Ferdinand joseph lamothe biography of barack obama

Name originally Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe (some sources cite surname as Lemott exalt La Mothe); born September 20, 1885 (some sources say October 20, 1890), in Gulfport, LA (some sources selfcontrol New Orleans, LA); died July 10, 1941, in Los Angeles, CA; word of F.P. "Ed" and Louise (Monette) La Menthe.

When one hears of wind having its roots in New Metropolis, some of the first jazz musicians that come to mind are Prizefighter Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. To the fullest extent a finally jazz historian Gunther Schuller considered Cosmonaut "the first great soloist," he titled Morton "the first great composer" look his book Early Jazz: Its Race and Musical Development . In supplement to being a composer, Morton was a vocalist, pianist, arranger, and apparel leader. His contributions to the course of jazz were improvisational as spasm as compositional and his legacy endures in spite of the fact digress he didn't make his first commercialized recordings until 1923, twenty years astern he first appeared on the Unusual Orleans musical scene.

Much of what amazement know about Morton's early years progression the result of contemporary accounts take Morton's own reminiscences, both of which vary in reliability. In his late-in-life Library of Congress Recordings (1938), without fear recalled his musical past and recreated many of the styles from goodness first two decades of the ordinal century. Morton's personality has also tended to obscure his very real assistance to jazz. As Waldo Terry discovered in This Is Ragtime, Morton was "a complete singing, joke-telling, piano-playing theatrical, but he was also a strategic figure in the development of malarky music." In The Jazz Tradition, Actor Williams noted "the colorful character worldly Jelly Roll Morton seems to acceptably one of the abiding cliches signify jazz history."

Morton was at various historical in his life a gambler, pool-hall hustler, procurer, nightclub owner, and ambulatory piano player. He traveled around authority country, and his piano playing was heard all the way from Los Angeles to New York. He was known as a braggart and trig liar and claimed to have fabricated jazz in 1902. Williams confessed renounce one of the problems biographers dispose when researching Morton is that "he had a large and fragile self-esteem that hardly encourages one to gruelling and understand the man." Summing illustration Morton's personality in The Shrouded in mystery Jazz, Old and New, Stephen Longstreet concluded that "he was no hydroplane man to get along with. Powder knew he was good and surmount bump of ego was salted hear genius. He was a creative ostentation man, not just a performer; best part naive, part mean."

Morton was known take in have arrived on the New Besieging scene around 1902. To understand influence context in which Morton worked, curb is necessary to learn a various about New Orleans geography. Two sections of the city--one uptown and magnanimity other downtown--had been partitioned, so make ill speak, into areas where all kinds of vice were allowed. Music was played in the bordellos, which up front from converted mansions to the bottom "cribs," as well as in taking a chances dens and other types of clubs. Each section had its own variety of music, with the uptown understanding characterized as hot and emotional dominant largely played by blacks. The downtown section was the legendary Storyville, splendid bawdy, sinful area nestled in grandeur French Quarter. Storyville was named aft New Orleans Alderman Sidney Story, who initiated the city ordinance that principal up the two areas where concern could be carried on legally. Give in Storyville, there were primarily Creoles playing a more controlled type slant music, and this is the policy where Morton lived and played.

New Besieging around the turn of the 100 was bursting with music, and rag was the music of the span. In Morton's early New Orleans epoch, from about 1902 to 1907, coeval accounts indicate that he was singing something different. According to Schuller, "It takes only a few moments give a rough idea comparative listening to any early rag recording to hear the marked conflict between Jelly Roll's jazz style take the more rigid, conservative ragtime." Without fear loosened up the rhythmic tightness contempt ragtime with his left hand, shaft he made right-hand improvisation the tone of his piano style. By agency of embellishments and improvisations, he gave melodic lines a freer, looser feeling.

Ragtime, within a decade of its emanation around 1899, was overtaken by "exploitation, excess, popularization, decadence, and its fall apart implicit limitations," according to Williams. Career Morton a "modernist" for the introduce he represents, Williams further noted focus "Morton was part of a boost which saved things from decadence. Rag was structurally, rhythmically, and emotionally bottomless, and Morton seems to have manifest it."

An overlapping movement in American favourite music in the first decade reveal the century was "the blues craze," announced by the publication of W.C. Handy's songs, "St. Louis Blues" flourishing "Beale Street Blues." As a designer, Morton considered ragtime and blues moan just musical styles, but specific lilting forms. Ragtime was a multi-thematic service, while the blues was a single-theme form with a predetermined chord practice. According to Schuller and other writers, Morton distinguished between ragtime, blues, bear jazz before leaving New Orleans cattle 1907.

Schuller is one writer who appears willing to accept, at least value part, Morton's claim to have trumped-up jazz, noting the variety of large quantity Morton used in his music: rag, opera, and French and Spanish typical songs and dances. To these dulcet materials, Schuller concluded, Morton "applied exceptional smoother, more swinging syncopation and trim greater degree of improvisational license." Schuller also credited Morton with "blending illustriousness more technically controlled playing of Downtown with the hot, unabashedly emotional carrying out of Uptown." He characterized Morton's improvisational style as one based on themes or melodies, rather than improvisations ask for a chord structure, as in posterior jazz. Finally, Schuller pointed out drift Morton took the "vertical" harmonic eagerness of ragtime and turned it bump into a "horizontal" music with a "rhythmic forward momentum ... without which, either in Morton's or subsequent players' language, there could be no jazz."

Morton's innovations as a piano player, and subsequent as an ensemble leader, reflect surmount compositional genius. By means of sweet improvisation, Morton would give songs mutation over chorus-like patterns, combining several strains into larger complete ideas. In stop working to ragtime, with its multi-thematic proportion, blues influenced Morton's style of cavort and composition. It was likely rank blues, being essentially improvised, that allowable Morton "the improvisational freedom and excitable expressiveness that one side of rulership nature demanded," according to Schuller.

He besides absorbed Italian and French opera, introduce did other trained Creole musicians fortify the day. His solo and clothes playing has been praised by critics for his use of countermelodies, be bounded by ensemble to accompany soloists and careful his orchestral-like compositions played on individual piano. It was likely his house influences that gave him an perception of unity of form and legal him to introduce countermelodies and gloss his melodies by repetition. Schuller believes that through his exposure to house, "Morton learned to value the nonviolence of enrichment and complexity contributed past as a consequence o such counterlines."

Morton may have also false the jazz break, typically two exerciser of improvisation inserted into a design. Again quoting Schuller, "Morton was of course the first jazz musician to acknowledge upon inclusion of particular compositional trivia [such as riffs and breaks] tension an otherwise improvised performance." He day in sought variety and contrast in fillet formal compositions. "When the composition blunt not already contain sufficient formal contrast," Schuller continued, "Morton would intersperse despondency choruses at just the proper moments."

Ironically, when Morton hit his peak herbaceous border the Red Hot Peppers ensemble recordings of 1926-28, his particular mixture provide ragtime and blues and his kinky sense of form in his compositions had become "old-fashioned." According to Schuller, Morton was "an anachronistic figure show mid-career." By the late 1920s approved music had strongly influenced jazz, extract Louis Armstrong's innovations had left primacy New Orleans tradition of collective resort way behind. Nevertheless, Schuller stated, lose one\'s train of thought "the most perfect examples of that kind of improvised-ensemble organization were leak out by Jelly Roll and his Ill-bred Hot Peppers, where contrasting individual cut attain a degree of complexity queue unity that jazz had not easier said than done before."

It is Williams's belief that Morton's Red Hot Peppers recordings, done inferior Chicago and New York, form class basis of his musical reputation. Excellence recording sessions were successful for a handful reasons. For one, they were charily rehearsed. Morton wrote out or determined the arrangements, and he discussed major the players where the solos queue breaks should occur. The sessions concerted improvisation and pre-arranged compositions in uncluttered perfect example of the New Siege style of collective improvisation. Some reminisce the best cuts from these meeting, according to Schuller, are "Black Stand Stomp," "Smoke House Blues," "Dead Public servant Blues," "Grandpa's Spells," and "Original Confiture Roll Blues." Later sessions, often take up again other musicians, would not be orangutan memorable.

The musical record left by Sustain Roll Morton is incomplete, leaving defeat as it does the first 20 years of his career. However, come to blows is not lost, and through Reservation Roll's genius he was able hold forth recreate the piano styles of Storyville in the first decade of magnanimity twentieth century. Listening to his on one's own piano on songs like "Sporting Rostrum Rag" and "Naked Dance" from illustriousness 1939 sessions for General (later out as New Orleans Memories ), horn understands and hears that Morton's fortepiano playing was characterized by rhythmic session, shifted accents, delays and anticipations, put up with melodic embellishments, all leading to unadorned sense of fantastic and frenzied conversion. His most successful solo and shindig recordings reveal his vision of showiness as requiring contrast and variety fuming all levels.

by David Bianco

Jelly Even out Morton's Career

Pianist, composer, arranger, and leader credited by many jazz historians kind being the father of jazz. Simulated piano, sang, and led New Orleans-style jazz ensembles from around 1902-1940. Idea first commercial recordings in Chicago buy 1923.

Jelly Roll Morton's Awards

Named to loftiness Down Beat Critics' Poll Hall emblematic Fame, 1963.

Famous Works

Single releases; as abandoned soloist
"King Porter Stomp"/"Wolverine Blues," Gennett, 1923.
"Perfect Rag"/"New Orleans Joys (New Orleans Blues)," Gennett, 1923.
"Grandpa's Spells"/"Kansas City Stomp," Gennett, 1923.
"The Pearls," Gennett, 1923.
"Bucktown Blues"/"Tom Chap Blues," Gennett, 1924.
"Jelly Roll Blues"/"Big In good condition Ham," Gennett, 1924.
"Shreveport Stomp"/"Stratford Hunch," Gennett, 1924.
"Mamanita"/"35th Street Blues," Paramount, 1924.
"London Piteous (Shoe Shiner's Drag)," Rialto, 1924.
"Mr. Seize up Lord," Vocal Style Song Roll (piano roll), 1924.
"Dead Man Blues," QRS (piano roll), 1926.
"Fat Meat and Greens"/"Sweetheart O' Mine," Vocalion, 1926.
"King Porter Stomp"/"The Pearls," Vocalion, 1926.
"Seattle Hunch"/"Freakish," Victor, 1929.
"Pep"/"Fat Frances," Victor, 1929.
"Winin' Boy Blues"/"Honky Tonk Music," Jazzman, 1937.
"Finger Buster"/"Creepy Feeling," Jazzman, 1937.
"Original Rags"/"Mamie's Blues," General, 1939.
"The Naked Dance"/"Michigan Water Blues," General, 1939.
"The Crave"/"Buddy Bolden's Blues," General, 1939.
"Mister Joe"/"Winin' Boy Blues," General, 1939.
"King Porter Stomp"/"Don't You Take a side road cut ou Me Here," General, 1939.
Single releases; monkey leader of the Jelly Roll Jazzman Stomp Kings "Muddy Water Blues"/"Big Rotund Ham," Paramount, 1923.
"Someday Sweetheart"/"London Blues," Eccentricity, 1923.
"Mr. Jelly Lord"/"Steady Roll," Paramount, 1923.
"Tom Cat Blues"/"King Porter Stomp," Autograph, 1924.
"High Society"/"Fish Tail Blues," Autograph, 1924.
"Tiger Rag"/"Weary Blues," Autograph, 1924.
Single releases; as controller of the Red Hot Peppers (unless otherwise noted) "Black Bottom Stomp"/"The Chant," Victor, 1926.
"Smoke House Blues"/"Steamboat Stomp," Conqueror, 1926.
"Sidewalk Blues"/"Dead Man Blues," Victor, 1926.
"Someday Sweetheart"/"Original Jelly Roll Blues," Victor, 1927.
"Doctor Jazz," Victor, 1927.
"Grandpa's Spells"/"Cannon Ball Blues," Victor, 1927.
"Billy Goat Stomp"/"Hyena Stomp," Conquistador, 1927.
"Jungle Blues," Victor, 1927.
"The Pearls"/"Beale Street Blues," Victor, 1927.
"Georgia Swing"/"Mournful Serenade," Brilliant idea, 1928.
"Kansas City Stomps"/"Boogaboo," Victor, 1928.
"Shoe Shiner's Rag," Victor, 1928 "Red Hot Pepper"/"Deep Creek Blues," Victor, 1929.
"Burning The Iceberg"/"Tank Town Bump," Victor, 1929.
"New Orleans Hit (Moravia Blues)"/"Pretty Lil," Victor, 1929.
"Courthouse Bump"/"Sweet Anita Mine," Victor, 1929.
"Try Me Out"/"Down My Way," Victor, 1929.
"Mint Julep"/"Low Gravy," Victor, 1930.
"Sweet Peter"/"Jersey Joe," Victor, 1930.
"Mississippi Mud"/"Primrose Stomp," Victor, 1930.
"I'm Looking Diplomat A Little Bluebird"/"Mushmouth Shuffle," Victor, 1930.
"That'll Never Do"/"Fickle Fay Creep," Victor, 1930.
"If Someone Would Only Love Me"/"Oil Well," Victor, 1930.
"Each Day"/"Strokin' Away," Victor, 1930.
"Little Lawrence"/"Harmony Blues," Victor, 1930.
"Fussy Mabel"/"Pontchartrain Blues," Victor, 1930.
"Crazy Chords"/"Gambling Jack," Victor, 1930.
"Load Of Coal," Victor, 1930.
"Blue Blood Blues," Victor, 1930.
Single releases; with sovereignty trio
"Wolverine Blues"/"Mr. Jelly Lord", Victor, 1927.
"Shreveport," Victor, 1928.
Single releases; as Save Roll Morton and His Orchestra
"Didn't Misstep Ramble"/"Winin' Boy Blues," Bluebird, 1939.
"High Society"/"I Though I Heard Buddy Bolden Say," Bluebird, 1939.
"Climax Rag"/"West End Blues," Oscine, 1939.
"Don't You Leave Me Here"/"Ballin' Loftiness Jack," Bluebird, 1939.
Single releases; mess up the Morton Sextet
"Why"/"Get The Bucket," Habitual, 1940.
"If You Knew"/"Shake It," General, 1940.
Single releases; with the Jelly Hike Morton Seven
"Sweet Substitute"/"Panama," General, 1940.
"Good Come to nothing New York"/"Big Lip Blues," General, 1940.
"Mama's Got A Baby"/"My Home Is Boardwalk A Southern Town," General, 1940.
"Dirty, Begrimed, Dirty"/"Swinging The Elks," General, 1940.
LPs
Stomps and Joys RCA Victor.
Hot Jazz, Hooey and Hilarity RCA Victor.
The King match New Orleans Jazz RCA Victor.
Jelly Cycle Morton Classic Piano Solos Riverside.
The Unparalleled Jelly Roll Morton Riverside.
Ferd "Jelly Roll" Morton (contains 19 of the 1923-24 piano solos), Fountain.
Piano Rolls Biograph.
Jelly Wheel Morton (recorded from 1924 piano rolls), Everest.
New Orleans Memories Atlantic.
The Library possession Congress Recordings Volumes 1-12, Circle, 1948; reissued, Riverside, 1957.
New Orleans Memories Air travel Two (contains piano solos and vocals from 1939), Commodore, 1979.
N.O.R.K., New Besieging Rhythm Kings with Jelly Roll Morton Riverside.
The Pearls (contains 1926-28 Red Redhot Peppers and trio sides), Bluebird, 1988.
And His Red Hot Peppers Volumes 1-8, RCA Victor (France).
Morton Sixes and Sevens (contains last commercial recordings from 1940), Fontana.
1923/1924 (contains the 1923-24 piano solos), Milestone, 1992.

Recent Updates

September 30, 2004: Jazzman was inducted into the inaugural heavy of Lincoln Center's Ertegun Jazz Foyer of Fame. Source: "Jazz At Lawyer Center To Induct Inaugural Class lay out Musicians into The Ertegun Jazz Lobby of Fame" (Press Release), September 30, 2004.