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"Original Jelly Roll Blues", usually shortened to and known as "Jelly Roll Blues", is an early jazz fox-trot composed by
Jelly Roll Morton Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a gen ...
. He recorded it first as a piano solo in
Richmond, Indiana Richmond is a city in eastern Wayne County, Indiana. Bordering the state of Ohio, it is the county seat of Wayne County and is part of the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 36,812. Situ ...
, in 1924, and then with his
Red Hot Peppers Red Hot Peppers was a recording jazz band led by Jelly Roll Morton from 1926–1930. It was a seven- or eight-piece band formed in Chicago that recorded for Victor and featured the best New Orleans-style freelance musicians available, includ ...
in
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
two years later, titled as it was originally copyrighted: "Original Jelly-Roll Blues". It is referenced by name in the 1917
Shelton Brooks Shelton Brooks (May 4, 1886September 6, 1975) was a Canadian-born African American composer of popular music and jazz. He was known for his ragtime and vaudeville style, and wrote some of the biggest hits of the first third of the 20th century. ...
composition "
Darktown Strutters' Ball "Darktown Strutters' Ball" is a popular song by Shelton Brooks, published in 1917. The song has been recorded many times and is considered a popular and jazz standard. There are many variations of the title, including "At the Darktown Strutters' ...
". The Red Hot Peppers version is a typical New Orleans jazz presentation where the trumpet, clarinet and trombone play lead melody and
counterpoint In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tra ...
, with the piano, guitar, string bass and drums providing the rhythmic accompaniment. However, Morton varies and enriches this basic structure by providing many instrumental breaks in suspended rhythm, as well as giving the horns and the piano solo passages. The final chorus is in New Orleans "ride-out" style, where all the instruments play together and vary the melody and chord progression in counterpoint over a driving, climactic rhythm. The tune is also notable for having an Argentine tango-like rhythm and flavor in several passages, which Morton claimed was essential to real jazz. Although this tango flavoring did not survive into later jazz, it is noteworthy in the mixture of international cultural influences that produced New Orleans jazz, and this recording is a prime example of it. In this record and several other Morton recordings of 1926–27, the New Orleans early jazz style, as a collective blend of instruments varying the basic melody by means of both composed, written notes and improvisation, reached its peak of artistic development.The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, September 2004, Cambridge University Press, p. 131


References


External links

*http://www.doctorjazz.co.uk/page10a.html. *http://www.redhotjazz.com/redhot.html. Jazz compositions Songs written by Jelly Roll Morton 1924 songs {{1920s-jazz-composition-stub