Aaron Diehl, Piano

so [Applause] i'm not a trained actor but i'll try to use my best voice without using the microphone can everyone hear me okay yes okay good um i just wanted to say a few words before i started to play many people ask me do you feel ghosts in the halls that you perform the venues that you perform in most of the time no but this is one place where i really feel the ghost of general morton and for those of you who are not familiar with um jelly roll and his relationship here in coolidge auditorium alan lomax interview jelly roll who was the self-proclaimed inventor of jazz lomax interviewed him in 1938 several hours of recordings that are now easily accessible online uh and there are collectively they're called the complete library of congress recordings and um jelly rolls said there were in talking about the development of jazz as he saw it he he said there were two key ingredients to making great jazz music one was the blues and the other was the spanish tinge and you'll be hearing a lot of the spanish tinge tonight and you'll be hearing a lot of the blues the spanish tinge is a rhythm that uh simply put i'll just tap it out for you okay it's also known as the habanera or uh simpler form this is trusillo he said that the combination of these two ingredients made great jazz music and he also said that jazz takes from the finest class of all music which i thought was very interesting this performance is dedicated to him i was introduced to the library of congress recordings in high school and even today i'm always referencing them listening not only to his story but also just how great of an improviser he was and really an originator he was one of the compositions i'll play tonight was the first jazz composition published in 1915 called the original jelly roll blues and in fact the copy that was submitted one of the first copies a manuscript that jelly roll wrote was submitted here the library and you can actually find it here if you're interested in seeing it so thank you to jelly will morton and the contributions he's made to american music and also another person i want to dedicate this to is james depogny who was a pianist [Applause] passed away recently and he was a fine pianist and also quite a scholar and in fact there's a book on jelly roll uh his complete piano works quite a a piece of literature and a great reference for anyone who's interested in jelly rolls compositions so thank you for coming [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so so so do [Music] do [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so so [Music] um [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do does anybody know what jellyfish got his name somebody knows so not everybody so i'll tell you the story really quick so he uh he was doing a skit in chicago like a vaudeville uh act kind of a comedy actor and the piece was originally entitled the chicago blues but he says he got the name jelly roll when he was uh so he's on stage improvising his skit with this guy named sammy russell and uh sammy said something to the effect like my my name is sweet pop cream puff right out of the bakery shop so so jelly roll had to come back with something quick so he said well my name is sweet papa jelly roll with stove pipes in my hips and all the women in town are dying to turn my damper down uh he was also a great cook among other things now jelly rolls arch rival was uh dedicated and uh i don't think he liked the fact that jelly really liked the fact that handy was uh his name was the father of the blues and so uh i think there's some debate about uh which came first the saint louis blues are the jelly old blues but anyhow this is the saint louis blues [Music] do do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] this is this last one's a blues like composition that i wrote down and uh it's named after a book by leroy jones also known as amiri baraka titled lose people so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] you [Music] so do so so so so do [Music] so [Music] thank you um i'm going to play it one more by jelly roll and this is something that he called the finger breaker and he called the finger breaker because it's fast and it's difficult to play um but there's a story that billy that like dr billy taylor told me one time about uh actually hearing jelly roll live at a place um called uh the jungle n which was like i think u street um and at this time this is later on in jelly's life and uh he was just kind of scraping by and so he was managing this club and most of the times nobody came and he would just play and also he was the pianist he was the bartender he was the manager and one time billy taylor and his friends came check out well i don't know if they even came for the music he was in high school and i guess they were just hanging out and they were kind of snickering at at jelly's plane like it was old-fashioned it was archaic style of jazz piano and apparently jelly turned around and told them he said you punks can't play this music and dr taylor said and he was right we couldn't play so um enjoy the finger break [Music] so do do do [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 2,638

Rating: 4.7142859 out of 5

Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: 5N9atzw7d58

Length: 55min 8sec (3308 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021