Dead man blues

"When Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton sat down at the piano in the Library of Congress in May 1938 to begin his monumental series of interviews with Alan Lomax, he spoke of his years on the West Coast with the nostalgia of a man recalling a golden age, a lost Eden. He had arrived in Los Angeles more than 20 years earlier, but he still recounted his losses vividly. Tbe keenest loss was his separation from Anita Gonzales, by his own account "the only woman I ever loved," and to whom he left almost all of his royalties in his will.". "In Dead Man Blues, Phil Pastras sets the record straight on the…