RESEARCH General History

JAZZ HISTORY
Book tells of life, hard times – and genius – of 'Jelly Roll'

Craig Chamberlain, News Editor
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

6/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand Journalism professor William Gaines collaborated on a new book that details the life of jazz "originator" "Jelly Roll" Morton.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Jazz has been called one of America’s greatest inventions. Yet its first composer, Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton, was ridiculed, nearly forgotten and living in poverty as he neared the end of his life in the 1930s – even while his music made hits for others on the radio.

Morton has been called a braggert, bully and worse, but Howard Reich and William Gaines, in their new book "Jelly’s Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton"(Da Capo Press), seek to vindicate the "originator of jazz," as he called himself, and restore him to his place in history.

Reich is an award-winning jazz critic for the Chicago Tribune. Gaines is a former investigative reporter for the Tribune, where he won two Pulitzer Prizes, and is now the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The book grew out of a three-part series the men collaborated on for the Tribune in 1999, when Gaines was still at the paper.

Through lively writing, backed by investigative reporting techniques rarely employed in this kind of story, "Jelly’s Blues" follows Morton and his music through the early decades of jazz.

It begins a century ago in a New Orleans neighborhood of saloons, brothels and dance halls, where "the most original musicians America had yet produced were dispensing their wares for free, on the streets." It later weaves through the 1920s Chicago jazz scene , where Morton reached the height of his success, then traces his hard times in New York and Washington, D.C., before his death in 1941.

The book tells other stories along the way, one about how Morton, true to his claims, was bilked out of perhaps millions in royalties. Gaines found records from a probate court, and then later in the U.S. Copyright Office, showing how one of Morton’s publishers, Walter Melrose, added his name to some of Morton’s copyrights, laying claim to half the royalties on those pieces. In some cases, "Melrose would put his name on Jelly Roll’s compositions as the lyricist, but there were no lyrics," Gaines said.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests, Gaines also found correspondence between Morton and the U.S. attorney general regarding the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), which collected broadcast and performance royalties. Morton and most other black musicians at the time were effectively locked out of ASCAP membership, and thereby denied royalties they were due. Gaines suspects the correspondence helped lead to the filing of a federal suit years later.

Also part of "Jelly’s Blues," however, is the story of how one fan of Morton’s music, Roy Carew, became his advocate when Morton was at rock bottom, and how another, William Russell, made it his life’s work to save and collect everything he could on Morton’s life, times and music. The material in the collection was the starting point for Reich and Gaines, and their book is dedicated to him.

Also in the collection were groundbreaking scores, far advanced for their time, that Morton wrote over the last three years of his life – showing, say the authors, that he was an innovator to the end. They were performed for the first time nearly 60 years after his death.