Dear MMD,  Does anyone know where to obtain a recut piano roll, or
a MIDI file, of Jelly Roll Morton's amazingly dark and jazzy (but
strangely neglected) adaptation of the "Miserere" from Verdi's opera,
"Il Trovatore?"

Morton plays this incredible piece on vol. 4 ("Kansas City Stomp") of
the Rounder Records CD edition of the Library of Congress recordings.
I believe there was a roll made in the 1950s by J. Lawrence Cook, who
used the Library of Congress recording as his source.  But I've had no
luck finding this composition among the numerous recuts and MIDI files
of Morton's work available today.

Even the sheet music to this seems to be impossible to find.  Lomax
includes a snippet of the beginning in his book Mr. Jelly Roll, but for
some reason the composition wasn't included in James Dapogny's volume,
"The Collected Piano Music of Jelly Roll Morton".

Louis A. Waldman
Austin, Texas

 [ The foreword of the book says it "contains a version of every piece
 [ Jelly Roll Morton ever published or recorded as a piano solo."
 [ However, the pre-publication advert stated, "The edition presents
 [ every Morton composition ever published or recorded as a piano solo
 [ ..."  In fact, the book includes only the pieces composed by Morton
 [ or attributed to him.
 [
 [   Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton
 [   The Collected Piano Music
 [   (C) 1982 Smithsonian Institution
 [   Publ. by Smithsonian Institution Press,
 [   P.O. Box 1579, Washington, D.C. 20013
 [   Copublished with Schirmer Books, May 1982
 [   ISBN 0-87474-351-6
 [
 [ -- Robbie