Jelly Roll Morton Research Paper

Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941), was the very first important Jazz composer, who contributed a lot to the development of Jazz. Jelly Roll Morton was a composer, arranger and also a performer, a piano player. He learned to play piano when he was ten years old. Within a few years, he was already began playing piano at the brothels in Storyville. Storyville would later on be called the birthplace of Jazz， although it was not entirely true because Jazz was created and recreated by a lot of people around the cities in America, but Storyville was an important place that affected the development of Jazz. In 1926, Jelly Roll Morton founded a group called The Red Hot Peppers . This group consists a standard New Orleans instruments, which included cornet, trombone, clarinets, banjos, double bass, drums, and featured piano as a solo instrument in this particular group. The instrumentation of his group was strongly influenced by The Original Dixieland Jass Band. Grandpa’s Spells, Black Bottom Stomp, and The Pearls are examples of his famous works with The Red Hot Peppers. These famous works showed Jelly Roll Morton’s maturity in composing as a composer, his advance concept of the solo writing and the ensemble as an arranger, and his talent as a pianist.

With this wise action he has done, he was able to break down Jazz like nobody has done. According to Jelly Roll Morton, there are four basic elements of Jazz, which is breaks, riffs, Spanish Tinge, and tempo. Break means a short segment while the soloist improvises without any accompaniment, riffs means a phrase that repeated at regular intervals, Spanish Tinge which is the languorous 3+3+2 bass rhythm of tango and other bass rhythm of early Spanish and Caribbean dances, and tempo for him means