danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Depends on how the thread goes, really, but Papa Jo will be appearing when the Basie Band is covered.How many pages until we get to Jo Jones?
Jazz history - all of it! The Thread
- Thread starter danny la rouge
- Start date
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Tomorrow we start on Keppard. For now we are still in Jazz Prehistory. So here are some more of the formative influences to be found in New Orleans as jazz was being born:
Gospel:
Blues:
Fife and drum:
Gospel:
Blues:
Fife and drum:
ska invita
back on the other side
This fife and drum stuff is really doing it for me - anyone know of a compilation? Might be best in short doses though i imagine 
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Hah.This fife and drum stuff is really doing it for me - anyone know of a compilation? Might be best in short doses though i imagine
There are a number of Alan Lomax compilations which feature fife and drum. I don't know of any solely fife and drum compilations, but I'm sure they exist.
I can recommend Everybody Hollerin' Goat by Othar Turner. I haven't yet got round to buying anything by his grand daughter, Sharde Thomas, but I must put that right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shardé_Thomas
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Freddie Keppard
Freddie Keppard was, by all accounts, long past his prime by the time he was finally recorded. He was one of that first class of New Orleans musicians in the first decade of the 20th Century to play what we would today call jazz. Though his powers were diminished by the time of the recording we’re about to hear, it is through him that we can perhaps get an inkling of the music of that first decade of jazz.
Keppard, a former shoeshine boy on Basin Street, took Buddy Bolden’s spot on cornet in the Eagle Band when Bolden was incapacitated. Those who saw him at his peak say Keppard played very much in the Bolden style, which meant a penetrating, ringing, melodic tone, used to rhythmically lead the band. Bolden was credited with inventing, or at least popularising, the “Big Four” beat (see Wynton Marsalis’ explanation here: http://jazz.nuvvo.com/lesson/10127-what-is-the-big-four-beat ), so Keppard’s role in the Eagle Band was very much to propel the other players.
King Keppard
After Bolden, he was the second to be called “King” – at the age of 16 - by other New Orleans musicians.
The side I’ve chosen to demonstrate Keppard’s style is Stock Yards Strut, recorded by Freddie Keppard's Jazz Cardinals in 1926. That’s nearly 10 years after the ODJB’s first side, but, with the caveats discussed above, we’re going to assume that Keppard’s style hadn’t changed much since the first decade of the century. Keppard had left New Orleans in about 1914, maybe a little earlier, to take his music first to Los Angeles, and then from coast to coast and points in between, and it seems reasonable to assume, with the benefit of contemporary accounts, that his style had fully developed by that time. Tantalisingly, we’re told he was offered a recording date in 1915, but turned it down, according to legend because he was afraid other musicians would cop his licks. (More probably it was because as a professional, urban musician, he knew his worth, and didn’t think much of the terms he’d been offered). Either way, he missed out on the chance to lead the first jazz band on record.
While he was a great player, he was not really an innovator. What we hear him play is, more or less, what he learned from Bolden. (Those who heard both in the flesh attest to this).
The first thing to notice is how much it is Keppard who rhythmically propels the tune. The nominal rhythm section of Arthur Campbell on piano, and Jasper Taylor on woodblocks (a compromise drummers came up with so as not to overwhelm the recording equipment) follows Keppard rather than the other way round, so much so that you can hear them fumble when Keppard drops out.
Polyphony
The next thing to notice is that New Orleans polyphony. This is the vital feature of early New Orleans jazz; the ensemble improvising that went on between cornet, clarinet (here played by the great Johnny Dodds) and trombone (Eddie Vincent).
Those three instruments essentially take different parts of the chord: trombone plays the root note; cornet (or trumpet) takes the middle part of the chord, where the main melody will be voiced; and clarinet – most agile of the three – uses the highest notes to arpeggiate patterns like the cast iron filigree work of New Orleans balconies. By knowing their respective roles, they can then weave in and out of each other, improvising counterpoint and harmonies, each contributing their own individual character, and with the whole greater than the parts. That ensemble polyphony is perhaps little changed from what we think went on in Bolden’s day.
A window on the early years of jazz
Like his mentor, Keppard was an alcoholic, and died in 1933, aged only 44.
So there we have it, King Keppard: second king of jazz, in decline by the time we get to hear him, but his recordings are the frosty window through which we can glimpse the beginnings.
You can get Freddie Keppard tracks on several New Orleans era compilation CDs, but he only recorded 24 tracks, and they are all on “ Freddie Keppard, the Complete Set 1923-26”, on the Retrieval imprint of Challenge Records. (http://www.challengerecords.com/products/1182852221). It is recommended by Morton and Cook in the Penguin Jazz Guide as having much better sound quality than previous CD issues.
Freddie Keppard was, by all accounts, long past his prime by the time he was finally recorded. He was one of that first class of New Orleans musicians in the first decade of the 20th Century to play what we would today call jazz. Though his powers were diminished by the time of the recording we’re about to hear, it is through him that we can perhaps get an inkling of the music of that first decade of jazz.
Keppard, a former shoeshine boy on Basin Street, took Buddy Bolden’s spot on cornet in the Eagle Band when Bolden was incapacitated. Those who saw him at his peak say Keppard played very much in the Bolden style, which meant a penetrating, ringing, melodic tone, used to rhythmically lead the band. Bolden was credited with inventing, or at least popularising, the “Big Four” beat (see Wynton Marsalis’ explanation here: http://jazz.nuvvo.com/lesson/10127-what-is-the-big-four-beat ), so Keppard’s role in the Eagle Band was very much to propel the other players.
King Keppard
After Bolden, he was the second to be called “King” – at the age of 16 - by other New Orleans musicians.
The side I’ve chosen to demonstrate Keppard’s style is Stock Yards Strut, recorded by Freddie Keppard's Jazz Cardinals in 1926. That’s nearly 10 years after the ODJB’s first side, but, with the caveats discussed above, we’re going to assume that Keppard’s style hadn’t changed much since the first decade of the century. Keppard had left New Orleans in about 1914, maybe a little earlier, to take his music first to Los Angeles, and then from coast to coast and points in between, and it seems reasonable to assume, with the benefit of contemporary accounts, that his style had fully developed by that time. Tantalisingly, we’re told he was offered a recording date in 1915, but turned it down, according to legend because he was afraid other musicians would cop his licks. (More probably it was because as a professional, urban musician, he knew his worth, and didn’t think much of the terms he’d been offered). Either way, he missed out on the chance to lead the first jazz band on record.
While he was a great player, he was not really an innovator. What we hear him play is, more or less, what he learned from Bolden. (Those who heard both in the flesh attest to this).
The first thing to notice is how much it is Keppard who rhythmically propels the tune. The nominal rhythm section of Arthur Campbell on piano, and Jasper Taylor on woodblocks (a compromise drummers came up with so as not to overwhelm the recording equipment) follows Keppard rather than the other way round, so much so that you can hear them fumble when Keppard drops out.
Polyphony
The next thing to notice is that New Orleans polyphony. This is the vital feature of early New Orleans jazz; the ensemble improvising that went on between cornet, clarinet (here played by the great Johnny Dodds) and trombone (Eddie Vincent).
Those three instruments essentially take different parts of the chord: trombone plays the root note; cornet (or trumpet) takes the middle part of the chord, where the main melody will be voiced; and clarinet – most agile of the three – uses the highest notes to arpeggiate patterns like the cast iron filigree work of New Orleans balconies. By knowing their respective roles, they can then weave in and out of each other, improvising counterpoint and harmonies, each contributing their own individual character, and with the whole greater than the parts. That ensemble polyphony is perhaps little changed from what we think went on in Bolden’s day.
A window on the early years of jazz
Like his mentor, Keppard was an alcoholic, and died in 1933, aged only 44.
So there we have it, King Keppard: second king of jazz, in decline by the time we get to hear him, but his recordings are the frosty window through which we can glimpse the beginnings.
You can get Freddie Keppard tracks on several New Orleans era compilation CDs, but he only recorded 24 tracks, and they are all on “ Freddie Keppard, the Complete Set 1923-26”, on the Retrieval imprint of Challenge Records. (http://www.challengerecords.com/products/1182852221). It is recommended by Morton and Cook in the Penguin Jazz Guide as having much better sound quality than previous CD issues.
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
Only just caught up with this thread, excellent posts danny and ska 
Dillinger4
Es gibt Zeit
there was a great jazz thing on BBC Radio 3 last night
Obscure Hurt by Guy Barker, performed by the BBC CO and Barker's own orchestra.
Obscure Hurt by Guy Barker, performed by the BBC CO and Barker's own orchestra.
ska invita
back on the other side
Its interesting, I cant think of another music where you have 3 lead instruments soloing simultaneously IYSWIM.
So if I've understood you right, although this recording is later than the first ever jazz recording by ODJB (
What would you say is the big groundbreaking feature of jazz compared to what has gone before - is it the soloing? The energy? The combo of the two?
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Exactly.
What's interesting is that at the point that jazz becomes widely popular with the listening public, both black and white, the recordings they are hearing represent both the new and the old; the innovators, and the "fossils" (for want of a better word). So it's hard for the public at this point to pin down where the cutting edge of jazz is, and where it is going, since all of it is new to them.
And in fact it's at this time that a lot of later musicians are hearing jazz for the first time, and hearing it first on record. Whereas Keppard et al learned their trade in person, at clubs, at dances etc., people like Benny Goodman will first hear jazz from recordings. This is a new phenomenon. It's something we're used to, but then it was new.
Incidentally, it is also at this time that people like Eddie Condon are setting up schools of thought about what constitutes "proper" jazz. Through his force of personality, a "Chicago school" (as in a way of thinking about jazz, rather than a place of education) is established that will influence many musicians, black and white.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
It's all that and more. I think we have to say that improvisation plays a much larger role in jazz (and blues) than in most other music that the public would have been used to. Bach improvised, but not really in a comparable way.
But there's also the fact that it takes all of the influences we've talked about already and forges something new and exciting out of it. Something that has roots, for sure, but something that at that point says something about modernity.
ska invita
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I know we're moving on but a last thing on Fife and Drum - 10 minutes of great footage here
Gravel Springs Fife and Drum
A compelling and award-winning portrait of Othar Turner, his music and their role in the Gravel Springs community. The film not only demonstrates how to make a cane fife, but also gets to the heart of both Turner and his fife and drum music as he's shown performing at an annual Fourth of July picnic. Quick cuts between dancing band members and the rhythmic movements of Turner's family going about their daily chores capture the mounting excitement and provide a rare, revealing glimpse of the work and play that characterize this traditional rural Mississippi society.
A unique record of an ancient musical tradition.
--- Film Library Quarterly
http://www.folkstreams.net/film,59
Gravel Springs Fife and Drum
A compelling and award-winning portrait of Othar Turner, his music and their role in the Gravel Springs community. The film not only demonstrates how to make a cane fife, but also gets to the heart of both Turner and his fife and drum music as he's shown performing at an annual Fourth of July picnic. Quick cuts between dancing band members and the rhythmic movements of Turner's family going about their daily chores capture the mounting excitement and provide a rare, revealing glimpse of the work and play that characterize this traditional rural Mississippi society.
A unique record of an ancient musical tradition.
--- Film Library Quarterly
http://www.folkstreams.net/film,59
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
It's important to remember how jazz sounded to the public in the 1920s. It isn't nostalgic, as it is for us. It's modern, brash, and permissive. (The musicians are smoking marijuana, or drinking during prohibition). It goes hand in hand with defying the Volstead Act, with cinema, with Alfred Stieglitz's nude photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe, with modern art. It is a modern art.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
But just to remind you, we're listening to Keppard in order to learn something of the beginnings of jazz, to hear what we can of Bolden.
Donald M. Marquis, in his book “In Search of Buddy Bolden”, quotes Bill Matthews, an old trombone player, as saying “...on those old, slow, low down blues, that boy could make the women jump out the window. On those old, slow, low down blues he had a moan in his cornet that went all through you, just like you were in church or something”. (p100).
Marquis also cites an interview given by Peter Brocage, a New Orleans cornet player who played with Joe Oliver's band and the Fate Marable Orchestra, amongst others, who says that of all the players who followed Bolden, Keppard was “most on the same style. The improvisations is always gonna be a little different, no two men alike”. (p105).
Donald M. Marquis, in his book “In Search of Buddy Bolden”, quotes Bill Matthews, an old trombone player, as saying “...on those old, slow, low down blues, that boy could make the women jump out the window. On those old, slow, low down blues he had a moan in his cornet that went all through you, just like you were in church or something”. (p100).
Marquis also cites an interview given by Peter Brocage, a New Orleans cornet player who played with Joe Oliver's band and the Fate Marable Orchestra, amongst others, who says that of all the players who followed Bolden, Keppard was “most on the same style. The improvisations is always gonna be a little different, no two men alike”. (p105).
It sounds more modern, brash and permissive to me now. More so than pretty much anything I can think of. All this putting it in historical context is making me feel slightly uncomfortable it's almost detracting from it, making it feel as if we couldn't properly understand it because we aren't of the right time and place. But people then just hearing it for the first time would have been blown away just like I was when I first heard it. I don't think it's simply a reflection of it's time, it would have functioned as an escape from it's time. Turn of the century New Orleans sounds fucking miserable. It should be an aural riot for people who have spent the day shining shoes or whatever. It should transcend for that reason and if it doesn't it's a failure and a failure in it's own time as well.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Interesting reaction. Hmm. I'm not sure you should continue reading the thread if you think that looking at the history of the music will take away your permission to enjoy the music! (For me the opposite was true; I wanted to know more and more about the people who made these sounds and what their inspirations were).
I can see what you mean that anyone coming to early jazz afresh at any time will be blown away, but I wonder how it's possible to come at it completely afresh? The musical language they developed has become part of popular culture. Just to take Louis Armstrong's singing style, he influenced all of popular music that came after. It is impossible for us to un-have that influence.
I wonder about that. Here's a thought experiment. Suppose the technical side of recording hasn't changed for the past 100 years (a big supposition) and you knew nothing about jazz and you were presented with recordings from 1915 to the present day but you had no idea when they were recorded. Would you be able to tell what came first? From this naive point of view, how do you tell whether X shares characteristics with Y because Y influenced X or whether X shares characteristics with Y because Y was influenced by X? (Do I dare suggest that that naive point of view might be quite liberating?)
People experiencing King Oliver for the first time would have had all this "pre-jazz" to inform them just as we have had all this later jazz to inform us. Obviously we have access to a broader musical experience now as time has passed but still, I'd never heard any of this fife and drum stuff before last week.
Or to put it in a less philosophical way. I'd never heard anything quite like Bix Beiderbecke's At The Jazz Band Ball when I first heard it. It sounded totally fresh and thrilling to me.
But I'm just being argumentative really. I like the history, which is interesting in it's own right.
the cartoonist robert crumb is an early jazz (and blues and country) afficionado, and has a fantastic book available with a collection of trading card images he did of various of his musical heroes. I reproduce the early jazz collection below (freddie keppard is present and correct, second from the bottom on the left).
the book comes with a great cd he compiled (i believe from his own collection of 78s), it's worth getting just for that...
the book comes with a great cd he compiled (i believe from his own collection of 78s), it's worth getting just for that...
ska invita
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Ive got one here for the earliest jazz manifestations roll call
"Carolina Shout" by James P. Johnson
This video has poor sound but is the recording of Johnson playing it himself as he would have intended. Some other videos have better sound but play it all with less expression
One of the first recorded pieces of jazz piano (recorded in 1921, with a piano roll made in 1918 - so the piece is probably a bit older than that), composed by Johnson himself.
So from what I read Johnson is a New Yorker who plays in the Harlem Stride style... the "stride" refers to having to jump your left hand up and down the keyboard.
It sounds a lot like a ragtime piano piece but it has some new elements in it such as improvisation, blue notes, and swing rhythms which its predecessor did not.
In particular the bit that "sounds jazzy" to me are the blue notes - the notes which fall out of the scale and give the bit of dischordant edge, such as those stabs at 1.04 (and repeated) as well as lots of little other ones dropped in all over the place (like at 0.33)...
according to wiki James Johnson "along with Jelly Roll Morton, were arguably the two most important pianists who bridged the ragtime and jazz eras, and the two most important catalysts in the evolution of ragtime piano into jazz. As such, he was a model for Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum and his more famous pupil, Fats Waller."
"Carolina Shout" by James P. Johnson
This video has poor sound but is the recording of Johnson playing it himself as he would have intended. Some other videos have better sound but play it all with less expression
One of the first recorded pieces of jazz piano (recorded in 1921, with a piano roll made in 1918 - so the piece is probably a bit older than that), composed by Johnson himself.
So from what I read Johnson is a New Yorker who plays in the Harlem Stride style... the "stride" refers to having to jump your left hand up and down the keyboard.
It sounds a lot like a ragtime piano piece but it has some new elements in it such as improvisation, blue notes, and swing rhythms which its predecessor did not.
In particular the bit that "sounds jazzy" to me are the blue notes - the notes which fall out of the scale and give the bit of dischordant edge, such as those stabs at 1.04 (and repeated) as well as lots of little other ones dropped in all over the place (like at 0.33)...
according to wiki James Johnson "along with Jelly Roll Morton, were arguably the two most important pianists who bridged the ragtime and jazz eras, and the two most important catalysts in the evolution of ragtime piano into jazz. As such, he was a model for Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum and his more famous pupil, Fats Waller."
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton
While details of Bolden and Keppard’s lives are sketchy, Morton’s was genuinely shady. He was a professional gambler, snake oil salesman (one concoction he made by boiling down Coca-Cola and adding salt), a con man, an occasional small-time pimp, and was known to carry a knife and use it. If there was a dodgy deal he could get in on, he would. The name he went by was a black New Orleans euphemism for female genitalia (c/f, for example New Orleans guitarist Lonnie Johnson’s lyrics:
) , and he had a diamond tooth. (The great pianist Mary Lou Williams remembers being frightened of him, and finding his smile and that tooth sinister).
Morton began his professional career as a pianist at the age of 14, playing in the brothels of New Orleans’ Storyville district. By 1904 he had left New Orleans, and took his music – and con routines - all over America and even Canada, including Chicago, Kansas City, St Louis, Detroit, and New York, where he was heard by what was to be the first generation of stride players. James P Johnson remembered hearing him in New York in 1911. He was probably one of the earliest artists to spread the New Orleans style to other urban centres.
Jazz Educator
Morton picked up bands as he went, and found he had to write out parts for local musicians not used to the New Orleans ensemble improvising. He is also known to have demonstrated for non reading musicians their parts on his piano. By this means, Morton was an early jazz educator, helping to spread the New Orleans ideas in the first decade of the 20th Century.
Morton’s playing uses distinctive right hand voicings, with the harmonies placed above the melody, and often using flattened 5th intervals. This was adopted as the New Orleans piano style.
The side we’re listening to is Morton’s own Blackbottom Stomp, recorded in 1926 by Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. It was originally called Queen of Spades, but he renamed it for the session, in order to cash in on the Black Bottom dance craze of the time.
What we hear is great bit of ensemble playing, which you might expect from players like Kid Ory on trombone (in wonderful “tailgating” form), Johnny St Cyr on banjo, and Omer Simeon on clarinet. But it is also clear that while there are ensemble and solo improvisations, there are also a lot of arranged passages. Listen to the descending ensemble riff at about 0:48 seconds to change key, for example. The piece is packed with tricks and dynamics, from the stop time passages, to the trumpet calls and ensemble responses. Many of these were dictated by Morton, rather than spontaneous inventions of improvisers. It’s also very “raggy”, with its collection of themes, and shift from Bb to Gm and back, and up to Eb.
Overlaid time signatures
And for once we can actually hear the rhythm section fairly well. We get a good flavour of the way a New Orleans rhythm section would play a 4/4 piece with a 2/4 feel, but slip back to 4/4 when emphasis is needed. It’s an effective technique. Earlier recording had been unable to capture the excitement of a New Orleans rhythm section, and now we get an idea of how we had been told they sounded: the light and shade, dropping out for certain passages, the barnstorming final chorus, the overlaid time signatures, and so on.
But overall, while there are solo breaks, this is an ensemble piece, in the old New Orleans mould; shaped and corralled by Morton, sculptured in his unique and demanding way, but it is not a vehicle for solos.
On CD
You can hear Morton’s solo piano playing on the Library of Congress recordings made by Alan Lomax in 1938, or you could try to get this tune on the CD recommended by Brian Morton and Richard Cook, on the (Chronological) Classics label, CD number 612 Jelly Roll Morton 1926 -1928. The French company went bankrupt, and their CDs, with the famous typo (“Chronogical”), are hard to find, and getting more and more expensive.
You’re better opting for the Proper Box, Dr Jazz: http://www.propermusic.com/product-details/Jelly-Roll-Morton-Doctor-Jazz-4CD-147746
While details of Bolden and Keppard’s lives are sketchy, Morton’s was genuinely shady. He was a professional gambler, snake oil salesman (one concoction he made by boiling down Coca-Cola and adding salt), a con man, an occasional small-time pimp, and was known to carry a knife and use it. If there was a dodgy deal he could get in on, he would. The name he went by was a black New Orleans euphemism for female genitalia (c/f, for example New Orleans guitarist Lonnie Johnson’s lyrics:
Morton began his professional career as a pianist at the age of 14, playing in the brothels of New Orleans’ Storyville district. By 1904 he had left New Orleans, and took his music – and con routines - all over America and even Canada, including Chicago, Kansas City, St Louis, Detroit, and New York, where he was heard by what was to be the first generation of stride players. James P Johnson remembered hearing him in New York in 1911. He was probably one of the earliest artists to spread the New Orleans style to other urban centres.
Jazz Educator
Morton picked up bands as he went, and found he had to write out parts for local musicians not used to the New Orleans ensemble improvising. He is also known to have demonstrated for non reading musicians their parts on his piano. By this means, Morton was an early jazz educator, helping to spread the New Orleans ideas in the first decade of the 20th Century.
Morton’s playing uses distinctive right hand voicings, with the harmonies placed above the melody, and often using flattened 5th intervals. This was adopted as the New Orleans piano style.
The side we’re listening to is Morton’s own Blackbottom Stomp, recorded in 1926 by Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. It was originally called Queen of Spades, but he renamed it for the session, in order to cash in on the Black Bottom dance craze of the time.
What we hear is great bit of ensemble playing, which you might expect from players like Kid Ory on trombone (in wonderful “tailgating” form), Johnny St Cyr on banjo, and Omer Simeon on clarinet. But it is also clear that while there are ensemble and solo improvisations, there are also a lot of arranged passages. Listen to the descending ensemble riff at about 0:48 seconds to change key, for example. The piece is packed with tricks and dynamics, from the stop time passages, to the trumpet calls and ensemble responses. Many of these were dictated by Morton, rather than spontaneous inventions of improvisers. It’s also very “raggy”, with its collection of themes, and shift from Bb to Gm and back, and up to Eb.
Overlaid time signatures
And for once we can actually hear the rhythm section fairly well. We get a good flavour of the way a New Orleans rhythm section would play a 4/4 piece with a 2/4 feel, but slip back to 4/4 when emphasis is needed. It’s an effective technique. Earlier recording had been unable to capture the excitement of a New Orleans rhythm section, and now we get an idea of how we had been told they sounded: the light and shade, dropping out for certain passages, the barnstorming final chorus, the overlaid time signatures, and so on.
But overall, while there are solo breaks, this is an ensemble piece, in the old New Orleans mould; shaped and corralled by Morton, sculptured in his unique and demanding way, but it is not a vehicle for solos.
On CD
You can hear Morton’s solo piano playing on the Library of Congress recordings made by Alan Lomax in 1938, or you could try to get this tune on the CD recommended by Brian Morton and Richard Cook, on the (Chronological) Classics label, CD number 612 Jelly Roll Morton 1926 -1928. The French company went bankrupt, and their CDs, with the famous typo (“Chronogical”), are hard to find, and getting more and more expensive.
You’re better opting for the Proper Box, Dr Jazz: http://www.propermusic.com/product-details/Jelly-Roll-Morton-Doctor-Jazz-4CD-147746
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
It's an iconic pic. We both used it for that reason. It seems to sum up his character in so many ways.
malatesta32
Not Serb. No, Really!
can confirm that the robert crumb book and cd is great. got it as from my brother for me birthday. some great tunes on it. altho crumbs sexual politics leave something to be desired he plays banjo in his band, the cheap suit serenaders.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
As a footnote, I'd like to point out that although it's sometimes said Morton was a stage name, I don't think that's fully accurate. He was illegitimate, and his mother and father never married. When he was young his mother married a man named William Morton (sometimes spelled Mouton - say it in a New Orleans accent to see why). Morton is his step father's name, which Ferdinand (Jelly Roll) took.
The name we often see as Morton's real name comes to us from Alan Lomax. We have to be careful with taking Lomax at face value, not least because he seems to have had great trouble with Morton's accent. Several scholars have noted that the transcriptions Lomax took from the recording he made for the Library of Congress of a lengthy interview with Morton interspersed with songs, often seem to misapprehend what Morton has said. You can hear Jelly Roll saying his natural father's name was Lamont (as in the former British Chancellor, Norman), but Lomax transcribes this as La Menthe. For years people searched the records for birth and death certificates in New Orleans for that name, but none exist. Of course, Lomax isn't wholly to blame, because Jelly Roll was both a seasoned bullshitter and a proud Creole, and in the conversation he is bigging up his French ancestry. But there is no one with the surname "La Menthe" or its variants "LaMenthe" and "Lamenthe" listed in the 1900 U.S. Census, never mind just New Orleans or Louisiana. (But then, perhaps Jelly Roll believed it to be La Menthe, like Creme de Menthe, or wanted others to believe it because he liked the sound of it. That's possible).
The current consensus has settled on LaMothe as his birth name, because that name is found in New Orleans around the turn of the century, and a birth certificate has been found with that on it (in the wrong year, and spelling his mother's surname wrong, and getting her first name wrong, and day and month wrong. But that's actually par for the course in Jim Crow New Orleans, with "Creoles of Color"). But it's not one Jelly Roll ever seems to have used.
Anyway, I bring this up to demonstrate the trouble of genealogy when dealing with Jim Crow laws, with oral history based on the tales of someone like Morton, and with the accuracy or otherwise of a chronicler like Lomax.
The name we often see as Morton's real name comes to us from Alan Lomax. We have to be careful with taking Lomax at face value, not least because he seems to have had great trouble with Morton's accent. Several scholars have noted that the transcriptions Lomax took from the recording he made for the Library of Congress of a lengthy interview with Morton interspersed with songs, often seem to misapprehend what Morton has said. You can hear Jelly Roll saying his natural father's name was Lamont (as in the former British Chancellor, Norman), but Lomax transcribes this as La Menthe. For years people searched the records for birth and death certificates in New Orleans for that name, but none exist. Of course, Lomax isn't wholly to blame, because Jelly Roll was both a seasoned bullshitter and a proud Creole, and in the conversation he is bigging up his French ancestry. But there is no one with the surname "La Menthe" or its variants "LaMenthe" and "Lamenthe" listed in the 1900 U.S. Census, never mind just New Orleans or Louisiana. (But then, perhaps Jelly Roll believed it to be La Menthe, like Creme de Menthe, or wanted others to believe it because he liked the sound of it. That's possible).
The current consensus has settled on LaMothe as his birth name, because that name is found in New Orleans around the turn of the century, and a birth certificate has been found with that on it (in the wrong year, and spelling his mother's surname wrong, and getting her first name wrong, and day and month wrong. But that's actually par for the course in Jim Crow New Orleans, with "Creoles of Color"). But it's not one Jelly Roll ever seems to have used.
Anyway, I bring this up to demonstrate the trouble of genealogy when dealing with Jim Crow laws, with oral history based on the tales of someone like Morton, and with the accuracy or otherwise of a chronicler like Lomax.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Here's Morton on his own, in 1924:
(Not piano roll, despite what the details of the YouTube clip seems to imply).
(Not piano roll, despite what the details of the YouTube clip seems to imply).
ska invita
back on the other side
i remember when you scored these (i think i need to get out more)
this
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