Classics 668: Jelly Roll Morton 1939-40

Classics 668
Jelly Roll Morton 1939-1940
Release Date: 1996
Rating: B

Other notable musicians in this CD: Henry "Red" Allen, Albert Nicholas, Zutty Singleton
Label(s): General, Commodore
Number of sessions: 6
Unissued materials: none
Track Highlights: The Crave, Big Lip Blues.
Other issue or reissues: Last Sessions: Complete General Recordings (Commodore CMD 14032)

About the period:
Jelly Roll's health was poor. His pockets empty. His belly loaded with whiskey. He was dyin'.

"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
If the women don't get you, the whiskey must!"

The Album:
Jelly Roll's last recordings for General label. "I have a subject of mutual benefit to discuss with you," wrote Jelly to Charles Smith. General Records had asked Jelly for an album of the old New Orleans favorites. "Jelly was extremely ill," writes Mr. Smith, "and we used as many as four waxes on certain sides." The stand-out side, of course, was Mamies Blues, which, everyone agreed, was not "commercial." Nevertheless it has kept the album in print ever since, and has been called the most beautiful of all jazz piano records. When General went on to make some "commercials" with a swing band composed of Henry Allen trumpet, Joe Britten trombone, Albert Nicholas clarinet, Eddie Williams alto sax, Welman Braud bass, Zutie Singleton drams, and Jelly Roll piano, the records died fast.

The set starts with The Crave, one of those melancholic moments of Jelly Roll, a great combination of poetry and piano. Then comes The Naked Dance , a stride/ragtime kind of fast tempo solo on keyboards, executed perfectly by Morton.There is Buddy Bolden's Blues, an homage to trumpet master of New Orleans and we can add it to the small catalog of jazz tributes to Bolden like Hey, Buddy Bolden in Ellington's The Drum is a Woman LP, and also a reinterpretation of Ellington piece by Nina Simone. Again, Jelly Roll's Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say and Sidney Buddy Bolden Stomp and Buddy Bolden Story.

After you listened to superb trumpet solo of "Red" Allen on Big Lip Blues, then dig Mamie's Blues. "This is the first blues I ever heard in my life," that's Jelly's own introduction to the tune.

As Spring of 1941 came to Los Angeles, Jerry Roll's death came along and closed and locked the keyboard. He was in the middle of planning his next recording session of New Orleans music, but that was the end.

--Ehsan Khoshbakht

Listen to The Crave, 1939:



Details:


Jelly Roll Morton
Solo
New York. December 14, 1939

R-2562 The Crave
R-2563 The Naked Dance
R-2564 Mister Joe
R-2565 King Porter Stomp
R-2566 Winin' Boy Blues

Jelly Roll Morton
Solo
New York. December 16, 1939

R-2570 Buddy Bolden's Blues
R-2571 The Naked Dance
R-2572 Don't You Leave Me Here
R-2573 Mamie's Blues

Jelly Roll Morton
Solo
New York. December 18, 1939

R-2579 Michigan Water Blues

Jelly-Roll Morton's Seven
Jelly-Roll Morton (p,voc)/Henry "Red" Allen(t)/Joe Britton(tb)/Albert Nicholas(cl)/Eddie Williams(altosax)/Wellman Braud(b)/Zuny Singleton(d).
New York, January 4, 1940

R-2582 Sweet Substitute
R-2583 Panama
R-2584 Good Old New York
R-2585 Big Lip Blues


Jelly-Roll Morton Six
Jelly-Roll Morton (p,voc)/Henry "Red" Allen(t)/Albert Nicholas(cl)/Eddie Williams(altosax)/Wellman Braud(b)/Zuny Singleton(d).
New York, January 23, 1940

R-2621 Why?
R-2622 Get me Bucket
R-2623 If I Knew
R-2624 Shake It

The Morton Seven
Jelly-Roll Morton (p,voc)/Henry "Red" Allen(t)/Claude Jones(tb)/Albert Nicholas(cl)/Eddie Williams(altosax)/Wellman Braud(b)/Zuny Singleton(d).
New York, January 30, 1940

R-2632 Dirty, Dirty, Dirty
R-2633 Swinging The Elks
R-2634 Mama's Cot A Baby
R-2635 My Home is in a Southern Town


Total Time: 62 mins. (approximately)

Till The Butcher Cut Him Down

Today's one of those long, melancholic days. I'm listening to Jelly Roll Morton's last recordings and going through Alan Lomax'es notes, while the poet/pianist is singing:

"He rambled.
He rambled,
He rambled till the butcher cut him down, .. ."

DOWNBEAT LOS ANGELES
AUGUST 1, 1941
BURY JELLY ROLL MORTON ON COAST

Los Angeles A solemn, high requiem mass, performed at St. Patrick's Church with the full dignity of the Roman Catholic ritual, followed by burial at Calvary Cemetery was the world's parting gesture to Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton, who died here at Los Angeles hospital July 10 of heart trouble and asthma.

One white man was among the approximately one hundred and fifty people who attended the church service and accompanied the funeral procession to the cemetery - Dave Stuart of the Jazz Man Record Shop.

THE CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT

Notably absent from the funeral of the man who did so much to bring jazz out of the honkey tonks and dives of New Orleans were two o the most successful black bandleaders of the days Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford. Ellington is appearing at the Mayan Theatre here in a stage revue and Lunceford is at the Casa Manana.

Among those present were the members of what was probably the first black jazz band to make phonograph recordings - pioneers of jazz saying goodbye to one of their valiant gang musicians who played from the heart because they never learned any other way to play.

Reb Spikes, Jelly's old song-writing partner, didn't have a car and almost didn't get to the cemetery. Dave Stuart saw that Reb was about to get left behind and took him out in his car,"Sure appreciated that," said Reb. "Wanted to go as far as I could with Jelly."

Stoned Me Just Like Jelly Roll

I’m listening to the latter recordings of Jelly Roll Morton available from Alan Lomax archives - now belong to the Library of Congress. I want to cry to the rare beauty of these songs and tales. Jelly Roll coughs, he curses and he rambles through one of the most amazing tunes I ever heard on the record: The Murder Ballads. “I killed that bitch ‘cause she had ma man” he sings. It’s like Georges Bataille’s Histoire de l'œil, when obscenity becomes poetry. Jelly distills haunting images of sexual desire and death. When he was waxing these sides he was so down and out. Whisky had ruined his stomach. His skin was grey. His eyes, like the lights of the ‘red light district’ - where he spent most of his life- were dim and fading.

Jelly Roll Morton, from New Orleans, was a pianist, composer, pimp, billiard player, tailor, minstrel-show entertainer, hustler and more. Began recording in Chicago in 1923, then leading a band called Red Hot Peppers and recording some of the most influential recorded music ever. Arrived in New York in 1928, but the town was captivated with the new sounds and new names like Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington. He tried a few come backs but it didn’t work. By the 1930s he was finished and for him, the Alan Lomax proposal was a relief; to record the story of his life and the story of jazz, free from any commercial (and of course language!) concerns. Three years after the Lomax sessions he died in Los Angeles, bitter and unrewarded. There are so many legends about him but the truth about Jelly Roll lies in the music that he has left for us and in his absolute mastery of piano.

These four Lomax records (May and June 1938) are: Kansas City Stomp, Anamule Dance, The Pearls, and Winnin’ Boy Blues ('Rounder' label). In my view these recordings (with exception the last one which I haven’t heard yet) are priceless treasures of Jazz music. Let’s read a few lines from The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, by Mr. Cook & Mr. Morton about these dates:

“Lomax realized the opportunity he had in his hands he got Morton to deliver a virtual history of the birth pangs of jazz as it happened in New Orleans of the turn of the century. His memory was unimpaired, although he chose to tell things as he preferred to remember them, perhaps; and his hands were still in complete command of the keyboard. The results have the quality of a ling, drifting dream, as if Morton were talking to himself. He demonstrates every kind of music which he heard or played in the city, re-creates all his greatest compositions in long versions unhindered by 78 playing time, remembers other pianists who were never recorded, spins yarns, and generally sets down the most distinctive (if not necessarily the most truthful) document we have on the origins of the music.”

He plays that piano like nobody else; every single note is so lyrical and so luminous. Although he’s a pimp, he is too wasted to watch out his bitch; and now this ‘prick’ is talking to himself in Lomax’s portable waxing tool and showing the prophet side of himself; the holy Jelly Roll. He tells stories about love and betrayals, jails and dumpy joints, heavens and hell, like those stories of Faulkner. I know our man, William Faulkner, must have listened a lot to Jelly Roll – a year after these musical illuminations, Faulkner wrote The Wild Palms, his ultimate statement about the strangers and strangeness in the heartland of the united states.

I’m writing these lines, behind my desk in my boring office in a holy city of Mashhad, far away from Jelly’s Storyville. The tunes and the waves of music that are coming from my iPod break me into pieces but I stand still. I feel sorry for everyone in the office who is not listening to this now, and I'm sure everyone feeling sorry for me whom in their eyes look like a madman with my Jelly Roll!