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I started a quest to find terrific blues music and incredible musicianship when I was just a little kid. I also have a tremendous appreciation of fine musical instruments and equipment. One of my greatest joys all of my life was sharing my finds with my friends. I'm now publishing my journey. I hope that you come along!


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Showing posts with label Jelly Roll Morton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jelly Roll Morton. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Hesitation Blues - Jelly Roll Morton


Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (October 20, 1885 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer.

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" was the first published jazz composition, in 1915. Morton is also notable for naming and popularizing the "Spanish tinge" (habanera rhythm and tresillo), and for penning such standards as "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say", the latter a tribute to New Orleans personalities from the turn of the 19th century to 20th century.

Reputed for his arrogance and self-promotion as often as recognized in his day for his musical talents, Morton claimed to have invented jazz outright in 1902 — much to the derision of later musicians and critics. However, jazz historian, musician, and composer Gunther Schuller writes about Morton's "hyperbolic assertions" that there is "no proof to the contrary" and that Morton's "considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation".
Morton was born into a Creole of Color community in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. A baptismal certificate issued in 1894 lists his date of birth as October 20, 1890; however Morton himself and his half-sisters claimed the September 20, 1885, date is correct. His World War I draft registration card showed September 13, 1884 but his California death certificate listed his birth as September 20, 1889. He was born to F. P. Lamothe and Louise Monette (written as Lemott and Monett on his baptismal certificate). Eulaley Haco (Eulalie Hécaud) was the godparent. Eulalie helped him to be christened with the name Ferdinand. Ferdinand’s parents were in a common-law marriage and not legally married. No birth certificate has been found to date. He took the name "Morton" by anglicizing the name of his stepfather, Mouton.
During the period when he was recording his interviews, Morton was seriously injured by knife wounds when a fight broke out at the Washington, D.C. establishment where he was playing. A nearby whites-only hospital refused to treat him, and he had to be transported to a lower-quality hospital further away.[citation needed] When he was in the hospital the doctors left ice on his wounds for several hours before attending to his eventually fatal injury. His recovery from his wounds was incomplete, and thereafter he was often ill and easily became short of breath. Morton made a new series of commercial recordings in New York, several recounting tunes from his early years that he had been talking about in his Library of Congress interviews.

A worsening asthma affliction sent him to a New York hospital for three months at one point and when visiting Los Angeles with a series of manuscripts of new tunes and arrangements, planning to form a new band and restart his career, the ailment took its toll. Morton died on July 10, 1941 after an eleven-day stay in Los Angeles County General Hospital.

According to jazz historian David Gelly, Morton's arrogance and "bumptious" persona alienated so many musicians over the years that no colleagues or admirers attended his funeral
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Sunday, March 18, 2012

I Hate a Man Like You - Lizzie Miles acc. by Jelly Roll Morton


Lizzie Miles was the stage name taken by Elizabeth Mary Landreaux (March 31, 1895 – March 17, 1963), an African American blues singer
Miles was born in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, in a dark skinned Francophone Creole ("Creole of Color") family. She traveled widely with minstrel and circus shows in the 1910s, and made her first phonograph recordings in New York of blues songs in 1922 – although Miles did not like to be referred to as a 'blues singer', since she sang a wide repertory of music.

In the mid 1920s she spent time performing in Paris before returning to the United States. She suffered a serious illness and retired from the music industry in the 1930s. Not before she recorded "My Man O' War", described by one music journalist as "a composition stuffed with rococo suggestiveness". In the 1940s she returned to New Orleans, where Joe Mares encouraged her to sing again—which she did, but always from in front of, or beside the stage, since she said she had vowed in a prayer not to go on stage again if she recovered from her illness. Miles was based in San Francisco, California in the early 1950s, then again returned to New Orleans where she recorded with several Dixieland and traditional jazz bands and made regular radio broadcasts, often performing with Bob Scobey or George Lewis.

In 1958 Miles appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival. In 1959 she quit singing, except for gospel music. She died in New Orleans, from a heart attack, in March 1963.

Her half sister Edna Hicks was also a blues singer
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