Taking a Long, Hard Look at Life of Jelly Roll Morton

“Jelly Roll!” takes the audience from jazz pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton’s earliest days to his death in Los Angeles. We see Morton as a 6-year-old, talking about voodoo and other strange goings-on in his New Orleans home. Jump forward a lifetime and there he is as a ghost, complaining that his funeral is not nearly as much fun as it should be.

“We cover it all, from the start to the end--with many things in between,” said Marion J. Caffey, the star of the one-man show coming to the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Friday for a single performance. “It’s a challenge pulling it all together, but it’s a great time too.”

Caffey, touring nationally with “Jelly Roll!,” is the center of attention for 90 minutes, with a little assistance from pianist Butch Thompson, the man actually playing “Finger Breaking” and other signature Morton tunes.

Caffey does a little singing and and a lot of talking during this unsentimental journey. He jaws about the “hoodoo voodoo,” the women, the drinking, the highs and the lows, and, of course, the music that made up Morton’s world.

“What’s really interesting is all that he did in his life,” Caffey said from his home in Gainesville, Fla. “From New Orleans and playing in the whorehouses [during his teens] to moving to Chicago and becoming, as he liked to say, the inventor of jazz.”

Actually, the seeds of jazz were already starting to sprout in New Orleans in the late 19th century when Morton was born. But there’s no question he was one of the key figures in the evolution of ragtime music into what solidified in the ‘20s as jazz.

In any case, Caffey said, “Jelly Roll was just a very colorful man . . . that’s what I like about playing him.”

The veteran New York stage performer has been doing it off and on for several months, both on tour and off-Broadway at the 47th Street Theater in New York City.

Caffey inherited the role at the 47th last year from Vernel Bagneris, who wrote the show and first starred as Morton. The Bagneris production won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical for 1995.

The play received some fine notices as well. New York magazine critic John Simon began his review this way: “If, then, I had to demonstrate concretely what is charming, I could, these days, send the questioner to a little show called ‘Jelly Roll!’ ”

Authenticity is a big reason for the success, Caffey said. Bagneris created “Jelly Roll!” after extensive research, including dozens of hours spent listening to Morton’s music and musings on tapes at the Library of Congress.

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Bagneris started with the basics. Morton was born Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe Morton on Oct. 20, 1890, and went on to become a pioneer in ragtime music.

His biggest fame came during the late ‘20s when he recorded songs with his group, Morton’s Red Hot Peppers.

But the good times didn’t last. After his popularity waned in the ‘30s, Morton died in Los Angeles on July 10, 1941, reportedly bitter that Louis Armstrong and other contemporaries had become more famous.

“He was a very complex person, brilliant but also arrogant,” Caffey said. “There are so many sides to him, and I think they are in the piece. It captures the essence of the time, too, which is important.”

Because of its historical foundation, Caffey thinks “Jelly Roll!” is as valuable as “Jelly’s Last Jam,” George C. Wolfe’s better-known musical. Wolfe’s vivid show, which portrays Morton as a bigot who betrays his black heritage, is as much about racism and self-hatred as it is about music.

“This is more of a biography, more of a history about his full life and the songs,” Caffey said. “This is less of a spectacle [than ‘Jelly’s Last Jam’]. . . . It’s really the man talking about himself and revealing him to us along the way.”

* What: “Jelly Roll!”

* When: Friday at 8 p.m.

* Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Jamboree Road exit and head south. Turn left onto Campus Drive. The theater is on Campus near Bridge Road, across from the Marketplace mall.

* Wherewithal: $18-$25.

* Where to call: (714) 854-4646.