MISTER JELLY ROLL

Jelly Roll Morton, Inventor Of Jazz, Online Book by Alan Lomax

with Some sheet music & lyrics.

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114
ALABAMA BOUND
that these smart guys were much worse off than I was. But 1 didn't see that then.
All the smart guys wore overalls and a flannel shirt, busted open at the top, with no tie. From that dress you was consid­ered a sharpshooter. One of these sharpshooters named Harry Dunn was a very nice fellow that liked music and taken a lik­ing 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 I've even seen, no game has so many cheats right in front of your eyes, and it would have taken a magician to catch Hairy.
"Some day I'm going to make a gambler out of you,** he 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 rail­road camp at Orange, Mississippi. 'What Harry meant by "mak­ing a payday" was that he was going to win all the money from the people that had worked for it.
I will always remember Orange, because it almost meant fatal to me. Orange was a little bit of a place close to the Ala­bama line—had a log cabin and two or three houses was all. Harry took me along as his little brother. "I want to let you see how these things is done, because showing you without the actual experience, wouldn't do no good. These holdout tricks in Georgia Skin take a lot of nerve."
That's what Harry told me, but he also knew that, by me being able to play piano in the sporting-houses, I always had some kind of money. I tried to convince Harry that I had a lot of nerve and could do these tricks already, but he told me to stay out of the game. However, I secretly decided to get some experience, and that I did.