blog post Jelly Roll Morton’s Vancouver

If you ever get the chance to venture onto the historic strip of old hotels lining East Hastings Street on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, you may want to poke your head into the Patricia Hotel. Located at the corner of Hastings and Dunlevy, the Patricia is where one of the undisputed legends of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton, hung his hat between 1919 and 1921. Morton, the New Orleans born, self-proclaimed inventor of jazz, rolled into town to join the house band of one of the hottest night spots in the city. He sang, joked, played burning hot piano, gambled and fought off drunken loggers during his residency at the Patricia. If that kind of CV doesn’t earn him honorary Canuck status, I can’t imagine what would.

As colourful as the history is, it’s now almost forgotten. But thanks to a new CD by James Danderfer, the memory of Morton’s stay on Canada’s West Coast lives on. Swingin’ at the Patricia is a collection of Morton’s compositions and Danderfer originals, composed in a style that is faithful to the Morton aesthetic. Danderfer gave the management of the Patricia Hotel his best elevator pitch for supporting the new CD, and without missing a beat, general manager Daryl Nelsen agreed to underwrite the project. This wasn’t the first time the Patricia gave the nod to a request to recognize the hotel’s most famous denizen. Back in January 2010, CBC Radio produced a show at the hotel called “Jelly Roll Morton-Making Vancouver” that included performances by Henry Butler, Ndidi Onukwulu, C.R. Avery and the James Danderfer Trio.  

Danderfer on composing music to honour Jelly Roll

Danderfer explains how the opportunity to perform in Pat’s Pub (called the Patricia Café in Morton’s day) was a creative turning point. “Just knowing that Jelly Roll played in that room changes the way it feels to perform there. It actually changes everything about the way you look at playing the music,” says Danderfer. “Those notes are somewhere in those walls. He was right there and lived in one of the rooms. It’s a really mysterious connection you feel.”

“It’s kind of a tricky place to be as a musician as you start trying to capture a feel of an earlier time,” continues Danderfer. “I started hanging out around the Patricia Hotel to try to get a sense of anything, a feeling, and to imagine what things looked like when Jelly Roll looked out his window there. Later, when I went to the piano, these little melodies started to come out and that’s how the five pieces I called ‘The Jelly Roll Suite’ were born.”

On March 9, the James Danderfer Trio (Danderfer on clarinet, Miles Black on piano and Joe Poole on drums) will repatriate Morton’s music to the Patricia Hotel and bring along Danderfer’s new tunes written in the style of Morton.  

Related Links:

MARCH 9th release party at Pat’s Pub for ‘Swingin’ at the Patricia’ album

Canadian Jazz legend Phil Nimmons

James Danderfer interviewd by Guy MacPherson