1^ PARTE - I primi grandi nomi del jazz
Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton
Jelly Roll Morton was the first great composer and piano player of Jazz. He was a talented arranger who wrote special scores that took advantage of the three-minute limitations of the 78 rpm records. But more than all these things, he was a real character whose spirit shines brightly through history, like his diamond studded smile. As a teenager Jelly Roll Morton worked in the whorehouses of Storyville as a piano player. From 1904 to 1917 Jelly Roll rambled around the South. He worked as a gambler, pool shark, pimp, vaudeville comedian and as a pianist. He was an important transitional figure between ragtime and jazz piano styles. He played on the West Coast from 1917 to 1922 and then moved to Chicago and where he hit his stride.
Morton's 1923 and 1924 recordings of piano solos for the Gennett label were very popular and influential. He formed the band the Red Hot Peppers and made a series of classic records for Victor. The recordings he made in Chicago featured some of the best New Orleans sidemen like Kid Ory, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dodds, Johnny St. Cyr and Baby Dodds. Morton relocated to New York in 1928 and continued to record for Victor until 1930. His New York version of The Red Hot Peppers featured sidemen like Bubber Miley, Pops Foster and Zutty Singleton. Like so many of the Hot Jazz musicians, the Depression was hard on Jelly Roll. Hot Jazz was out of style. The public preferred the smoother sounds of the big bands. He fell upon hard times after 1930 and even lost the diamond he had in his front tooth, but ended up playing piano in a dive bar in Washington D.C. In 1938 Alan Lomax recorded him in for series of interviews about early Jazz for the Library of Congress, but it wasn't until a decade later that these interviews were released to the public. Jelly Roll died just before the Dixieland revival rescued so many of his peers from musical obscurity. He blamed his declining health on a voodoo spell.
Bix Beiderbecke
Bix Beiderbecke was one of the great jazz musicians of the 1920's; he was also a child of the Jazz Age who drank himself to an early grave with illegal Prohibition liquor. His hard drinking and beautiful tone on the cornet made him a legend among musicians during his life. The legend of Bix grew even larger after he died. Bix never learned to read music very well, but he had an amazing ear even as a child. His parents disapproved of his playing music and sent him to a military school outside of Chicago in 1921. He was soon expelled for skipping class and became a full-time musician. In 1923 Beiderbecke joined theWolverine Orchestra and recorded with them the following year. Bix was influenced a great deal by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, but soon surpassed their playing. In late 1924 Bix left the Wolverines to join Jean Goldkette's Orchestra, but his inability to read music eventually resulted in him losing the job. In 1926 he spent some time with Frankie Trumbauer's Orchestra where he recorded his solo piano masterpiece"In a Mist". He also recorded some of his best work withTrumbauer and guitarist, Eddie Lang, under the name ofTram, Bix, and Eddie. Bix was able to bone up on his sight-reading enough to re-join Jean Goldkette's Orchestra briefly, before signing up as a soloist with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra. Whiteman's Orchestra was the most popular band of the 1920's and Bix enjoyed the prestige and money of playing with such a successful outfit, but it didn't stop his drinking. In 1929 Bix's drinking began to catch up with him. He suffered from delirium tremens and he had a nervous breakdown while playing with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and was eventually sent back to his parents in Davenport, Iowa to recover. It should be noted that Paul Whiteman was very good to Bix during his struggles. He kept Bix on full pay long after his breakdown, and promised him that his chair was always open in the Whiteman Orchestra, but, Bix was never the same again, and never rejoined the band. He returned to New York in 1930 and made a few more records with his friend Hoagy Carmichael and under the name of Bix Beiderbecke and his Orchestra.
But mainly, he holed himself up in a rooming house in Queens, New York where he drank a lot and worked on his beautiful solo piano pieces "Candlelight", "Flashes", and "In The Dark" (played here by Ralph Sutton; Bix never recorded them). He died at age 28 in 1931 during an alcoholic seizure. The official cause of death was lobar pneumonia and edema of the brain.
1. Jelly Roll Morton
Nell'immediato dopoguerra nei circoli jazzistici
europei il nome di Jelly Roll Morton, come quello
di King Oliver, maestro di Louis Armstrong, veniva
pronunciato con una sorta di rispetto venato di
mistero, riservato solo alle personalità che si
ritenevano di notevole importanza, ma non si
conoscevano affatto. La ragione, almeno in
Italia, era semplice: dal 1930 in poi, nessuna
delle case fonografiche aveva più stampato i
dischi del pianista creolo; ed i pochi e consunti
"Gramophone" che riportavano alcuni brani
del suo complesso migliore, i "Red Hot Peppers",
erano introvabili. Un'analoga sorte era toccata a
tutto il jazz precedente: agli "Hot Five" di Armstrong
e al Duke Ellington di "Take it easy" e di "Jubilee
Stomp" (1928). I pregiudizi e gli avvenimenti politici
seguiti alla fine della 2^ guerra mondiale avevano
fatto il resto, coprendo la produzione musicale
d'oltre oceano con un silenzio quasi assoluto.
Anche gli appassionati di jazz più anziani che
avevano avuto modo di ascoltare Jelly Roll Morton
solo molti anni prima, lo avevano poi dimenticato.
Oppure lo ricordavano vagamente attraverso qualche
disco americano scovato chissà come.
Ma troppo poco, naturalmente. Del resto, le alterne
vicende della vita di Jelly Roll Morton, morto nel
1941, in pieno periodo bellico, avevano fatto sì che
in paesi anche meno isolati, sotto questo profilo,
dell'Italia, mancasse una sufficiente documentazione
e quindi una conoscenza minimamente approfondita
della sua opera. E nello stesso dopoguerra
l'importazione di materiale discografico era rimasta
precaria e inorganica. In questo stato di cose, è
naturale che la comparsa sul mercato italiano di 4
facce a settantotto giri di Jelly Roll Morton, negli
ultimi mesi del 1951, sia stata salutata come un
autentico avvenimento. Per gli appassionati di jazz
si aprivano prospettive e zone di ricerca del tutto
nuove: cioè il jazz antico, attraveso quei dischi,
appariva molto meno primitivo di com'era stato
immaginato. Inoltre, per chi aveva buone orecchie,
Morton si rivelava superiore a qualsiasi aspettativa.
Questa sorpresa, come moltealtre (Si pensi per esempio al
jazz di Parker e Gillespie, che
perfino i critici giudicarono
nettamente rivoluzionario,
mentre rappresentava solo
un'evoluzione della quale si
possono ritrovare i segni premonitori negli stili
precedenti) era la diretta conseguenza delle
scarse possibilità d'informazione. Pochissimi,
infatti, sapevano che Morton, 13 anni prima
aveva dichiarato pubblicamente di essere stato
il creatore del jazz. Questa affermazione, anche
se esagerata, non era stata accolta con una
risata generale, nè aveva causato il ricovero
del suo autore in una clinica per alienati.
Al contrario aveva suscitato innumerevoli
discussioni, aveva riportato Morton alla ribalta
e dato vita alla più lunga registrazione musicale
fino allora conosciuta. Ossia alle 116 facce che
Jelly Roll è stato invitato ad incidere, nel
maggio del 1938 per la Library of Congress.
In quelle incisioni Morton ha avuto modo di
fissare, in parole e in musica, tutta la propria
vita.
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