Joseph 1885

Background

Both his mother, Louise Monette, and his father, F. P. (Ed) La Menthe, a carpenter and an able trombonist, were apparently descended from free colored Creole families long settled in Louisiana.

Education

He attended a local grammar school, but his chief interest was music, and he often heard performances at the French Opera House, where he became familiar with European musical forms.

He started the piano at about ten, studying for a time with a teacher at St. Joseph's University in New Orleans.

Career

- July 10, 1941) .

Morton, Ferdinand Joseph, (Sept. 20, 1885?

In later years Morton tended to romanticize the facts of his boyhood, and many details remain obscure or contradictory.

Morton soon gained fame as one of the best pianists in Storyville.

Morton cultivated a "barrelhouse" style which he considered different from ragtime, and by 1902 or 1903 he had begun composing.

Some of his most popular works of the period were "New Orleans Blues, " "King Porter Stomp, " "Wolverine Blues, " and "Jelly Roll Blues. "

By 1904 he had begun to travel in other parts of the South, playing the piano in sporting houses and organizing small bands in which he sometimes played trombone or drums.

Before long he had left New Orleans for good.

With increasing prosperity, and with growing recognition as a jazz musician, he fully indulged his fondness for striking dress and had a diamond inserted in a front tooth.

In 1917 Morton moved to California, where he remained for five years, playing in Los Angeles night clubs and establishing one of his own.

Significant as these were, his subsequent sides made for Victor, mainly in New York and Chicago between 1926 and 1930, were even more important.

For these he recruited such top New Orleans jazz musicians as Omer Simeon, Kid Ory, Johnny St. Cyr, and Johnny and Warren "Baby" Dodds to form the small band known as the Red Hot Peppers; they recorded some of his most original compositions, including "Black Bottom Stomp" and "Grandpa's Spells. "

Although at times difficult to get along with, Morton showed considerable tact and judgment in his dealings with these men.

The results proved to be some of the best jazz records made.

These successes made the last half of the 1920's prosperous for him, but his popularity declined in the 1930's.

He spent much of that decade in New York City, which had displaced Chicago as the jazz capital.

In the era of big swing bands, Morton's music seemed old-fashioned; for nearly ten years he made no recordings and fell upon hard times.

He continued to compose, however, creating and arranging almost continuously when he was not eking out a living in successively lower jobs.

He took his misfortunes bitterly, believing that both publishers and booking agents were cheating him and even that a West Indian partner had cast a voodoo spell upon him.

He now had a small but loyal following among enthusiasts of jazz, one of whom, the folklorist Alan Lomax, had him tell his life story, with many examples of his playing, on a series of documentary records made for the Library of Congress.

In 1917, during his first stay in California, Morton began living with Anita Gonzales (Johnson?)

, also from New Orleans.

Late in 1940, after he had developed hypertensive heart disease, Morton returned to California and reestablished a home with Anita.

Many regarded him as an incorrigible braggart and embroiderer of fact, as in his claim that he had "invented" jazz in 1902.

He carried on several bitter feuds, including one with W. C. Handy, known as "The Father of the Blues. "

But it was as a composer that he made his greatest contribution.

Many of his compositions-- including "Milneburg Joys, " "The Pearls, " "Shoe Shiners Drag, " "Wild Man Blues, " and "Kansas City Stomps"--became standards in the jazz repertory.

Jazz was not the creation of any one man, but Jelly Roll Morton's compositions, in which the formalistic and generally rigid structure of ragtime is suffused with the emotional intensity and improvisational freedom of the blues, are among the earliest embodiments of true jazz.

[The fullest biography is Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll (1950), which combines the subject's reminiscences from the 1938 Lib.

of Cong.

records with Lomax's own research.

Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz (1968), pp. 134-74, provides the most thorough discussion of Morton's music yet to appear.

Other useful sources are: Martin Williams, Jelly Roll Morton (1963) and the chapter on Morton in Williams's Jazz Masters of New Orleans (1967); Orrin Keepnews, "Jelly Roll Morton, " in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, eds. , The Jazz Makers (1957); Leonard Feather, The Encyc.

of Jazz (2nd ed. , 1960); and Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets (rev. ed. , 1958).

Dept. of Public Health. ]

Religion

Reared as a Catholic, he was buried with the last rites of the Church in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Personality

Although he was a gentle, generous, and reasonably modest friend to those whom he trusted, Morton was known to the public as an unbridled egotist with a flair for colorful behavior.

Interests

• Music & Bands

  - July 10, 1941), 1885 1941 Male Composer Jazz Musician jazz musician and composer, known as "Jelly Roll" Morton, was born in New Orleans, La. , and christened Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe.
  
  By his own account, he took up the harmonica at the age of five and the Jew's harp two years later.
  
  In the next few years he became a skilled guitarist and began playing blues and ragtime with small street bands.
  
  After his mother's death, when he was about fourteen, he and his two half sisters were left in the care of their great-grandmother, though Ferdinand lived chiefly with his godmother, who encouraged his piano study.
  
  For a decade before 1917 he wandered through the Midwest and Southwest, working in minstrel shows and in vaudeville, and supplementing his earnings as a piano player with winnings as a pool shark and gambler, together with profits from assorted small enterprises in Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, and Kansas City.
  
  He also began making written arrangements of his compositions; his "Jelly Roll Blues, " published in 1915, was probably the first jazz orchestration ever printed.

Connections

parents:

Willie

His parents separated, and he eventually adopted the name of his stepfather, Willie Morton.

married:

Mabel

In November 1928 he married Mabel Bertrand, a nightclub entertainer and daughter of a New Orleans doctor.

rival:

Tony

His chief rival was Tony Jackson, a ragtime pianist for whom he always had a high regard.

Daughter:

Mabel

In November 1928 he married Mabel Bertrand, a nightclub entertainer and daughter of a New Orleans doctor.

stepfather:

Willie

His parents separated, and he eventually adopted the name of his stepfather, Willie Morton.