It's hard to believe that Morton didn't come to
Chicago with a plan in mind-he had scored a hit with "Wolverine
Blues", a tune he'd written and which had been published
by Chicago's Melrose Publishing, a local operation run by two
brothers, Walter and Lester. Now he appeared at their South Side
music store, announcing himself and beginning a two-hour monologue
that mostly concerned how great he was and the number of songs
he'd composed over the years that could now make a lot of money
as sheet music.
He proved that what he said was true the way he always had: he
sat at the piano and played, song after song, songs to go with
his many stories, songs that could only have come from a man that
had been everywhere in the country and seen everything there was
to see.
The unique sounds that were embedded in his treasure
trove of music were a virtual history of the birth of jazz, everything
from vaudeville and theatre music to marches, opera, blues, ragtime,
and anything else that was in the air. Needless to say, the Melrose
brothers were impressed.
Morton was certainly busy that first year in Chicago;
he recorded more than thirty sides in that single year, including
solo piano works and duets with King Oliver, as well as trios
with Oliver and clarinetist Volly de Faut. And there were five
tunes with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a white band playing
the New Orleans style favored by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
Morton recorded with the Rhythm Kings for Gennett
Records. Interestingly, Gannett was located in Richmond, Indiana,
a headquarters for the local Ku Klux Klan. Morton passed himself
off as being of Italian descent to avoid any trouble while he
was in town. Jelly was absolutely everhwhere. Earl Hines was around
too, and he told jazz critic Stanley Dance:
"Jelly Roll Morton…was the most popular
underworld pianist around…He had written any number of
tunes and everybody thought a lot of him. Whenever he needed
money, he'd write a tune and sell it to one of the downtown
publishers like Melrose for fifty or seventy-five dollars."
The Melrose brothers were not always a "downtown
publisher". When Morton entered their music store in 1923
it was located on South Cottage Grove Avenue on Chicago's South
Side. The store had never done particularly well, but Walter was
focused on the music publishing business as a way to success.
Walter fancied himself a songwriter, though the songs that he
copyrighted in his name, including "Since I Lost You",
were uniformly dreadful and completely unheard and unrecorded.
Morton's arrival changed all that, of course, and by the end of
1923, Walter was able to move the music publishing business to
downtown Chicago, while his brother, Lester, continued to run
the music store with a new partner. Two years later Lester quit
the store and Walter closed the store and bought Lester's interest
in the publishing business.
Walter Melrose advertised that Jelly Roll Morton
was now Melrose Publishing's staff writer, and published such
classic Morton tunes as "Grandpa's Spells", "London
Blues", "The Pearls", and "Wolverine Blues".
Morton was unhappy that Melrose changed the title of his "The
Wolverines" to "Wolverine Blues", particularly
since the song is in no way a blues number, but the incident passed.
Within two years of Morton's first appearance at the Melrose music
store, Melrose publishing had become a major music publisher,
putting out compositions such as "King Porter Stomp"
and "New Orleans Blues"-tunes Jelly Roll Morton had
first composed two decades previous. Morton also claimed to have
helped the company to success in other ways, such as recommending
that the company acquire rights to songs by W.C. Handy (whom Morton
had met back in 1908) and Louis Armstrong.
By 1926, Walter Melrose had another bright idea.
In order to bolster the popularity (and therefore sales) of Morton's
music, he helped put together a contract for Morton with Victor.
In the nine months that followed Jelly Roll Morton recorded sixteen
sides with a group that went by the name of Jelly
Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers. The group was composed
of a variety of New Orleans musicians, and Morton used two separate
lineups on the records: George Mitchell played cornet, either
Omer Simeon or Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Kid Ory or George Bryant
on trombone, Stump Evans playing alto sax on several sides, Johnny
St. Cyr or Bud Scott on the banjo, John Lindsay playing bass or
Quinn Wilson on tuba, and Andrew Hilaire or Baby Dodds on drums.
Morton meticulously arranged the numbers for the group and taught
the musicians how to play the songs exactly as he had written
them. These recordings are arrangements that focus on the ensemble,
doing for contrapuntal New Orleans group dynamics what Louis Armstrong
had done for the soloist. To put it simply, Morton arrived at
much the same place that a youthful Duke Ellington was arriving
at and would demonstrate only a few months later.
While Gary Giddins has claimed that such early Ellington
works as "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" and "Black
and Tan Fantasy" dated the Morton recordings, placing them
forever in the past, that is a bit of an overstatement. Giddins
also is suspicious of the fact that Morton's Red Hot Peppers sides
are held up as one of the premier examples of recorded New Orleans
jazz at its height even though they were recorded in Chicago.
But the same might be said of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and
Hot Sevens recordings. The availability of work had helped relocate
many New Orleans musicians to Chicago and now the record companies
were finding that they had an audience for the work of these artists.
Besides, Jelly Roll Morton had been travelling the country for
twenty years, never settling in one place for long. The music
of the Red Hot Peppers is New Orleans music by virtue of Morton's
ear, memory, and ability to arrange music for the ensemble rather
than by virtue of the location of its recording.
