Confidence

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton would write in 1938, and I, myself, happened to be its creator in the year 1902.

Morton was only 12 years old in 1902, and to many of those who remembered him, it then seemed like just the latest in a series of outrageous boasts. Said Pops Foster...He claimed he invented a lot of things he didn't. If you listened to him talk long enough, he's say he invented the piano or anything else that came to his mind.

Jazz had no single creator, of course, but Morton's claim had more heft than it seemed at the time. "He could back up everything he said," claimed Omer Simeon, "with what he could do." Morton was among the first to play jazz, its first theorist and composer and master of form, the first to write it down, and the first to help spread New Orleans music across the country.

He was born Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe in New Orleans on October 20, 1890, but eventually changed his name to Morton for "business reasons". When 14 years old, his mother died and he and his two sisters moved in with relatives. The following year, wearing long pants stolen from an uncle's closet to fool the policemen who had orders to chase away the boys in short ones, he began venturing into Storyville, the 18 square block of vice in this raucous city. It was a place like no other in America, a magnet to people from every stratum of society, all intent on pleasure. Here Jelly Roll Morton forged his highly successful career as a piano player and composer. A jazz legend.

After hours, Morton haunted the back room of a place called the Frenchmen's.Everything in the line of hilarity was available and all the piano players in the District hung out. We had Spanish pianists, colored, white, we had Frenchmens, we had Americans. We had'em from all parts of the world. New Orleans was the stomping grounds for all the greatest pianists in the country.

Showmanship was always central to his style. The pianist James P. Johnson remembered seeing him work in california.

He would take his overcoat off. It had a special lining that would catch everybody's eye, so he would turn it inside out and, instead of folding it, he would lay it lengthwise across the top of the piano. He would do this very slowly, very carefully and solemnly, as if the coat was worth a fortune and had to be handled very tenderly. Then he'd take a big silk handkerchief, shake it out to show it off properly, and dust off the stool. He'd sit down, hit his special trademark chord, and he'd be gone! The first rag he'd play was always a spirited one to astound the audience.

Everywhere Jelly Roll Morton went, New Orleans music went too, and jazz musicians will always remember him as a musical giant and great innovator. Confidence helps. And so Jelly says....

A lot of people have the wrong conception of jazz. Jazz music is to be played sweet. Soft, plenty rhythm. When you have plenty rhythm with your plenty swing, it becomes beautiful.... You can't make crescendos and diminuendos when one is playing triple forte [loud]. You've got to be able to come down in order to go up. If a glass of water is full you can't fill it anymore, but if you have half a glass you have an opportunity to put more water in it, and jazz music is based on the same principles.

Yeah, Jelly. And isn't that a Libra for ya?
Bottom photo: Louise Monette, the mother of Jelly Roll Morton