Every year or so I rewatch Ken Burn's Jazz . I love it and think it is an absolutely brilliant piece of work, even if it makes me sad that I did not grow up to be a nerdy-looking historian who serves as one of the talking heads on historical documentaries on PBS. I guess technically I am an historian, an art historian (side eye) and I certainly have the nerd part on lock… I just have to weasel my way onto a documentary. As long as I'm LA I guess I have a tiny chance. Coming to a TV near you… stay tuned.
Anyhow, what I wanted to discuss was one Jelly Roll Morton. Jelly. Roll. Morton. AKA Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe. This guy was one bad mamma-jamma. He claimed to have had INVENTED jazz. Invented the entire thing!! Jelly Roll was born in 1890, and he claims to have invented the genre in 1902, so chronologically his assertion is at least somewhat feasible. Ego and tall tales(?) aside, the man was extremely talented, a musical genius, and seminal figure in early jazz who greatly contributed to the genre, especially his early work in New Orleans.
Jelly Roll's story is fascinating. He taught himself piano as a child and around 14 started playing in the famed brothels of early twentieth-first century New Orleans (a fascinating topic in and of itself). In the brothels he entertained waiting patrons with humorous and smutty songs he performed on the piano. Later, once the patrons were taken upstairs and got down to business, Jelly Roll was in charge of providing mood music with all the right tempo for the business at hand.
It was during his work at the brothels that Morton chose his stage name. I always thought that was weird name for a musician. According to the Burns doc, "Jelly Roll" referred to a sexual act. What type of sex act, the nerdy talking head did not share, and of course that just made me super curious. After some digging around I found that "Jelly Roll" was in fact late 19th and early 21st century slang in black communities for… VAGINA! That's right… PUSSY!!
It gets better.
Jelly Roll had a friend, awesome jazz singer Lizzie Smith, who recorded a song entitled, you guessed it… "Jelly Roll"… oh yes. In the song she proclaims, among other things, that her jelly roll is the best in town, and that ain't nobody gonna get a taste. Sing it girl! Basic bitches from today need to recognize you're the original pussy power pop star.
Morton also had his tune, "Jelly Roll Blues," I'll let you decipher that one yourself.
