Elijah Wald – Jelly Roll Blues |
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Jump to description of book chapters Errata (post-publication corrections or emendations) "Wald evokes a world of barrelhouse piano and honky-tonks that would make the denizens of a Weimar cabaret blush…Along the way, he astutely analyzes the intermingling of ethnicity, gender, and social class that shaped popular music… An illuminating, deeply researched study of roots music, decidedly not suitable for work.” "One of the most illuminating music writers working today… Wald seeks not only to reconstruct a little-known body of music, but to explore and reveal the social world out of which that music came…. “Jelly Roll Blues” enriches our sense of how the world used to sound… and should appeal to any readers who want to deepen their knowledge of the foundations of American music…. truly virtuosic." "...magnificent, raunchy exploration of early blues.... If I had to pluck one word from this book that represents it best, it would be 'funk,' a word Mr. Wald uses repeatedly.... Most mainstream art is proper. But if the blues were proper, it wouldn’t be the blues." Jelly Roll Blues is a journey through the censored voices of early blues and jazz, and the deep culture of the Black sporting world, guided by the songs and memories of Jelly Roll Morton. Morton became famous in the 1920s as a composer and bandleader, but got his start as a singer and pianist entertaining customers in the honky-tonks and bordellos of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He recorded an oral history of that time in 1938 for the Library of Congress, but the most distinctive songs were hidden for over fifty years, because the language and themes were as wild and raunchy as anything in gangsta rap. Those songs inspired me to explore how much other history was locked away and censored in the early years of the twentieth century, and this book is the result. Full of previously unpublished lyrics and stories, it provides an alternate view of the dawn of American popular music, when jazz and blues were still the private, after-hours music of the Black sporting world, and in particular of the women who were that world's most celebrated figures. It gives new insight into familiar figures like Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong, and introduces characters like Ready Money, the New Orleans sex worker and pickpocket who ended up owning one of the largest Black hotels on the West Coast. It is a journey to a fascinating period when a new generation of Black musicians, dancers, and listeners were shaping lives their parents could not have imagined and art that transformed popular culture around the world. Available in April 2024 from all better bookstores, or online from Bookshop.org. “I grew up on the old blues: heard it, felt it, danced to it, but a lot of people didn’t hear the real stuff, because somebody else was controlling the narrative. This book is searching out those voices, keeping them from being lost, and helping to transfer that ancestral information to a new generation.” "Elijah Wald has done it again. Both a compelling study of blues pioneer and musical genius Jelly Roll Morton's roots and song craft as well as a meticulously-researched history of early twentieth-century, ostensibly “taboo” popular music culture, Jelly Roll Blues offers a clear-eyed exploration of Black modernist era vernacular music, and takes seriously graphic forms of cultural expression as articulations of human desire and as complex manifestations of social and economic lifeworlds shaped by racial and gender pressures and inequalities. Wald continues to challenge and expand what we know as well as what we think we know about the early blues." "This book is riveting. Elijah Wald brings the world of the New Orleans demi-monde to raucous life through his excavation of the censored lyrics of early jazz and blues. Moreover, in showing how women participated in this musical culture—as musicians in their own right, audience participants, and prostitutes enjoying some leisure time after hours—he reveals a world scarcely glimpsed before and all but erased from history. What Wald recovers here borders on the miraculous." "Wald’s book is a fascinating exploration of the lyrics, dances and performances of early 20th century Black Americans, much of which has been buried in libraries and archives. He masterfully connects jazz to contemporary popular music, relates the struggles of Black performers, examines the changing standards for censoring popular culture, and adds to the epic that was Jelly Roll Morton’s life. Essential reading." "Elijah Wald is one of our most skilled and affable guides to the hidden, governing currents within the long stream of American music, and with Jelly Roll Blues he navigates one of the most important: the erotic, provocative and just plain dirty songs at the heart of jazz and blues. This book travels into the heart of the sporting life, vividly recounting a time when working women and dandyish men invented a musical language that not only celebrated life's greatest pleasures but told truths that other art forms were too tame to touch. A hot and essential read." "Elijah Wald’s latest excavation of American popular culture reminds us that music is meant to reflect life as it is, despite the genteel aspirations of commercial window-dressers. Jelly Roll Blues gives by far the most realistic and satisfying account of Morton’s cultural environment to date, while also revealing the importance of cultural networks that operated beneath the commercial mainstream. Highly recommended." "Elijah Wald’s incisive, deeply researched, and hugely entertaining new book reminds us of the power of stories and storytelling to both shape and illuminate worlds, and what is lost when those narratives are disrupted. Using Jelly Roll Morton’s fascinating 1938 Library of Congress musical memoir as a jumping off point, and through his careful engagement with previously censored lyrics and obscured lives, Wald invites us on an important journey toward correcting incomplete historical accounts of early blues and jazz." "I enjoyed Jelly Roll Blues immensely. Whatever one’s estimate of Morton’s importance and credibility, there is no doubt about his ability to be in interesting places at interesting times, doing interesting things. Wald guides the reader round that world with admirable clarity. For blues scholars and enthusiasts, some of his observations about the history and origins of the form will be required reading.” "We had plenty of fun, the kind of a fun I don't think I've ever seen any other place. Of course, there may be nicer fun, but that particular kind -- there was never that kind of fun anyplace, I think, on the face of the globe but New Orleans." |
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