TITLE: Mister Jelly Roll, Mister Lomax and the Invention of Jazz
SPEAKER: John Szwed, Dave Burrell
EVENT DATE: 01/18/2006
RUNNING TIME: 66 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
In 1938, Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe, also known as Jelly Roll Morton (1885-1941), sat down at a piano in the Library of Congress to record the first oral history of jazz. Seated nearby, asking questions and operating a small portable disc recorder, sat Alan Lomax, 23-year-old assistant in charge of the Library's Archive of American Folksong. Writer and jazz scholar John Szwed and pianist Dave Burrell explore this unique legacy right where it was created -- on the stage of the Coolidge Auditorium.
Speaker Biography: John Szwed is John M. Musser Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Yale University, and Louis Armstrong Professor of Jazz Studies at Columbia University. As a musician, he studied trombone with Donald Reinhart, music theory with Mervin Hutton, and played professionally for 12 years. He is the author of "Space is the Place: Sun Ra's Life on Earth" (1997) and "So What:The Life of Miles Davis" (2002), among other publications, and is currently researching and writing a biography of Alan Lomax.
Speaker Biography: Dave Burrell has recorded with Archie Shepp, David Murray, Pharoah Sanders and many others, and has released more than 20 albums as a soloist and leader, including "Jelly Roll Joys" (Gazell Records 4003), a solo piano tribute to Jelly Roll Morton released in 1991.
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SERIES: Homegrown
