Jelly Roll Morton

Jelly Roll Morton may have been indulging in typical hyperbole when he advertised himself as the inventor of jazz, but one has to concede his role as the idiom's first important composer. A wonderful pianist who could also sing, he brilliantly distilled the polyglot influences of his native New Orleans into masterpieces of pulsating polyphony on his classic recordings of the 1920s, including "Dead Man Blues" and "Black Bottom Stomp." Morton's later career was short-circuited by ever-shifting musical trends, but his Library of Congress interviews with Alan Lomax provide a unique insight into the nearly vanished musical culture from which he had sprung.