The Monday Blues – Jelly Roll Blues

Today (in 1890) is one of a few dates that are said to be the birthday of Jelly Roll Morton. Another is September 13, 1884 and another is said to be September 30, 1890. So I really can’t even tell you how old he would be today. It just so happens that one of his birthdays fell on this Monday and it’s a perfect tie in to The Monday Blues.

Morton was known apparently for “bending the truth” a bit. His claim to have invented jazz in 1902 was often criticized. The music critic Scott Yanow once said, “Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth … Morton’s accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth.”

At the age of fourteen, Morton began as a piano player in a brothel. He often sang smutty lyrics and used the nickname “Jelly Roll”, which was slang for female genitalia. At the time, he was living with his grandmother who was quite religous. When she found out what he was doing she literally disowned him. Morton said, “When my grandmother found out that I was playing jazz in one of the sporting houses in the District, she told me that I had disgraced the family and forbade me to live at the house. She told me that devil music would surely bring about my downfall…“

The Jelly Roll Blues (or The Original Jelly Roll Blues as it is sometimes called) is an early jazz fox-trot composed by Morton. He recorded it first as a piano solo in Richmond, Indiana, in 1924. Take a listen to this …

In 1938, Morton was stabbed and suffered wounds to the head and chest. A nearby hospital refused to treat him, as the city had racially segregated facilities. So he was transported to a black hospital farther away. When he was in the hospital, doctors left ice on his wounds for several hours before attending to the injury. His recovery from his wounds was incomplete, and thereafter he was often ill and became short of breath easily.

His asthma would get so bad that he stayed at a hospital in New York for three months. He continued to suffer from respiratory problems when he travelled to Los Angeles hoping to restart his career. It was not to be, however, as he spent eleven days in an LA hospital before passing away on July 10, 1941.