The Jelly Roll Blues arguably was the first published jazz composition. Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (better known as Jelly Roll Morton) claimed to have written it in 1905 after inventing the musical form three years earlier.
I especially like Morton’s 1920s version of Louis Armstrong idol Joe “King” Oliver’s Doctor Jazz. The first time I heard it, though, I thought Morton was saying “Cactus Jack,” referring to legendary Texas pol John Nance Garner. Not likely.
Civil War note: Morton got his start playing piano in a brothel in New Orleans, then wandered the country, made records, etc. Wound up in D.C. in the historic Shaw neighborhood which grew out of freed slave camps and was named for Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. He commanded the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first Union black regiments, which was celebrated in the movie Glory. Jelly Roll Morton, whose music still is available, died in 1941.
You could hardly do better than to own a copy of Doctor Jazz. Even though it has nothing to do with Cactus Jack.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 