The Obscenity of Jelly Roll Morton

Jelly Roll Morton's 'Make Me A Pallet on Your Floor' is a 13-minute phantasmagoric blues prefiguring the sexual fantasies of Gangsta rap. Morton's famous bravado is here at its most untrammelled. Morton esteems his own prowess, issues commands, threats, and swears. A lot.

This latter fact alone will put a lot of people off, but if you can get past this, it's a fascinating document.

I don't believe I would have otherwise come across the beautiful comparative adjective 'fuckingest', as in 'You the fuckingest bitch, baby, I ever met'.

But the lyric that clinches it, for me, is the following:

Now listen to this baby:


Make Me A Pallet on Your Floor

Now imagine it's 1938. Lomax watches impassively as Morton pushes the song into evermore uncommercial territory. Listen for that lovely moment when Morton coughs and exclaims on the quality of the whiskey Lomax has given him.

(Note: this is my own edit of the recordings, which you'll find are split into tracks on the box set. As far as I can tell, there's no reason for them not to be edited together except the slightly uneven quality of the recordings.)