Jelly Roll Quotes & Sayings

In 1908 Handy didn't know anything about the blues and he doesn't know anything about jazz and stomps to this day. I myself figured out the peculiar form of mathematics and harmonies that was strange to all the world but me. — Jelly Roll Morton

Now, because he knows that his economic theories don't work, he's been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. Lately he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll-back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. I don't know what's next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. — Barack Obama

The sporting houses needed professors, and we had so many different styles that ... it wouldn't make any difference that you just came from ... whatever your tunes were over there, we played them in New Orleans. — Jelly Roll Morton

Roll me in sugar and call me a fuckin jelly-doughnut! — Stephen King

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902. — Jelly Roll Morton

Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings. — Jelly Roll Morton

It was a delicious meal
skim milk, wheat middlings, leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello. — E.B. White

I first met Jelly Roll in Chicago. He was livin' high then. You know, Jelly was a travelin' cat, sharp and good lookin' and always about he wrote this and that and the other thing - in fact, everything! — Zutty Singleton

I have been robbed of three million dollars all told. Everyone today is playing my stuff and I don't even get credit. Kansas City style, Chicago style, New Orleans style hell, they're all Jelly Roll style. — Jelly Roll Morton

My contributions were many: First clown director, with witty sayings and flashily dressed, now called master of ceremonies. — Jelly Roll Morton

The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, "This is for me." — Wynton Marsalis

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge. — Jelly Roll Morton

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp ... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues. — Eric Clapton

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm. — Jelly Roll Morton

In the year of 1902, when I was about seventeen years old, I happened to invade one of the sections [in New Orleans] where the birth of Jazz originated from. — Jelly Roll Morton

I do not claim any of the creation of the blues, although I have written many of them even before Mr. Handy had any blues published. I heard them when I was knee-high to a duck. — Jelly Roll Morton

Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures. — Jelly Roll Morton