Jelly Roll Morton Quotations

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

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.

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.

Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings.