1/8/2024 0 Comments Pianist accompanist jobsIt opened with a gaudily dressed fellow walking into a music store on Cottage Grove Avenue and telling the Melrose brothers: “I’m Jelly Roll Morton, from New Orleans.AMDA College of the Performing Arts is one of the foremost performing arts colleges in the country with campuses in Los Angeles and New York City. Their shady underside and the infectious sounds preserved in their groves echo the era when jazz arrived in Chicago. He had acquired the copyright to 3,000 songs, among them: “Dippermouth Blues,” “Why Don’t You Do Right?,” “Barrel House Stomp,” “I Guess I’ll Be on My Way” and “High Society.”Įver since, they’ve borne witness to a pivotal chapter in music history. Lester Melrose continued producing and filching songs into the 1950s, then retired to Florida, where he died in 1968. Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, and Ella Fitzgerald were playing local engagements but were no-shows. The Defender lambasted the performers who didn’t attend his funeral, despite being indebted to him for their success. When Morton died in Los Angeles, in 1941, he was destitute. 10 headline: “Jelly Roll Morton Won’t Ask For Cash (From) Melrose Company.” Yet Morton ultimately rejected the fan’s plan, as the Chicago Defender announced with an Aug. The letter coincided with an efforts to help Morton gain control of his songs by an amateur jazz musician to who also was Treasury Department official - down on his luck, Morton was managing a down-market nightclub in Washington, D.C. All would be revered as giants of jazz or the blues. In 19 his recording studio was the Sky Club on the top floor of the Leland Hotel in Aurora.Īmong those who stood in front of the microphone were Sonny Boy Williamson, Tampa Red, Big Joe Williams, Washboard Sam and Big Bill Broonzy. Lester Melrose subjected musicians to an industrial process. That gave him a bigger chunk of the royalties than Morton got for the score, while robbing Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Benny Goodman of the rights to some of their compositions. Walter Melrose, who died in 1973, was credited as a record’s producer and again as its lyricist. In Chicago, Morton assembled and led the studio orchestra that performed the arrangements he wrote and made the Melrose brothers wealthy. In 1997, after a cache of Morton’s manuscripts surfaced in New Orleans, Howard Reich, the Tribune’s jazz critic and a trained musician who at one point studied the documents, noted “the obvious meticulousness, precision and clarity of his writing - in an era when many jazz musicians could not read music.” Jelly Roll Morton, in back on piano, plays with jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet and other musicians at Morton's last Victor recording session. “Old Jelly was a good orchestra man, but he couldn’t write music, so we had to have an arranger take down his stuff,” Lester Melrose would claim. Lester eventually supplemented his brother’s put-downs. Walter Melrose pooh-poohed Morton’s role, saying he had only been given sporadic assignments. Morton also left, having incurred Walter’s wrath for having a card printed reading: “Jelly Roll Morton, composer and arranger for the Melrose Music Company.” In 1925, Lester Melrose sold his interest in the music store and began producing so-called Race phonograph records aimed at Black consumers. He took his stage name from its vulgar argot - his real name was Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe. Jelly Roll Morton began playing in the red-light district as a teenager. Some say musicians moved north in part because New Orleans authorities shut down the bordellos where jazz was the background music. He’s the man who make me get out both my dancing shoes. When the world goes wrong and I’ve got the blues
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