Jelly Roll Morton

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, born around September 20, 1890, in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, became known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton. Of Louisiana Creole descent, Morton was a pianist, bandleader, composer, and Broadway book writer whose influence on American jazz extended from the early twentieth century through his posthumous recognition on the Broadway stage. His birth year remains uncertain, as no birth certificate was issued for him; Morton himself claimed different birth years on various documents, including 1884 on his World War I draft registration card and 1885 in later interviews. His parents, bricklayer and occasional trombonist Martin-Edouard Joseph Lamothe and domestic worker Louise Hermance Monette, never legally married, and his father left the family when Morton was approximately three years old. Following his mother's 1894 marriage to William Mouton, Ferdinand adopted his stepfather's surname in anglicized form and took "Ferd" as an informal forename.

Morton began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, working in brothels in New Orleans while concealing his occupation from his churchgoing great-grandmother by claiming employment as a night watchman at a barrel factory. When she discovered the truth, she disowned him. The cornetist Rex Stewart later recalled that Morton had adopted the surname Morton partly to shield his family from the association with his work in such establishments. Around 1904, Morton began touring the American South, working in minstrel shows including Will Benbow's Chocolate Drops, gambling, and composing. During this period he produced several compositions, among them "Jelly Roll Blues," "New Orleans Blues," "Frog-I-More Rag," "Animule Dance," and "King Porter Stomp." Stride pianists James P. Johnson and Willie "The Lion" Smith observed him performing in Chicago in 1910 and New York City in 1911.

Between 1912 and 1914, Morton toured as a vaudeville act alongside his girlfriend Rosa Brown before settling in Chicago for three years. By 1914 he had begun committing his compositions to paper, and in 1915 "Jelly Roll Blues" became one of the first jazz compositions to appear in published form. Morton also spent time in California beginning in 1917, traveling with bandleader William Manuel Johnson and Johnson's sister Anita Gonzalez. His tango "The Crave" gained popularity in Hollywood, and he was invited to perform at the Hotel Patricia nightclub in Vancouver, Canada. He returned to Chicago in 1923 to assert authorship of what had become known as "Wolverine Blues" and released his first commercial recordings, initially as piano rolls and subsequently on record both as a soloist and with jazz bands.

In 1926, Morton signed a recording contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company, which gave him access to well-equipped studios in Chicago and the opportunity to record with a rehearsed ensemble. The resulting recordings by Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers featured musicians including Kid Ory, Omer Simeon, George Mitchell, Johnny St. Cyr, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dodds, Baby Dodds, and Andrew Hilaire. After relocating to New York City, Morton continued recording for Victor with a wide range of collaborators, among them Sidney Bechet, Artie Shaw, Bubber Miley, Henry "Red" Allen, Cozy Cole, and Zutty Singleton, though his New York sessions did not produce a commercial hit. RCA Victor declined to renew his recording contract for 1931, a decision attributable in part to the economic pressures of the Great Depression. Morton continued performing in New York under financial strain, briefly hosted a radio program in 1934, and subsequently toured with a burlesque band. In 1935, his composition "King Porter Stomp," arranged by Fletcher Henderson, became Benny Goodman's first hit and a swing standard, though Morton received no royalties from those recordings.

Also in 1935, Morton moved to Washington, D.C., where he managed and performed at a bar on U Street NW in the Shaw neighborhood, a venue known at various times as the Music Box, Blue Moon Inn, and Jungle Inn. He served simultaneously as master of ceremonies, bouncer, and bartender. It was during this period that folklorist Alan Lomax encountered Morton and, in May 1938, invited him to record music and interviews for the Library of Congress. Those sessions expanded to more than eight hours of Morton talking and playing piano, covering his years in Storyville and including ribald songs of the era, some of which were not released publicly until 2005. Later in 1938, Morton was stabbed by an associate of the bar's owner, sustaining wounds to the head and chest; a nearby hospital refused to treat him due to the city's racially segregated medical facilities.

Morton's compositions also included "Black Bottom Stomp" and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," the latter a tribute to musicians from New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century. He claimed to have invented jazz in 1902, an assertion that drew criticism. Music critic Scott Yanow noted that Morton's documented accomplishments as an early innovator were substantial enough that embellishment was unnecessary, while musicologist Gunther Schuller observed that Morton's considerable achievements provided reasonable support for his broader claims. Morton is recognized as jazz's first arranger, having demonstrated that a genre grounded in improvisation could preserve its essential qualities when written down.

Morton died on July 10, 1941. Decades later, his life and music became the basis for the Broadway musical Jelly's Last Jam, for which Morton received credit as book writer. The production earned Morton a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score in 1992, bringing renewed attention to the New Orleans-born composer whose work had helped define an American musical form.