Jelly's Blues by Howard Reich

Author:Howard Reich [HOWARD REICH AND WILLIAM GAINES]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

So far as New York was concerned, Jelly Roll was decidedly the old thing—a New Orleans pimp who had made it big in Chicago— his very name a throwback to the days when jazz and sex were practically inseparable, the very rhythm of life in the District. With his bulky Chesterfield shirts and gold suspenders and diamond-encrusted tooth, Morton appeared to New Yorkers as if he still were selling women rather than music, while his long-winded soliloquies—a holdover from an era when New Orleans musicians served as their own press agents and publicists—grated on those who bothered to listen.

Morton’s only saving grace, in fact, was that at least his name still held some allure in the hinterlands, so at the start of 1929 he picked up a job playing a chain of ballrooms in Pennsylvania and Ohio. At first, it seemed like a decent engagement, but it quickly showed that Morton’s options were running out. “It was pretty rough, and we couldn’t make any money,” said New Orleans reedist Paul Barnes.

In fact, at one time we went a couple of days without food. At the taxi [dance joint] we got paid every week; on the road, it depended on what we took in at each dance. . . . One day we got into Washington, Pa., very late, with nothing to eat, and we were so hungry that Jelly pawned his diamond ring so the band could have some food. Coming back to New York from this trip we had only $10 apiece. . . . I remember now that we wore tuxedo suits on that tour, and how we acted “big time” in our tuxedos and wouldn’t let anybody know we were broke and hungry.

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