piano – jazz, stride, and tango
Well it’s been a while with no posts but having recovered from the Complete Morton Project marathon, we’ve gone into the studio to record a new CD of 15 of our favorites that we discovered last year during the project. Here’s a video about the album: It’s out now on the amazing Lejazzetal label, which […]
Well 48 weeks later, here we are at the LAST post of the Complete Morton Project!! It’s been a very interesting and exhausting project but we’re both very glad that we managed to complete it, and have learned a lot of great tunes in the process, and of course quite a few mediocre ones as […]
It’s the penultimate week of the Complete Morton Project!! To start off, we have one more obscurity for you, “The Superior Rag.” This one was never recorded by Jelly but the sheet music was published in a rather obscure book, and also found by the enterprising Morten Gunnar Larsen from Norway in the Library of […]
We’re very near the end here, only a few more weeks to go! Today we have another from Morton’s late period big band compositions which were not recorded by him but have since been resurrected by several ensembles. We learned this one, “Stop and Go,” courtesy of Scottish drummer Ken Matheison. It’s not as unusual […]
This Tuesday we have an eccentric couple of Morton tunes for you, starting with “Crazy Chords,” one of Morton’s few forays into “Modern” harmony along with“Freakish” and “Pep”. This one features a similar descending chord progression but with the added diminished chord thrown in, rather than parallel descending 9th chords. Unfortunately this also comes from […]
Not to many weeks left now – but we’ve saved some great tunes for the end of the year period. Here’s another of Morton’s multi-part blues compositions, “London Blues.” Named after the London Cafe in Chicago, it was also recorded by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and others. Like “New Orleans Blues” it is just […]
This week we have only one tune for you, as David and I have been out on tour for the majority of the past month, but never fear, next week we’ll be back to 2 a week for the remainder of the project (only 5 more weeks to go!) This week’s tune is the famous […]
We’ve got two great tunes today, kicking off with Morton’s most famous piece “King Porter Stomp” which he wrote in hommage to another pianist, Porter King. It became a swing era classic when it was adapted by Benny Goodman for a hit record with his big band. The 3rd strain chord progression with its climactic […]
We’re celebrating Jelly Roll Morton’s birthday this week (Oct 20, possibly 1885 or 1890, we aren’t entirely sure because he constantly lied to make himself seem older than he was), with his greatest composition “The Pearls.” It’s a masterful tune with multiple sections, textures, and melodies which he wrote in the teens at the Kansas […]
This week we present another interesting composition unrecorded by Morton and only found by accident! The great New York bandleader Vince Giordano was bidding on some vintage sheet music on eBay and came across this tune, “Croc-O-Dile Cradle,” written by Morton. Only the piano part and banjo part remained, but fortunately all the melodies were […]
Andrew Oliver 