Jelly Roll Blues
Jelly Roll Blues , also Original Jelly Roll Blues , is an early jazz composition allegedly written by Jelly Roll Morton in 1905 and published in 1915. This makes it the oldest published jazz composition.
Building the composition
The piece was based on two melody strings of twelve bars each , separated by a four-bar interlude that transposed the melody from B to E. It is a simplified ragtime composition with a clear blue character . The bass line is inspired by a habanera .
Impact history
Morton initially called the composition, which he said was composed in 1905, Chicago Blues . His King Porter Stomp and his New Orleans Blues (both 1902 and 1903) were written before that . The piece became very popular with the audience and identified with it so much that he now called it Jelly Roll Blues . He also wrote a text that referred to him on the one hand, but also played with ambiguity on the fact that Jelly Roll stood for vagina among the Afro-American audience ("He's so tall and chancy, He's the ladies' fancy. Everybody know him, Certainly do ado him. ”) The success of the piece with the audience gave him the idea to publish it. He managed to convince the publisher Will Rossiter to publish the composition in 1915 - both for solo piano and for ensemble.
In 1921 the first recording of Jelly Roll Blues was made with the Norfolk Jazz Quartet . An instrumental version of the original Memphis Five followed in 1923 . Morton did not record the Jelly Roll Blues himself on an piano roll until 1924 (version for solo piano , currently re-released on The Piano Rolls: Realized by Artis Wodehouse ). A recording with his Red Hot Peppers was made in 1926. The melody and its counterpoint were interpreted by the trumpet, clarinet and trombone, while piano, guitar, double bass and drums provided the rhythmic accompaniment. With numerous breaks and solo passages in the piano part, he varies the basic structure. Other recordings of the title were submitted by Peg Leg Howell , Tommy Ladnier , Louis Armstrong , Humphrey Lyttelton , James Dapogny and Frank Frost .
As early as 1929, the writer Claude McKay used the title of the composition in his novella Banjo to identify the title hero as a jazz musician.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c David A. Jasen, Gene Jones Black Bottom Stomp: Eight Masters of Ragtime and Early Jazz Routledge 2013, p. 144
- ^ Edward Komara, Peter Lee (eds.) The Blues Encyclopedia Routledge 2004, p. 708
- ↑ Phil Pastra's Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West University of California Press 2001, p. 142
- ↑ Hot Peppers (Red Hot Jazz)
- ^ The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2004, p. 131
- ↑ Thomas Huke Jazz and Blues in the Afro-American novel from the turn of the century to the present. Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg 1990, p. 62