Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, better known as Jelly Roll Morton, was early innovator in the jazz genre, bandleader, and composer. He was born on October 20, 1890 (though some sources say 1885), in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was Edward Joseph Lamothe, a bricklayer and occasional trombonist and his mother Louise Hermance Monette, a domestic worker. Young Ferdinand's father would sometimes take him to the French Opera House in New Orleans. His parents were never legally married and his father left his mother when Morton was around three years old. After his mother married William Mouton in 1894, Ferdinand adopted his stepfather's surname, anglicizing it to Morton, adapting "Ferd" as an unofficial forename. Ferd was a Creole who was of mixed African and Spanish heritage. Creole musicians were among the finest of the musicians in New Orleans due to the classical training that many received.
Ferd began to learned the guitar at age 7, and piano at 10. Ferd took piano lessons from a local schoolteacher Rachel D. Moment for an indeterminate period of time. Morton described her as "the biggest ham of a teacher that I've ever heard or seen..." However, with his innate talent he also likely absorbed a lot of the influence of other musicians playing in or near downtown New Orleans. At the age of fourteen, Morton began as a piano player in a brothel in Storyville, (or as it was referred to then, a sporting house), the red light district of New Orleans set up by alderman Sidney Story in 1897. Another place he frequented was the Frenchman's Café where many New Orleans musicians played during and after hours. In 1902, Morton met famous ragtime pianist and composer Tony Jackson.
Morton began meeting with Jackson and other musicians in back rooms after all the nightclubs closed, playing until the afternoon. Tony Jackson was a major influence on his music; according to Morton, Jackson was the only pianist better than him. Morton claimed that jazz was born there, and that the word was his invention. Year 1902 is symbolic for him because it predates the word “jazz” entering print, it reinforces his image as a prodigy and it places him at the origin point. Morton didn't invent jazz, but he was the first to codify jazz as a composed, arranged art form. Musically, he blended the styles of “ragtime and minstrelsy with dance rhythms,” placing him at the forefront of this new movement. In early 1904, Morton traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, to absorb local musical influences. Just only 14 years old, he soaked in the influences of this environment, learning more than just the music, but also the lifestyle of these pianists.
During this time Ferdinand mother died. Along with his two sisters, he went to live with his great-grandmother Mimi Péché. This arrangement didn’t go well nor did it last long. On the sly, Jelly Roll had been spending his afternoons developing a reputation as one of the top young piano players in New Orleans’ tenderloin district. Grandma Péché didn’t think music was a suitable career for any family member, let alone playing piano in Storyville bordellos. One morning on her way home from Mass, she ran into Jelly Roll wending his way back after a night working as a piano “professor” in a brothel. She saw his fancy clothes and knew in a flash what he’d been up to. For Mimi Péché, musicians were bums and scalawags. She wasn't about to let young Ferdinand live in the same house with his innocent young sisters, and coldly shut him out of the family home. He was 15-years-old and out on the street on his own.
After his grandmother threw him out, he took the train to Biloxi and stayed with his godmother Eulalie—or “Lallie”. He called her aunt Lallie. Aunt Lallie took him everywhere, including saloons and even jail. But it was in jail, when he heard the inmates singing, that Morton found his first musical inspiration. A firm believer in voodoo, his aunt kept glasses of water around the house from which Morton believed he heard voices echoing in the night. Morton also heard chains rattling and the sewing machine running. He would forever be influenced by voodoo and always kept holy water near his bed. During this period Morton also learned more about performance with ensembles while traveling with Billy Kersand's Minstrels throughout the South and Midwest. He also met many musicians that influenced his style and his attitude, which might eventually be described as appropriately confident if mildly cocky.
When he left his aunt’s house, Morton also left New Orleans, never to return. Sometime in 1910, Ferd join a unique theatrical troupe called Mack's Merry Makers. He played in their shows for a while, and worked with actor and writer Sandy Burns, who for some time had traveled with Sammy Davis. He wandered the country, and found work as a musician, a pool shark, and a gambler, while spending time in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and touring with his girlfriend Rosa Brown as a vaudeville act before living in Chicago for three years, where future stride great James P. Johnson caught his act. From there, he and Rosa tried to find another troupe, and ended up in Kentucky by the spring, then back to the Dayton, Ohio area. While touring, his songs "Jelly Roll Blues", "New Orleans Blues", "Frog-I-More Rag", "Animule Dance", and "King Porter Stomp" were composed. His most famous tune "Jelly Roll Blues", wouldn't be published until years later.
Ferdinand gave himself the nickname "Jelly Roll". Taking on “Jelly Roll” fit his flamboyant personality and helped him stand out in a competitive musical scene. The phrase “jelly roll” appeared in blues lyrics, street slang, and bawdy humor, where it referred to sensuality, eroticism, and sexual prowess. This made it a provocative, swaggering nickname—exactly the kind of persona Morton cultivated as a young musician in New Orleans’s Storyville district. It was a calculated, flamboyant choice that matched the culture of the environment and the persona he wanted to project. Morton quickly adopted the name, and before the mid-1910s, while he still used Ferd from time to time, he started to enjoy billings as "Jelly Roll" Morton. From this point on he began his career in earnest, traveling around the country while working as an itinerant pianist, gambler, pimp, and door to door salesman.
In 1911, Morton arrived in New York City sporting a diamond in his front tooth. It was there that he first played “Jelly Roll Blues”. By 1914, he was putting his compositions on paper. Early in 1914, Morton had been working with McCabe's Minstrel Troubadours when they were disbanded during a stay in St. Louis, and Kansas City, Missouri. Morton initially played ragtime—a popular style at the time that combined European classical elements with African American syncopated rhythms. However, he quickly began experimenting with the music, incorporating elements of the blues and Latin rhythms, while placing a heavy emphasis on improvisation. This fusion of styles laid the groundwork for what would become known as jazz. In 1915, Morton published one of his most famous compositions, “Jelly Roll Blues,” which is considered one of the earliest jazz compositions ever printed. Its innovative combination of ragtime, blues, and improvisation laid the foundation for countless jazz pieces that followed.
Ferd, now consistently billed as "Jelly Roll" or "New Orleans Jelly Roll," was receiving excellent reviews for his vivacious style, even when accompanying Rosa. He played a wide range of pieces from piano rags to classical pieces, and by this time, perhaps some of his own compositions. By late summer he and Rosa were playing in Chicago, Illinois, where Ferd would later spend a considerable period of time. Morton made some of his first West Coast appearances during the latter part of 1915 at the Pan-American Exhibition (World's Fair) in San Francisco, California. He eventually move to Los Angeles California, in the spring of 1917, where he would play through most of the year. After a stint in San Francisco for the winter and spring with bandleader William Manuel Johnson and Johnson's sister Anita Gonzalez, he traveled up to Vancouver, Canada, playing for some of the summer and fall in a jazz band led by pianist and clarinetist Oscar Holden.
In early 1918 he formed his Creole Jazz Band comprised of several fellow New Orleans musicians. He had actually played the clarinet with trombonist Edward "Kid" Ory's band prior to his west coast migration. He would later play a somewhat important role in Morton's life near the end. In the winter of 1918 the group played near the Mexican border in San Diego, and also may have made excursions at times into Tijuana. The 1920s were Morton’s most productive years. After bouncing around the west coast for most of 1920 and early 1921, Morton moved to Chicago in 1922 and produced his first recordings, “Mr. Jelly Lord” and “Clarinet Marmalade,” with a White jazz band, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Morton was one of the first African Americans to play in a mixed band.
While the 32 year old’s very first recordings were a couple of primitively recorded band sides, he made his mark that year with a series of brilliant piano solos, among the most significant in jazz up to that point. In Chicago, Morton formed his legendary band, Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers, and began recording some of the most significant jazz recordings of the era. Morton would achieve the height of his success as the leader of the legendary recording band, "The Red Hot Peppers", which recorded with Morton for the Victor label from 1926–to 1927. During this time he wrote “Wolverine Blues” which was published by Melrose Publishing. He would go on to write many more songs for them and start a relationship that would turn out to be ill fated for him. He recorded solo and duets with King Oliver, and with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings for the Gennett label, in the “hot style’, of the period, at the height of his popularity.
Morton and the Peppers recorded some of the most original and inspired numbers in the history of jazz. They earned national fame with such hits as “The Chant,” “Dead Man Blues,” “Dr. Jazz,” “Smoke House Blues,” “Sidewalk Blues,” and “Black Bottom Stomp”. His composition "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say", the last being a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century. These are widely regarded as masterpieces of early jazz. His intricate arrangements, blending written and improvised parts, showcased the full potential of a small jazz ensemble. On these sides, the band displayed the improvisational flair of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens, and it swung even harder. He would prove to be a brilliant composer for hot ensembles, being able to capture and portray the musical feel of New Orleans. The Red Hot Pepper recordings would become some of the best-selling recordings of the day.
Many of Morton's peers were enjoying an equal measure of success in 1927 and 1928, including Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington, the latter who would soon reign over the music scene of Harlem in New York City. In the late 1920s, in fact, there was a geographic shift as the center of gravity of hot jazz moved from Chicago to New York. The latter was building better clubs and theaters, had a wider reach with radio in the early days of networks, and some of the better recording studios and engineers. The Harlem Renaissance had been in full swing for several years, and Morton, along with the artists mentioned heavily contributed to the Renaissance. He moved to New York in 1928 and from then until 1930 he recorded fifty-eight more sides for Victor. There would be a lot of different names of his bands under which his recordings were done.
Most of these of course start with Jelly Roll Morton then we have Orchestra, Jazz Trio, Trio, Six/Seven, Incomparables, Kings of Jazz, Steamboat Four, Jazz Band, and Jazz Kids. There was also The Levee Serenaders, and the St. Louis Levee Band. Unfortunately, Morton’s good times did not last for long as his style of jazz soon fell out of fashion. The Great Depression and the advent of swing music had a devastating effect on Morton. Victor did not renew his contract, after his session of October 9, 1930, and his luck started to run out. Morton picked up what jobs he could find in New York, was part of a band in a traveling burlesque act, and briefly had a radio show in 1934, but he was largely forgotten by the jazz world. Morton’s outspokenness, combined with his claims of having invented jazz, alienated many of his peers, and he found himself increasingly marginalized.
Morton was forced to hock his diamond and resorted to playing piano in a lowbrow bar in Washington, D.C. While in Washington, in the late 1930s when he met folklorist Alan Lomax. Beginning in 1938, Lomax recorded a series of interviews for the Library of Congress in which Morton offered an oral history of the origins of jazz and demonstrated early styles on the piano. The recordings helped rekindle interest in Morton and his music. These interviews are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the early history of jazz, as they offer insights into both the music itself and Morton’s often larger-than-life personality. As his heart was working harder just to keep him mobile, Morton's strength quickly waned. He did some last sessions in December 1939 with the New Orleans Jazzmen featuring Sidney Bechet, but was not in good health due to recent heart problems.
He moved back out to Los Angeles in in 1940, but was too ill to work or move around much. In early June he was sent to a sanitarium to deal with the asthma and pulmonary issues. Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe "Jelly Roll" Morton died on July 10th, 1941, at age 50. He was one of the pioneer ragtime piano players, but he would later invite scorn by claiming to have “invented jazz in 1902”. He was, nevertheless, an important innovator in the transition from early jazz to orchestral jazz that took place in New Orleans about the turn of the century. The ragtime and traditional jazz revival of the 1950s helped to raise the level of awareness of Morton, as did the two books, "Mister Jelly Roll" and no less than four editions of "They All Played Ragtime". Morton’s music was more formal than the early Dixieland jazz, though his arrangements only sketched parts and allowed for improvisation. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential. Morton didn’t invent jazz, but he did help invent the idea of jazz as a composed, arranged, professional art form, and he wanted the world to know it.