Jelly Roll

Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton could brag almost as well as he could play the piano – and, as the world knows, he played piano very well indeed. His most famous boast was provoked by a broadcast of Robert Ripley’s Believe It or Not radio program, which introduced W. C. Handy as the originator of jazz and the blues. “W. C. Handy is a liar,” Morton announced in a long letter addressed to Ripley and published in the Baltimore African-American and Down Beat magazine. The letter goes on to claim, “It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.” That was not the first time he made that claim or something like it. The guitarist Danny Barker recalls that Morton would announce, “I created jazz and there’s no jazz but Jelly Roll’s jazz.” According to the musician and entrepreneur Reb Spikes, “[Jelly] would hear a piece and say, ‘They’re stealing that from me. That’s mine.’ Or ‘That guy’s trying to play like me.’” The trumpet player Lee Collins remembers going to see Morton in his hotel room: “He asked me to come work with him. ‘You know you will be working with the world’s greatest jazz piano player… not one of the greatest – I am the greatest.’”

Dead Man Blues, Phil Pastras