Storyville, Jelly Roll and the origin of Jazz

 Storyville and Jelly Roll Morton

A former bordello in Storyville

I've always been fascinated by Storyville.  A lot of the music I play originated there, and I wanted to see what's left of it.  The problem is, they leveled it in 1920 or so.  There are only a couple of the original buildings left ... the rest is the Iberville housing project.  The story goes that New Orleans came up with a creative solution to the reality that you really could get anything you wanted ... and a variety of things that would never occur to people just emerging from the Victorian Age ... in the Big Easy.  So the city fathers studied European models and came up with a plan to limit prostitution and associated activities to a 20-block area.  Very progressive, they thought.  That lasted about 30 years, at which point the whole idea of legalized prostitution embarrassed the city powers-that-were, so they shut it down.  (I've noticed throughout this trip that the greatest danger to blues history seems to be tight-sphinctered local politicians.)
Jelly Roll Morton and the origin of jazz

Jelly Roll Morton's childhood home

Ferdinand LaMothe liked to be called Jelly Roll Morton.  He was born in a prosperous neighborhood and was, according to the precise racial accounting then prevalent, a creole.  His house still exists in the 7th ward, surrounded by several structures still unreconstituted after Katrina and a couple that Habitat for Humanity is rebuilding.
Jelly Roll began playing piano in Storyville when he was in his teens and became successful.  He was a dandy, always dressed to the nines, and a self promoter.  He went a little overboard by claiming that he invented Jazz in 1902.  He wasn't far off on the time or the place, just on the claim that it was he who originated the form.
It's impossible to say where exactly the blues was born, but that's not true about the music we call Jazz.  It did originate around the turn of the century, and it was born right in Jelly Roll's neighborhood.
Congo Square

A corner of Storyville that fronts on Rampart Street was called Congo Square.  It was a small park where the black community was free to congregate.  Jazz probably started with the drumming traditions imported from Africa, added instruments as ingenuity and finances permitted.  In a nod to Louis' fame and later 20th Century sensibilities, Congo Square was renamed the Louis Armstrong Park, and it now includes some wonderful artwork celebrating the epicenter of Jazz.