You’re listening to Dead Man Blues, a Victor 78 from 1926. Jelly’s claims nodded to his exploits with the fairer sex, and the invention of jazz as a musical form. He even claimed to know when he would die. You see, Morton was raised by his aunt Eulalie Echo, a practicing voodoo priestess in their native New Orleans. And as Morton’s girlfriend Anita Gonzales explained:
Jelly always knew she’d sold him to Satan and that when she died, he’d die too – she would take him down with her.
And believe what you will, but Eulalie Echo passed away in 1941. As for Jelly: he died just two months later, at the age of 46.