Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz"

New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Very Good+ in Poor dj. (c.1950). First Edition. Hardcover. [a good sound copy, very light foxing to bottom edge of text block, minor bumping to base of spine; the jacket is in pretty rough shape, with various edge-tears, shallow chipping (especially along the top edge), and is completely separated at the front hinge (held together by a new mylar protective jacket cover)]. (drawings, endpaper maps, musical examples) A biography, of sorts, of the great jazzman, derived largely from recordings he made at the Library of Congress (at Lomax's invitation and urging) in May and June of 1938. (There were a total of eight hours of recordings of Morton talking and playing the piano, along with a number of longer unrecorded interviews.) "It has proved vain to try to check or correct Jelly's story," wrote Lomax in the book's preface. "Jazz musicians are strong on downbeats but weak on dates. There are almost as many versions of every happening as there were men in [Morton's] band. The big outlines of his story are solid and true to life [and] I have tried to give his narrative as much inner consistency as possible, something he would certainly have done if he had been able to write this story himself." Appendix One, "The Tunes," reproduces musical transcriptions for 13 songs and presents a chronological list of Morton's compositions; Appendix Two, "The Records," attempts to document as many of his recording sessions as possible. .