Revisiting Jelly Roll Morton

Slought is pleased to announce a live concert by Dave Burrell performing the music of Jelly Roll Morton on an Aeolian Technola Player Piano (1911). This performance will take place on Wednesday, June 23, 2004 from 8-10pm at Slought.

Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton (1890-1941), perhaps the first great jazz composer, is credited as the transitional figure between ragtime and contemporary jazz piano. He spent the early part of the 1900s in New Orleans - as a pianist, pimp, minstrel-show entertainer, comedian and hustler - and, until 1922, in Los Angeles. Morton began recording in Chicago in 1923, then bandleading with his Red Hot Peppers, making some of the classic early jazz recordings for the Gennett and Victor labels. Best known for songs like "King Porter Stomp," "Grandpa's Spells," "Mr. Jelly Roll," "Black Bottom Stomp," "The Chant," "Original Jelly Roll Blues," "Doctor Jazz," "Wild Man Blues," "Don't You Leave Me Here," and "Sweet Substitute," his recordings featured some of best New Orleans musicians including Kid Ory, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dobbs, Johnny St. Cyr and Baby Dobbs. The popularity of big bands, the Depression and the shift to New York as the center of jazz, gradually pushed Morton into obscurity. However in 1938 (and released a decade later) Alan Lomax recorded him in an extensive and colorful series of musical interviews for the Library of Congress. Jelly Roll died just before the Dixieland revival rescued so many of his peers from musical obscurity. He blamed his declining health on a voodoo spell.