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Ruben Roddy (as); Emmanuel Paul (ts); Joseph ‘Red’ Clark (sou); Arthur Ogle, Robert ‘Son’ Lewis (d). August 1951.
    Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis said (1990): ‘Wherever you say it first emerged, in cat-houses, bars or out on the street, what came to be called jazz was music that had a social function. It bound African-American people together and confirmed their sense of community.’
    This sits here out of strict chronological sequence as a representative of a music that in its heyday went unrecorded. The group was formed in 1920 by clarinettist Willie Parker, so its provenance is not anachronistic and neither is the music. This is the most authentic available example of old New Orleans music in its original environment, even if this recordingof traditional funeral and parade music was recorded in a French Quarter alleyway rather than actually on the job. The regulars of the Brass Band, as it was then, were augmented by Lewis for the day, although he plays flat, and the brass are similarly wayward in intonation. The recording is musty, the tempos ragged, the extra takes of four of the numbers an anti-climax, while some of the dirges threaten to dissolve altogether. But seldom has the old music sounded so affecting, the workmanlike attitude of the players lending it something like nobility. The remastering has been done very well, considering the source material, and the superb documentation – by Alden Ashforth, the teenage enthusiast who recorded the session – adds to the undeniable mystique.
    Samuel Charters managed to record the Eureka again in 1956, for Moe Asch’s Folkways label, and some 80 minutes of rehearsal music has also survived, now rather extravagantly spread across two CDs, worth chasing up by anyone interested in this period. Given that some of this is chatter, tune-ups and breakdowns, it’s scarcely an essential way into this kind of music. But Charters’s vivid notes bring the occasion back to life, and since it presents the Eureka players at their most typical (this time without Lewis), it may even be more valuable as a document.
    JELLY ROLL MORTON &
    Born Ferdinand Joseph Lemott (or La Mott, or La Menthe), 20 October 1890, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 10 July 1941, Los Angeles, California
    Piano, voice
    The Complete Library Of Congress Recordings
    Rounder ROUCD 1888 8CD
    Morton (p, v); Alan Lomax (v). May–June 1938.
    Mary Lou Williams said (1976): ‘I was afraid of him. He had this big mouthful of diamonds and he stuttered when he talked fast, which made him seem more frightening rather than ridiculous. He pushed me on to a stool in his office uptown and told me to play. I played “The Pearls” for him, hoping I wouldn’t get dumped on my butt on the floor. He was supposed to hit out for almost no reason, especially girls.’
    Oral history is either the curse of jazz studies or its greatest resource, and probably both. In the summer of 1938, broke and almost finished, Morton was recorded – almost by chance at first – by Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, and when Lomax realized the opportunity he had on his hands he got Morton to deliver a virtual history of the birth pangs of jazz as it happened in the New Orleans of the turn of the century. His memory was unimpaired, although he chose to tell things as he preferred to remember them, perhaps; and his hands were still in complete command of the keyboard. The results have the quality of a long, drifting dream, as if Morton were talking to himself. He demonstrates every kind of music which he heard or played in the city, re-creates all his greatest compositions in long versions unhindered by 78 playing time, remembers other pianists who were never recorded, spins yarns, and generally sets down the most distinctive (if not necessarily the most truthful) document we have on the origins of the music.
    The sessions were made on an acetate recorder and, while the sound may be uncomfortably one-dimensional to modern ears, everything he