The year is 1938. In the quiet, well-lit environment of the Coolidge Auditorium, housed within the United States Library of Congress, a lone man sits at the piano, comping as he tells his life story. It is the story of a hustler, pool player, cardsharp, fight promoter, pimp, and musician, and it is peppered with outrageous claims, ribald tales, and remembrances of events that stretch the credulity of even the most generous listener. Periodically he punctuates his stories with full-fledged songs, the piano ringing out with knuckle-busting stomps, joined by high-spirited vocals singing often-bawdy lyrics. The recording machine that runs continuously, tended by the only other person present in the auditorium, captures all of this. The performer is Jelly Roll Morton, once one of America's most popular performers and songwriters, down on his luck and mostly forgotten. Now, as a desperate act, he performs the songs he's written over the years and tells the tales he remembers for the tape recorder of Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, a document that will become the most comprehensive record of Morton's contribution to music.

How did a man of Morton's considerable talents, a man who recognized the ways that popular music evolved and changed, a well-dressed dandy with all the canny instinct of a carny, come to end his days in this way? Did he really invent jazz, as the now-infamous business cards he carried claimed? What exactly is the truth behind this enigmatic and fascinating figure?

Morton was born in either 1890 or 1885, depending on whom you believe. Morton claimed to have been born in 1885, and many believe that this was so that his claim to have invented jazz in 1902 would seem more plausible. Morton's version would have made him 17 in 1902, by which time he had already played piano in whorehouses in Biloxi and New Orleans. However, it is equally possible that he merely lied about his age to make it easy to obtain whatever work was available, be it in a brothel, saloon, or minstrel show. Research by Larry Gushee of the University of Illinois points to an 1890 birth. It also established Morton's given name as Ferdinand Lamothe rather than the more generally accepted Ferdinand La Menthe. More recent research suggests that Morton was indeed born in 1885 as he always claimed. In any case, he changed the name to avoid being identified as being of French descent, from Lamothe/La Menthe to Mouton, which became corrupted by pronunciation and poor spelling into Morton.

Morton's father, one Ed La Menthe, was virtually non-existent, and his mother, Louise Monette, died when he was fourteen years old. He had already shown interest in music, having played a variety of instruments other than piano because he believed that the instrument was for sissies. That notion was cleared from his head by the teaching of Tony Jackson, composer of the song "Pretty Baby". Jackson was an educated Creole, and had an incredibly trained ear that made him able to play any tune he heard, whether it was a show tune, opera, folk song, or any other type of music. After the death of his mother, Morton lived with his great-grandmother, a woman by the name of Mimi Pechet. Pechet was rather strict and did not believe that musicians could be anything other than evil, so she disowned Ferdinand when she discovered that he had become one. Morton left and went to Biloxi, where his godmother, known as Eulalie Echo (again, research suggests that her name was actually Laura Hecaud) lived. It was in Biloxi that Morton took the job of pianist at a whorehouse, carrying a pistol and drinking whiskey for the first time. Though he didn't much care for liquor then, he learned to enjoy it later in life. From there, he began a whirlwind tour of the United States that didn't really stop until 1923. What he did in those years is indeed the stuff of legend; it appears he did some of pretty much everything. In New Orleans, he played in the "sporting house" of Hilma Burt, located in the city's mythical Storyville district. He later told Alan Lomax:

Buddy Bolden would play at mostly the rough places, for instance the Masonic…Masonic hall on Perdida and Rampart, which was a very rough section…sometimes they'd play in the Globe Hall, that's in the downtown section on St. Peter's & St. Paul…very, very rough place. Very often you could hear of killings on top of killings…many, many a time myself I went on Saturdays and Sundays and look in the mall…and see 8 and 10 men was killed over Saturday night…"

He moved on to Mississippi, where he got sentenced to a chain gang in a case of mistaken identity-he was supposed to have robbed a mail train. Though he received a sentence of 100 days, he managed to escape. He ended up back in New Orleans, playing piano and beginning, for the first time to write music, a skill that he had learned largely because of his Creole heritage. Creoles were generally well educated in the arts, and enjoyed classical music and opera as well as more popular types of music. Unlike dark-skinned African Americans, Creoles in New Orleans often had formal musical training and could write and read music as well as play it by ear.