Jelly Roll Morton

A Creole pianist and composer from New Orleans, Jelly Roll Morton was among the first to write jazz down as fully formed arrangements rather than treat it purely as collective improvisation. With his Red Hot Peppers he set scored passages against solo breaks, giving early jazz a composer's architecture. Brilliant and self-mythologizing in equal measure, he claimed to have invented the music, a boast that nonetheless points to his real role as one of its first great organizers. His birth year is disputed, given as 1885 in some sources and 1890 in others.