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Rounder
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The self-proclaimed "inventor" of jazz had been all but forgotten when in 1938 ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax sat him down at a piano for several days of storytelling, piano playing, and singing. Lomax edited those recordings into the Morton quasi-autobiography Mister Jelly Roll, and the music has appeared sporadically on different recordings. Now, for the first time, here’s the whole shebang on CD, Jelly talking, singing, and playing over the course of seven discs. (An eighth includes interviews with Morton contemporaries.) What captivates are Morton’s droll, oddly formal locutions over his comping piano chords, the relaxed, natural phrasing of his playing, and the charm of his baritone vocals. You can hear plenty about Jelly’s New Orleans youth, the sporting houses, the razor and gun fights, gambling, pool playing, Mardi Gras Indians, and music. The stories can get pretty raunchy, and so can the songs. (Check the multi-part "Murder Ballad.") But here he is, if not jazz’s inventor, certainly its first great composer. The packaging is impossible (a clumsy cardboard grand piano that won’t conform to any known shelving system), but it includes Lomax’s book and a supplementary 80-page booklet. The faint-of-heart can hunt down Rounder’s 1993 four-CD mostly-music set, but the complete edition is invaluable.
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