Jelly Roll Morton Home - New Orleans

Jelly Roll Morton's home is located on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The self styled inventor of jazz was born Ferdinand Joseph La Mothe, most probably in this home, between 1885 and 1890.  Birth certificates were not required at the time and the exact dates of the family's stay in the home are not recorded, so much of his early life is lost to time.  It is known for certain that he hailed from the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood and spent much of his youth here.  His father left home when Morton was three and his mother remarried a man named William Mouton.  Ferdinand anglicized the name to Morton.  He picked up the nickname Jelly Roll, slang for female genitalia, while working as a piano player in one of the town's many brothels.  By the early 1900's he had begun touring and eventually ended up in Chicago and New York.  His claim as the father of jazz has been disputed over the years, but he certainly ranks as one of the central figures in the genre's early days, and the first significant composer and arranger of New Orleans jazz.  His compositions include "Jelly Roll Blues" and "King Porter Stomp." 

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