Jelly Roll Morton was invited to play a new Vancouver nightclub called The Patricia, on East Hastings Street. In 1917, he followed bandleader William Manuel Johnson and Johnson’s sister Anita Gonzalez to California, where Morton’s tango “The Crave” made a sensation in Hollywood. In 1915 his “Jelly Roll Blues” was arguably the first jazz composition ever published, recording as sheet music the New Orleans traditions that had been jealously guarded by the musicians. By 1914, he had started writing down his compositions. In 1912–1914, Jelly Roll Morton toured with his girlfriend Rosa Brown as a vaudeville act before settling in Chicago for three years. No birth certificate has been found to date. His parents lived in a common-law marriage and not legally married. Hécaud helped choose his christening name of Ferdinand. Eulaley Haco (Eulalie Hécaud) was the godparent. Lamothe and Louise Monette (written as Lemott and Monett on his baptismal certificate). His World War I draft registration card showed September 13, 1884, but his California death certificate listed his birth as September 20, 1889. Sources differ as to his birth date: a baptismal certificate issued in 1894 lists his date of birth as OctoMorton and his half-sisters claimed he was born on September 20, 1885. Jelly Roll Morton was born into a Creole of Color family in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. The jazz historian, musician, and composer Gunther Schuller says of Morton’s “hyperbolic assertions” that there is “no proof to the contrary” and that Morton’s “considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation”. Reputed for his arrogance and self-promotion as often as recognized in his day for his musical talents, Morton claimed to have invented jazz outright in 1902 - much to the derision of later musicians and critics.
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