I don't thnk you can have any interest in New Orleans jazz very long before the name Jelly Roll Morton comes up.

perhaps these recordings for Lomax were not available, but the Red Hot peppers stuff surely was. I think as well he was a potent mythological character - the whorehouse pianist who became a noted composer and orchestrator. As I remember Duke Ellington himself cited Morton as an influence.

but it was the whorehouse pianist persona that interested guys like our own George Melly, and Bob Wallis called his band the Storeyville Jazzband - after the infamous red light district.

To a repressed English society, this guy seemed like a colossus of ananrchy and freedom - a hero of a time and a place when all kinds of freedoms were available.