Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton [Hardcover] Review

The great trumpeter Rafael Mendez once said that he lived by one golden rule his father taught him: "Never boast.Someone better than you may be lurking around the corner, waiting to take your place."This was a lesson that Jelly Roll Morton (1886-1941) didn't learn until bad luck, lack of opportunity and rivals who DID take his place (particularly Ellington and Art Tatum) humbled him into reassessing his talent and his place in contemporary music.But, as this remarkable book points out, he not only learned his lessons but learned from them, remaking both his image and his music in the face of near-total indifference.

When reading through this bio, I had reached about page 148 and had some reservations as to its worth over Alan Lomax's half-bio, half-autobiography, "Mister Jelly Lord."It seemed to me that the authors had bent over backward to excuse Morton's past as a pimp, gambler and hustler simply because he was the first to codify jazz in written music, and indeed even seemed to claim his superiority as a jazz musician over such luminaries as Bunk Johnson, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet.Chapter Five, in particular, had several errors in both fact and judgment, consistently referring to Morton making his early acoustic recordings in front of "microphones" (they used a big metal horn to focus the sound into a steel cutting needle, no microphones were used at all, hence the term "acoustic"), renaming Bing Crosby as Bill (a typo so glaring that even a modern yuppie proofreader should have spotted it), and their astounding demotion of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings to "a rinky-dink ensemble" in their records without Morton.(In plain truth, the NORK was the first band to actually swing on records, even from their very first records in 1922, by virtue of their rolling, "loping" beat, similar in feel to that of Sidney Bechet's New Orleans Feetwarmers of a decade later.Listen and hear for yourself.)

At this point, then, I was going to give this book 3 stars, mostly for factual accuracy but not for value judgments or style.But then something happened.They began chronicling, in full detail, the meeting and eventual partnership of Morton and Roy Carew.They fully documented, as Lomax had not, all of Morton's personal, medical and legal battles with their results in his lifetime and after.They described in full Morton's second and last stay in New York, quoted what he really said to black musicians on the street corners of Harlem, and told just how he re-evaluated the musical value of contemporary musicians and planned to compete with them.And they described in detail his sad last months in California and the creative new music he had written for large orchestra, something far beyond his greatest accomplishments of the 1920s.

Morton, then, is truly given his just due as a man and musician.The loudmouthed "braggart" is revealed as a man who did not proselytize his music above all others in Harlem, but warned younger black musicians not to trust the powers that be in the music business of their time because they would get railroaded as he had.The quixotic dreamer who Lomax described as wanting to create carbon-copy Red Hot Peppers bands across America to push his name above all others is shown as a man who truly cared about finding work in the Depression for good musicians who deserved better.And the "moldy fig" whose stomps and blues were already outdated by 1939 is shown as a vital creator who was still coming up with startling new material.So much is already evident to Morton fans from a few of the 1939-40 General recordings, but this book also describes his innovative large-band scores "Mr. Joe," "Oh Baby" (not to be confused with the pop `20s song of the same name), "Why?" and especially "Ganjam."More satisfyingly for the reader, it chronicles how Morton's "loudmouthed" complaints of the early 1940s eventually led to real reform in the 1950s and `60s of the entire music business and the rules it had to follow.

As a result, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.Forget the sometimes stiff and schoolbookish writing style.Forget the occasional errors in fact and judgment.The overall picture it paints of Mr. Jelly Lord, especially in his last years, is a fine and noble one.If you think you know the Morton story, I'm here to tell you you DON'T, at least not until you read this book.I always had the utmost respect for Morton's musical mind, one of those rare organs that was able to remember with photographic precision everything it heard and synthesize it into a unique and personal style.Now I have respect for Morton the person as well, at least the Morton of his last years.Jelly Roll had indeed redeemed himself, and you WILL be startled by some of the things you read here.I guarantee it.

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