Ferdinand Morton
| Jelly Roll Morton | |
|---|---|
Morton in 1918
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (possibly spelled Lemott, LaMotte or LaMenthe) |
| Also known as | Jelly Roll Morton |
| Born |
October 20, 1890 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | July 10, 1941 (aged 50) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Ragtime, jazz, jazz blues, Dixieland, swing |
| Occupation(s) | Vaudeville comedian, bandleader, composer, arranger |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Years active | 1900–1941 |
| Associated acts | Red Hot Peppers, New Orleans Rhythm Kings |
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (October 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer who started his career in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Widely recognized as a pivotal figure in early jazz, Morton is perhaps most notable as jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential spirit and characteristics when notated. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in 1915, was the first published jazz composition. Morton also wrote the standards "King Porter Stomp", "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say", the last a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century.
Morton's claim to have invented jazz in 1902 aroused resentment. The jazz historian, musician, and composer Gunther Schuller says of Morton's "hyperbolic assertions" that there is "no proof to the contrary" and that Morton's "considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation".Alan Lomax, who recorded extensive biographical interviews of Morton at the Library of Congress in 1938, did not agree that Morton was an egoist:
In being called a supreme egotist, Jelly Roll was often a victim of loose and lurid reporting. If we read the words that he himself wrote, we learn that he almost had an inferiority complex and said that he created his own style of jazz piano because "All my fellow musicians were much faster in manipulations, I thought than I, and I did not feel as though I was in their class." So he used a slower tempo to permit flexibility through the use of more notes, a pinch of Spanish to give a number of right seasoning, the avoidance of playing triple forte continuously, and many other points". --Quoted in John Szwed, Dr Jazz.
Morton was born into the inward-looking, Creole (free people of color) community in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana c. 1890. Both parents could trace their Creole ancestry back four generations to the eighteenth century. Morton's exact date and year of birth are uncertain, owing to the fact that in common with the majority nineteenth-century babies born in New Orleans, no birth certificate was ever issued for him, since the law requiring birth certificates for citizens was not enforced until 1914. His parents were Edward Joseph (Martin) Lamothe, a bricklayer by trade, and Louise Hermance Monette, a domestic worker. His father left his mother when Morton was three (they were never formally married) and when his mother married William Mouton in 1894, Ferdinand adopted his stepfather's surname: anglicizing it to Morton. He showed musical talent at an early age.
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