Jelly Roll Morton

📍Seventh Ward, New Orleans, LA, USA

“I was born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe in a comfortable two-storey house on Frenchmen Street, in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans, a Creole neighbourhood of French-speaking families, craftsmen and musicians. I always said it was 1890, but who's counting. My mother, Louise Monette, sent my father away for chasing women, and later married Willie Mouton, a porter, and I took the name Morton from him. I had two half-sisters, Amede and Frances, who adored me. I tried the guitar, the drums and the trombone, but it was the piano that took me. My godmother, Eulalie, known outside the family as Laura Hunter, was a voodoo woman whose spells were popular in the district, and I loved her dearly. Next door to her lived Mamie Desdunes, who played the blues on piano, and she was one of the first people I heard play them. At about fourteen, I slipped off to Storyville, the red-light district, and found work as a professor, playing piano in the finest houses, Lulu White's and Willie Piazza's among them. I made more money in a night than most men made in a week. When my grandmother found out, she told me I had disgraced the family and must leave the house and stay away from my sisters. So I left and travelled, playing all over America. I always said I invented jazz, and I put it into written arrangements with my Red Hot Peppers, recording Black Bottom Stomp and King Porter Stomp. In 1938 I recorded my memories for Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, and the Seventh Ward remembers its proud Creole son.”

Sources: hnoc.org acloserwalknola.com newworldencyclopedia.org Wikipedia: Mister Jelly Roll