Jelly Roll Morton Birth Site — Frenchmen Street Area

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe was born in the Faubourg Marigny in 1890 to a Creole family. He renamed himself Jelly Roll Morton and became the first great composer of jazz and the first to write jazz arrangements on paper. His recordings with the Red Hot Peppers in the late 1920s are foundational documents of the art form. He grew up playing piano in Storyville's houses and parlors. He claimed, with characteristic modesty, that he personally invented jazz in 1902. The birth site sits near Frenchmen Street, now the center of the city's live music scene. The Faubourg Marigny was once the plantation of Bernard de Marigny, a wealthy Creole who subdivided his property in 1806 to sell lots and develop a residential area. The Frenchmen Street entertainment district began developing in the 1980s. As Bourbon Street became dominated by tourism, Frenchmen developed as a spot for locals to enjoy live music. Morton was born where the city's Creole culture — French-speaking, Catholic, musically literate — met the raw material of American vernacular music. That collision is what jazz is. The first composer to write it down walked these blocks first.