Full Description
When it appeared in 1950, this biography of Ferdinand 'Jelly Roll' Morton became an instant classic of jazz literature. Now back in print and updated with a new afterword by Lawrence Gushee, Mister Jelly Roll will enchant a new generation of readers with the fascinating story of one of the world's most influential composers of jazz. Jelly Roll's voice spins out his life in something close to song, each sentence rich with the sound and atmosphere of the period in which Morton, and jazz, exploded on the American and international scene. This edition includes scores of Jelly Roll's own arrangements, a discography and an updated bibliography, a chronology of his compositions, a new genealogical tree of Jelly Roll's forebears, and Alan Lomax's preface from the hard-to-find 1993 edition of this classic work. Lawrence Gushee's afterword provides new factual information and reasserts the importance of this work of African American biography to the study of jazz and American culture.
Contents
Preface to the 1993 Edition
Preface to the 1973 Edition
Prelude
LOUISIANA TOWN
My Folks Was All Frenchmans
Really Tremendous Sports
Money in the Tenderloin
INTERLUDE ONE: The Family
STORYVILLE
Where the Birth of Jazz Originated From
Uptown-Downtown
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm
INTERLUDE TWO: The Boys in the Bands
ALABAMA BOUND
Half-hand Bigshot
Those Battles of Music
The Lion Broke Down the Door
Jack the Bear
Can't Remember All Those Towns
Jelly Roll Blues
I TOOK CALIFORNIA
The Cadillac in Bloom
Diamonds Pinned to My Underwear
Mama Nita
INTERLUDE THREE:
Hello, Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz
THE BITTERS WITH THE SWEET
Mabel
Red Hot Pepper
It Like to Broke My Heart
Till the Butcher Cut Him Down
Acknowledgments
Appendix One: The Tunes
Appendix Two: The Records
Afterword
by Lawrence Gushee
Select Discography and Bibliography
