WLD - thanks for the ideas, I haven't listened to Jelly'srecording for years, but my impression then was that he tired very hard to live in two worlds - the respectable one (where he could wear the diamond in this tooth) and the one he came from (where he had to pawn the diamon) - just agreeing to do the recordings showed to me that he was serious about documenting his history, even if he made up some (don't we all). I think it would have been very interesting to go out for a night bar-hopping with Jelly. It would be great if Marion McPartland, Ken Burns or somebody could just do a piano jazz historu TV series - Jelly, Willie the Lion, Ubbie - I have a tremendous admiration for them all.
I think they all pretty good guys who were mainly interested in perfecting their craft.
Chris in Wheaton