Jelly Roll got real in a recent interview, confessing that his mom's funeral song request hits him right in the feels.
Appearing on The Howard Stern Show recently, Jelly Roll became emotional describing the profound impact one song had on his life and relationship with his mother. "By the way, I love this story, too," Stern said to the rapper and Country singer. "That song, 'Save Me,' was inspired by the song by Bette Midler, 'The Rose,' because you and your mom used to listen all the time."
Stern then wondered aloud if Jelly Roll had ever met Midler. "Oh goodness no," Jelly shot back. "If I meet her or James Taylor, I'm gonna cry on the spot," he admitted.
"This is a beautiful song, 'The Rose,'" Stern added.
"My mother would play this, keep in mind she was a really dark woman at the time. She would say, 'Play this at my funeral,'" Jelly Roll recalled.
Jelly Roll remembered vividly his mom somberly requesting the song be her funeral dirge.
"She would sit at the kitchen table... I still get emotional listening to it," he explained. "She would smoke these cigarettes, and she would just be like, 'Just remember to play this when I die.'"
Jelly Roll Admits He Relates to His Mom's Morbid Request
Despite the painful memory, Jelly has a memento of it inked to his skin. "So the first tattoo I ever got was a rose on my back with her name," he added.
Even though the funeral request for a teen son might seem morbid to some, Jelly relates to his mom's melancholy at the time. "That's coming from a woman who didn't think she was going to live, and I know how that feels," Jelly Roll explained. "I know how it feels to think you're not going to live."
Meanwhile, the "Halfway to Hell" singer owes his mother for one of his signature features. She named the artist Jason Bradley DeFord upon his birth. However, she also rechristened him Jelly Roll for his love of the pastry.
"I was a little chubby kid that loved jelly donuts, and she didn't know the difference between a jelly roll and a donut," he explained to in a piece for Interview magazine. "I only found out the difference later in life, because I had to google it."
"But she called me Jelly Roll," he added. "I always say the difference between a nickname and a stage name is you don't get to give yourself your nickname. Because if I was a stripper and got to give myself a stripper name, I'd give myself something really cool, like Zeus. But it didn't work that way, so I got stuck with Jelly Roll."
"My mother still calls me her little Jelly. I walk in her house and she'll go, "Is that my little Jelly?" I'm six-two and almost 40," he explained with a laugh.
