"Now in one of my earliest tunes, New Orleans Blues, you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz" - Jelly Roll Morton

When Morton spoke these words to Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress in 1938, his career had been relegated to a footnote in jazz history.It would take the rehabilitative efforts of Lomax, Lawrence Gushee, Bill Russell and others to restore him to his rightful place as a seminal figure in the music.

Morton had come to the Library of Congress to re-establish a failing career and to reassert his primacy as the "inventor" of jazz, so it is tempting to take much of what he said as hyperbole and braggadocio. But investigation of Morton's bragging almost always reveals a truth at the center; he may often have been guilty of exaggeration, but not of outright deception. His reference here to the "Spanish Tinge" regards a supposed characteristic of early New Orleans jazz, a Latin or Afro-Caribbean strain. Many of Morton's piano compositions do contain certain "Spanish" rhythmic features and melodic references. The presence of these musical devices in Morton's work is easily verified by examination of his written scores. However notation is not particularly adept at conveying certain subtleties and nuances of phrasing. For this we must turn to the "fossil record" of his recordings and that of other early 20th century jazz musicians, which would indeed seem to reveal a "tinge" or rhythmic lilt, that sets jazz music apart from other music of the day.

If there is, as Jelly Roll says, a "Spanish tinge" in New Orleans jazz, what might it be, precisely, and in what form does it manifest itself? It seems likely that Morton's use of the term is not particularly specific, but rather refers to any number of musical characteristics, not all of them "Spanish" per se. One must keep in mind that during Morton's time many musical devices that were considered exotic or out of the ordinary were assigned ethnic or national sources that may have had very inauthentic relationships with their true origins. In the case of the Spanish Tinge, the route taken was not a direct line of musical influence from Spain to New Orleans. Jelly Roll's Spanish Tinge is more likely Afro-Cuban in origin.

Pamela J. Smith has written of the central role played by Cuba in 19th century Caribbean musical culture. In a sense, the acculturative processes that shaped Cuban music in the 19th century can be seen as predecessors to the cultural amalgam that later produced jazz. Mid 191h century Cuban music incorporated elements of Spanish and African folk music. Smith suggests a clear line of development from the habanera rhythm (a variant of which, the Tresillo, is clearly present in Morton's "New Orleans Blues"), which she suggests is "the basis of the danzon, the tango, the rhumba, and the guaracha" (Pamela J. Smith, Caribbean Influences on Early New Orleans Jazz, MA Thesis, Tulane University, 1986, pp. 47-48).