 Jelly Roll Morton’s New Orleans Jazzmen
at the RCA Manufacturing Company, Inc., studio #3 in New York, N.Y.
28th September 1939 This photograph was taken on the day of Morton’s second Bluebird recording session in 1939. Otto F. Hess took the photograph while visitor Harry Lim (centre) looked on.
Harry Lim was a Dutchman from Java, the main island of the Dutch East Indies. He collected jazz records before he travelled to the Netherlands in the late 1930s. He left for New York just before the war broke out.
I visited my friend Han Enderman and I noticed a book on his shelf, which was unknown to me. The book, Is This To Be My Souvenir? by Frank Büchmann-Möller, was published in 2000 by Odense University Press. It is based on the Timme Rosenkrantz Collection of jazz photographs, which exceeds more than 2000, and are now in the Music Dept. of the University Of Southern Denmark in Odense. [23]
I checked to see if there was anything in the book about Morton, and to my surprise I found the above picture on page 135. It shows left to right: Albert Nicholas, the left shoulder of Jelly Roll Morton, Harry Lim, Happy Caldwell and drummer Zutty Singleton.
The caption says that the photograph was taken at the RCA session of 14th September 1939 and is credited to Otto Hess. In 1939 Harry Lim had just arrived in the USA from The Netherlands. He is known to have been present at the Jelly Roll Morton’s New Orleans Jazzmen session two weeks later, but not on the first session. I had the opportunity to ask Harry about his meeting with Jelly Roll at the time of the recording, and he said that it was just a promotional affair. So I have a feeling that this newly-found Hess photograph was not taken on 14th September, but on 28th September 1939. The Otto Hess collection now resides in the New York Public Library.
Not shown in Mr. Jelly Lord (1980) by Laurie Wright, or Oh, Mister Jelly (1999) edited by William Russell. courtesy of Ate van Delden
© 2004 Ate van Delden Collection
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