Category: Complete Morton Project
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Unbelievably, we’re getting very near having posted 80 of Jelly’s tunes…woah! This week we kick it off with the dark and stompy “Wild Man Blues” which features a lot of trading and double time breaks on the original, which we’ve incorporated into our arrangement as well. Once again we’ve omitted the opening skit (fortunately for…
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This week we have the companion to Hyena Stomp, the ridiculous and hilarious Billy Goat Stomp! This was on the other side of the original record, and once again represents a (fortunately) little remembered fad of early jazz relating to animal dances and noises. This actually goes way back to pre jazz days and dance…
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Today’s entry in the Complete Morton Project features two tunes from Jelly’s 1940 session for General Records, his last band recordings. “Sweet Substitute” is a great bluesy tune, which features one of Red Allen’s best trumpet solos on the original recording. There’s a great interview with Albert Nicholas, the clarinetist on the original, about the…
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This week’s Jelly Roll Morton selections are two nice stomps (both in the key of C, incidentally) from his middle band period in the late 20s. The first is “Pretty Lil,” which evidently may have been dedicated to Lil Hardin Armstrong, Louis Armstrong’s first wife, though I now can’t seem to find any substantiating evidence…
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Today’s entry into the Complete Morton Project starts off with one of Morton’s 1927 band tunes, “Georgia Swing.” This was recorded right after his move from Chicago to New York and the original record features a tuba for the first time in the Red Hot Peppers discography. It’s an interesting shift towards the more popular…
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For this week’s Jelly Roll Morton selections, we start off with the final of his four 1929 solo tunes for you, “Seattle Hunch.” This was an interesting recording session which yielded some unfortunately sloppy performances of four great tunes (in addition to this one, there’s “Freakish,” “Pep,” and “Frances“). This one is perhaps the least…
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Today’s Complete Morton Project tunes commence with “Sweet Anita Mine,” recorded by Jelly in 1929 and named after Anita Gonzalez, with whom Morton had a complex and tempestuous relationship. This is the second piece we’ve done so far dedicated to Anita, the other being the wonderful Spanish Tinge tune “Mamanita” (from way back in Week…
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David Horniblow and I met about 5 years ago when I moved to London and promptly started a duo project which has since evolved into the Dime Notes and the Vitality Five. We are, of course, highly influenced by the great New Orleans pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton and thought it would be fun…
Andrew Oliver 