MISTER JELLY ROLL

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

with Some sheet music & lyrics.

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	300	Appendix Two
	imagination. CusacFs scholarship1 (and we may acknowledge our indebtedness to him by sending him everything we know about Jelly Roll records) complemented by comments from Mister Jelly Roll reveal an artist of true creative passion at work in the unfamiliar and sometimes rather weird atmos­phere of the phonograph business. Jelly learned to work within the limits of the three minute popular record and he turned them out like hotcakes. ... I am informed that every known commercial record Jelly cut can be purchased *—if not on original labels, at least as unauthorized reissues; jazz, even in its antiquarian phase, operates a bit beyond the pale. . . . "I made my first record," said Jelly Roll, "in 1918 for some company in California. Reb Spikes, Mutt Carey, Wade Waley, Kid Orey, and I recorded The Wolverines and King Porter, but we never heard from those records. I don't know why. Then on in Chicago, I cut piano rolls for the American, the Imperial, and the QRS Company. I don't know what happened to all those piano rolls/' [So far three of these piano rolls have been discovered and reissued.] Chbonologicai, Index original date                ptace                         title                                        gkodp                             company 1922 or          Chicago?         Dead Man Blues             Piano Roll                                        QRS earlier u                                   Grandpa's Spells                     *                                                   * "About the time, in 1923," said Jelly Roll, "Fritz Pollard, the famous baseball player, introduced me to Ink Williams who was then a scout for the Paramount Recording Company. I got together a band (Nick Dominique—cornet, Roy Palmer-trombone, Townes—clarinet, Jasper Taylor—drums) and those records sold very big. I was to be paid by the side and I never have got all the money yet. We used a washboard in this record played by a crazy guy from New Orleans named * A few representative hot record shops which can supply Jelly Roll records: Commodore Music, 136 East 42nd; Jazz Record Center, 107 West 47th; Jazz Record Corner, 782 8th Ave., N. Y. The Record Shack, 11800 Wilshire Blvd., and Record Roundup, 7227 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, Cal. Walnut Music Shop, 118 Walnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. Seamores Record Shop, 4395 S. Wabash, Chicago, 111.