JAZZ GREAT JELLY ROLL MORTON DIES (THC) Today in history July 10 1941 Jelly Roll Morton—a native of New Orleans who became the first great jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader—dies in Los Angeles, California. Born Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe in New Orleans (his year of birth is recorded variously as 1885 and 1890), he was the son of racially mixed Creole parents; he later took his stepfathers last name, Morton, as his own. Young Ferdinand learned to play the piano as a boy, and by the age of 12 he was performing in the bordellos of Storyville, New Orleans famous red-light district. Talented and precocious, Morton blended the popular music styles of ragtime, minstrelsy and the blues and flavored the mixture with Caribbean dance rhythms; the result was a hybrid that resembled a then-emerging style later known as jazz.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 12:44:15 +0000
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