Hi all,
I just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know about a new video from The Jelly Roll Factory on Youtube.  It's a brief slideshow explaining what The Jelly Roll Factory is, what we want to do and why it's a good idea for people with a little bit of extra money hanging around to give us some support.  The current version is in German, but we'll have an English version up soon, and even if you don't understand the words, you'll love the music by founding members Phil Dalton, Jake Yanachek, Joe Holloway and Ricky Barkosky.
Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAPY14AEFdU
Cheers,
Peter

Welcome to the official blog of The Jelly Roll Factory (soon to be e.V.), a new non-profit organization focused on supporting the production of new music while promoting the use and enjoyment of older music, specifically early jazz and blues that has entered the public domain. I'll get into the specifics of our mission in a later post. Right now I just want to introduce myself as the new blog editor and say a few words about what we'll be trying to do here. My name is Peter Lawson. I'm a musicologist, writer, singer and English teacher, originally from Tennessee but now permanently based in Hamburg. With this blog, I'm interested in exploring questions of all sorts relating to the preoccupations of our organization. This includes historical or interpretive investigations of early jazz and blues songs, reports on issues relating to copyright law and the public domain, testimonials about personal experiences performing music on the street or within a local scene and much more. If you have any suggestions, comments, or submissions, I invite you to write to me at jellyrollfactory@gmail.com.

Until next time,

Peter

A Jelly Roll Anthem? Shake it and Break it - Charley Patton

Peter Lawson messaged me yesterday with this fabulous piece of music. He suggested it as an anthem for The Jelly Roll Factory.... and I happen to agree with him. 

Here:s the lyrics from the first verse.... 

You can shake it, you can break it,

you can hang it on the wall
Throw it out the window, catch it 'fore it roll
You can shake it, you can break it,
you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Everybody have a jelly roll like mine, I lives in town
I, ain't got no brown, I, an' I want it now
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
You can snatch it, you can grab it, you can break it,
you can twist it, any way that I love to get it
I, had my right mind since I, I blowed this town
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Jus' shake it, you can break it,
you can hang it on the wall
.. it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it...
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
I ain't got nobody here but me and myself
I, stay blue all the time, aw, when the sun goes down
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
You can shake it, you can break it,
you can hang it on the wall
... it out the window, catch it 'fore it fall
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall 

...it out the window, catch... 

•     

Jelly Roll Team Profile - Peter Lawson - Musicologist

I grew up in the hills of east Tennessee. Thanks to my music-loving parents, my nursery rhymes were mostly songs by the Impressions, Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman etc., and I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t sing along with any Beatles song that happened to come on the radio. My obsession with music of all kinds continued through childhood into adolescence and gradually expanded, especially after a middle school band director heard me goofing off and told me that I actually had a pretty good baritone voice (I’ll never know whether he really meant it or was just trying to shunt me off into the choir). When I left home to study at Brown University, I ended up taking music on as my major and performing with the University Chorus.

After graduating from college I moved to Los Angeles, where I earned a PhD in musicology at UCLA while continuing to perform regularly, primarily vocal music of the renaissance and baroque periods. While pursuing my degree, I was incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to assist and study under some of the greatest musicological minds of our time, including my advisor Mitchell Morris, MacArthur fellow Susan McClary, and Elijah Wald, whose Blues course, which I assisted twice and taught once, completely reshaped my way of thinking, not only about blues, but about the entire history of popular music in America.

Since I completed my studies in the Spring of 2015 I have been in Hamburg, raising my one-year-old son, teaching English, and taking any opportunity I can get to sing, relearn the guitar after a decade-long hiatus, and hear music wherever I can find it. I’m thrilled to be a part of the Jelly Roll Factory project not just because it allows me to proselytize about the early blues and jazz music that I already love but also because of the new and much needed opportunity for personal expression that it offers to me and to anyone in Hamburg who wants to take advantage of it.

(More to come from Peter on the history of this amazing music in the near future. Look out for his article on the history of the Jelly Roll in American culture. Ed)

Jelly Roll Team Profile - Jake Yanachek

I was born in New York City and raised not far away in the suburbs. As I look back, it was a great place to live; close enough to the city, but far enough away for m to know there was much more to life than suburbia. The search for "something else" -fueled by my love of Kerouac, loud music, and movement of any kind- brought me west at the age of 18. I began university in San Francisco, California and eventually finished in Phoenix, Arizona with a B.S. in Urban Studies, where I focussed on the cooperation of municipalities and non-profit service providers.

 

After finishing my studies, I moved back to New York. This move was short lived, however, as the place where I grew up had become much too small. I started traveling in my early twenties, eventually making my way through Central America. Along the way, I met a beautiful German girl who invited me to come visit Hamburg. There wasn't much tying me down at that point, so I jumped at the opportunity. I found myself in Hamburg in May, 2014 with no job, no visa and dwindling cash. I quickly realized that I wanted to stay (for the girl, less so for the grey city) and found a solution: busking.

I spent the summer of 2014 on the streets of Hamburg with an acoustic guitar, an empty box and a growing repertoire of songs to play. I had never done anything like this before. I'd always wanted to play in the NYC subways, but I was always somehow intimidated. It was still a bit unnerving in Hamburg (after all, you never know if you'll be praised, harassed, chased by cops or beggars, etc...) but it had become my job. I made nearly 2000 Euros that summer; it was enough to sustain myself until my Schengen visa was up.

I returned to HH for good in November, 2014. I completed a teaching certification course and have been working as an English teacher ever since. From time to time, I still busk.

 

Music has always been a passion of mine. I began playing guitar at 13. My Mom took me to my first concert at Madison Square Garden shortly after that. I've been fortunate to have been able to travel to may different places to see live music. The Jelly Roll Factory allows me to combine my skills, previous experience and passion for music into one project.

And if you see me on the streets, throw me some change.

Jelly Roll Team Profile - Joe Holloway

I grew up in a musical household, in the West part of Cornwall, in the UK. My dad had an upright piano, and an old nylon-string guitar that I would attempt to get my tiny arms around until I was old enough to start having real lessons at age 8. I started learning classical guitar, and then later switched to electric when I started to develop a taste for modern pop punk bands like Green Day and Blink-182. Through school and college from the age of 14, I played in several different heavy rock bands, performing locally at festivals and in bars until I moved away to Manchester to attend university.

I completed a B.A. in Popular Music in 2014, before moving to Hamburg. Musically, it was an eye-opening experience, as a big part of my course was continuously working with other musicians in different groups, and experimenting with all kinds of genres. I had the opportunity of moving from guitar to bass and drums with different groups, and so was able to get a feel for what it takes to work in a band.

I also became interested in the recording process, and for my course's final project, I chose to write, record, mix and perform all parts of an album, as well as write a report explaining every productive and creative decision I made. Through this process, I gained a lot of experience in mixing and sound engineering, as well as in using recording software such as Logic Pro X.

Since moving to Hamburg, I've become involved with various music projects, The Jelly Roll Factory being one, and have also continued to pursue my own solo projects. I met my friends on the JRF team through working at Hamburg School of English, and I'm very excited to see what we can achieve.

The True King of Rock n Roll - Robert Johnson

So why was Bobby J the greatest of them all?

Robert Johnson was an normal lad in the Delta in his early 20s. Married and expecting his first kid.. Sadly neither survived child birth. And thus began the life of the blues, the real pain of real life. You can't sing the blues if u ain't got no pain to fuel it.He had buckets of it...

It is said he was a very average guitarist and was ridiculed by his mentors Son House, a three times murderer, and Chalrey Patton, the first king of the blues. Charley Patton was by most accounts a nasty drunk and tight with his money, however his recorded work is some of the most brilliant blues ever performed. These men literally told Robert Johnson to F*** off with his terrible playing. So he did.

Robert Johnson spent nearly 2 years learning from a man called Ike Zimmerman. He absorbed all the information and practiced endlessly. From this came the Robert Johnson sound we know today.

His lyrics were dark. The man had sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads after all. ;) The blues was seen as the devil's music and Robert Johnson milked that persona with songs like: Me and the Devil Blues, Crossroads Blues, Preaching Blues and Hell Hounds on my Tale. The latter is regarded as one of the greatest songs ever written.

The crossroads myth dates back to Tommy Johnson 15 years earlier when he proclaimed the devil re-tuned his guitar, played a lick on it and suddenly he could play the blues. (the wonders of open tuning)

But why was Bobby J so far ahead of everyone else? He was creating electric guitar sounds from a cheap Gibson and a bottleneck. He took his peers music so much further. He was 20, 30 years ahead of his time in what he was attempting to do with the guitar. Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones and pretty much every rock musician sights Robert Johnson as one of the greatest influences.

To really understand this we need to compare him to his peers. Namely: Son House, Charley Patton, and other influences like Skip James or Peetie Wheatstraw. Below are a some of their songs:

Son House – Death letter Blues

Charley Patton – Mississipp Boweavil Blues

Skip James – Devil Got My Woman

Peetie Wheatstraw – Gangster's Blues

Robert Johnson took everything one two three steps further, introducing off beats and timing which we associate with rock n roll rather than the blues. There were voodoo drum beats, Gambian sounds, field hollers, railway songs, chain-gang chants echoing throughout. Below are a few Bobby J songs. The change in dynamic between these and the tracks from his peers is clear. Robert Johnson was a once-in-a-lifetime. The bridge to all the music that follwed and the true king of Rock n Roll.

Crossroads Blues

Hellhounds on My Tail – (This is influenced to Skip James)

Daily Motion Link To Bobby J

Preaching Blues (and up jumped the devil) (Patton/House slide influence but totally revolutionised by Bobby J)

Daily Motion link to Preachin Blues 

(Due to the very tiresome GEMA regulations I can't find many of the Robert Johnson tracks... and as a 70 pma Jelly Roller.. what the HELL are GEMA protecting it... these are questions the Jelly Roll Factory wants answer on!)

Jelly Roll Team Profiles - Ricky Barkosky

 

Ricky Barkosky

My day job is a freelance English teacher. I have a B.A. in Global and International Studies with a minor in German language and culture from the University of Kansas and have been actively playing music for over ten years now. The latter is what defines everything about my day-to-day life. I love discovering and listening to music and I really can’t imagine being anything other than a musician and artist. 

I luckily found music and art at a young age. My mom is a painter and always had records on, my dad is a drummer, my uncle a guitar player, and my step mom and step dad always encouraged creativity and individuality. I would always go along to my dad’s band practice and remember being simply transfixed by how everything appeared—I loved how the drums looked when they were set up, the posters of maple-like leaves on the wall, and how the silver grill of the Fender amp face glistened everywhere except the cigarette burns. 

I started playing drums at sixteen and at nineteen moved to Seoul, South Korea with my family. I joined a band called On Sparrow Hills, which happened to be formed by English teachers, and recorded an EP, The Sitting Choir, in 2009.
 
In the midwestern college oasis of Lawrence, Kansas I met and became friends with Ron Miller, drummer for Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, and formed the garage rock and roll band Up The Academy. We recorded numerous times at the Harveyville Project and released a selftitled 7” in 2012 on Replay Records. Additionally, we played numerous shows, including two years in a row at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX, and toured the States.  

Some years later, I joined the psychedelic, shoegaze band Psychic Heat and continued to play rigorously—including another year at SXSW. I toured with Psychic Heat and recorded the album Sunshower at the Harveyville Project, which was released in May 2016 on High Dive Records.  
I’ve been extremely lucky, knock on wood, in convincing the woman who is now my lovely German girlfriend to be with me and in finding so many other amazing people in Germany. In other words, I call Hamburg my home nowadays. I’m working with my new band The Wayward Howls and continue to write and play music daily. 

I’m really pleased to be working with the extremely talented and diverse individuals on The Jelly Roll Factory team and look forward to see what the future brings.  

Street musician - Hamburg

I was out today in the beautiful sunshine. I went down to Park Fiction for Feierabend and met Igor, a Russian guy who has lived and played the streets in Hamburg for the last 20 years. I got out my harps and we jammed for about 2 hours as we went from rock t jazz and then into some dirty slide blues. Happy Days :))

Grassroots Community Budget recording studio

Grassroots Support of local Hamburg Artists

Just a reminder to all of you out there that focus of our project is a community based recording studio. This is the main focus of of our fund-raising drive over the next few months :)) 

Who do we want to help?

Those who don't have the resources to take thier music to the world. Those short on cash, tied by family financial commitments, stuck in the same practice/street playing cycle. Those who find it hard to get heard and seen. Those who can't get a pratice room, who find it hard to keep a band going due to lack of resources. We simply want to help those people who want a chance to take thier music more seriously or who do already and can't get a foot on the ladder.

What do we want to create?

A budget recording studio to produce demo recordings for hard up musos and street musicians who normally wouldn't have access to these opportunities. Any genre is possible, from blues and soul to singer-songwriters or hip hop, though this is not really suited to say... death metal bands.

How would it work?

1. We set up a first meeting with the prospective artist who shows us the work they want to record, either played for us or recorded on their phone. We don't want to spoon feed people we want to enable them, thus some initiave on their part is necessary.
2. The artist will be asked to cover a Public Domain piece of music in their own style as part of honouring the heritage The Jelly Roll Factory is founded on.
3. Once they have done that we will arrange a studio appointment of 2 to 3 hours. The onus is on the artist to make the most of the time allotted and to be ready and professional.
4. There will be a token charge of xyz€. People take things more seriously when there is even a small amount of money in the game.
5. When the demo of 3, 4 or 5 songs is complete they will be given the master copy on CD rom or on thier USB stick as mp3 files. We will not store back ups unless asked to by the artist.

Jelly Roll Team Profiles - Phil Dalton

Phil Dalton - The Jelly Roll Factory

My day job is as a freelance business English teacher. However, I have carried a passion for music for most of my life. I started playing the blues harmonica when I was 14 and have played the guitar since 2000. I fell into Delta blues in my late teens and found myself listening to the haunting tones of Son House and Skip James. I was hooked!

 I have also experienced the hardships of playing; homelessness, poverty and frustation of not being able to go beyond your station. In South Africa, I ran an open house policy for musicians who passed through Jeffreys Bay, in the Eastern Cape. I also supported and represented some of these artists and was able to play with many exceptional people. On many occasions, I guested on my harp for Brent Kozak, a well-known, talented Knysna artist.

I studied French cuisine and spent many years in the hospitality industry, in both front and back shop positions. Later, whilst living in South Africa, I built and ran a small but successful construction and renovation business, with which I bought and sold properties, renovated and built properties.

Since moving to Germany, I have completed a Business Administration HNC/D with Edexcel in my spare time. I have also been playing music with friends and on the streets. I have written two books; a novel and a teaching aid.

I am a self-driven, intrinsically motivated person, who demands the best from myself and from others. I am passionate about this project and would gladly sit down with anyone who is interested in hearing about what we are doing.

A New Jelly-Roller picture version

So we have a new collage of the 70pma Jelly-Rollers

The stars of the show :)

The 70pma Jely-Rollers

70pma Jelly-Rollers

Peetie Wheatstraw - Legend profile

Peetie Wheatstraw (December 21, 1902 – December 21, 1941) was the name adopted by the singer William Bunch, an influential figure among 1930s blues singers. The only known photograph of him shows him holding a National brand tricone resonator guitar, but he played the piano on most of his recordings

A true great. As comfortable with a guitar or playing piano and crooning with a jazz band. I have been blown away by his recordings ever since I came across them. I have attached Gangster blues here, enjoy :))

To read more about Peetie Wheatstraw visit: wiki Peetie Wheatstraw

Six New Public Domain Jelly Rollers

**** Jelly Roll update: We are working on the financial side and getting all the costings and numbers sorted at the moment. We are also refining the recording process, doing feasability studies on the vinyl production and writing both risk analysis and the double marketing mix. :)****

We are very pleased to announce the addition of six new faces to our 70pma club (died before 1946)

Richard "Rabbit" Brown (c. 1880 – c. 1937) was an American blues guitarist and composer. His music was characterized by a mixture of blues, pop songs, and original topical ballads. On May 11, 1927, he recorded six singles for Victor Records. "James Alley Blues" is included in the Anthology of American Folk Music and has been covered by Bob Dylan, among others.

Jim Jackson (c.1884 – 1933) was an African-American blues and hokum singer, songster, and guitarist, whose recordings in the late 1920s were popular and influential on later artists.

Virginia Liston (1890 – June 1932) was an American classic female blues and jazz singer. She spent most of her career in black vaudeville. Liston recorded "You Can Dip Your Bread in My Gravy, but You Can't Have None of My Chops," and "Just Take One Long Last Lingering Look." She performed with her then-husband, Samuel H. Gray, billed as Liston and Liston. She also performed with Clarence Williams, singing with the Clarence Williams Blue Five on "You've Got the Right Key, but the Wrong Keyhole" and "Early in the Morning" and the Clarence Williams Washboard Band on "Cushion Foot Stomp," and "P.D.Q. Blues."

Laura Smith (unknown – February 1932) was an American classic female blues and country blues singer. She is best known for her recordings of "Gonna Put You Right in Jail" and her version of "Don't You Leave Me Here". She led Laura Smith and her Wild Cats and also worked with Clarence Williams and Perry Bradford. Details of her life outside the music industry are scanty.

 Mamie Smith (née Robinson, May 26, 1883 – September 16, 1946) was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress. As a vaudeville singer she performed in various styles, including jazz and blues. In 1920, she entered blues history as the first African-American artist to make vocal blues recordings. Willie "The Lion" Smith (no relation) described the background of that recording in his autobiography, Music on My Mind.

Johnny Dodds (April 12, 1892 – August 8, 1940) was an American New Orleans based jazz clarinetist and alto saxophonist, best known for his recordings under his own name and with bands such as those of Joe "King" Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Lovie Austin and Louis Armstrong.Dodds (pronounced "dots") was also the older brother of drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds. The pair worked together in the New Orleans Bootblacks in 1926.

jelly roll update

Good evening Jelly Rollers :)

We have not been too visible here for a few days, but we have been busy and the business plan is progressing well.

At present we are working on:

• Competitive analysis of recording studios
• Financial forecasting
• Decisions around limiting the time of the project
• Updating the database and all that entails
• 1500 Jelly roll stickers ordered and printed in 2 weeks
• Defining the recording process from a technical/IT and analogue perspective

 The process of writing this plan really is helping to create owership of the project and allowa ua to move forward pragmatically.

As soon as we have some more info on our progess I'll post it out to you. Thanks for your support :)

Facebook page - Like us :)

Our Facebook page is now online. So please come show your support and like us :)

https://www.facebook.com/TheJellyRollFactory

Thanks Joe Holloway for sorting this out. It is a bit basic at present, but soon we will be up to full steam.

If you are in the sweepstake for the Euros we'll be posting updates on there.

Phil :)

Mission Statement - First draft

Mission Statement

The preservation of PUBLIC DOMAIN music from the 1920s and 1930s, specifically blues and jazz. The propogation of this music into a new generation of musicians and the dissemination of music history and the lives that made it.

We wish to combine this love and passion for music with our innate desire to help other musicians in our local area by supporting them through our recording studio. 

The success of our friends, networks and community is key to the promotion of music, of local artists, of tolerance and friendship and the building of bridges not walls.

Jelly Roll update

Good morning Jelly-rollers

It has been a busy week all round, but some progress has been made.

The business plan is now in full swing, We are presently putting together the financial and marketing plan so we can continue to write the plan. Next up is a risk analysis.

We are certainly going to have to crowd fund the project and are planning on funding the first two years of operations to allow us the time to set up and build our name locally and then across Germany.

If we take the time to plan now we will be more successful later.

We have also identified 254 tracks of interest to send to a lawyer for clearance and identified 25 new sets of raw data to add to the database.

Work is coming on well.

We need to find a sympathetic:

• graphic designer to do vector pictures of our logo
• German lawyer - to help incorporate The Jelly Roll Factory here in Germany
• German speackers who would like to translate our bad German into something a bit less creative ;) 

If you are or know someone who might be interested in helping please drop us a line.
phildalton101@hotmail.com (subject Jelly Help)

Database sneak preview

So here, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the first public preview of our database.This has been made possible thanks solely to the hard work and passion of Nick Isserstedt.

14000 shellac tracks and 1200 artist spanning most of the 1920s and 1930s and coverng most of the race recording from the major records labels.

So it is MS Access based. Here is the search page:

Search for artist, composer or song title

 Here are the results on a search for the phrase Jelly Roll:

 Once we find tracks we could use we make them as "of interest" and they ppear on a seperate page. Then we have compiled another list called "viable recordings" which automatically adds tracks of artist who have been dead for more than 70 years. See below:

This then gives us tracks we can check with IP lawyers

This is going to be offline use only at present. When we can raise enough capital we want to put the modules online.

For more information please feel free to contact us at The Jelly Roll Factory

New Sticker idea

Another simple design to create interest :)

Local Hamburg Band the Wayward Howls at Pocca Hamburgerberg last night

Just want to give a shout out for the Wayward Howls (they describe themselves as: alternative psycheldelic soul rock´n´roll Hamburg) who played a killer set to a crowd of about 80 people at Pocca in Hamburgerberg last night. They were meant to kick the evening off but where moved to headline because of their popularity. I had a fantastic evening and they seem to as well.

Check out the Wayward Howls demos online here:

https://thewaywardhowls.bandcamp.com/releases

Their next gig informatin will be posted here so you can catch them too :))

You can keep up to date with them on their faebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/Waywardhowls/

Thanks again guys for a great evenings entertainment

Simpler Format for the Logo

Here is a simpler format for the logo:

...and the version for stickers  to be printed in the next few weeks. 1000, 5x5cm stickers cost 40€ online. I am trying to source them locally as well.

Grassroots Hamburg Music Support

This is a copy of the first draft of the studio description from the business plan. I would value ur feedback on the idea and where it could be extended... if I forgot something from the lists. ..any suggestions? :)

Grassroots Support of local Hamburg Artists

Who do we want to help?

Those who don't have the resources to take thier music to the world. Those short on cash, tied by family financial commitments, stuck in the same practice/street playing cycle. Those who find it hard to get heard and seen. Those who can't get a pratice room, who find it hard to keep a band going due to lack of resources. We simply want to help those people who want a chance to take thier music more seriously or who do already and can't get a foot on the ladder.

What do we want to create?

A budget recording studio to produce demo recordings for hard up musos and street musicians who normally wouldn't have access to these opportunities. Any genre is possible, from blues and soul to singer-songwriters or hip hop, though this is not really suited to say... death metal bands.

How would it work?

1. We set up a first meeting with the prospective artist who shows us the work they want to record, either played for us or recorded on their phone. We don't want to spoon feed people we want to enable them, thus some initiave on their part is necessary.
2. The artist will be asked to cover a Public Domain piece of music in their own style as part of honouring the heritage The Jelly Roll Factory is founded on.
3. Once they have done that we will arrange a studio appointment of 2 to 3 hours. The onus is on the artist to make the most of the time allotted and to be ready and professional.
4. There will be a token charge of xyz€. People take things more seriously when there is even a small amount of money in the game.
5. When the demo of 3, 4 or 5 songs is complete they will be given the master copy on CD rom or on thier USB stick as mp3 files. We will not store back ups unless asked to by the artist.

Where would we do this?

A bunker practice room or other practice space in Hamburg. These generally cost between 150€ and 300€ per month to rent.

The space will be multi-purpose. Giving us both a recording studio and initially a base of operations from which to run The Jelly Roll Factory.

What equipment would we need to record artists?

• PA system and speakers
• various leads
• 2 vocals microphones, leads and stands
• 50 watt guitar amp
• Bass amp
• Computer with CD burmer
• Basic drum kit
• Recording software Audacity Pro

What other furniture would we need?

• Chairs
• Bar stools
• Tea crates
• Table
• Desk
• Book shelves
• Record player, speakers and amp
• Lighting
• Fridge
• White/Notice/Chalk board

These would be sourced through ebay kleinanzeigen, ebay, amazon and donated. Between the founding members of The Jelly Roll Factory we have enough music and music tech savvy to be able to make value for money acqusitions.

New Logo

We have upgraded our logo. This will be taken to a graphic designer for a professional finish :)

The Values of Public Domain

Here is an exerpt I found on the PUBLIC DOMAIN page on Wikipedia about the values of PUBLIC DOMAIN. Here at The Jelly Roll Factory we support these principles.

Pamela Samuelson has identified eight "values" that can arise from information and works in the public domain.^[20]:22
Possible values include:

1. Building blocks for the creation of new knowledge, examples include data, facts, ideas, theories, and scientific principle.
2. Access to cultural heritage through information resources such as ancient Greek texts and Mozart’s symphonies.
3. Promoting education, through the spread of information, ideas, and scientific principles.
4. Enabling follow-on innovation, through for example expired patents and copyright.
5. Enabling low cost access to information without the need to locate the owner or negotiate rights clearance and pay royalties, through for example expired copyrighted works or patents, and non-original data compilation.^[21]
6. Promoting public health and safety, through information and scientific principles.
7. Promoting the democratic process and values, through news, laws, regulation, and judicial opinion.
8. Enabling competitive imitation, through for example expired patents and copyright, or publicly disclosed technologies that do not qualify for patent protection.^[20]:22

I found this useful information on PUBLIC DOMAIN law (especially for our US readers) on the Stanford University websiteso I thought I would share it with you.

Public Domain Stanford University Library

One of the most difficult aspects of our whole project is defining the usage and parameters of the use of PD work in various countries. We still have some way to go on this and we'll keep you updated.

Barbecue Bob - Yo Yo Blues

Barbecue Bob (aka Robert Hicks) , named Barbecue because he was a grill chef in a barbecue restaurant, was a piedamont blues artist. He was an iconic guitarist and had an amazin blues voice. Sadly he died in 1931 of TB aged 29.

Excerpt from our business plan

Business Idea

What is the purpose of the project?

The Jelly Roll Factory has two main objectives:

• Firstly to create awareness of PUBLIC DOMAIN blues and jazz of the 1920s and 1930s. The artist, their lives and stories and their music. We wish to bring back some of this truly great era of music through releasing 7 inch vinyl versions of the original shellac 78 rpm songs, which have never been released on the later vinyl format. We also wish to see these songs sung by artists and for the history of the music to live on. Breathing life into the memory of the who paved the way for the music world as we know it today.

• The second part is to invest in hard up local artists and street musicians in the greater Hamburg area. Helping those who don't have cash for demo recordings to get their music onto cd so that they can use this to make their own luck to get gigs or sell cds on the street. To this end, we intend to build and run a budget demo recording studio.

• Importantly no style of music is off limits. We want to support artist if they are bluesmen or hip hop artist or singer song-writers of ballads. We ask only that their music is their own and that they cover one public domain track in their own style and make it their own. We believe it is vital that thier is a link between the old and the new and that each musician honours that as part of working with us.

What is special about our idea?

• Music is a driving force in the lives of all involved in the Jelly Roll Factory. We have all gained immense pleasure from playing and we all understand the hardships and pitfalls involved in a life of music.
• We would like to give back to our fellow musicians, bring back the sounds and words of yesteryear's titans and move forward in the fellowship and rewards that playing and networking with the local community can bring.
• The Jelly Roll Factory is about then and now. Looking to fill the cracks where commercial music companies would never go. It it about joining our shared music history and grassroots community support.

What are our short-term goals?

• Release one single of public domain music in a limited edition run of 100 records.
• Website with a live MS Access database of 20s and 30s shellac recordings. At present we have over 14000 titles and 1200 artists in the offline beta version
• Deutsch version
• Set up an event for local musicians to play
• Begin feasability studies for a practice room we can utilise as a budget recording studio.
• Networking with street musicians and other artists to find specific common needs beyond the music.

What are our long-term goals?

• A busy budget recording studio serving the local music community.
• Vinyl cutting – boutique runs (under 50 copies)
• Musical equipment swap shop
• Music history lectures and storytelling
• Quarterly single vinyl releases
• DJ the music
• Regular events for local and visiting artists:
• Interaction between us and local charities eg: Addiction/STD awareness.

Jelly Roll Update

Database - Nick Isserstadt, our resident IT guy, has built a database in MS Access to search around 14000 shellac recordings from the 20s and 30s with:

• Title
• Artist
• Record Label
• Composer 
• Date Recorded
• Matrix number
• Shellac Number

Although this is still in the fledgeling stages the initial results are proving extremely useful. In time and with funding we want to process this online for all of you to research and use.

 Thanks Nick :)

Standing on the shoulders of Giants

I would like to mention Tom Norm Morrison who built juneberry78s.com a website for early American roots music. Sadly Tom passed away last year, but his legacy of a digitalised 78 collection and commitment to public domain music is a mantle we wish to aspire to at The Jelly Roll Factory. Please visit his website and enjoy the listening room with many 78s available on mp3.

Hamburg grassroots music support

After long chats with Jake and Ricky. (The two lads, both passionate and knowledgeable musician, helping make this project a reality.) the focus on grassroots support of musicians has really started to take shape.

A priority project for us would be a budget one stop demo recording studio for talented street and part-time musician without access to a space to record.

The details are being thrashed out and we.ll tell u more as it as it happens but the spirit of the project is to help grassroots musicians get a demo recording of their original material with which they can make their own luck in getting gigs or recording a cd to sell on the street or release

More to follow....

Trixe Smith - My Daddy Rocks Me

Trixie Smith (1895 - 1943) Released in 1922, it is credited as the first song to mention Rock and Roll. It was composed by J. Berni Barbour, who passed in 1936. This makes this a very exciting work to consider for public domain use. This is a slightly later version than the original 1922 release, but what an amazing piece of music

The Rule of Shorter Term - Copyright Law

Now to highlight some of the difficulties understandng the copyright situation of works that are out of copyright in other countries, but still under copyright in Germany. Germany decided to reject the rule of shorter term. This means that in most countries when a piece of work is out of copyright in it's country of origin it is out of copyright in the other country, even if that country has a longer copyright law. However Germany opted out of this law in most situation, especially pertaining to other EU works and US works. In German there is a blanket copyright law for 70 years p.m.a (after the person's death)

Here is an excerpt from the wikipedia page on the Rule of Shorter Term:

Situation in the European Union

In the European Union, copyrights have been harmonized amongst the member states by the EU directive 93/98/EEC on harmonising the term of copyright protection. This binding directive, which became effective on July 1, 1995, has raised the duration of copyrights throughout the union to 70 years p.m.a. It also includes in its article 7 a mandatory rule of the shorter term for works from non-EU countries. Within the EU, no comparison of terms is applied, and—as in the Berne Convention or in the UCC—existing international obligations (such as bilateral treaties) may override this rule of the shorter term. Directive 93/98/EEC was repealed and replaced by Directive 2006/116/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights.^[19]
Germany extends the non-applicability of the rule of the shorter term to all members of the European Economic Area in §120 of its Urheberrechtsgesetz.^[20] It also does not apply the comparison of terms to U.S. works. In a case decided on October 7, 2003 by the Oberlandesgericht of Hesse in Frankfurt am Main, the court ruled that a U.S. work that had fallen in the public domain in the U.S. was still copyrighted in Germany. The court considered the rule of the shorter term inapplicable because of the bilateral copyright treaty between Germany and the United States, which had become effective on January 15, 1892 and which was still in effect. That treaty did not contain a rule of the shorter term, but just stated that works of either country were copyrighted in the other country by the other country's laws.^[18]
The EU member states implemented Directive 93/98/EEC^[21] and Directive 2006/116/EC^[22] in their national law; however, it is not guaranteed that such national implementations are either "comprehensive or in conformity" with the Directives.

EU case law

Even before article 7 of directive 93/98/EC explicitly prohibited the application of the rule of the shorter term amongst EU countries, the comparison of terms within the EU was not allowed. The Treaty instituting the European Community, which in its original version became effective in 1958, defined in article 7, paragraph 1, that within the union, any discrimination on grounds of nationality was prohibited. (Since 2002, when the treaty was amended by the Treaty of Maastricht, this is article 12, paragraph 1.) Application of the rule of the shorter term is such a discrimination, as it results in granting domestic authors longer copyright terms for their works than foreign authors from other EU countries.
This issue was settled decisively in 1993 (i.e., two years before directive 93/98/EC became effective) by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in what became known as the Phil Collins decision. In that case, Phil Collins sued a German phonogram distributor who was marketing records of a concert Collins had given in the U.S. German law of that time granted German performers full neighbouring rights, and in particular the right to prohibit the distribution of recordings made without their consent, regardless of the place the performance had occurred. At the same time, German law granted the same right to foreign performers only for their performances that had occurred in Germany. The ECJ decided on October 20, 1993 that this was a violation of the non-discrimination clause of article 7 of the EC treaty. It also clarified that the non-discrimination clause was indeed applicable to copyright.^[23]
The court stated that

In prohibiting "any discrimination on the grounds of nationality" Article 7 requires each Member State to ensure that persons in a situation governed by Community law be placed on a completely equal footing with its own nationals and therefore precludes a Member State from making the grant of an exclusive right subject to the requirement that the person concerned be a national of that State.^[24]

Boweavil Blues - Bessie Smith

Boweavil Blues - Bessie Smith on youtube
Recorded 7th April 1924 by Columbia Records

"Bessie Smith (Columbia) 1924 was believed to be first performed by Charly Patton as "Mississippi Boll Weevil Blues" in 1909 and was covered by a number of early blues artists including Gertrude "Ma" Rainey. It tells the story of the impact of the Boll Weevil on the southern cotton crop at the turn of the twentieth century which along with southern racism, Jim Crow laws, employment vacancies created by WWI led to the first Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban South and North."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIskE8wE18M