Red Hot Pepper to Ink Spot!

by JEFF ADAM

HARRY PRATHER, bassist now touring Britain with Bill Kenny and the Ink Spots, confirmed to me his presence on Jelly Roll Morton’s recordings of “Tank Town Bump” and other titles made at Camden, New Jersey, in July, 1929, and showed a heartening readiness to talk of his days with the Red Hot Peppers. He then played tuba; it was several years later before he changed to string bass.

Harry is in his fiftieth year and has been in the music business since his late ’teens. His memory is excellent, and I was interested to learn of the many famous Jazzmen he had worked with.

It was in January, 1929, he joined Morton and he stayed with him until August, 1930.

During that period Morton had a contract to provide bands for a chain of 35 to 40 ballrooms in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Harry was in Philadelphia with a band led by veteran New Orleans clarinetist, George Baquet, when Morton asked him to join his group.

Baquet on records

The personnel then was: Walter Foots Thomas (alto, arranger); Paul Barnes (alto); Joe Thomas (tnr.); Dick Richards, Boyd “Red” Rossiter (tpts.); Charlie Irvis (tmb.); Rodriguez (pno.); Barney (bjo.); Joe Watts (drs.).

The group remained fairly constant, except that by the time of the Victor sessions, Briscoe and William Laws had replaced Richards and Watts. Baquet was added for the records only. (see footnote below)

Prather obviously respected Morton. Jelly treated him well, and seems at that time to have been pretty well liked. The band travelled in a 27-seater bus, with a gun for each man in the band — for Jelly put his faith in firearms!

He was also one for “public relations,” alighting first, greeting everybody and making himself known to the neighbourhood.

Management rackets

“He was a great talker, and could invent some fabulous lies,” says Harry, “but when it came to playing that piano, he could cut them all!”

“I last saw Jelly in New York toward the end of 1939. He was disgusted with the way the management racket had ruined the band business; he could not conceal his resentment at the gangsters who had moved into smart offices and wanted to take a big percentage of all he earned.”

“His health was poor, too, so he was talking of selling the rights to all his compositions and retiring to California. He was a wonderful man and musician, for whom I always had great respect. He did so much for jazz that it is good to see that a few people are still ready to give him the credit which is his due.”

Since those days, Harry Prather has worked around the eastern part of the USA, making New York his home, but occasionally visiting Chicago or Toronto.

He has played with bands led by Kid Punch Miller, Al Wynn, Sidney Bechet, Frankie Newton, Louis Jordan, Leon Abbey and Wilbur de Paris and during the war years worked for USO under alto player Herman “Humpy” Flintall.

His colleagues in the present Bill Kenny group are pianist Andy Maize, who has worked mainly with small groups and as an accompanist, and guitarist Everett Barksdale.

Note: Theo Zwicky and Al Vollmer have since positively identified members of the orchestra for the Victor Camden sessions of 9th, 10th and 12th July 1929 as: Walter Briscoe, Boyd Rosser (tp): Charlie Irvis (tb): George Baquet (cl): Walter Thomas, Paul Barnes (as): Joe Thomas (ts): Jelly Roll Morton (p): Barney Alexander (bj): Harry Prather (bb) and William Laws (d). [Q 204]

The extra pianist Nicholas “Rod” Rodriguez should not be forgotten, even if he does not play on the issued records, he did participate in the rehearsals.

Stomping Piano Man

MR. JELLY ROLL
By Alan Lomax.

336 pp. New York: Duell Sloan & Pearce. $3.50.

By LOUIS ARMSTRONG

JUST finished reading the Story of Jelly Roll Morton, a great piano man of Storyville. I think it is one of the finest stories ever written on early New Orleans Jazz, and I, being a personal friend of Jelly Roll, you know that story thrills me, of his life.

I didn’t meet Jelly Roll until the early Twenties in Chicago, as he left New Orleans way before I got to play music — the year of 1906, and he lived in Los Angeles, California and stayed there practically all his life, till the Twenties, when he started recording around Chicago, and there he wrote so many stomps (he called them) especially the “King Porter Stomp” and “Grandpa’s Spells,” and there’s another I recorded for him — “Wolverine Blues,” Walter Winchell even mentioned it as a fine tune and a fine recording.

Jelly Roll Morton had a wonderful sense of humor. You could tell he was a man who knew his instrument very well, and anyone that didn’t believe it — he’d prove it to them! You know, he’d love to gather a lot of musicians around on the corner and have little cute arguments about music — yeah! And he was talkin’ with some musicians one day, about his ability on the piano, and some little guy comes up and asks him — he said “Jelly, you must be the best piano player in town.”

And Jelly answered by saying, “In town???? In the world!” Heh heh.

And I admired that gold tooth he had with the diamond in it. Heh heh.

A lot of things he said pertaining to Storyville I remembered even after I left New Orleans. He would play in Lulu

(Continued on Page 19)

When Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, regarded by the aficionados as the king of all jazz trumpet players and “hot” vocalists, was asked to review “Mr. Jelly Roll,” he replied, “Glad to do. He was my boy.”

Jelly Roll Morton

(Continued from Page 3)

Stomping Piano Man

White’s sporting house, and all the best places where colored musicians could not play — so quite naturally he made more money and had more than the average musician that was in Storyville, and he did wear the beat clothes.

Now I never did hear Jelly Roll in a band. He always played either by himself or had his own combination for recordings. So when he got to Chicago (staying in California, I personally think, set him back twenty years or more) he ran into “awful” good piano players, such as Earl Hines, Teddy Weatherford (that piano man played in the symphony orchestra at the Vendome Theatre, under the direction of Erskine Tate). Then, after I left Chicago I didn’t see Jelly Roll again till practically five years, and then I saw him on Seventh Avenue with the same crowd — telling them how good he is. But he was always making good records and writing those good stomps (that’s what they call them, but they’re tunes). Then I didn’t see him for five years.

Just before he died, he was the picture of health and still had that spirit. No one ever thought he was ill because he always had that Jolly spirit and everyone was always lookin’ for him on the corner — because they knew they’d always get a boot out of him. Then, the last I heard of Jelly, the last tune he wrote that went big for a while was “Grandpa’s Spells.”

So Jelly is gone now, and there are hundreds of musicians who are sorry that happened because he was really a stimulant to them.

Now that his book has come out everybody’s gonna get one, and as for me — I’m gonna buy a book and keep the one I already have. Here’s wishing all the success in the world to “Mr. Jelly Roll.”

Paul Barbarin Talks About Jelly Roll

I first heard of Jelly — well, I was very young when I went into the District, the red-light district, to take Mr. Cottrell’s place in Manuel Perez’s band. We were at Rice’s Cabaret, which was at Marais and Iberville streets. Across the street was Pete Lala’s, where Joe Oliver had the band, and where they also had entertainers such as Mack & Mack, who were quite well along in years by this time. A couple of times I took Henry Zeno’s place at Lala’s, which was a great joint. I was just a boy then, and I had to put on long trousers so I could play the job. That is when I first heard about Jelly working on Basin Street, at Lulu White’s house. But I never met him then. I couldn’t stay out late in New Orleans and bum around a saloon like the other guys ’cause I was too young. I can very much recall that some guys called him “Winin’ Boy.“

I met Jelly Roll in Chicago. I went there in 1917 and worked in the stockyards. The next year, when I was playing drums at the Royal Garden with Eddie Vincent’s band, they wanted to send to New Orleans for a cornet player. Since I’d come from New Orleans lately, they asked me. I mentioned my friend Buddie Petit, but he never did come to Chicago. So then I mentioned Joe Oliver. I say, “Get Buckeye.” (We called him Buckeye Joe cause of that cataract in one eye.)

We had heard him in brass bands and he could really blow. So Joe and Jimmie Noone came up at the same time. I’ll never forget the first number we rehearsed that night — Darktown Strutters’ Ball. We rehearsed just a few other numbers and they said everything was all right. “We’ll just call ’em down and play ’em.” Jimmie Noone — oh he was great! I never heard anyone finger a clarinet like he did when he played I Know That You Know — and he had little bitty fingers.

The Royal Garden was a dollar to come in, and they’d have a thousand people nightly. The people had come up to Chicago from all over the South, and a lot of them were in there every night. Around twelve o’clock they’d start playing the blues, and that first night they played a blues that I remember the Oliver-Ory band, with Johnny Dodds, playing at Economy Hall in New Orleans. It went, “I ain’t rough, and I don’t fight.” — they put them words in later on. Oliver had a little bitty mute, the size of a light bulb, and Joe was leaning over the bandstand playing to the people, and he took that little mute and started talking and I mean talking — on his horn! The man was great that night, hot dog! Boy, and the people just started screaming and threw their hats in their (the air.)

So it was in Chicago, while I was working with Oliver, that I actually met Jelly Roll for the first time. It was at Clarence Williams’ music store on South State Street, between 34th and 35th streets, almost across from the Grand Theatre. One of Jelly Roll’s tunes that we used to play with Jimmie Noone in Oliver’s band at the Royal Garden was called Queen of Spades. I’ve never seen or heard of this tune since those days.

A lot of other guys came up from New Orleans at that time, and some entertainers came up with the jazz bands. One band worked at Shaw’s Deluxe Club. They had Sugar Johnny, Lawrence Duhe, Ed Garland, and Roy Palmer. That guy was the greatest, to me. I don’t see where any other trombone player was greater than Roy, and I’m saying a whole lot. They alternated those two brothers, Minor and Baby “Tubby” Hall, on drums. Later they put Sidney Bechet in the band. I knew Sidney before he started on clarinet, when he was playing a tin flute by a pressing shop on Burgundy Street. Then the next thing you know he had a clarinet and was already great.

Jelly wasn’t always working steady in Chicago. I thought he was mostly a gambler. He used to go down to the Union, Local 208 on South State Street, and gamble there. He’d lose maybe four or five hundred dollars. Then when he needed money, he’d go down to Melrose, who published his tunes. And he made some records that were good. Yeah, that was his downfall — easy come, easy go. Also Jelly and all the big shots would go and gamble at the Pioneer Club, at State and 35th streets, across from the Deluxe. But Jelly would most likely go down to the Union to shoot dice. Jelly was also a good pool player, and he used to tie up with a great pool shark of the day — I don’t recall the guy’s name, but he was very popular.

After I went to New York to play with King Oliver and Luis Russell, I made some records with Jelly. In Chicago I had wanted to record with him so bad I didn’t know what to do, but he used the drummers Andrew Hilaire and Baby Dodds mostly. In New York, at a time when Luis Russell wasn’t doing anything, and Jelly needed a drummer, I worked with him for about two weeks. It was the Rose Danceland, upstairs at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, same side of the street as the Apollo Theatre. It was a jitney dance place. They had a lot of his photos in the vestibule as you went upstairs — Jelly Roll Morton. We played a lot of his own compositions, like Wolverine, and they had a lot of published orchestrations there.

Jelly was an easy man to get along with. He was an all right guy, and that man could compose! I’d say he talked a lot, if you know what I mean; I think he talked himself out of that job at the Rose Danceland. We were very good friends at that time. He liked me, and I’d sit down and chat with him often. He was a good-natured guy — a great man.

As I said, he talked a lot, and of course the guys in New York, gave him hell! Jelly’d brag so much about New Orleans they’d get mad about it because the guys that came up from New Orleans, all of them could play — play jazz. The New York guys couldn’t play that kind of music! They were modern — they tried to play a modern style, you see what I mean? So they got mad at Jelly and roasted him. He’d tell them, he’d say, “I’m the greatest — the greatest piano player!” Sometimes he’d play on the piano in the Rhythm Club, at 132nd Street. He’d get at the piano and he’d say, “Listen to this!” And he was really playing, and he was right too. But all the New York cats would get on him and roast him and get on his nerves, Chick Webb, especially, would make him hot.

In New York I finally made some records with Jelly when be recorded with Wilton Crawley. The guys were mostly from the Luis Russell band. Once while we were recording, Crawley was playing his clarinet his false teeth fell out to the floor and made so much noise the man in the control room stopped the record. The guys all started laughing, and it must have been ten minutes before any of them could play again. We had no special rehearsals for the recordings I made with Jelly. We went right to the studio [Victor’s on 24th Street in New York] and played; that’s all. Run over the tune once and, “All right, let’s go, take one.” (see footnote below)

After I left Louis Armstrong’s band and Jelly came back to New York, I rehearsed with his band [in 1939]. The rehearsals were right in his apartment in Mamie Wright’s house [207 West 131st Street]. Jelly’s wife Mabel was living there. We rehearsed in a big room with a grand piano. Things were really tough about that time. He was having a hard time — a great man like that — trying to get a break. If we’d ’ve got a job I’d have stayed around, but not working, I was going to have to go back home to New Orleans.

Half the time the guys didn’t come to rehearsal, oh, maybe one or two, and we couldn’t do much with one or two. But he would try to run over the manuscripts he had, and there were piano copies of some published tunes. There were some beautiful numbers. Sweet Substitute was one we rehearsed at that time. And we really had a good time when we rehearsed with the full band. It wasn’t a big band, but a jazz band like he had in Chicago, that type of sound — one trumpet, one clarinet, one trombone. He was sure he could get a job and keep the guys together, but they’d drift off and I don’t know what happened to them — they probably got other jobs. I was willing to stay on if we could get regular work, but my expenses were going on and I couldn’t hang around with nothing happening. So after a few weeks I had to go home to New Orleans.

Jelly didn’t dress up much at the rehearsals. It was summer time and he was in shirt sleeves. When I knew him in Chicago he was always up-to-date. He was Jelly Roll Morton, and he always had a powerful ring — that and a powerful stickpin. I guess he used to keep those to pawn if he needed something.

Jelly’s piano playing impressed me a whole lot. What I especially liked about it, he had a nice count [beat]. He had a good left hand, and everything he played was understandable. I enjoyed playing with him, and enjoyed hearing him.

I can tell you that Jelly Roll is a hundred in my book. I’m still crazy about all his tunes, every one of his compositions. I don’t care what they say about him — that he boasted too much. A lot of guys say he talked himself into a job and then he’d talk himself out of the job, but he moved all the time. All I can tell you, to add it all up, is that the man was the most!

New Orleans
December 4, 1969

Note: The article describes the studio location as [Victor’s on 24th Street in New York]. However, the Victor recording sheet indicates that the Wilton Crawley recording session, mentioned by Paul Barbarin, took place at the RCA Victor Company, Inc., Liederkranz Hall, 111 East 58th Street, New York.

Jelly Roll Morton’s
Washington Documentary

By Rudi Blesh

Most jazz lovers know of the recording sessions by Jelly Morton for the Folk Archives of the Library of Congress in Washington. These sessions, held in 1938 in the Coolidge Auditorium, were conceived and supervised by Alan Lomax. For several weeks Jelly played, talked and sang, pouring out his nostalgic memories, his theories of jazz and his personal reminiscences, interrupting from time to time as he felt the inspiration, to play definitive versions of many of his own compositions. His talking, of course, was music too, and was always accompanied underneath by his softly rhythmic and inventive piano chording. It is poetically appropriate that Mr. Jelly Lord should have written his autobiography in the unforgettable tones of his voice and his piano.

The more than one hundred twelve-inch sides that resulted from these sessions form an unparalleled documentation of the life, times, and creative work of a great artist. They form, too, an unequaled contemporary chronicle of an art movement as seen from within by one of its greatest figures.

It is little wonder that these records, made only nine years ago and three years before Morton’s death, have already become almost a legend. Few jazz lovers have heard all of these, sides (which have never been issued), and by far the majority have never heard any of them yet, reports about them spread, reports that they are the finest recording ever done by one of the greatest men of jazz.

So it is little wonder that many attempts were made to secure the public release of these priceless records. So many companies and so many individuals had already made the attempt that it looked, a year ago, as if this music might never see the light. The records were locked up in the Archives, apparently permanently and, for the last several years, could not be heard even in the Library.

It is not necessary at this time to go into the difficulties that barred the release, although, it must be he admitted, they seemed insurmountable. Kenneth Bright, Field Director of CIRCLE, Harriet Janis, and the writer had determined, however, to try to do the impossible. We were agreed that the cultural importance of this material made the most patient and protracted efforts mandatory. Bright personally conducted the long and difficult negotiations that resulted finally in an exclusive arrangement for CIRCLE to issue the long-awaited records.

The series that Jelly left on wax in Washington nine years ago should, we strongly feel, be issued in as complete a form as possible. The historical and sociological aspect of these discs as documents of the American scene from 1895 to 1915, and their intrinsic musical importance far transcend the specialized field of jazz appreciation. The series belongs besides in jazz collections — in libraries, musical conservatories and universities everywhere.

So this summer will see the release of the first albums of a limited edition of the Morton series. This edition, complete except for some half-dozen unissuable sides, will require about a year. It is planned that the sets will he available on subscription only.

The Baby Dodds Story

The Red Hot Peppers

John and I also made records with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. On all the jobs with Jelly Roll it was he who picked the men for the session. He went around himself and got the men he wanted to record with him. We weren’t a regular band but — like Louis’ Hot Seven — only a recording outfit. Sometimes the various men in the band wouldn’t see each other for months. But when Jelly Roll gave us a ring we met for rehearsal and we all knew what was expected of us. Of course we all knew each other from New Orleans but those record sessions were the only times we all got together to play music. But there was a fine spirit in that group and I enjoyed working with Jelly Roll immensely. We were always happy to see each other in the outfit and to sit down and talk over what had happened since we last got together.

At rehearsal Jelly Roll Morton used to work on each and every number until it satisfied him. Everybody had to do just what Jelly wanted him to do. During rehearsals he would say, “Now that’s just the way I want it on the recording,” and he meant just that. We used his original numbers and he always explained what it was all about and played a synopsis of it on the piano. Sometimes we had music and he would mark with a pencil those places which he wanted to stand out in a number. It was different from recording with Louis. Jelly didn’t leave much leeway for the individual musician. You did what Jelly Roll wanted you to do, no more and no less. And his own playing was remarkable and kept us in good spirits. He wasn’t fussy, but he was positive. He knew what he wanted and he would get the men he knew could produce it. But Jelly wasn’t a man to get angry. I never saw him upset and he didn’t raise his voice at any time. He wasn’t hard to please and after making. a record he would let us know when he was pleased with it.

Although Jelly used to work out all the different parts himself, he often gave us something extra to do, some little novelty or something. When we made the Jungle Blues he wanted a gong effect and I think I used a large cymbal and a mallet to produce the effect he wanted. One number that was pretty complicated for me was Jelly’s Billy Goat Stomp. There were places in that where the vocalist made a noise like a billy goat and I had to do something else on the drums at the same time. It was in Spanish rhythm like so many of the numbers used to be played in New Orleans. I used the cymbal and soft mallet on that number and also the Chinese tom-tom. Another tricky one was the Hyena Stomp. It took quite a bit of rehearsing on some of those to get just what Jelly wanted but he told us what he expected and we would do our best to get the right effect. I was very versatile then and picked up the idea when Jelly played it on the piano. He was pleased with John’s playing and with my drumming. And the records we made with Jelly were under the best of recording conditions. They were recorded in the Chicago Victor studio on Oak Street near Michigan Avenue, and the accoustics [sic] there were very good. It was one of the best studios I ever worked in.

Besides making records with Jelly’s band John and I also made trio records with him. They were also Jelly Roll’s tunes and most of them he had previously recorded as piano solos. He added the clarinet and drum parts but he didn’t want these other instruments to stand out. He just wanted to feel us, not to hear us. Because he wanted the drum so very soft I used brushes on Mr. Jelly Lord. I didn’t like brushes at any time but I asked him if he wanted me to use them and he said “yes.” So I played the whole number with brushes instead of sticks. On the same number he wanted John to play in the low register, and that’s the way he played it. It wasn’t John’s version but rather the way Jelly wanted him to play. On the Wolverine Blues I decided to try using my Chinese tom-tom. I figured it would change the beat yet still sound good, and Jelly left it in the record.

When he made those trio recordings Jelly patted his foot to keep his tempo. He was so determined about his time that he stamped his foot. It was his tempo but if we followed it we would be off and of course he didn’t like that. Once the technician said that Jelly stamped his foot so loud it sounded like two bass drums. In order to keep it from the recording they had a little mattress made, about eight inches square, which they put under his foot so he could stamp all he wanted to and yet not be heard. The trio idea was Jelly’s and it was something new for records. It was through this trio of Jelly, John and I that a lot of people got the idea and jazz trios became a popular thing.

Chords And Discords

Wyer Was Wrong – W. C. Handy

To the Editors:                                                                                                                           New York City

My attention has been called to an article by George Hoefer in the April 18 issue of Down Beat, captioned Tales Of Two Jazzmen: One True, Other False, and may I add, ALL FALSE. He writes:

“Onah Spencer, former Down Beat correspondent covering Chicago’s south side, learned the Wyer story from Jasper Taylor. It dates back to around 1916 when kid drummer Taylor was playing with William C. Handy’s band in Memphis.”

Onah Spencer and Jasper Taylor have read my book Father of the Blues, which gives the true story of Paul Wyer and his brother, Ed, who were violinists in my Memphis Orchestra and clarinet and baritone in my Brass Band. Paul made on his clarinet the first jazz break, which I incorporated in the original score of the Memphis Blues.

I have never worn patched pants and never had to wear them. I could, however, paint you a most delightful picture of the only time I didn’t have sufficient clothing, which happened in East St. Louis after I had pawned my watch to my employer for food and lodging. This man took my two weeks’ wages and kept my watch for the board and lodging and wouldn’t let me have my laundry and clothes. I went to the police for redress and they threatened to take me in for vagrancy if I pressed the charge.

It’s A Lie

Your statement beginning with this — “According to Taylor the Spanish Habanera rhythm in St. Louis Blues came from an arrangement of the tune made by Wyer, etc.,” is false. My Minstrel Band played Havana, Cuba on the Prado in 1899 — 10 years before I met Wyer, and if you read my book, you will see how I hung out with the natives, caught the rhythm of the rumba from them 30 years before it reached Broadway. In my minstrel band in the late ’90s I played compositions that had the Habanera movement.

The Tango was taken from an African word ‘Tangana’ which influenced the Spaniards, and the Spaniards influenced South Americans, who introduced the movement which I incorporated into my blues as the call of the blood.

Mr. Hoefer says — “According to Taylor the Spanish Habanera rhythm in St. Louis Blues came from an arrangement of the tune made by Wyer, etc.,” also, “It is said William Grant Still, who had played in the same Handy band, learned from Paul Wyer some of the musical ideas he later used in his compositions.” Such statement are malignant falsehoods that take from the Negro creator credits in ragtime and all that he has contributed to American music.

I wrote every note in St. Louis Blues, didn’t allow anybody to dot an “I” or cross a “T” or even read my proofs.

Still’s mother and father before him were musicians and he did not have to ask Wyer anything about music because he made the first band arrangement of St. Louis Blues and finished Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory (music scholarship) before he ever saw Wyer.

W. C. Handy

CHICAGO BAND BRIEFS

Studies Bop, Returns To
Original Love, Dixieland

By PAT HARRIS

Chicago — Roy Wasson made a decision a couple of years ago that is almost unheard of among jazzmen. Wasson was playing piano in California and he began to listen to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker records. He liked them. For a onetime student of Jelly Roll Morton, that’s quite an admission.

“But I had to choose between the beat and the happy sound of Dixieland, and the music of bop, and I stuck with Dixie. The Dixie beat to me,” Wasson says, “is like the rhyme in poetry. You don’t have poetry without rhyme, and I couldn’t see playing without that beat.”

Now with Lane

Wasson’s now playing with Johnny Lane’s combo at the 1111 club here. A mild sandy-haired man of 40, he can’t reproduce Jelly’s style perfectly any more, but them, it’s been a long time since Jelly’s tutelage. Wasson was 16 when he met Morton, at the Walter Melrose publishing office at State and Lake streets in Chicago.

It was around 1923, and he used to go up to Melrose’s frequently to pick up sheet music for the neighborhood band he played with. “Jelly Roll seemed pleased that I knew his compositions, and he offered to teach me to play them just as he did.”

Studied for Year

“I studied with Jelly Roll the better part of a year. We would go up to a place near Adams and Wabash where you could rent pianos by the hour, and, once a week, I’d have a lesson, I’d play something, then he would play it, and we’d continue like that until I could duplicate his phrasing.”

As far as Wasson knows, he was Jelly’s sole pupil at the time, and certainly one of the few pianists Morton ever taught directly. In 1924, Wasson went to Milwaukee with the Red Flame Syncopators, and the lessons ended. On his return to Chicago he worked with Al Gale’s band at Pete’s Place, 111th and Cicero.

With Clarinetist Gale, who’s now in the sausage business in Minneapolis, were Charles Yaki, banjo; Gene Krupa, drums, and miscellaneous cornet players. It was probably Krupa’s first professional job, Wasson thinks. Though Roy stayed with Gale for almost two years, Gene left after about a year to go with Irvin Aaronson’s band.

Another Teacher

Wasson picked up another teacher, too, on his return to Chicago. This time, it was Jess Stacy, who was working at the Midway Gardens at the time. Roy’s routine with Stacy followed a pattern quite different from that under Morton.

“I’d go to Jess’ house about 1 p.m. and we’d have breakfast together. We’d play all afternoon, and I usually stayed through dinner and went down to the job with him in the evening. The Midway Gardens was a melting pot for musicians, I sat in for Stacy a couple of times, and I remember Benny Goodman, in short pants, sitting in with the band.”

Since Wasson’s return to Chicago last spring, he worked with Doc Evans’ band for a while, then as a single at the 1111 club. When Johnny Lane’s Dixie band moved into the Bryn Mawr spot, Wasson stayed on as pianist. His style is close to Morton’s, and is one of the brightest spots in the Chicago jazz picture today.

THE HOT BOX

Jelly Roll’s Library Of
Congress Wax Date
World’s Longest Session

By GEORGE HOEFER

Ferdinand Joseph Morton, better known to jazz aficionados as “Jelly Roll,” achieved his second big wind in 1938. He became a top jazz recording artist after having fallen into obscurity around 1930, and at the same time was a vociferous jazz historian and autobiographer right on up to his death in July, 1941.

It was Charles Edward Smith who found Jelly playing a modernistic spinet piano in an upstairs joint in Washington D.C., called The Music Box. In April 1938 Alan Lomax made arrangements for Jelly to record a musical autobiography for the Folk Song Archives of the Library of Congress. A five week recording date started on May 21, 1938, in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Congressional Library.

Alan Lomax, speaking of one of the world’s longest recording sessions, told Onah Spencer of DOWN BEAT in January 1941, “Spencer, I recorded Jelly Roll for purely folk musical purposes for the Archives and it was the darndest thing you ever heard. One hour and a half of continuous monologue and musical flashes. He would shout, ‘I am the great Jelly Roll’ (then he would play a bit of piano music); then he would shout again ‘I am the great Jelly Roll’ (and intersperse a little more music); then he would holler ‘I invented jazz, yes I did. I did that,’ and that record is really something to hear.”

DOWN BEAT in June 1938 ran a story by Sidney Martin (written before the first session) outlining the plans of what Jelly Roll was to put no (on) wax. The idea was to have Morton cut discs on the development of jazz by playing[,] singing and talking.

The rise of jazz and swing from folk music sources was to be house (barrelhouse) tunes, hymns and voodoo chants of New Orleans forty years ago. Jelly was to contribute all he could recall of the Creole melodies, New Orleans street cass (calls), funeral dirges, and the music of the backwoods churches. He was to embellish the discs with descriptions of the voodoo “rice on the blanket” rituals and relate the legends of the witch doctor’s powers.

Prolific Composer

Jelly Roll Morton was a prolific composer of jazz tunes. He transcribed many light opera tunes to jazz. Martin in his story also mentioned that Jelly was to sing tunes like Easy Rider, Stack O’Lee Blues and Midnight Special and the French Quadrille from which Tiger Rag was derived.

A great deal of talking was to be recorded with Jelly telling how he thought jazz rhythm was derived from the accompaniment the congregation in southern Negro Baptist churches gave the sermon by stomping their feet and clapping their hands. He was to play and tell the significance of the famous funeral march Flee Like A Bird To The Mountain and then describe how after the burial the band modulated to Oh, Didn’t He Ramble (Lomax has traced Ramble to a hymn brought over to the U.S. by the Pilgrims). Lomax also wanted Morton to play the early New Orleans military marches and show how they were transformed into standard Dixieland stomps.

Jelly Roll Morton

How well the late Jelly Roll performed this assignment has not been known generally. The records have been inaccessible for nine years in the Library Archives. The Morton estate has always retained the rights to the records, therefore, the Library has been unable to issue them in spite of the clamoring from jazz students the world over.

Settle With Circle

Before he died, he told his lawyer that there were certain people who were to never get these records because of the way they exploited him during his lifetime. The lawyer for the estate has finally accepted the terms of Circle Records and have released the rights to this company providing they issue the entire series with the exception of sixteen objectionable sides that would reflect on the Morton family.

Rudi Blesh, Recording Director, of Circle Records now announces the release of the records in a DeLuxe Edition of twelve albums with two albums coming out every three months. The total cost will be $120 for the complete set, payable $20 quarterly. Forty-Five records in all will be included on 12" vinylite.

These records should prove invaluable to the jazz collector. Although, Morton, who used to sign his letters, “Jelly Roll Morton Originator of Jazz and Stomps, World’s greatest hot tune writer,” sticks close to jazz on these sides, he also squeezes in descriptions of his “careers” as boxing promotor (promoter) and ambidextrous pool shark.

Rare Morton Piano Roll
Discovered In Junk Shop

By GEORGE HOEFER

Chicago — Here is a story to whet the appetite of the jazz collector. Since the war-time salvage drives, record hunting in junk shops, private homes, and record shops has become a dull occupation. It would appear that all the gems have been picked up. Every once in a while something happens to disprove this generality. Early last summer two Kansas City collectors stumbled in a rewarding junk pile in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Don Hoffman and Jerry Hatje of Wichita went up to Hutchinson expressly to search for vintage jazz records. In one large junk shop they found several good discs and a cabinet full of player piano rolls and a few loose rolls scattered around on the floor in corners. A carton in one of the corners contained some torn rolls and one perfect in its original box. The boys read the writing on box in awe: “Shreveport Stomp, by Jelly Roll Morton, copyrighted by the Melrose Brothers, 1924.” It is not indicated as to whether this roll was manufactured by the QRS company or by Vocal Style (Vocalstyle) Piano Roll Co. of Cincinnati. The roll cost the boys a dime.

Interest to Students

This find will eventually give Morton students an additional version of Jelly’s composition, as it will probably be put on wax by one of the small jazz labels. Other versions of Shreveport are Jelly’s piano solo on Gennett 3390 (1924) and the Jelly Roll Morton trio on Victor 21658 (1928).

Other Morton piano rolls have been found, including the QRS Dead Man Blues, which was transmitted to to records on Century 4000 by Sam Meltzer. William Russell advises that three other finds of Morton rolls have been reported to him, including Tin Roof Blues and two other Morton compositions. This is the first time he had heard of the Shreveport roll.

Additional Finds

Later in the summer, Don and Jerry picked up some more piano rolls from a tip given by a farmer, who had traded in his old player piano for new piano. The proprietor of the piano shop told the boys they could have all the piano rolls they wanted if they would go through the 500 or so he had in his garage. Among this pile they found James P. Johnson’s Innovations, Spencer Williams’ Tishomingo Blues, and Maceo Pinkard’s The (Those) Draftin’ Blues. There were also many rags, stomps, and blues by such artists as J. Russel Robinson, Pete Wendling, Clarence Jones, and Zez Confrey.

THE HOT BOX

Tales Of Two Jazzmen:
One True, Other False

By GEORGE HOEFER

Two interesting jazz legends have been brought to my attention in recent weeks. One, a true story, involve a clarinetist of early day jazz named J. Paul Wyer (or Wyre) who is now leading an orchestra in South America. The other is a false tale, prevalent in the southwest, built around the fabulous career of the late Pinetop Smith.

Onah Spencer, former Down Beat correspondent covering Chicago’s south side, learned the Wyer story from Jasper Taylor. It dates back to around 1916 when kid drummer Taylor was playing with William C. Handy’s band in Memphis.

Dressed to Kill

As Taylor recalls it, “It happened during the days when Handy would be dressed to kill in front, but when he turned towards the band he had to put at least one hand behind his back to cover the patches.” They were playing the excursion steamer Pattona and killed off their time in a combination pool room-gin mill.

One day a ragged stranger, whose physical characteristics resembled those of Duke Ellington, walked into the pool room. He had just dropped off of a fast freight and wanted to show Memphis what he could do. The bouncer wanted to eject the guy but a girl offered to buy him a drink. He didn’t want a drink but desired to borrow a violin and play for the assemblage. His wish was granted and he played many standard opera and violin solos from memory to the enthralled crowd.

Asked what else he could do, he proceeded to play the piano, the clarinet, and do magic tricks with the trombone (story goes he made snakes come out of the bell of the horn). Finally, Wyer finished up by cleaning the house out with a pool stick.

W. C. Handy followed up by hiring Wyer for his band, and soon learned that the fellow was the son of a Wyer he had heard about. The father had been an army bandleader at Pensacola and the director of a symphony orchestra that played in Havana, Cuba, and for musical comedy road shows. It turned out that Paul had a brother named Ed who also joined the Handy band and played violin.

Habanera

According to Taylor the Spanish Habanera rhythm in St. Louis Blues came from an arrangement of the tune by Wyer who as a boy had played in Havana in his father’s orchestra. It is also said that William Grant Still, who played in the same early Handy Band, learned from Paul Wyer some of the musical ideas he later used in his compositions.

The story goes on that after Wyer (Paul) left Handy he drifted into Chicago taking the pool sharks, including the famed Mush Mouth Johnson, for all they were worth. Finally he won $60,000 on the Irish Sweepstakes and went to South America to become an importer.

Latest information indicates Paul Wyer was mixed up with the Nazis for awhile during the late war and disappeared for some years. A recent magazine received from Wyer by Jasper Taylor showed a picture of Paul leading a South American orchestra.

Read Everything

Handy in his Father of the Blues recalls Paul Wyer as a clarinetist who could read anything written and without a prepared part could improvise a part worthy of writing down. [FOB 96]

Buster Bailey, a well known clarinet player who also started his career in the Handy band, recalls Wyer as a great artist.

The Pinetop Smith legend, disproved by Down Beat’s bizarre 1939 story, I Saw Pine Top Spit Blood and Fall, appeared last November in Sigman Byrd’s column in the Houston Press. Byrd, who goes under the title of “The Stroller,” got his story from a Buster Cartwright who runs a gin mill and plays blues piano in Houston.

Pinetop Story

The legendary tale revolves around how the boogie finally killed Pinetop. Cartwright knowingly told Byrd how Pinetop was born in New Orleans (he was born in Troy, Ala.) and wondered if Duke Ellington would play Smith’s boogie at a forthcoming Houston concert.

Cartwright’s story goes as follows: Pinetop had a gal named Bessie Rose who lived in Galveston. The Boogie Woogie was dedicated to her and she was “the little gal with the red dress on” in Pinetop’s famous lyrics. Fact is, Buster averred Pinetop had only two numbers in his repertoire but could play them all night. One of these was Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie and the other Jump Study. The latter was incorrectly titled Jump Steady.

It seems that one hot summer night in 1929 Pinetop was playing at the Naked club in Galveston. Bessie Rose hadn’t shown as yet. Pinetop usually reserved the Boogie for her as she insisted he sing it just for her. On this particular night another gal who had been picked up by Smith’s roving eye inspired him to go into his Boogie. The new chick, a fancy light-brown gal, followed up and stood by Smith’s piano bending close to his ear whispering, “Play it for me Pinetop.” He was averring that was what he was doing when in walked Bessie Rose.

Red on White

When Bessie surveyed the situation she right then and there drew her West Dallas Special out of her purse and opened the blade. She walked straight towards the piano where Pinetop’s back was turned to her and buried the blade in the Boogie King’s back. He fell over on the piano and every white key turned crimson with his blood. That’s the legend.

For those who didn’t see or don’t remember Down Beat’s 1939 story, we’ll repeat the death facts uncovered by Sharon Pease. Pease obtained a copy of Smith’s death certificate bearing out the truth that Pinetop Smith was killed by a pistol bullet, quite by accident, in a Chicago west side dance hall. Two men whom Smith hardly knew got into a scuffle and a third ran towards them with a pistol. Somehow or other Pinetop was pushed in the line of the third man’s fire. This happened in March 1929.

The Saga of Jelly Roll Morton’s
Ill-fated Final Recording Date

by FLOYD LEVIN

During the Fall of 1940, Ed Garland, veteran bassist with Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band, received a very interesting phone call. It was Jelly Roll Morton, in New York. The great pianist-composer’s godmother recently died and he was coming West to handle her estate. While in the area, he wanted to rehearse a large New Orleans band for a recording session.

He asked Garland to locate the best possible players for the rehearsals. Since Morton indicated he was very ill and would probably not play the piano, Garland selected Buster Wilson, an apprentice of Morton’s two decades before, to stand by.

The saga of Jelly Roll’s arduous cross country trip towing a second car through snow packed roads has been carefully documented in Alan Lomax’s book “Mister Jelly Roll,” published in the early ’50s.

By the time he arrived, the band was ready. It included: Mutt Carey and Pee Wee Brice, trumpets, Kid Ory and Jug Everly, trombones. Theodore Bonner, Robert Garner, and Alfonso George, saxophones, Atwell Rose, violin, Bud Scott, guitar, Ed Garland, bass. Minor Hall, drums, Buster Wilson would play piano and Jelly was to conduct.

The newly assembled Jelly Roll Morton orchestra rehearsed for several weeks at the Elks Hall on Central Avenue. Morton had written many new numbers for the record date he claimed was scheduled.

“Those arrangements were very interesting.” Garland told me. “Jelly was aware that some of his tunes were being successfully played by the swing bands — Goodman had a hit record of his King Porter Stomp and Lionel Hampton’s Shoe Shiner’s Drag was heard every day on the radio. He thought he would show those swing bands how his music should be played. He had written parts for four trumpets and five saxophones, but he revised the arrangements to fit the smaller band I put together for him.”

Morton’s health deteriorated rapidly and he was hospitalized in the Spring of 1941. Garland continued rehearsing the band for Morton until Jelly’s death.

Unfortunately, Jelly’s final recording session never took place. He died on July 10, 1941, ending his dream to resume a prominent position in contemporary popular music.

He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. The pallbearers included Kid Ory, Mutt Carey, Fred Washington, and Ed Garland. The grave remained unmarked until 1950 when the newly formed Southern California Hot Jazz Society helped arrange for a marker to be placed on the grave. (It will require a separate article to properly delineate the intricacies of that unusual situation).

See: Anita Gonzales and the Untold Story of Jelly Roll Morton’s Last Years

An ironic twist of fate denied an opportunity for me to own the arrangements Morton wrote for that anticipated record date. His handwritten scores remained in Buster Wilson’s front room for almost a decade. They were in a large trunk draped with a silk shawl and topped with a tarnished brass lamp. Buster promised to sort through the trunk “one day” and promised to give me those old manuscripts. I repeatedly reminded him of his offer, but he never managed to open the trunk.

After Buster’s death, I informed his widow, Carmelita, of the promise. I discreetly called her several times but she seemed reluctant to give me the manuscripts. The phone eventually was disconnected. Carmelita moved, and apparently left the city. It was never possible to contact her again.

Garland told me that none of the musicians received payment for the lengthy rehearsals. Although his memory was usually very sharp, he could not recall the titles of the tunes they rehearsed. Also, I was never able to obtain any information regarding a firm with whom Jelly might have arranged to issue the proposed recordings.

To my knowledge, this is the only published documentation about Jelly’s last jazz band. We can only speculate on how those records might have sounded. It is regrettable that Jelly Roll Morton’s last writings will probably never be located.

© 1997 Floyd Levin

The Silver Dollar Episode

by FLOYD LEVIN

Those of us sincerely interested in the history of the music we call jazz, occasionally come across a fascinating fragment of information that opens huge vistas for future research. Many of the known details of early jazz history were brought to the surface by dedicated collectors who fervently searched for the facts and painstakingly pieced together each tiny bit of information. The vivid fabric of jazz history has beer carefully woven by probing devotees bent upon documenting every minute segment of the music’s background.

I have always considered myself a part of this research movement. By peering into the past and questioning every possible source for hidden facts, I have made some startling disclosures. Some have received acclaim from fans and collectors throughout the world. (My expose on Tony Jackson’s personal life was reprinted in six languages!) But none of my previous research efforts have equaled my latest adventure which I shall always refer to as, “The Silver Dollar Episode.”

During a recent conversation with jazz bassist Ed Garland, he spoke about the late Jelly Roll Morton. I was very interested by Garland’s remarks because Morton is probably my very favorite jazz musician (along with Armstrong, Bechet, Ellington, and a score of others!). “Tudie” recalled hearing Jelly play at a small cafe in downtown Los Angeles. Garland, Kid Ory, and Papa Mutt Carey frequently sat in with the New Orleans pianist at the old Silver Dollar Cafe on Main Street near 8th.

THE SILVER DOLLAR CAFE! MAIN STREET NEAR 8TH!

Being familiar with that area, I recalled seeing a Silver Dollar Cafe — on Main near 8th! It still exists — a surviving link with the golden age of jazz! Could this small bar possibly hold secrets that I might expose to the world? Would an old employee remember when Jelly Roll Morton had worked there? Since Morton certainly played a most important role in the jazz drama, any bits of information about his career would be of great interest to his many fans. I immediately decided to fully explore this exciting situation.

Because of the slightly unsavory location adjacent to Los Angeles’ seedy Skid Row, I felt it advisable to visit the S.D. without my usual feminine companion, so I ‘phoned Lucille and said that I would be home later than usual. I explained that a very important assignment in the interest of jazz research required my attention. I left the office early and drove toward that magic corner of 8th and Main excited at the prospect of visiting the actual site of my hero’s triumph!

Stopping at the traffic signal directly across from the Silver Dollar Cafe, I glanced toward the entrance. A large sign over the door proclaimed, “TOP-LESS WAITRESSES!” “WILD GO-GO GIRLS.” While I have never been a devotee of mammillary exposure, I promptly decided that no sacrifice was too great in the interests of jazz research!

Waiting for the signal to change, I recalled the many pleasant hours I had spent listening to Jelly’s records. I fondly remembered those wonderful Library of Congress albums, Morton’s personal requiem — perhaps the most important record date in jazz history! “The Pearls,” one of the most beautiful compositions ever written, is just one of the Morton gems. We are also indebted to him for “Wolverine Blues,” “Milenberg Joys,” “King Porter Stomp,” “Original Jelly-Roll Blues.” I wanted to savor this delicious nostalgia before actually entering the hallowed hall where the immortal Jelly Roll Morton had actually performed.

Entering the darkened room, I realized that the early evening hour would be ideal to interview the bartender who might remember Morton. Perhaps the very piano on which he had performed might still be in use! Undoubtedly, the management had changed many times over the years, but perhaps I could learn if the original owner was still alive.

I found a tiny round table that was not occupied although the ashtray was filled. Moments after seating myself, I was approached by a rather formidable blond waitress. A casual observation disclosed that she was, indeed, topless — and very well endowed! As she came closer, I was transfixed by the undulating motion of her large breasts, which halted as she reached my table. I mumbled something about a cold bottle of beer and she jiggled toward the bar.

I glanced around hoping to see something that I might link this moment with that earlier era when Morton’s articulation had filled this very room. The walls were heavily draped with a slightly faded satin that showed evidence of several unsuccessful attempts to remove large stains. Perhaps beneath those awful drapes, the original walls might disclose some clue to the room’s original appearance. It had probably been, paneled in rich woods . . .

My reverie was interrupted by the blond waitress who had reappeared with a round tray on which rested (in addition to her large breasts) the bottle of beer I had ordered and a slightly soiled glass.

As she learned forward to pour my beer, I stammered, “B-b-been working here long, dear?”

“No.”

Sensing that our conversation would rapidly deteriorate from this brilliant beginning, I concentrated on my beer as she turned to wipe the table next to mine. Another customer had entered the cafe and she moved toward him leaving a mixed aroma of cheap perfume and perspiration. An experimental sip of the beer disclosed that it was not cold enough — probably the result of its recent juxtapositional arrangement on her tray!

I left the table and casually sauntered toward the bartender who acknowledged my presence with the warm greeting, “What’s yours, Buddy?”

“I have a beer at the table,” I muttered, overlooking the “Buddy” which usually would have annoyed me. “What sort of band do you have here?” I asked, to start the conversation.

“It’s a band! Four, five young guys. They plug in their guitars and play loud. The girls do the go-go bit so no one looks at the band. The band ain’t much — but the girls are great. We have one girl here, would you believe . . .”

“Ever hear of Jelly Roll Morton,” I blurted. I decided to get to the point immediately.

“Jelly Roll WHO? Hey, are you drunk? This is a respectable place and we don’t want no trouble!”

“No I’m not drunk,” I protested. “Jelly Roll Morton was a great jazz musician and I understand that he played in this very place many years ago. He wrote “Wolverine Blues” and . . .”

He interrupted, “Never heard of him. I’ve worked here for eight years and no one named Martin ever played here. Did he play guitar?”

“His name was MORTON!” I think my voice became slightly louder, “and he played piano! It was a long time ago — Jelly died in 1941 . . .”

“Listen Buddy,” he snarled, “I was born in 1943, so hawdaya ’spect me to remember that?”

I returned, to my table saddened by my failure at the bar. The beer was gone (but the ashtray was still full). A slight gesture to my overexposed friend sent her hack to the bar for another bottle of beer which I drank quickly.

It was then that I noted the juke box. THE JUKE BOX! This would be a wonderful place to hear some of Morton’s recorded classics. Who could ever forget the brilliant “Cannon Ball Blues” with that torrid George Mitchell trumpet solo! Jelly’s Red Hot Peppers’ recording of “Black Bottom Stomp” will live forever. Probably the best recorded work of Johnny Dodds and Johnny St. Cyr can be heard on many early Morton hits. The Morton piano solos, the early Gennetts or the later Generals, clearly establish guidelines by which jazz piano playing can be judged. When one of these solos is transcribed to a sheet of music, the tremendous technique of the master is quite apparent. The printed black notes hang in huge clusters like ripe plump grapes ready for the harvest.

I reached into my pocket for change and moved toward the gaudy neon juke box and eagerly scanned the list of offerings.

“CREEDENCE CLEARWATER!” “THE LED ZEPPLIN!” “THREE DOG NIGHT!”

I read on in horror:

“PEPPEPMINT RAINBOW,” “THE MOTHERS!” (THE MOTHERS?)

After reading the entire list, I realized that JELLY ROLL MORTON was not represented on the entire program.

My buxom waitress must have gone home. The next beer was delivered by a comely lass of less spectacular proportions but with a warm, friendly smile. She emptied the ashtray. I decided that the interests of jazz research could not be served by questioning this young, girl about Jelly Roll Martin — er, Morton.

A wave of gloom swept over me. Gone was the nostalgic thrill of discovering some hidden secrets of jazz’s dark past. I was even slightly, disturbed with Jelly Roll himself — perhaps he was not the world’s greatest pianist after all! Maybe he did not actually write “Tiger Rag” as he claimed! Should I transfer my affection to Art Tatum? Or James P. Johnson? In the future, I would certainly leave this jazz research bit for such skilled writers as William Russell, Johnny Simmen, Stanley Dance, or George Kay.

These dark thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the harsh staccato of auto horns behind me. The signal had changed and the irate motorists were protesting my delay. Across the street, a sleeveless man was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the Silver Dollar Cafe. The “TOPLESS” sign looked very faded. The windows of the bar were streaked.

I ground into first gear and sped toward the freeway. Tuning the car radio to Benson Curtis’ program, I settled back to the familiar routine of Los Angeles freeway travel. The program ended as I reached the top of the hill and swung into our driveway. The strains of “Panama” remained in my head as I turned the key and opened the door.

“Honey, I’m home!”

© 2002 Floyd Levin

Mostly About Morton

Veteran Clarinetist, Whom Jelly Roll Preferred Above
All Others, Tells About the Good Old Days

By OMER SIMEON

I first met Jelly Roll in Chicago while I was with Charlie Elgar. That was Charlie Elgar’s Creole Band and we played mostly in Milwaukee. Somebody around Chicago had recommended me to Jelly Roll and he asked me to come down to make some records. We used to go to his home for rehearsals and the first time I was there, he handed me a piece called Mamamita, which had a pretty hard clarinet part. I guess he was testing me out and I knew he was pleased when I read it off at first sight. We rehearsed that tune but never did record it.

Walter Melrose brought all the music down from his music store. Morton was working for Melrose then and the pieces played were mostly all stock arrangements Jelly had made up and published by Melrose. Jelly marked out parts we liked and he always had his manuscripts there and his pencils and he was always writing and jotting little parts. Art Hodes reminds me of Jelly Roll the way he rehearses and records — pencil, paper and manuscripts and jotting down changes here and there. Jelly left our solos up to us but the backgrounds, harmony and licks were all in his arrangements. He was easy to work for and he always explained everything he wanted. He reminded me of a guy like Dizzy Dean — but he could back up anything he said. Every one liked to pick arguments with him because they liked to hear him talk and argue. Later on in New York, when swing was becoming popular, Chick Webb used to kid him — told him he didn’t know anything about jazz and asked him about New Orleans. That would start him off about being the pioneer of jazz. He was always talking about New Orleans; about Buddy Bolden, Frankie Dusen, Buddy Petit, Tony Jackson — he could take off their mannerisms on a job and he was always a comedian It was hard to keep up with him — he could talk 24 hours in a row.

We would have a couple of rehearsals at Jelly’s house before the date and Melrose would pay us $5.00 a man. That’s the only time I ever got paid for a rehearsal. Then we’d go around to the Victor studio on the north side for the recording and he’d pay us $15.00 a side, which was more than scale in those days. Technicians set the stage for the date — Jelly had to take orders there for a change — and all this time I was commuting from Milwaukee. I was with Elgar until 1927, playing at the Riverview Ballroom and the Wisconsin Roof Garden. Elgar was very popular around Milwaukee. He had a large band for that time — about twelve pieces. Darnell Howard was with him and Cliff King played clarinet. Joe Sudler was with him and he was a good trumpet player. I was playing alto and clarinet and later on I got a soprano sax so I had three instruments to carry around. We had to play dance music but Elgar featured a lot of rags and other tunes like High Society and Clarinet Marmalade. We never recorded though.

Melrose spared no expense for a record date — anything Jelly Roll wanted he got. Melrose worshipped him like a king. Jelly was great for effects as on Sidewalk Blues and Steamboat Stomp and later on like the opening on Kansas City Stomp. I had never heard anything played like that before. Jelly thought it up and anything he needed for his effects, Melrose would go out and get it. For the second date he got Darnell Howard and Barney Bigard in for the trio effect he wanted on two of the sides. I played all the clarinet part and Howard and Bigard just sat there and held their clarinets except for the few strains Jelly wanted them to play. He had a Claxton horn for Sidewalk Blues and I think it was Marty Bloom — Melrose’s partner — who did the whistling, it was supposed to be a cop’s whistle and Jelly took off the cop and Johnny St. Cyr did the other talking. They did the talking on Steamboat Stomp too. Bloom was the sound effects man. I remember on the second date, Melrose walked in with a bottle of scotch. We usually had a bottle around as the dates would be early in the, morning and we had to get our spirits up. Anyway, Jelly had two drinks and we had to stop the session for a while and open all the windows so he could get some air. He wasn’t much of a drinking man. Melrose sure got a big kick out of that.

I was still commuting from Milwaukee when the third date came up in December, 1926. On Someday Sweetheart I took a solo chorus on bass clarinet. Jelly wanted it and Melrose rented one somewhere. Took a little time to get familiar with it and I didn’t like it too much. Jelly was always fond of effects and wanted to be different. He was always trying to find something different and whatever he wanted, we would have to do. He was fussy with introductions and endings and he always wanted the ensemble his way but he never interfered with the solo work. He’d tell us where he wanted the solo or break but the rest was up to us. Some more of Jelly’s effects cropped up on the third date. He had two violins on Someday Sweetheart and I think one of them may have been Darnell Howard. He was quite prominent at that time on violin as well as on sax and clarinet. On Original Jelly Roll Blues, Johnny St. Cyr played a guitar and the drummer used castanets to give a Spanish style effect. Jelly was sure full of ideas and he used them. I remember on Dr. Jazz, the long note I played wasn’t in, the stock arrangement. Jelly liked it and had Melrose put it in the orchestration.

I didn’t see Jelly again around Chicago. I played with Elgar a while after that and left him to go with King Oliver. I had one record date with Oliver in Chicago when we made Willie The Weeper, Black Snake Blues, Every Tub, and Showboat Shuffle. I took the soprano sax solo on Willie The Weeper. Shortly after, we went to New York with Oliver, where we made a few more records. Also had a record date with Eddie Lang, Oliver and Clarence Williams at a studio in Washington Square but can’t remember the tunes. The Oliver band didn’t stick together long in New York. Ory was first to leave, then Barney Bigard and I went back west, where I played again with Elgar at the Eagle Ballroom in Milwaukee. I left him late in 1927 and went back to New York with Luis Russell, where we played at the Nest Cafe. Andy Anderson was on trumpet.

In June, 1928, Walter Melrose came to The Nest and asked me to make another record date with Jelly. Jelly had come to New York and had a band at the Rose Danceland. All the boys on the date were in his band and I was the only outsider. Russell Procope was playing sax and clarinet at the ballroom but Jelly wanted me to play on the date. Ward Pinkett, Geechie Fields and the Benford Brothers were all in his band. Pinkett was a fine trumpet player, sometimes the way he played was a lot like Mitch. All the tunes were rehearsed at the Rose Danceland — Georgia, Swing Kansas City Stomp and the others and he wanted to make a trio side too. He said Dodds had been making a lot of records and Benny Goodman was starting in and with everybody soloing, he wanted to give me a chance to show myself. He wanted me to work in his band too but I didn’t go until Fall and then only worked one week. He paid me $75.00 a week and wanted me to stay but the job was a taxi-dance hall and it was too hard. We’d play for fifty minutes in a row and rest ten minutes. I had a chance to work for Erskine Tate in his pit band at the Metropolitan Theater in Chicago and could be with my family there. That was good experience too as I had to play all kinds of music with Tate.

I saw Jelly a couple of more times but never played with him again. Once on a one nighter with Earl Hines band somewhere in Maryland, Jelly came over to see me. The last time I saw Jelly was in Washington at the Howard Theater. He came back stage and said he was going to organize a band again and wanted me to come with him. He had a club in Washington then and wanted to cook me some red beans and rice. I’m sorry now that I couldn’t make it.

“Oh, Mr. Jelly!”

By Charles Edward Smith

Ferdinand (Jelly Roll) Morton, born 1885 in New Orleans, Louisiana, was one of the great jazz pioneers. Throughout his life he gave unstinting praise to some of the jazzmen who preceded, and inspired him, among them: Buddy Bolden, first king of jazz cornet; Porter King, leading pianist of the Gulf Coast and inspiration for “King Porter Stomp”; Louis Chauvin, king of the St. Louis ragtime pianists; and, above all, Tony Jackson, pianistic master of everything from “Opera to the blues” whom Jelly aptly described as “the world’s greatest single-handed entertainer.” Jelly’s world was the world of honky tonk and sporting house. A great composer, he derived little profit from his numerous compositions — a fate that he shared with most Negro composers from Scott Joplin on. A man of great personal charm and dignity, Jelly made friends slowly but once a friendship was established it had depth and permanence. When Jelly died in 1941 there appeared in print, several apocryphal stories that made him to appear a boaster, if not a charlatan. None of his friends thought these worth replying to for Jelly’s life, like his music, speaks for itself. Here is a small fragment of that life.

“I’ve been working on some plans. I wish you’d come in with me on this. I got an idea it’s big, very big.” The curtains on the U Street windows stirred gently and the warm, damp air of the Washington summer billowed in upon us, hanging like a vapor over the bare tabletops in the too-brightly lit room. Jelly smiled tentatively, as though not quite sure one would fall in with his plans. “I considered this proposition a long time,” he added.

The smile was characteristic of Jelly. Maybe not the Mr. Jelly Lord of the 1920’s when a Cadillac and a diamond-filled tooth were understatement, but still Mr. Jelly Lord, even though only a small handful of the jazz world knew, or cared, that he was alive. It was that smile and not the big talk that was Jelly.

Ten years before he had been on top. A long decade! Poverty, illness and at times a pessimism that amounted to premonition. He had known poverty before, in the hard and hopeless environment of the Gulf Coast. But something held him up in those days, no matter how hard the luck came. He was young and the world was still his jug. He could play pool on the side (whether well, or badly didn’t matter) and he could make his way from honky tonk to honky tonk, confident that when be reached St. Louis he could “take” everyone but Tony Jackson.

Jelly helped to build a world, only to find, in his last years, that there seemed to be no place for him in it. That was how it was when he came to that upstairs cabaret on U Street, where most of his own customers didn’t know who he was. His own tunes had been pirated, or were used without benefit to him for at that time he was still fighting for his ASCAP button. He had no band and no offers for solo work. So he mixed malicious drinks in the back room for generally lethargic clientele.

The sell-out guys jazz, meanwhile, were getting ahead. Jelly tried to convince himself that commercialism in music and music-making was artistic; he quoted, almost verbatim, the nation of some music magazines that, ironically have fought and still fight all that Jelly stands for in jazz. Because no one with Jelly’s sincerity and background could actually go commercial.

The conviction wasn’t real but there were times when he tried to make it stick. In such moods born of his failure in worldly terms, he would come up with pseudo-pop songs and grandiose ideas, such as the one, he proposed to me that hot July night. We would, he explained, plan a series of Juke Box recordings. That was where the money was. Fifty thousand Juke Boxes couldn’t be wrong!

I thought of the Juke Box there on U Street and what had happened to it during the course of my Washington sojourn. At first there were few records of any merit in it. Then the influence of small circle of Washington jazz fans began to tell and the neighborhood kids didn’t know what to make of it; they complained about the corny old tunes on the Juke Box — Wolverine Blues, Beale Street Blues, Honky Tonk Train, The Pearls.

And Jelly was torn again. What the kids wanted was not jazz. “They don’t know nothing about jazz,” Jelly would say emphatically. But they represented “public.” Ten, minutes later Jelly would play one of his new “pop” songs, watching one for its effect. “Ain’t it a kind of pretty thing?” — and you could see Jelly clutching for straws so that it was hard to say, what one had to say, “Jelly, I like the old tunes best. You know that. And you could do more like them.”

Once in a while, if he felt especially bad, he would mutter, “No one wants that stuff any more.” But his hands would be on the keyboard, feeling for the past. And in those moments he forgot the little compensations with which he’d tried to push aside the big frustrations. Apologetically, he would loosen the patterned tie on the starched striped shirt. “Man, I believe it’s warm tonight,” and Mr. Jelly Lord smiled, with that world again in a jug and the stopper in his hand. That was generally time for a drink for his friends and a sip of sherry for himself. “I can’t drink, you know.” Then: “What’s that, one of the old ones? Well, this is no doubt one of the oldest, this one has whiskers.” That way the evening got ripe and the unknowing customers, if any were present, looked on, cynically ignorant but aware that Mr. Jelly Lord was not to be tampered with.

Without always being conscious of it, that small group of Washington jazz fans who encouraged Jelly, helped him immeasurably to resume his title and place in jazz. “I don’t know what I’d do if a few friends didn’t drop in. People don’t know the old jazz any more.” So it was good to talk old time and say flatteringly “Your friend really knows. Say, listen to him talk about Buddy Bolden.” Then Jelly would go back to the piano again.

I recall evenings with mixed groups (that were permissible in so few places in Washington), a bunch of us gathered about the spinet-piano, Jelly tossing off blues verses and goading Sterling Brown of Howard University into singing a few. I can remember Jelly telling a crowded, fidgety Union benefit audience, most of whom wanted to dance, that he would enlighten them with a resume of jazz history, beginning with Buddy Bolden. Many members of the exclusive Jelly Roll Club, such as Nesuhi Ertegun, I knew of then only by hearsay. Jelly was increasingly proud of his fans. One day at the Howard Theater I corralled Sidney Bechet and we went up the creaking stairs. Jelly’s wife happened to be in the place and the effusive greetings in Creole put New Orleans on the map all over again.

There was a lot more of that, all helping Jelly to realize once more his place in jazz and helping to undo some of the damage to his ego. And for those people Jelly’s wistful and wishful build-up (“Inventor of Jazz, Stomps and Swing”) fell away; he was able to think of himself, as they thought of him, a great jazz pianist and composer, a great jazz pioneer.

That’s the way it was when Jelly recorded his amazing documentary series for the Library of Congress. If it irks connoisseurs that these records are not yet available to the public, it might be some consolation to consider that without them Jelly would not have been prepared to do his own best memorial, the General album. His fingers were often stiff and his heart wasn’t pumping the way it should, yet many times during that period Jelly remarked how good it felt to play that way. The studio was a small room off a corridor behind the Music Section at the Library of Congress. When he was warmed up he played with all his old-time fervor. That was the way he felt when he made his piano solo of Wolverine Blues. I thought of his own explanation of his style:

“My theory is to never dischord [sic] the melody. Always have the melody going some kind of way, and of course your background should always be with perfect harmony, and what is known to-day as riffs, meaning figures — musically speaking, it is figures.” His head was over the keyboard now, his right hand reaching for the treble. He said, “Oh, Mr. Jelly!”

I left Washington in August, 1939, and went up to Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, to do some writing. While there I got a note from Alan Lomax telling me that Gordon Mercer might like to do an album of Jelly’s piano and singing, and that he had recommended that I supervise and do the booklet.

Shortly thereafter I received a letter from Jelly. There was, he informed me, “a subject of mutual benefit,” that he hoped I would discuss with him at my convenience. This was also characteristically Jelly — the letter, I mean. It was formal, couched in a stiff and naively elegant English. And if it concerned business, as did this, it invariably had an air, of mystery about it. Had I not heard from Alan and Gordon, I might have anticipated a new campaign against the Juke Boxes.

By the time the album project was a settled thing, Gordon Mercer was with General and we had the facilities of the Reeves Sound Studios to work with. This was a wonderful break, as was the wholehearted co-operation given us. But before we went into the studio I had several sessions with Jelly at his place in Harlem. The money we would get out of it would obviously not compensate for the work involved so we decided to have a hell of a good time and do an album that would be an honest projection of Jelly and his background.

The way we worked it out was necessarily informal. Usually Jelly sat at the grand piano but if he didn’t feel up to playing (and being in extremely ill health, he often didn’t) we sat and talked and I took notes. After a couple of hours of this Mrs. Morton would bring on shrimps and rice, or something else that recalled New Orleans. Once Jelly excused himself before meal-time and I realized that on that occasion he had had a hand in the cooking, as he often had had in Washington when his friends dropped into the cabaret.

We settled on the tunes right there in that apartment off upper Seventh Avenue. When we walked into the studio we had the album in order, backings and all, with a couple of substitutes on hand in the event we had to fight it out. We didn’t. The album went through as planned. The tests thrown out (none of them accessible now) consisted of an infamous Tiger Rag, an equally infamous Animal (Animule) Ball, and a Sporting House Rag that didn’t come off. We used as many as four waxes on certain sides, because Jelly was really ill at this time and we took a few sessions to complete the job. At Jelly’s request I sat in the studio with him as he recorded and I thought at the time I was going through at least as many crises as was he. On Winin’ Boy Blues, for example, he closed his eyes on the humming passage. The clock was climbing up towards the three-minute mark. Gordon and the engineers motioned me frantically to nudge Jelly. I didn’t. It was too good. Besides, I didn’t dare. Jelly opened his eyes slowly and murmured “Oh, Mamie,” as the number came to its close.

In making up the album Jelly and I put Mamie’s Blues first. An official of the company nodded his agreement. It was the right thing to do. It wasn’t commercially sensible because a number like that would not sell the album, he said. Mamie’s Blues was listened to in Harlem by a younger-generation pianist and Mrs. Morton repeated his remark, “Yeah,” he had said, “but why does he play that one-finger piano?” Jelly’s face darkened and he said to his wife, “Don’t you know when to keep quiet?” Then he shut up himself, and looked a little old and tired. A week later Time magazine devoted its music column to Jelly’s beautiful blues about a certain Mamie Desdume (Desdunes), who played a walking bass and had two fingers missing from her left hand.

Lightning Strikes Twice

by Harrison Smith

The picture NEW ORLEANS which stars Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, with Armstrong, Ory, Bigard, Beale, Scott, Singleton and Callender featured as “The Original Ragtime Band” is currently showing at the historic Winter Gardens here, recalling 1918 (1915) when the Original Creole Band¹ got it’s (its) “Big time” start there. The building was originally Studebaker’s Wagon Factory and Horse Market and I can recall the time, around 1910, when the building with the original wall still intact was transformed into a beautiful and spacious theatre.

Bert Williams, Al Jolson, Shelton Brooks, Sophie Tucker, Florence Mills, Phil Baker and hundreds of other famous personalities played there in musical comedy productions and vaudeville presentations. Each Sunday night, the management presented ten vaudeville attractions and the spot became the most important showcase for artists who desired to show their acts to the booking managers of various circuits covering the U.S.A. from Coast to Coast. The most important of these being Keith, Orpheum and Loew, the artists managers naturally did all they could to get their charges booked on one of these circuits. The spot was the goal and artists gambled for one to five years work, and often gladly brushed off thoughts of payments for the single performance involved, and they were considered very lucky to be included in the selected ten acts. If an artist could procure a route he could mortgage his contract for a home, a car or a diamond ring!

The late Harry Weber, foremost manager of the era, who managed Shelton Brooks, Miller & Lyles, The Tennessee Ten — a jazz band act, featuring the then upcoming Florence Mills — ‘Slow Kid’ Thompson and Curtis Mosby, got one of these dates for the Creole Band, who came, played and conquered. A repeat date sewed up an Orpheum Circuit tour for the unit at $800 per week[,] which was a lot of money for a band in those days. In addition to many midwest cities, the band played in Indianapolis, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Des Moines, Omaha, Kansas City, Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, Frisco, Los Angeles, (and) Oakland dovetailing into other cities for a return date in Chicago. Upon its return to New York City, Weber placed the band with Ned Wayburn’s revue Town Topics — a production similar to the old Ziegfield (Ziegfeld) Follies with a cast of one hundred headed by Bonita and Lew Hearn, fabulous ‘Gay 90’s’ stars. The revue played on the roof of the nations first million dollar theatre, the Century Theatre, which was situated at Central Park West and 60th Street, right off Broadway, facing the renowned Central Park. In that era, roof gardens were a vogue, some others being Hammerstein’s, Garden de Paris, Ziegfield’s (Ziegfeld’s), the Majestic Theatre, Reisenweber’s, Hotel Astor and Hotel McAlpin. When it rained the performances were carried on indoors. Important Century Theatre productions were Aphrodite, Joseph and his Brethren and The Waltz Dream — all spectacular ones. Mere words cannot describe the beauty of the Century Theatre, since demolished and at present an apartment house site. The Ziegfield (Ziegfeld) is its nearest present day approach.

The Winter Gardens, leased by the picture producers at the rate of one thousand dollars a day, offer a good ‘shot in the arm’ for the good of jazz. There is an immense electric sign covering half of the front of the building, which covers seventy-five per cent of the block, which must have cost at least fifty thousand dollars. Posters ballyhoo Storyville’s ‘18 blocks of sin dives!’ Others invite one in to see them while photos show crib girls smiling and looking their prettiest. A wheezy phonograph grinds out the theme song Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans. It seems tough that Storyville takes all the rap for sin dives, since many other cities have them. By ballyhooing the Original Ragtime Band it appears that some energetic press agent is trying to confuse the public that this is the same as the Original Creole Band. Right across the street at the Capitol, M.G.M. is ballyhooing likewise, Lena Horne’s third appearance in person at the theatre. Lena’s side of the street gets the most traffic, so it appears that she will get the most business. Her ballyhoo may help plug my new tune Lena.

The Winter Gardens building has a large night club room on the balcony floor, which has had many names — the most famous being The Plantation, and the most recent The Zanzibar, No. 1. In 1924 it was the Plantation and featured Florence Mills, Shelton Brooks, and Will Vodery’s band with the famous Johnny Dunn — first top money ‘trump card’ who got $150 per week plus recording fees. The revue was later presented in London as Dixie to Dover and in Paris as The Blackbirds. In 1926 The Plantation featured Ethel Waters and Duke Ellington’s band, the latter featuring my tune Lil Farina which they recorded for Gennett. Later, I presented Duke in leading theatres prior to the Kentucky Club and Cotton Club dates. I did my darndest in 1926 to get Jimmy Wade to accept one of the showcase dates but the Club Alabam manager objected for fear of his losing Wade’s band. However, I placed Wade with Gennett.

The historians who write about success of the ODJB at Reisenweber’s, which was a spot not comparable to the Winter Gardens or Century Theatre, do not know that jazz bands played Reisenweber’s ten years before the ODJB. Some of the bands were Jim Europe’s, Tim Brymn’s, the Royal Poincians 5, The Right Quintette, Sophie Tucker and her Jazz Band with Dick Himber and Earl Fuller’s with Ted Lewis. Back in those days syncopation was called swing through the advent of Will Marion Cook’s classic Swing Along Chillun’ which along with Shine (That’s Why They Call Me Shine) was featured in William(s) & Walker’s musical comedy Bandanna Land which ran on Broadway for three months in 1907. I have a Victor record of Swing Along Chillun’ made by a quartette many years ago and it evinces that swing is not a new novelty. First it was ragtime, then jazz and swing, and now it’s be-bop, but there is a trend towards the return to ragtime, since Hollywood interests find it their business to put out the large electric sign to which I referred. These people are not dopes and always throw a ‘seven.’ In line with Ragtime, I hope to publish two of Jelly Roll Morton’s favourites soon Notoriety Rag and Diamond Jim. I have a band record of the first number but the second has never been published. In passing, I must mention that I have a Brunswick record of St. Louis Tickler (Tickle) (Rag) which is exactly the same as Buddy Bolden(’s) Blues and wonder which was created first.

Others making jazz history in New York City around 1918 were Jimmy Durante’s Jazz Band, Joe Perry’s Hot Dog’s (5), Vincent Lopez’ Jazz Band, Bill Brown and his Brownies, and bands led by Dan Kildaire, Bill Hamilton, Jack Hatton and Cordy Williams. Hatton, John C. Smith and ‘Cricket’ Smith were all ‘trump cards’ and were outstanding. Frank Withers was then trombone king. My old friend Bill Tyers, a very dignified gent, who for years was top arranger for REMICK, would turn over in his grave if he could hear the bands slaughtering his beautiful idyll Panama the way they do to-day. He composed the tune in 1909 for Aida Overton Walker and her Panama Girls — a famous vaudeville act. Panama, like Tyers’ Maori and Admiration, should be a sweet tune. It is amusing to note the following ‘good ole New Orleans tunes’ composed in New York’s Tin Pan Alley: Shine, Panama, Ballin’ The Jack, Strut Miss Lizzie, Way Down South in New Orleans, I’ve Found a New Baby, Turtle Twist, That’ll Never Do, Smilin’ the Blues Away, My Little Dixie Home and Oh, Didn’t He Ramble.

Rudi Blesh is ‘just carryin’ on’ with his Circle records, his So This Is Jazz programme which is carried over four hundred stations in North and South America and Canada, his Riverboat Excursions which are repeated twice weekly to a capacity audience of three hundred and by the release of the late Jelly Roll Morton Library of Congress recordings. Tonight (June 27, 1947) he is presenting Chippie Hill, James P. Johnson, Albert Nicholas, Danny Barker, Pops Foster, Wild Bill Davison, Baby Dodds and Montana Taylor in a concert at the Ziegfield (Ziegfeld) Theatre, the proceeds of which will go to a benefit fund for Spanish refugees. This achievement is comparable to that of the aforementioned Weber’s. HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF.

1 Note: For detailed information about the Original Creole Band, as mentioned in the article above, readers are recommended to consult the book: Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band by Prof. Lawrence Gushee.

THE ‘FABLELOUS’ JELLY ROLL

BY HARRISON SMITH

To have known and worked with Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton for many years beginning way back in Jelly’s Gennett days, was an experience to beat all experiences. To love the guy, to hate the guy, to call him a snob, saint, sinner, prevaricator, genius was all in a day’s work. Yet his years on this earth will be remembered by all of us who love hot jazz[,] as the fabulous ‘Jelly’ was one of its pioneering disciples. Your writer has some interesting reminiscences about Jelly.

JELLY ROLL WAS A GREAT IMPROVISOR

In my hectic association with Jelly Roll I found him not to be an originator of tunes[,] but a great improviser and embellisher.

Here is a list of tunes with their original titles and composers before Jelly changed them to Morton compositions.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Original title

Turtle Walk
(Tosh Hammed & Ben Garrison)

Jelly changed it to:

Turtle Twist (Vi 38108)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Original title

You Taught Me How To Love
(Billie Ross)

Jelly changed it to:

Mushmouth Shuffle (Vi 23004)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Original title

I Know Something Now (That I Didn’t Know Before)
(Gene Back) ¹

Jelly changed it to:

Oil Well *  (Vi 23321)

* Reason behind this title is that your writer had some shares in Standard Oil at this time and Jelly used to jokingly call me ‘Oil Well.’

¹ This is Gene Buck (1885-1957) who was president of ASCAP from 1924 to 1941. He started in the music business as a designer of sheet music covers, eventually working as a designer-director for Florenz Ziegfeld.
__________________________________________________________________________

Original title

Aunty, Got A Border Now
(Charley Pearson)

Jelly changed it to:

Primrose Stomp (Vi 23424)
____________________________________________________________________________________

Original title

Sing A Little Song Each Day
(Harrison Smith - Ben Garrison)

Jelly changed it to:

Each Day * (Vi 23351)

* This title I contend to be the greatest Jelly Roll recorded. Jelly had everything. I am at present modernizing the score and have renamed it ‘Mortonia.’
__________________________________________________________________________

Original title

(There’s Nothin’ Funny About That) That’s Like It Oughta Be
(Harrison Smith - Ben Garrison)

Jelly changed it to:

That’s Like It Oughta Be (Vi 38601)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Original title

Ne Var
(Roy Evans and Harrison Smith)

Jelly changed it to:

That’ll Never Do (Vi 23019)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Original title

(I’m Always) “Sharing You”
(Hector Marchese)

Jelly changed it to:

Strokin’ Away