Jelly Roll Morton: Jelly Roll Blues
Track
Jelly Roll Blues
Artist
Jelly Roll Morton (piano)
CD
Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton (Retrieval RTR 79002)
Musicians:
Jelly Roll Morton (piano).
Recorded: Richmond, Indiana, June 9, 1924
Rating: 88/100 (learn more)
Morton believed that the piano should sound like an entire orchestra in every respect—ensemble, sections and soloists. Listening to a Morton solo, one can imagine how passages and Morton’s single-note breaks and filigrees might be assigned to different parts of the orchestra. To this conception Morton added breaks and riffs. “Jelly Roll Blues,” which Morton claimed to have written the in 1905, was in all probability the first of his pieces to be published. It appeared in print, in Chicago, around 1915. This work, like many early original jazz compositions, retained a vestige of ragtime, especially in its employment of multiple melodic strains.
Reviewer: Rob Bamberger
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