Jelly's Last Jam Hines, Gregory performer Mitchell, Brian Stokes performer Glover, Savion performer Theatrical Performance 1992-04-26 Virginia Theater Through September 5, 1993. Brian Stokes Mitchell replaced Gregory Hines in 1993; Music by Jelly Roll Morton Dir. George C. Wolfe Tap choreography Gregory Hines and Ted L. Levy; choreographed by Hope Clark Starring Gregory Hines (Jelly Roll Morton) Savion Glover (Young Jelly), ; Jimmy Tate understudy as young Jelly. Gregory Hines 1992 Tony Award Best Actor Musical Tonya Pinkins Tony Award Best Actress Featured Role in a Musical Keith David Tony Nomination Best Actor Featured Role Musical "Jelly's Last Jam" Tony Nomination for Best Book (Musical) Hope Clark, Ted L. Levy, Gregory Hines, Tony Award Nomination Best Choreography "Jelly's Last Jam" Tony Award Nomination Best Musical "Jelly's Last Jam" Tony Award Nomination Best Musical Score Writes Balliett: The musical "revolves around a black dancer named Jelly Roll Morton, who is a Scrooge in Creole clothing...this Morton is a greedy, hypocritical bully, and also a light-skinned racist, who "denies the black soil from which they rhythm [of jazz] was born" and who, late in the evening, says angrily, "there ain't no coon stock in this Creole." Change the lead's name in 'Jelly's Last Jam' to, say, Bill Robinson, and it becomes clear what the show really is-- an experimental study, done within a traditional Broadway-musical framework, of the life and death of a black misanthrope. In short, a psycho-musical. Morton's real outlines, though, are constantly suggested onstage, and anyone who knows something about his life will find it impossible not keep comparing his ghost with Wolfe's monster. Wolfe says that Morton was a Creole. Strictly speaking, he was a Creole of color, or cafe au lait, as they were once called--a partial descendent off the original Creoles, who were French-speaking white aristocrats of the early nineteenth century. Wolfe changes Morton, one of the great jazz jazz pianists, into a tap dancer-- presumably because Gregory Hines, who plays Morton, is a star. And Wolfe makes Morton a contemptible racist, even though Morton invariably hired black musicians, and none ever suggested he was a bigot. (To be sure, Morton, acutely aware of his own worth, was arrogant, and sometimes displayed the so-called New Orleans evil-- a red-eyed paranoia that seized all New Orleans musicians when they imagined they had been slighted or insulted.) But the worst of Wolfe's distortions in 'Jelly's Last Jam' involve Morton's music. Apparently believing that it was not 'black' enough or emotional enough, he hired the arranger-composer, Luther Henderson to write a homogenized "modern" score. The result is a tasteless stew on which float largely unrecognizable bits and pieces of Morton compositions. Morton's greatest records,, made in Chicago in 1926 and 1927, are elegant, driving examples of polyphonic jazz. They prefigure Duke Ellington, yet celebrate the old free-for-all New Orleans ensemble music. Balancing elation and sorrow, humor and pomp, the blues and ragtime, they are as 'black' as jazz got at that time." (Whitney Balliett, "The Real Jelly Roll.") (Constance Valis Hill, "High Voltage singers and dancers electrify ‘Jelly's Last Jam" Albany Times Union February 10, 1995 C9.) Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Balliett, Whitney: Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000. St. MartinÕs Press (2000). Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html Savion Glover (biography) loc.music.tdabio.98 Gregory Hines (biography) loc.music.tdabio.106 tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.654