Jelly’s mostly remembered in jazz histories as the first composer and arranger to organize the resources of jazz into complex, exciting, and subtle works. But on these Last Sessions, made in New York at the end of 1939 before his migration to California (where he died in 1941),we get to hear Jelly Roll the entertainer, musical historian, and blues balladeer.

Asked to recall some of the old New Orleans music, Jelly cut 13 sides that include a set of ragtime tunes and brothel ditties (“The Crave” and “The Naked Dance” among them) and a masterful version of. “King Porter Stomp” (a composition later made popular by Benny Goodman). But what he mostly plays are blues (“Winin’ Boy,” “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say,” “Don’t You Leave Me Here,” “Mamie’s Blues”), sung in that characteristic streetwise, sly, half-hocum style that defines an entire New Orleans altitude, from Jelly Roll to Danny Barker to Dr. John.

The ensemble pieces (another dozen) also feature Jelly’s vocalizing and sadly, have been dismissed as commercial and trite. They’re not. Backed by some terrific New Orleans musicians (Red Allen, Albert

Nicholas, Zutty Singleton), these are further extensions of Jelly the entertainer, in a style, in contrast to Armstrong’s, that never really left New Orleans: rambunctious, down to earth, and elegant.

It is this Jelly Roll Morton that needs to be resurrected, now that we can see clearly the strong line of inheritance, mainly through what became rhythm and blues (Fats Domino, even Allen Toussaint), of a musical personality that practically defines New Orleans as no other before it. As Alan Lomax makes clear in his updated preface to Mister Jelly Roll. Jelly stayed true to what he knew and believed, no matter how much it hurt.

He may have died in Los Angeles, but the last tune he cut, ironically, was “My Home Is in a Southern Town,” its poignancy hardly masked by Jelly’s upbeat arrangement. Maybe Pops was more famous and Sidney Bechet the more impassioned virtuoso, but neither embodies the singular culture that has been New Orleans in the 20th century like Jelly Roll did.

These Last Sessions, long out of print and now issued with affectionate liner notes by Butch Thompson, provide as fine an introduction and portrait of a New. Orleans original as anyone could want. Maybe they will help one day in winning Jelly Roll Morton the kind of respect he deserves.

–Roger Hahn