Category: Uncategorized
-
This week’s Jelly Roll Morton selections (complete project info here) start off with the other of his “modern” tunes, “Freakish,” a companion to “Pep” that we did in Week 7. These two pieces were first recorded as piano solos in 1929 (in the same session as Frances) and have similar use of some colorful and…
-
This week in the Complete Morton Project, David and I return to a great trio session that Morton recorded with Barney Bigard (Duke Ellington’s main clarinetist) and Zutty Singleton on drums (of Louis Armstrong’s bands and many others). This session from 1929 produced 4 sides, two of which were written by Jelly. We’ve already posted…
-
Well we’ve reached the 10th week of the year of David Horniblow and I playing all of Jelly’s tunes…(full explanation), and this week we’ll start with one of his very classic early tunes which was recorded in 1923 for the Gennett Record Company in Richmond, Indiana. The label was initially just an afterthought by which…
-
Well we’re chugging along now with week number 9 of the complete compositions of Jelly Roll Morton (full explanation), and before the tunes I’d like to plug a duo gig David and I are doing at the Green Note in Camden this Saturday, the 10th of March, playing all Morton material. Tickets are here! OK,…
-
This week’s Jelly Roll Morton compositions are up, starting it off with “Oil Well”, one of his 30s medium-large sized band sides. Of course, adapting it to the duo setting was a bit interesting but it’s a catchy stomp tempo tune with a nice diminished chord in the 3rd strain which to my ear gives…
-
Today’s Morton compositions are up, starting off with “Pep”, one of my personal favorites. It’s a killer three strain tune with the typical Morton form but with an interesting twist, some bizarre parallel harmony in the first strain that Morton probably would have described as a “modern” sound, which is the term musicians in the…
-
This week’s complete Jelly Roll Morton selections (full explanation here) kicks off with David back on his mid-1920s bass clarinet on a late period Morton tune, “Dirty, Dirty, Dirty.” This was recorded by Morton in his final band session in 1940 and shows a bit of his evolution to include some of the trademark stylistic…
-
This week’s selections for the Complete Morton Project are “Big Fat Ham” and “Deep Creek,” representing two very different aspects of Morton’s compositional output. “Big Fat Ham” is a very rocking three-strain piece in the mold of many of Jelly’s fine multi section tunes. This one is especially fun with the cool breaks in the…
-
Continuing the Morton this week, we lead off with one of Morton’s best “Spanish Tinge” pieces. This was his way of describing the habanera, Tango/Caribbean-esque rhythms and left hand patterns that he considered essential to the jazz idiom. In his Library of Congress interview, he has a very interesting explanation of why the Tinge is…
-
It’s week three of the complete Jelly Roll Morton composition project (full info), and we have two diverse pieces from Morton’s pen today. The first is “Fickle Fay Creep,” a very cool bluesy tune which was recorded by Morton’s Red Hot Peppers in 1930, and then later in the Library of Congress interview in 1938…
Andrew Oliver 