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For almost the full time of his association with Jelly Roll Morton, Walter Melrose was skimming money off the top by finding ways of obtaining money that should have gone to Morton. Jelly didn't realize this for some time, because in the mid-1920s he was flush with money, and he showed it, covering himself with diamonds that covered his fingers, watch, and his famous front tooth. He was the Elton John of the roaring 20s.

When Walter Melrose submitted the copyright claims for Morton's tunes, he added lyrics to the tunes that Jelly had written. This made him a collaborator and he could claim songwriting royalties even though he had never written a decent song in his life. When added to the publishing royalties he already collected for the sheet music, this amounted to a nice chunk of change. But that wasn't all. Melrose also arranged the recording contract for Morton with the Victor Talking Machine Company. The contract, signed in December of 1926, specified that all monies would be paid to Melrose Brothers Music rather than to Morton. Morton never saw or signed a contract for these recordings. As far as Melrose and Victor were concerned, Morton had no claim on the artist royalties for some of the greatest recordings in the jazz canon. He was entitled to composer royalties, but even those were going partially to Walter Melrose.

In 1927, Morton met dancer Mabel Bertrand and the two began to see a lot of each other, eventually living together. Though Morton often referred to her as his wife, the two were never legally married. Though Morton is remembered as a hustler and carny, there is some evidence that his newfound fame as a bandleader and recording artist, together with his infatuation with Bertrand caused him to change his ways. When he decided to move to New York in 1928 because the music industry there was finally catching on to the hot music being played in Chicago, he took Bertrand with him. But when Morton arrived in New York, he discovered that he was not popular as he had been in Chicago. Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, two bandleaders whose sound and style show quite a bit of Morton's influence, were the popular bandleaders in New York, and Morton was already regarded as something of an anachronism. He got a job at the Rose Danceland, a small club, leading the house band. Over the next few years he recorded sides for Victor until they dropped him in 1930, played in pick-up groups, and eventually ended up at the Red Apple Club, a seedy bar at 7th Ave. and 135th Street. By 1934, Jelly was "seedy and disillusioned" according to an unimpressed John Hammond, who saw him at the Red Apple. Morton was seen as a throwback to another era, and an unsavory one at that. No one would book him and no record companies, not even Gennett records, wanted to record him. Yet he knew that his music was being played everywhere. Benny Goodman recorded a version of "King Porter Stomp" that was an immense hit, and Fletcher Henderson had also had success with the tune a couple of years earlier.

In 1935, Morton left New York, moving to Washington, D.C., supposedly to become a fight promoter, but that didn't work out, so he returned to piano playing, this time in a small second-floor club in the black district. He tended bar, seated what customers there were, and played. Over the next three years, he slowly became obsessed with obtaining the money he was owed, and the recognition as well. He realized that the music business had changed, and that he had somehow been written out of his own success. It was around this time that Alan Lomax, who worked at the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress, heard Morton and persuaded him to record nearly eight hours of music and interviews between May 23 and June 7, 1938. These recordings were probably never meant to be released, and indeed many of the songs didn't surface on record releases of the sessions because of their frankly obscene lyrics. Rounder Records released the best version around 1993, four seperate CDs that collect all of the musical performances from the sessions. Some of Morton's monologues are also included if they are part of the song, but those that were unacompanied by music are cut off. This is unfortunate, since Morton's remembrances hold historic importance, but there is also Lomax's book Mr. Jelly Lord, which tells Jelly's story utilizing transcripts from those sessions.

At the end of 1938, Morton decided to head back to New York, armed with indignation and what was left of his talent. He was going to make one last effort get back what was owed him, and show that he was still a relevant musician more than a decade after his heyday.

Upon returning to New York, Jelly immediately began to visit the various booking agencies and music publishers he was familiar with. He haunted the headquarters of the Musician's Union, hoping to piece together a new band that would match the recorded glory of the Red Hot Peppers. He met with little success, and he was nearly broke, owning little more than a wardrobe that was a mere shadow of his dandy clothes of a decade earlier and the Lincoln that he had driven into town.

In Washington, Morton had met a man named Roy Carew, an IRS auditor who had grown up in New Orleans. He suggested to Morton that they form a publishing company to publish Morton's music. The plan didn't come to much, but Mortoncontinued to write to Carew from New York, telling him about his efforts to revitalize his career, his attempts at getting money that was owed him, and even the last handful of scores he had written. Carew kept all of this material, leaving instructions for his wife to sell the whole lot to jazz archivest William Russell upon his death. Russell purchased them in 1967 and kept them in his New Orleans apartment until his own death in 1992. These documents then went to the Historic New Orleans Collection, where they were catalogued. Two scores for new compostitions surfaced that were completely unknown even to Morton scholars. These compositions, "Oh, Baby" and "Ganjam" were restored and finally performed in New Orleans in 1998. These compositions proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jelly Roll Morton was absorbing new music and styles until the very end of his life. He was not the Jazz Age anachronism from New Orleans that he had been made out to be. "Ganjam" sports a large band, chords and solos straight from Ellington and Mingus' best work, and a sensibility that places it squarely in the 1940s--at least. Jelly Roll Morton's place in jazz history would have to be drastically revised.

The reason these scores never came to light during the composer's lifetime were twofold: he was busy fighting for his due, and he was in poor health. In 1939 Morton suffered what was probably a heart attack, and was taken by Mabel Bertrand to the hospital, where she gave a false address for him and signed as his wife in order to make sure he received the proper care. Morton suffered from hardening arteries, often barely able to climb the stairs to his New York apartment. His ill health couldn't keep him from writing letters. He wrote to the Justice Department regarding Walter Melrose withholding royalties after letters to Melrose himself resulted in the arrival of a paltry $86.94 check. Shortly thereafter, Walter Melrose sold the music on which he owned copyright to Edwin H. Morris & Co. of New York. This made it impossible for Morton to sue Melrose since the company he had represented no longer existed. Morris & Co. did begin to send Jelly regular royalty checks, but they were very small due to the fact that Morton's music no longer generated the kind of revenue it had a decade before.

At the same time, Jelly Roll was fighting against ASCAP, the very organization that was supposed to be protecting him and other musicians. ASCAP was formed to collect royalties for public performances of musical compositions, and had been formed by songwriters, including John Phillip Sousa. The advent of radio enlarged ASCAP's role so that it now collected large sums for its members. Unfortunately, Morton had asked Walter Melrose about joining ASCAP as early as 1925, but was told the organization would not help him. By 1934, when Morton did apply, the group required any application for membership to be seconded by an ASCAP member. The group was clearly discriminatory, with only two black members out of 200. Louis Armstrong was not accepted as a member until 1939 despite the fact that he was one of the biggest recording artists of the 1920s and '30s. Morton was finally admitted in December of 1939, but was relegated to the lowest classification by which royalties were calculated. This made him eligible to receive $120 annually. Those in the highest classification (including Cole Porter and George Gershwin) received $15,000 annually. Ironically, Walter Melrose was an ASCAP member since 1927, and collected royalties on the unknown lyrics he added to Morton's songs during the entire time of Jelly's decline in Washington and New York.

Needless to say, the lack of interest in his music and the legal battles took their toll on Jelly Roll Morton. He was no longer the proud dandy he had once been, but a broken and bitter man. Toward the end of 1939 Victor recorded some sides of Jelly with Sydney Bechet and some other New Orleans jazz artists, but the label was interested in recording "oldies" and not in any new music that Morton was writing. He recorded a dozen band sides and a dozen piano sides in his very last sessions between December of 1939 and January of 1940. The band sides are poor--shrill and tinny, lacking any of the verve and innovation of the Red Hot Peppers sessions--but the piano sides show that Jelly was still a great performer. Ahmet Ertegun and his brother, Nesuhi drove regularly into New York on Sunday afternoons in 1939 to hear Bechet's group, which included Morton, play at a club. Ahmet had this to say about those performances:

"Jelly talked a lot between numbers--about how he invented jazz and that sort of thing. He always looked dapper and had style. If anybody invented jazz, he did, because he predicted so much that was to come...Obviously, Jelly was the greatest person in jazz--with all due respect to Louis and Duke."

In the Fall of 1940, Morton heard of the death of his godmother, Eulalie Echo, and went out to Los Angeles to ensure that some diamonds she had would not be stolen. The diamonds were gone by the time he got there, but Jelly decided to stay in L.A. "From the way I was treated in the east, I don't care if I ever see it again" he wrote to Carew. He continued to write letters and joined the musicians' union, but he was too ill to work. Even lying down, he could scarcely breathe, and he had few friends in the city. There was little for him to do but meditate on his career and the life that had been stolen from him.

Jelly Roll Morton passed away in Los Angeles on July 10, 1941.

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