Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West
by Phil Pastras
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Book Summary Information
Author: Phil PastrasEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-01-06
ISBN: 0520236874
Number of pages: 270
Publisher: University of California Press
Book Reviews of Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West
Book Review: Jelly Roll Morton--Only in America!
Summary: 5 Stars
WOW. After Alan Lomax's _Mr._Jelly_Roll_, this is THE book to get to understand the most boastful musical genius to grace the 1st half of the 20th Century. Jelly Roll Morton claimed to be the "Father of Jazz", and it seems certain that if he wasn't it's father, he was at least waiting in the delivery room at it's birth. This book covers the critical "lost years" of 1916-1922, and has a lot of material that escaped Mr. Lomax's attention when his book was published in 1950--in 53 years, enough has surfaced to justify a treatment like this, and Morton certainly deserves it. Until the transcriptions of his complete Library of Congress Recordings are published, this and Mr. Lomax's book are crucial to understanding this almost-forgotten genius, to whom modern music owes so much.
Summary of Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West
When Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton sat at the piano in the Library of Congress in May of 1938 to begin his monumental series of interviews with Alan Lomax, he spoke of his years on the West Coast with the nostalgia of a man recalling a golden age, a lost Eden. He had arrived in Los Angeles more than twenty years earlier, but he recounted his losses as vividly as though they had occurred just recently. The greatest loss was his separation from Anita Gonzales, by his own account "the only woman I ever loved," to whom he left almost all of his royalties in his will.In Dead Man Blues, Phil Pastras sets the record straight on the two periods (1917-1923 and 1940-1941) that Jelly Roll Morton spent on the West Coast. In addition to rechecking sources, correcting mistakes in scholarly accounts, and situating eyewitness narratives within the histories of New Orleans or Los Angeles, Pastras offers a fresh interpretation of the life and work of Morton, one of the most important and influential early practitioners of jazz. Pastras's discovery of a previously unknown collection of memorabilia--including a 58-page scrapbook compiled by Morton himself--sheds new light on Morton's personal and artistic development, as well as on the crucial role played by Anita Gonzales.
In a rich, fast-moving, and fascinating narrative, Pastras traces Morton's artistic development as a pianist, composer, and bandleader. Among many other topics, Pastras discusses the complexities of racial identity for Morton and his circle, his belief in voodoo, his relationships with women, his style of performance, and his roots in black musical traditions. Not only does Dead Man Blues restore to the historical record invaluable information about one of the great innovators of jazz, it also brings to life one of the most colorful and fascinating periods of musical transformation on the West Coast.
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