Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Here Come thé Roll! 1. Jelly Roll Morton born and bred
Marais
Take a walk and you know
File
Take a stroll and you will hear
Music came early to me
Our home was always filled
My light skin mama was
I strummed on guitar at first
I finally settled on the piano
A Jazz Bio-Poem
In New Orleans, Louisiana town
Where the streets have signs
With Frenchmen's names
Conti
St.Louis
Bienville
Graviere
Bourbon
You are in Creole country
Smells of gumbo brews
Come from every cooking kitchen
Shrimps
Crawfish
Gumbo
Etouffee
Jambalaya
Early ragtime jazz music
Floating in the bayou air
All the night and day
By my father Ed La Menthe
An old time trombone player
And a patron of the Opera season
From his homebuilder business
With all kinds of instruments
So it is apparent where
My music came from naturally
Louise Monette La Menthe
Who after my father split
Married Willie Morton
Father to Amede and Mimi
But then I turned my time between
Trombone my father's instrument
And drums or traps as they were called
When I got it clear in my head
That piano players were not
Long haired sissies
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver from New Orleans
The creative days of pioneer New Orleans jazzmen are long gone. We are fortunate to have the recordings of great musicians like Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. However, accounts of these early musicians are sketchy and we rely heavily on word of mouth and legend for knowledge of their daily lives.
Our contemporary jazz musicians are inclined to cannibalize the musical ideas of their previous era's jazzmen and then discard the traditional body of their work in favor of current jazz styles. It remains for historians, biographers, and poets to retain the facts and legend surrounding the lives of these often neglected or forgotten jazz innovators.
These two bio-poems combine biography and legend to capture the spirit and inner voices of our early jazzmen.
About the Author
Ray Bisso was born in Wakefield, Mass., educated at Holy Cross College, spent three and one-half years with a U.S.Army Swing Band in the Pacific. He was leader of the Memphis Bold Jazzband in California, owner of a jazz club, and worked as an advertising manager for Knight Ridder Newspapers. He has a degree in English from UCLA and the Alice Underkoffer Award for Poetry from Los Angeles Harbor College. In 1998, he published his narrative jazz poem, Buddy Bolden of New Orleans. A novel, Swing Band, was published in 2000. Another novel, Ad Man was also published in 2000.