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ABSTRACT
Pianist and composer Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and Original Dixieland Jazz Band cornetist Dominic “Nick” LaRocca epitomize the intersection of some of the most hotly debated topics in jazz historiography and mainstream jazz culture: musical authorship and historical accuracy. The dispute between Morton and LaRocca over the provenance of the classic early jazz composition “Tiger Rag” and the related controversies surrounding claims made by Morton during his Library of Congress interviews with folklorist Alan Lomax are revealing case studies in this regard. While examining the “Tiger Rag” authorship debates, this article discusses evolving and competing notions of authorship in jazz culture and scholarship and seeks to illuminate both the difficulties involved in determining authorial attribution for disputed early jazz compositions and the ways in which traditional single-author paradigms are perhaps less suited to aspects of early jazz practice than distributed and communal authorship.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Tim Gracyk, “‘Tiger Rag’—The Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1918),” Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2002), accessed November 19, 2021: https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/TigerRag.pdf. The ODJB also recorded the piece in London in 1919 and in New York City in 1923 for Okeh and again in for RCA in 1936.
2 Ibid.; Dominic “Nick” LaRocca, interview by Richard B. Allen and Kenneth Trist Urquhart, May 21–26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archives Oral History Interviews Collection, item 11, Transcripts of LaRocca Interviews, 1958, Box 27, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, Transcript of Reel I, 45–46; Transcript of Reel II, 15–16, accessed August 21, 2021: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/60364; Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and Alan Lomax, Liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, recorded at Library of Congress 1938, Rounder Records 11661-1898-2, 2006, compact disc, 30–32, 153; Ted Gioia, The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 434; Frank Tirro, Jazz: A History (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1993), 170.
3 Dominic James LaRocca, “Tiger Rag,” Leo Feist (publisher), monographic, 1917, Library of Congress, accessed August 17, 2021: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200033244); Dominic “Nick” LaRocca, interview by Richard B. Allen and Kenneth Trist Urquhart, May 21–26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archives Oral History Interviews Collection, item 11, Transcripts of LaRocca Interviews, 1958, Box 27, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, Transcript of Reel III, 73–75, accessed August 21, 2021: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/60364).
4 Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and Alan Lomax, Liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, recorded at Library of Congress 1938, Rounder Records 11661-1898-2, 2006, compact disc, 153.
5 Gioia, The Jazz Standards, 434.
6 Ibid.; Tirro, Jazz: A History, 170.
7 Mark Tucker and Tim Smolko, “Mills Brothers,” (Grove Music Online, 2014), accessed August 17, 2021: https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.J339300.https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2267210.
8 Andrew Durkin, Decomposition: A Music Manifesto (New York: Pantheon Books, 2014), 23–65; Gabriel Solis, Monk’s Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making (Berkley: University of California Press, 2008), 69–70; Ingrid Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 221; David Ake, Jazz Cultures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 11–28.; and Ake, Jazz Matters (Berkeley; University of California Press, 2010); Katherine M. Leo, “Early Blues and Jazz Authorship in the Case of the ‘Livery Stable Blues’,” Jazz Perspectives 12, no. 3 (2020): 311–38, doi:10.1080/17494060.2020.1833071.
9 For additional discussions of the controversy surrounding the provenance of “Tiger Rag,” as well as the general debates surrounding the perceived authenticity of the ODJB, see Gracyk, “‘Tiger Rag’—The Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1918),” 1–3; Gioia, The Jazz Standards, 36–8; John Chilton, “Original Dixieland Jazz [Jass] Band” (Grove Music Online: 2003), https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.J339300; and Tirro, Jazz: A History, 170.
10 Gracyk, “‘Tiger Rag’—The Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1918),” 1–3; “Tiger Rag,” Music Illustrated: The Songbooks of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Tulane University Online Exhibits, accessed August 17, 2021: https://exhibits.tulane.edu/exhibits/show/songbooksodjb/tigerrag.
11 Dominic James LaRocca, “Tiger Rag,” Leo Feist (publisher), monographic, 1917, Library of Congress, accessed August 17, 2021: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200033244.
12 The version of “Tiger Rag” discussed here is the 1918 Victor Records (Victor 18472) release, since it significantly outsold the original Aeolian-Vocalion recording, very few copies of which exist (Gracyk, “‘Tiger Rag’—The Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1918),” 1).
13 Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and Alan Lomax, Liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, recorded at Library of Congress 1938, Rounder Records 11661-1898-2, 2006, compact disc, 32.
14 Ibid.; Samuel Charters, Jazz: New Orleans 1885–1963 (New York: Oak Publications, 1958/63), 24.
15 For an even more detailed comparison of the ODJB and Morton versions, see Vincenzo Caporaletti, “Jelly Roll Morton, the ‘Old Quadrille’ and ‘Tiger Rag,’” Translated by Paolo Del Lungo (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2011): 51–72.
16 Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and Alan Lomax, Liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, recorded at Library of Congress 1938, Rounder Records 11661-1898-2, 2006, compact disc, 30–2.
17 Ibid., 31.
18 Ibid., 32.
19 For example, see the discussion of Gushee’s critique of Frank Tirro’s (and by extension, Sam Charters’s) research, discussed in the notes below.
20 Tirro, Jazz: A History, 170.
21 Gushee, “Jazz: A History by Frank Tirro [book review],” Journal of the American Musicological Society 31, no. 3 (1978): 535–40, doi:10.2307/831373.
22 Charters, Jazz: New Orleans 1885–1963, 24.
23 Dominic “Nick” LaRocca, interview by Richard B. Allen and Kenneth Trist Urquhart, May 21–26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archives Oral History Interviews Collection, item 11, Transcripts of LaRocca Interviews, 1958, Box 27, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, Transcript of Reel III, 73–75, accessed August 21, 2021: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/60364).
24 Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and Alan Lomax, Liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, recorded at Library of Congress 1938, Rounder Records 11661-1898-2, 2006, compact disc, 31–32.
25 Lomax’s Library of Congress interviews with Morton have heavily influenced posterity’s perception and contextualization of Morton specifically and early jazz history in general. See Katy Martin, “The Preoccupations of Mr. Lomax, Inventor of the ‘Inventor of Jazz’,” Popular Music and Society 36, no. 1 (2013), 30–9; Howard Reich and William Gaines, Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), 236.
26 Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and Alan Lomax, Liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, recorded at Library of Congress 1938, Rounder Records 11661-1898-2, 2006, compact disc, 31–32.
27 Ibid. As Vincent Caporaletti has documented, the “old quadrille” claims seem only to apply to the first strain of the tune (51–72).
28 Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It (New York: Dover, 1955/1966), 36.
29 Ibid.
30 Charters, 24. Carey’s tiger’s roar glissandos perhaps have a corollary to both Eddie Edwards’s trombone glissandos on the ODJB’s “hold that tiger strain” as well as Larry Shields’s clarinet glissandos that fill out the sections notated as rests in measures 9–16 on the original ODJB/Feist lead sheet and dominate the second section of the 1918 ODJB recording).
31 Warren “Baby” Dodds and Larry Gara, The Baby Dodds Story as Told to Larry Gara (Alma, Michigan: Rebeat
Publications, 1959/2002), 14.
32 Marshall W. Stearns, The Story of Jazz, (London: Oxford University Press, 1956/1970), 74.
33 Phil Pastras, “Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings,” Journal of the Society for American Music 2, no. 1 (2008): 117–9.
34 Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton and Alan Lomax, Liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, recorded at Library of Congress 1938, Rounder Records 11661-1898-2, 2006, compact disc, 31–32.
35 Ibid.
36 William L. Grossman, and Jack W. Farrell, The Heart of Jazz, (New York: New York University Press, 1956), 169; Howard Reich, “Jelly Roll Morton Archives Tell a Grand, Sad Tale of a Man Who Called himself ‘The King,’” Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1997, accessed August 17, 2021: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-12-02-9712020334-story.html; Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” (London, UK: Virgin Books/Penguin Random House UK, 1991; originally published 1950, New York: Grosset and Dunlap), 68.
37 Gunther Schuller, “Morton, Jelly Roll (jazz),” Grove Music Online, 2003, accessed October 11, 2018: http:////www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-2000313800; a historically fascinating publicity photo exists of Morton wearing blackface: Sam Schaefer, “Racial Classification in American Culture and Law into the Twentieth Century,” “Castles Made of Sand”: Racial Ambiguity and Mid-Twentieth Century American Musicians (University of Southern California: Scalar, 2017), accessed November 14, 2018: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/castles-made-of-sand-racial-ambiguity-and-mid-twentieth-century-american-musicians-1/americas-long-and-complicated-history-of-racial-classification.
38 Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone, Queering Kansas City jazz: Gender, Performance, and the History of a Scene (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 56: “In these [jazz history] interviews [such as the Lomax-Morton interviews] trained and experienced performers were ‘performing’ the text, which requires a great deal of contextualization and corroboration on the part of jazz scholars.”
39 Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 1991, 68.
40 Dominic “Nick” LaRocca, interview by Richard B. Allen and Kenneth Trist Urquhart, May 21–26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archives Oral History Interviews Collection, item 11, Transcripts of LaRocca Interviews, 1958, Box 27, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, Transcript of Reel III, 40–43, 73–75, accessed August 21, 2021: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/60364; (this passage of the interview occurs beginning around the 8’ 52” mark on the audio recording, which has been recently digitized, accessed August 17, 2021: https://musicrising.tulane.edu/listen/interviews/nick-larocca-1958-05-26).
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 A physical copy of the affidavit exists at the Hogan Jazz Archive: Item 1, Affidavit of Mrs. Alice Kiern, 6/12/1940, Box: 10, Folder: 6, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/59493.
47 Dominic “Nick” LaRocca, interview by Richard B. Allen and Kenneth Trist Urquhart, May 21–26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archives Oral History Interviews Collection, item 11, Transcripts of LaRocca Interviews, 1958, Box 27, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, Transcript of Reel I, 6–7, accessed August 21, 2021: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/60364). Kiern swore that she “has personally known for more the twenty-five years one Dominick [sic] J. LaRocca who resides in the city of New Orleans” and that the organist “during the period for time from 1914 to 1916 set down on paper various compositions originated by the said Dominick [sic] J. LaRocca, among which compositions was the number currently known as ‘Tiger Rag,’ that the said Dominick [sic] J. LaRocca originated and played the aforementioned numbers by ear, not knowing the reading and writing of music and would either play on his cornet or hum the mentioned numbers” to the organist. The affidavit further claims that “on the occasion when the said Dominick [sic] J. LaRocca first played ‘Tiger Rag’” to Kiern, “it was the first time the deponent had ever heard same, and thereupon reduced same to writing; that deponent has always considered the aforementioned Dominick [sic] J. LaRocca as the composer and originator of the song, presently known as and entitled ‘Tiger Rag.’” See Item 21, “Tiger Rag”, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, accessed August 20, 2021: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/60686.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Raeburn, in Caporaletti, “Jelly Roll Morton, the ‘Old Quadrille’ and ‘Tiger Rag’,” 47–9.
51 Ibid.
52 Caporaletti, “Jelly Roll Morton, the ‘Old Quadrille’ and ‘Tiger Rag’,” 51–72.
53 Ibid., 77–8.
54 Ibid., 77–9.
55 Dominic “Nick” LaRocca, interview by Richard B. Allen and Kenneth Trist Urquhart, May 21–26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archives Oral History Interviews Collection, item 11, Transcripts of LaRocca Interviews, 1958, Box 27, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, Transcript of Reel III, 73, accessed August 21, 2021: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/60364).
56 Ibid., 73–5.
57 For further details regarding LaRocca’s legal disputes over copyrights, see Leo, “Early Blues and Jazz Authorship in the Case of the ‘Livery Stable Blues’,” 311–38. For documentation of Alan Lomax’s involvement in assisting Morton in the pianist’s own separate and unrelated legal disputes over publishing rights involving Melrose Music and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), see John Szwed, Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World (New York, NY: Viking Press/Penguin Group USA, 2010), 133–4.
58 Ibid.
59 Leo, “Early Blues and Jazz Authorship in the Case of the ‘Livery Stable Blues’,” 311–38.
60 Ibid.
61 Durkin, Decomposition, 23–65. Durkin’s “rhetoric of genius” concept is reminiscent of Lydia Goehr’s portrait of the prevailing assumptions of musical authorship outlined in The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), “After 1800: The Beethoven Paradigm,” 205–42. In the realm of jazz, Durkin’s ideas bear some similarity to those of the following scholars: Solis, Monk’s Music, 69–70; Monson, Saying Something; Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 221; Ake, Jazz Cultures, 11–28.; and Ake, Jazz Matters.
62 Durkin, Decomposition, 27.
63 Ibid.
64 Leo, “Early Blues and Jazz Authorship in the Case of the ‘Livery Stable Blues’,” 311–38.
65 Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, “‘They Cert’ly Sound Good to Me’: Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, and the Commercial Ascendancy of the Blues,” in David Evans (Editor), Ramblin' on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 51–3.
66 Josiah Boornazian, “Paul ‘Stump’ Evans, Russell Procope, and Gary Bartz: ‘Alto-itis’ and the Neglected Jazz Alto Saxophone Masters,” The Saxophone Symposium 41 (Rochester, NY: North American Saxophone Alliance [Boydell & Brewer, Inc.], 2018), 18–35.
67 Dominic “Nick” LaRocca, interview by Richard B. Allen and Kenneth Trist Urquhart, May 21–26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archives Oral History Interviews Collection, item 11, Transcripts of LaRocca Interviews, 1958, Box 27, Dominic James “Nick” LaRocca papers, HJA-007, Tulane University Special Collections, Transcript of Reel III, 40–43, 73–75, accessed August 21, 2021: https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/60364).
68 Durkin, Decomposition, 23–65.
69 Leo, “Early Blues and Jazz Authorship in the Case of the ‘Livery Stable Blues’,” 311–38; Solis, Monk’s Music, 69–70; Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 221; Monson, Saying Something; Ake (Jazz Cultures, Jazz Matters).
70 Jason Toynbee, Creating Problems: Social Authorship, Copyright, and the Production of Culture, ed. David Hesmondhalgh, Pavis Centre for Social and Cultural Research (Milton Keynes: Open University, 2001), 2–32, 9.
71 “Distributed authorship” a concept imported from the visual arts which originated with Roy Ascott: see Edward A. Shanken, “From Cybernetics to Telematics,” in Telematic Embrace, ed. Edward A. Shanken (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003), 1–96, 64–6; Roy Ascott, “Distance Makes the Art Grow Further: Distributed Authorship and Telematic Textuality in La Plissure du Texte,” in At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet, ed. Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumark (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 282–96, 283.
72 Leo, “Early Blues and Jazz Authorship in the Case of the ‘Livery Stable Blues’,” 311–38.
73 Ibid.
74 Solis, Monk’s Music, 69–70.
75 Ake, Jazz Matters, 40–50.
76 Ake, Jazz Cultures, 26.
77 Claude S. Fischer, “Paradoxes of American Individualism,” Sociological Forum 23, no. 2, (June 2008), doi:10.1111/j.1573-7861.2008.00066; Rebecca LeFebvre and Volker Franke, “Culture Matters: Individualism vs. Collectivism in Conflict Decision-Making,” Societies 3 (2013): 128–46, doi:10.3390/soc3010128; Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism (London: Routledge, 1986), 3–63, 152–75.
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Josiah Boornazian
Josiah Boornazian, D.M.A. is an Assistant Professor of Jazz and Applied Saxophone at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His peer-reviewed publications include articles in the inaugural edition of Jazz Education in Research and Practice and the 2018 edition of The Saxophone Symposium. Dr. Boornazian has also been awarded a Björn Bärnheim Research Fellowship at the Hogan Jazz Archive. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Miami Frost School of Music, a Master of Arts degree from the City College of New York, and a Bachelor of Music degree from California State University, Northridge.