong number. What's your name?"
at the table with
"Jimmy. Don't you remember I was sitting
you tonight"
meyou, Jimmy. I don't know you
"Well, let tell and I'm
to bed." And I banged
very tired and very sleepy and I'm going
the phone.
Then it rang again and this was five o'clock in the morning.
I told him, Tin going to get in touch with the house detective
and I'm going to find out who's allowing you to call me at this
hour of the morning."
I could hear him laughing when he hung up. He told me
later on he was to test me, every way. If he could
just trying
have just slipped fifty-dollar bill in my stocking, he said, we
a
but then he
might have had one night of supreme pleasure,
would have been gone with the wind.
But sittingthere in the dressing room after the show, I used
to feel very, very excited. He was very handsome. And the
real fact is I was getting tired of night-club life. And I used
to ask myself, "I wonder if he really means what he says. He's
206 THE BITTERS WITH THE SWEET
probably fust kidding me along like all the entertainers he
has met. . .**
going to take
* 7
you out of theatrical business and you're going to
stay out.
Red Bat Pepper
That was in November, 1928, at the sign of Justice
McGuire on the highway. Just me and the judge and Jelly
Roll. Afterwards we drove to Kansas City and took in the night
spots and different things and I saw that everybody knew him
there ia K.CL We stayed there a month (Benny Moten was
than
I love myself better anybody else in the world and I ain't
never gonna have an accident when I'm driving the car?*' Of
course, he never did have an accident; and if a cop stopped
Tim? be coeld smooth-talk his way right out of it just like they
were relatives,
Ferd did all his own bookings by letter or in person. Fifteen-
hundred and sixteen-hundred dollars was about an average
nightfs pay or the band and lots of time they would stay a
whole week ooae place. He had his records; he showed them
where lie was Number One hot band with Victor. And when
they heard that band, they wanted him back. He had Barney
Bigard, Albert Nicholas, Red Allen, Wellman Braud,
and other
great men long before Ellington and those other
bands was
ever heard of. They broke all records in Pennsylvania, Indiana^
208 THE BITTERS WITH THE SWEET
Ohio, the interior of Canada, and all up through the New
such as Narragansett
England States, playing the best places
Pier. In the time I was with him he never went South, I don't
know why.
The band wore black tuxedos, but Jelly Roll wore a wine-
all
red jacket and tie to match, white pants and white shoes. He
directed the band himself, used to cut a lot of capers, then
sit downat that piano with that great big smile of his, and,
I'm telling you, he was a sensation. He never carried a singer
with his band. He took the solos on and then the rest of
piano
the band didn't anything. They would just stop
mean dead
and all the people would around the stand to look and
gather
to hear. Jelly had two perfect hands for the piano not like
some players, one hand good and the other weak he was just
as good in the bass clef as in the treble. It was a wonderful
put down there. If you play them, youll please me. You don't
have to make a lot of noise and ad-lib. All I want
you to play
is whafs written. That's all I ask."
Things kept going to the bad. Finally, one day, Garland, the
bass player, missed the bus. When he arrived late to the dance.
Jelly wouldn't let him on the stand, told him the contract called
for fifteen pieces and he cause it to be
only fourteen. So Gar
land went to the union and put Jelly up on charges for firing
him without cause. Somehow Garland's word took effect and
the union said Jelly couldn't use union musicians no more till
212 THE BITTERS WITH THE SWEET
he paid a thousand-dollar fine. By the time Jelly got that fixed,
the band was broken up and gone,
He had another disappointment that year. A deal came up
for his band to go to Russia. He had the band all set Bigard,
Bechet, and several more. Then they found out they couldn't
send anv monev back out of Russia to their families and so the
t/ .
out, I wouldn't feel as bad. But you want me to stay home all
the time, and then you do me like that /* . .
He'd tell me, "May (he called me May for short), I haven't
been no place in the world but the Rhythm Club." And I'd
have to forgive him because he was really so sweet. Very, very,
very gentle and kind. Of course, he was very high tempered.
If you got him angry, that French blood would come up in
him and he'd be plenty angry, but, even those times, he
wouldn't say anything bad, you know no more than, "I'm get
ting tired and disgusted." In fact, the only arguments
that
came up, came up over how I kept his clothes.
He had all those shirts. When he'd go downtown in the
. , .
And, really, I will never meet anyone in life that good and
that land. Not only to me, he was kind to the less fortunate.
He was always trying to help anybody that wanted to do
something in life. He lent lots of money to his musician friends
when they was down on Any place that the
their luck. . . .
Catholic sisters wanted to go, he'd fill up his car with gas and
oil and take um. And I remember one time a lady's little
daughter died of T.B. of the spine over on the Island and the
only thing she could afford was the hearse. Jelly told her:
"Now I don't want to make you feel bad and I don't want
you to think I'm trying to be a bigshot, but I want to let you
have my two cars for the funeral." So he went to the garage
and put his chauffeur at the wheel of the Cadillac and he took
the Lincoln and drove those folks to Woodlawn Cemetery and
back, My pastor, Father McCann told me later, said, "Jelly
Roll was a nice person to know. He was really land. We miss
fnm so much."
See, while we were living in New York I brought Jelly into
the Catholic Church. He had been bom a Catholic, but he had
let the practice go. And the Father suggested that we be mar
ried in the church and I wanted that, but Jelly refused. He
said we had been married once, so what's the use of doing it
over again we couldn't be separated without the church con
sent to it, whether we stood up in the church or no. "And we
have a license to prove it/' he would say and touch his inside
coat pocket.
Now I think back, it's a peculiar thing that he always insisted
218 THE BITTERS WITH THE SW$ET
on his carrying our marriage license and wouldn't never give
it to me to keep. I used to ask him why couldn't I have it
framed and put it up on the wall and he'd tell me, "Look,
now, May, the way we travel up in M
assachusetts and all that
where they have those strict laws about entertainers being
really married, I need to carry this license at all times. I'm the
man of the house and you just let me bother about these
things/' So I didn't worry my head about it and let it go. I
was just dumb to the fact, that's all I can say now.
At that time, though, what could I think? I had everything
in the world I wanted and I never had any trouble with Jelly
and other women. I never heard anything about him and
another woman, not even in Harlem, and you know if there
had been something Fd have heard it in that place. Anita? I
never heard of her till later.
No, the truth about Mister Jelly Roll Morton the actual
facts about Mister Jelly Roll Morton was that he was not what
you call a very high-sexed man. No, not a very high-sexed man.
It was just once in a while with him. When that mood would
Jetty RolU
"Lots of those boys would get hot at that. But, one thing
I always noticed about Jelly, he could back up everything he
said by what he could do. ? . .
a big in the
a big In a Of>*
in was to be less for fee
of the the big
It out of
BO for a to
of
The 0f Ms not
set on his
BO net*
did it to to the he
of his New
Ghetto Negroes the
put in jaiL
It wasn't long before I wished I had taken this woman's
advice. I was in the music-publishing business. Everybody
was writing me for bands and for music and for radio programs
and I had more work than I could do. I bumped into a West
Indian gay who was fooling with the music-publishing business
in an office so small
you couldn't turn around in it to get out
you had to back back the way you came in. I kinda liked this
cut up every bit of clothing I had and burn it all. I always had
a lot of clothes and the stack I made in my backyard was way
head. I poured on the kerosene and
up over the top of my
struck a match; it like to broke my heart to watch my suits
burn.
It seems like Im
still blurry about that doggone thing in
way. . . .
sprinkled some kind of powder all over the place. Mrs. Morton
stoutly denied, however, that voodoo was at work. , . .
Washington, D. C.
Jan. 4, 1937
My Darling Wife:
I received your letter and will say that things have
surely mrmed rotten for you, but we all think we have
the toughest break. Of course, it could be worse, but
it is
plenty bad. Have patience and know we will come
out all
rigjhk I did not want to write you until I had
something to send you. I feel sure we will be able to
go home for Mardi Gras. Don't worry. Yours as ever.
Ferd.
But when the brass bands swung out their hot marches and
the Jazz Babies did their Basin Street grinds and the Indians
played their ancient drama in the New Orleans Mardi Gras,
Jelly Roll and Mrs. Morton were
not looking on: the middle
of February found Jelly still
toughing it out in Washington,
still . . .
trying.
280 THE BITTERS WITH THE SWEET
I can.
Tell Mrs. -
giving you up. I am planning to send for you as soon as
Maybe before this week is out. If not, real soon.
you have your things and you
to let
will pay her the best you can, because it is so hard on
me paying expenses here and trying to do the best I
can to pay there.
Darling, you will hear from me real soon.
Yours,
Ferd.
I said to him in 1937, ""Well, what are you going to do? Are
you staying in Washington or are you coming back to me?"
Then he had to break down and tell me the truth,
"I have a little
night club there," Jelly told me. *Tm in part
7*
ners with a woman.
"Oh, I see. So that's it. I thought you were in the fighting
game. Well, then, I'm coming to Washington," I said.
"All right, Mabel,'' he told me.
When I
got to Washington, I saw what the situation was.
Of course, nothing was me, but you can sense those
said to
the Jungle Inn was the Absinthe House; you could get any
kind of drink in the world there you wanted. So these Washing
ton folks would lap up all that fine liquor and then scream
about the bill. When an argument would come up, Cordelia
wouldn't back Jelly up, and in the end, she would knock a
couple dollars off the check.
I said, "Jelly, you were running night clubs when this
woman was ducking the truant officer. Cordelia don't know
to use her money sensible. She's just running this place
her friends.** JeHy admitted I was right, but he kept on
tg to make something big out of the placewhich it
U Life to Brdb My Hew* 238
teTh me that
ss mine aU mine-
(tie ) (nes }
r
Does anything I
teU\^ thve is blind
fine it would have been for all of us if this New Orleans fan
tion that it
probably needs government supervision.
.. There are many who enjoy glory plus financial
.
This article rocked the jazz world and put Jelly's name back
in the headlines. There were some who felt that Handy's mild
retort in Downbeat was all the answer Jelly's blast deserved.
m
city erf New Orleans. la this city there WB$ a son
to a known as la Maathe
of French descent,
fam$y
w
The sou was named Ferdinand
Joseph La Mentiie____
iBefody, a
procession of limpid chords, balanced, crisp,
delicately textured, and tender with color Mister Jelly grinned
at me. He knew what he would find in face; he'd been my
'"professor** a long time and he knew how to please even a folk-
lorist. The amplifier of the recorder was hot;
the needle was
A$ I can understand,
My folks were in the city of New Orleans
Long before the Louisiana purchase
And aU my folks directly from the shores of France,
That is, across the world in the other world,
And they landed in the New World
. . .
ago.
The next days passed like Mardi Gras. At that time no prece
dents or red tape bound the infant Folksong Archive. Mister
Jelly Roll came to the Library almost every afternoon, driving
his Lincoln and finding every visit the occasion for a new,
though always conservative, outfit. All this was front for JeHy,
I began to perceive, and very thin front, too, for he was at the
end of his resources. These sessions were important to him.
He was renewing his self-confidence as he relived his rich and
creative past for a sympathetic audience that didn't interrupt;
he was putting his world in order; but, much more to the point
New Orleans and her boy, Jelly, were getting their hearing at
the bar of history itself.
one, dint out of the palace he had planned and built, this
tired Creole brought to life again, singlehanded and by sheer
?
**Morfon don t work here any more. . , . No, I don't know
where he's gone."
This Cordelia, she never would back Jelly Roll up, saM
Mabel He had put a cover charge on the Jungle Inn to fceep
the riff-raff and the roughnecks out of the place, but she wooM
letthem come on in anyhow even when they wouldn't take
Ferd tried to talk with Cordelia, but she say how
their hats off.
could she turn them away when she'd known them from tods
up? :;
ttft TOE BITTERS WITH THE SWEET
One night one of these riff-raff got to acting rowdy and
Ferd called him. The fellow then used some bad language.
Ford slapped him. Then he sat down at the piano and began
to play and the fellow slipped up behind him and stabbed
him. Stabbed him the first time in the head and, when Ferd
tamed, he stabbed him just above the heart. Then Ferd
grabbed him and they went down.
I was back of the bar mixing a Pink Lady when I heard the
scuffle. When I come out from behind the bar I couldn't hardly
He all
Mister Jelly had derided the old butcher for the last time.
I met him one day on a subway stair in New York and
a little way with him. He had to stop every few steps
to get Ms breath; then, after a moment of coughing, he went
oa in a weak voice with his plans for suing ASCAP and break
ing MCA. He was often tired, he told me. His composing had
slowed down. "From writing music, playing pool and looking
for spotson cards under bright lights, my eyes is shot," said
a very subdued Mister Jelly Roll. Charley Smith* who super
vised the recording of his fine piano album, "New Orleans
Memories," recalls that "his fingers were stiff and his heart
wasn't pumping the way it should.** But the old ram couldn't
stop rambling no matter how sick and bad he felt Mabel
Morton recalls his last try. . . .
pital
almost three, with no doctor around and the nurse
till
telling me
she couldn't give him anything.
But you know, those doctors became very interested in him
the three months he was there. Whenever I would come to
visit, there were always three
or four of them around the bed,
can live ten or fifteen years longer, but he can't play piano.
At home he began to brood all the time, began to worry. I
Well Dearest
I thought I would drop a line, to let you know I am
safe.
I started and decided to go west, and, believe me,
Pennsylvania and every state
when I hit thereafter I
met a storm as follows, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
terrific
Ferd J. Morton.
Los Angeles, CaEf.
Nov. IS, 1940.
My darling Mabel,
I am here in L.A. I am
going to try to make some
money so I can send you home (New Orleans), then
I know you will be okeh. I would not think of
leaving
you in that cruel city The weather is warm here
. . .
Yours as ever,
Ferd
Nov. 28th
My own Mabel
It worries me terribly when I don't hear from you
under the conditions I left you under Things . . .
Nov. 30th
My dearest Mabel, wife,
I never told her no such thing. She ask if you were here
and I said no and did not give them any satisfaction. I
know all niggers do
try to find out anyone's business
is
. . .
Very sorry to hear of your illness, but I haven't
been very well at all, myself Please accept this
. . .
.
Very sorry to hear that you have been sick but
. .
please
- . . .
_ ,r 7 7 Tan.
J
16th
Dear Mabel,
... I am writing a letter to Mrs. V-
i_/
Jan. 28th
Dear Mabel,
Your letter was received. I was delayed in answering
account of being sick. I am much better now, . . .
Ferd.
Feb. 22nd
Dear Mabel
Your letter was received but due to illness I was un
able to answer until now. Up to now I have had two
breath has been very short like
different doctors. My
when I had to go to the hospital and have been spit
ting blood and many other symptoms too numerous to
mention., but I am some better this morning.
Go to Mrs. V church in Brooklyn across
*s
from her house and appeal to the priest that you need
your money. Tell the whole thing and ask "him to help
you get it for you and I think it will help. ... As soon
as I am able I will send
you the money to go home.
Regards.
Ferd.
An envelope addressed to Mabel and dated April 28th, 1941,
contained only the following . . .
wffl insert
the
_
office drflnro 013, nisen tie
by tbe remitter do isot
I
Amount 2
% v
g address
-Street
art
State L I
Smtby.
Stzaot
State
s PQBCaiSER MOST SEND ORDER AND COUPON TO P1TEE
rpoR ress SEE onffiR SID ^*-*^t
258
He rambled,
He rambled,
He rambled till the butcher cut him down. . . .
gone.
sick, too. A
couple months later
he died in my anas,
me to keep anointing his lips with oil that had been
a in New York He had oil all over
nmning Mia
by bishop
when he gave up the ghost . ,
to add. . . .
get
"Be sure to mention my tourist camp in
your book, Mister
Lomax. Our chicken dinners are recommended by Duncan
HHKS."
End Matter
Acknowledgments
265
Appendix One
THE TUXES
Morton's life story should not overshadow his stature as a
musician of great originality and Influence. He was probably
the first true composer of jazz, able to arrange his compositions
in music notation, finally producing orchestrations in correct
form for ten and eleven pieces. That the best critics of Amer<
ican popular music already take him seriously and put him
among the top rank of the men of jazz is, I believe, only a
foretaste of the time when he will stand in the select com
Ferdinand Morton:
"Listen, man, whatever you blow on that horn, you're
blowing Jetty RoTL . . .*
PIANO SOLO
F?
BJ>7
TEMPO-MUSIC Pub. Co., 818 Quintaaa Place, N.W., Washington 11, D.C.
270 Mamie's Blues
F7 Ei7 F Et BSm F
Bb
C7
1
Beg-gin'eachan ev-'ry man that she met.. If yea
Mamies Blues 271
E'7
you
Excerpt from:
WININ BOY BLUES
1
8 ==* I
Sla-lB' 807, tel't ; U H &* *fc* It Ut* *****
j ,
. n ; n
owners.
Used by permission, Tempo-Music Publishing Company, copyright
AB rights
reserved.
274
The Naked Dance 275
Exeerpl from:
BUDDY BOLDEN'S BLUES
U- HJ'J. J
276
Buddij Boldcn'i, Elun
m
&
hMid 3u4-dy Bol-ita
Hit
tteqt Z j*dgt
M i
IL TROVATORE
(A Transformation)
owner.
Used by permission, Tempo-Music Publishing Company, copyright
All rights reserveu.
278
The Miserere 278
J. JL .
m
r I
:Ltc
U3=-
t *
INDIAN SONG
Transcribed and edited by Rally Wood.
anticipate the
beat without any hurried feeling and
Barely
you will have it
but more as an emphasis
2) Not sung as a full tone change,
on this beat*
3} Sometimes a G.
Co.
Copyright, Tempo-Music Publishing
-v ^?
*'
A There is
actually more s\ncopation throughout than can be
indicated. For instance, this note might just as well have
ALABAMA BOUND
=p^.
t**l
281
GEORGIA SKIN GAME
, .
Sung very freely
rr\
m
OK
^
^
I'll
5=
.
T
(Card slapped
on table)
on that
Spoken: Three dollars more. Five, I got you
O.K.! Bet! Roll up. OJL Roll up here.
Two more on the trey there. Q.JLI Bet!
Georgia Sfe'n Game
>
d. V^
In: {i i\ * i
.
n (Card slapped down
eatable)
?
Spoten; Ei^it
more doDars up there on the right-spot
dowi
dow
feiififf Ox
KING PORTER STOMP
284
King Porter Stomp 283
no
STOMP
-
r
i .!
JELLY ROLL BLUES
286
Jelly
Roll Bkes 287
Jelly
Roll Blues
i
&
All rights
Co., used by permission.
igbt, Tempo-Music Publishing
reserved.
1
289
290 Appendix One
earlier. At any rate
Fwg-i-more was composed in 1918 or
it seems to have been named after a contortionist in a minstrel
show with which Jelly Roll toured. This gentleman, who was
billed as Frog-i-more, wore a frog costume, and it is likely
that Jelly Roll actually played this melody for Frog-kmore's
COPY
RIGHT
YEAH TITLE COPYRIGHT BY
1915 The Jetty Roll Blues Will Rossiter, Chicago
(Written in 1905, arranged
1912? First published jazz
composition? )
1918 Frog-i-moreRag Fred Morton, Los Angeles
(Composed 1908)
1923 Wolverine "Blues Melrose Bros. Music Co.,
(Words by Spikes Bros.) Chicago
Froggie Moore Spikes Bros. Pub. Co.
Appendix. One 293
COPY-
BIGHT
YEAR TITT-E CQPTBIGHT BY
(Composed in 19G2-3-JRM)
Milneburg Joys (with Leon
**
Rappolo and Paul Mares)
**
Queen of Spades
Midnight Mama
1926 Chicago Breakdown
"
Sweetheart CfMine
(Part o FTOg-i-more )
**
Dead Man Blues
State 6- Madison Charles Raymond, Chicago
Black Bottom Stomp Mekose Bros, Music Co.
Sidewalk Blues
Canon BaU Blues (with Charley
**
Rider and Marty Bloom)
1927 Ted Lewis Blues
"
Jungle Blues
Wild Man Blues (with Louis
**
Armstrong)
Hyena Stomp Melrose Bros. Music Co., Inc.
BiUy Goat Stomp
Windy City Blues
(with Peary, Hudson, Raymond) Denton & Haskin, New York
1928 Buffalo Blues Triangle Music Pub. Co., N. Y.*
Ham ^ Eggs
*A great many of these compositions were copyrighted by merely submit
ting a lead line of melody to the Library of Congress. No known musical score
exists for them.
294 Appendix One
COPY
RIGHT
YEAR TTTUE COPYRIGHT BY
*
1938 If You Knetz Hour I Loce Yow Tempo-Music Pnb. Co.
*
My Home is in a Southern Totcn
*
Street Substitute
*
Why?
1939 We Are Elks *
^
Goodf Old Xctc Yorfc
We WiU Xecer Sat/ Goodbye Paul Watts
Tm Alabama Bound Ferd J.
Morton
Roy Carew
1944 Creepy Feeling J.
* Published.
**
composed for Genera? s Tavern Tunes series.
Originals
296 Appendix One
COPY-
BIGHT
YEAH Tin-E COPYRIGHT BY
1946 Frog-i-m&re Hffg (renewal) Estate of Ferd J. Morton
" "
1947 (published)* Roy J. Carew
"
Buddy Carter's Rag **
Benny Frenchy's Defeat "
II Trovatore (A Transformation)
The Perfect Rag
Mama Nita (tango)
Muddy Water Blues
"
Soap Suds
Big Fat Ham
* All the above have
been transcribed from the Library of Congress record
ing sessions and copyrighted by Tempo.
Appendix Tmo
THE RECORDS
critics:
"Just as
I would recommend one specific record by Jelly
Roll Morton as being representative of jazz, to the new
comer, so I would recommend Jelly Roll's work in its
en
those who have been captivated by jazz.
tirety to already
There is no more enlightening collection of records to be
found under the name of one man. Not all of the records
are but they are of great variety and they illustrate
good,
jazz development
and tendencies. Through all of them,
Roll's
like a golden thread, runs the insistent beat of Jelly
"If you never heard Jelly Roll at his best, you ain't
never heard jazz piano. , . ."Bud Scott
What jazzmen had known for forty years the young fans
began to learn in the Thirties. Like Poe, jazz was first "dis-
covered** by European critics; and at first there were more
music in Paris and London than in
serious listeners for this
New York or Chicago. One of the English record collectors
who had admired Jelly from afar met him at last in the Jungle
Inn in Washington. His very British account provides a very
amusing side-look at Mr. Jelly Lord who finally had encount
ered someone who knew more about his music than he did
limself:
"I made my first record," said Jelly Roll, "in 1918 for some
"About the time, in 1923," said Jelly Roll, "Fritz Pollard, the
famous baseball player, introduced me to Ink Williams who
was then a scout for the Paramount Recording Company. I
got together a band (Nick Dominique cornet, Roy Palmer-
trombone, Townes clarinet, Jasper Taylor drums ) and those
records. sold very big. I was to be paid by the side and I
never have got all the money yet. We used a washboard in
this record played by a crazy
guy from New Orleans named
*
A
few representative hot record shops which can supply Jelly Roll records:
Commodore Music, 136 East 42nd; Jazz Record Center, 107 West 47th; Jazz
Record Comer, 782 8th Ave. N. Y. The Record Shack, 11800 Wilshire Blvd.,
}
and Record Roundup, 7227 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CaL Walnut Music
Shop, 118 Walnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. Seamore's Record Shop, 4395 S.
Wabash, Chicago, 111.
Appendix Two
Brown wiio stopped traffic in New York with that washboard
of his."
Aog.-Sept.
1923 Piano solo
Grandpa* Spe&*
Kama* City Stontp*
The Pearls
Jazz Band (with Zne Robert-
Chicago Someday Suce&xart
Dec. son and Horace Enhnnks) Ofcrf^
1923
LandonELae*
Mr. Jelfy Lord Steamboat (with Kazoo,
Chicago
April piano and banjo)
1924 Stomp King* (Piano 0m2fod>
Solo
Chicago Mamaniia
April Bbx*
35ih Street Biaito
1924 Solo
Qiicaso LandonBlae*
June
1924 TTiTigg of Jazz (tee Coffins,
Chicago Fwfe TaU Bloc*
?June Boy Palmer and other*)
1924
High Society
Weary B&uc*
Tiger Bos
3flB
Appendkc Two
Dwt (Oliver) Autograph
Chicago '
1926 3 Swnwdj^ *-
Uvwwwir' rand s
far Ffet
Orijrinoi
fibet
Doda- Jazz
It must have been about this time that Jelly Roll began to
have trouble with his bands. At any rate, from now on he
changed his orchestras with almost every session. He de
manded that his players follow "those little black dots/* and
so eager was he to prove that his "little black dots'* contained
the essence of jazz that he brought in Nathaniel Shilkrefs
304 Appendix Two
sweet-clariaet player for one recording elate. This man could
read anything at sight and, working from Jelly *$ arrangements,
he played so much hot clarinet that ever since the fans have
been arguing about who this mystery man was. The . . .
11 June^ New York Geoff is, Swing Red Hot Peppers (Ward
1921 Knkett trumpet, Geecfay
Fields trombone. Omer
Simeon clarinet, JRM,
Lee Blair banjo, BiH Bern-
ford tuba, Tom Benford
drums) , JRM piano
Kansas CQy Stamps
Sitoe-xliiners Drag
Boogaboo
Skrevepori Stomp Trio (Omar Simeon clari
net, Tom Beaford drams,
JEM- piano)
Mam-nful Serenade Quartet (add Gecliy Fidlds
Jersey Joe
MM Julep
NwYk Yea. See My R Je-
1929 Got Artfasr Wt4
trnmpeta; Joe
tSX^BfrCSSKJ W
J
tfto we; JRM f
efl W.
Fofsrirfsc Blae*
Xerp Yd
Ste'* Got WbafJT Wees*
JOBC, N*r Y<ak Bw^rime Wbiw WI-
193 tan Crawfcy
IMC,
IBM TiM j Bam
Her Papa,
net, Zntie
1929
Tur& Twist
My IMk Kxie Home
Tim?a JLIfe II 0nWa
Be
New York BcchBe? Red Hot Peppers (W. Pfak-
ett tnnDpet* WHfcar 4e
1930
Ark trambooe, a Virtor
boofleman (?) darinot,, B.
AdklJsoo tnjo s JRM
imano, Billy Tayte baac,
CcwyCcrfe drrans) Vwtot
If Sememe
Thafll Never Do
5 banjos; B,
goiter; BIS BD-
ford tnba;JFonk Benibrd
draaw)
ei
' *
2* Mar* Fn^y Motel
* *
Pondwirew JSbec
Sfrokin* *
Away* .
B. Tietor
i A
IS Aos., New York Aw ferf A*o .
1934 F
* *
Foa
r
?l930-f ?New York ?& ifefy Farf ar.
4} The Miserere
Boyhood Memories
Hyena Stomp
Mama Nita
Spanish Swat
New Orleans Blues
La Paloma
Creepy Feeeling (Part 1)
Creepy Feeling (Concluded)
The Crave
Fickle Fay Creep
Mamie Desdoumes
Mamie's Blues
Albert Carroll and
Buddy Bertrand
The Crazy Chord Rag
St. Louis
("That guys a shark")
The Miserere
("So I swung a few of these
operatic tunes.")
Alabama Bound (Part 1)
("I was down on the Gulf Coast."*)
Alabama Bound (Concluded)
("He had a knife right on me.**)
looked the
they had been rehearsing Sidney blankly at
music and Jelly leaned from the piano and said, **You
remember don't you?** Sidney looked sur
that, Sidney,
3*
Then he turned away from the mike and let out a yowl
of anguish that would have seemed weird if all the others
hadn't joined in, moaning and carrying on in the best
funeral manner, and Jelly, in the most mournful voice of
all wailing, "such a good manP (As he told us later, "We
fioiZtn* crfc
9
14 Dec., New York Sporiin House Ra$ Piano sclo Genera!
1939 Original Rags
The Cmw
The Naked Dance
Mixter Joe
King Porter Stomp
Winin* Boy Blues
Animuk Ball
318 Appendix Ttoo
New Yccfc Blue* Soio
<a-
You Lca^e Me