"Oh, Mister Jelly": A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook (review)

Abstract

"Oh, Mister Jelly" is a pathbreaking example of the "scrapbook" type of jazz book. Photographs and documents have always played an important role in the presentation of jazz history, as far back as Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer's Pictorial History of Jazz: People and Places from New Orleans to Modern Jazz (New York: Crown, 1955) and notably in Frank Driggs and Harris Lewine's Black Beauty, White Heat: A Pictorial History of Classic Jazz, 1920-1950 (New York: W. Morrow, 1982; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1995). The scrapbook format emerged from the pictorial history by concentrating on one person, presenting photographs and letters. These materials would then be printed in a sumptuous edition suitable for housing in rare-book rooms. Chan Parker and Francis Paudras's "To Bird With Love" (Poitiers, France: Éditions Wislov, 1981) set the model with the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker. With this volume on composer Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton, William Russell has added unedited and lightly edited interviews to the resources, thus enlarging the scrapbook format.