Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

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"I don't intend to say anything unless it's real facts," declares New Orleans singer-pianist Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe (1885-1941) early in these historic interviews -- this from a shameless fabulist whose business card read "jelly roll" morton (originator of jazz). But in these seven CDs of often outrageous reminiscence and electrifying performance, recorded in 1938 direct to acetate discs by folklorist Alan Lomax, Morton tells the most important truth about the birth of jazz: what it was like to be there when it happened, at the turn of the century in America's most exciting musical city. His stories, in which Morton is invariably the star, bring to life a wide-open town of dandies, crooks and harlots, black, white and otherwise (Morton himself was Creole), colliding in pleasure and violence. As he talks, Morton keeps playing. "New Orleans was a stomping ground for all the great pianists in the country," he says, then makes his case for being the greatest -- and the father of all we hear in later innovators like Professor Longhair and Dr. John -- in demonstrations of his most famous originals ("King Porter Stomp," "The Pearls") and fervent attacks on traditional melodies ("Tiger Rag," "Oh! Didn't He Ramble"). This definitive treatment of these recordings comes with a CD of Lomax interviews with Morton's contemporaries, two books -- and a parental-advisory sticker, thanks to the explicit language in "The Dirty Dozen" and the seven-part "The Murder Ballad." Morton did not invent cussing. But as in everything else he did, he was one of the best.