[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong's private tapes & other memorabilia.

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 22:15:47 EDT

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In a message dated 9/30/02 2:42:43 PM Central Daylight Time, 
sbrager@socal.rr.com writes:

> I can't agree with you this time, Steve. If Louis didn't want the tapes to 
> be made public, he would have either erased them, asked Lucille or someone 
> to destroy them, or asked Lucille to keep them private. Lacking those 
> instructions, I feel that he knew that they would be made public at some 
> time.

   This is an assumption that I wouldn't want to make. He probably, for the 
most part, forgot about them.  We all do stuff like that and then forget 
about them until they surface years later.

> He surely had a sense of history and that would have been why he made the 
> tapes in the first place.
> 
> Why would he have made them otherwise?

    Louis' hobby seems to have been making tapes.  He did it all of the time, 
at home or on the road.  He taped recordings, he taped his performances, he 
taped conversations and he taped personal rants.  I can't imagine that he was 
doing this for 'history.'  He just liked doing it.

  We may be making to much of this as none of us have actually heard these 
tapes.  The wise thing to do, I think, would be to archive them and they 
could be available for serious students of Armstrong's work.  

What galls me about much of this attention on Armstrong, and I am not 
referring to anybody on this list, is that a bunch of name writers and 
musicians, who sneered at and ignored Armstrong when he was alive, now fall 
over each other in proclaiming his genius and their love for his music. I 
remember well the contempt that many musicians held for Louis.  Ask Ruby 
Braff and he will rant on for an hour on the New York jazz writers and 
musicians who wouldn't bother to ever go see Louis in performance but now 
they are feverishly writing and proclaiming their undying admiration for him. 
 The Ken Burns Crockumentary was a prime example of this.

Don't get me started on this.

Jim Beebe

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<HTML>In a message dated 9/30/02 2:42:43 PM Central Daylight Time, sbrager@socal.rr.com writes: 
 
 
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I can't agree with you this time, Steve. If Louis didn't want the tapes to 
be made public, he would have either erased them, asked Lucille or someone 
to destroy them, or asked Lucille to keep them private. Lacking those 
instructions, I feel that he knew that they would be made public at some 
time.</BLOCKQUOTE> 
 
&nbsp;&nbsp; This is an assumption that I wouldn't want to make. He probably, for the most part, forgot about them.&nbsp; We all do stuff like that and then forget about them until they surface years later. 
 
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">He surely had a sense of history and that would have been why he made the 
tapes in the first place. 
 
Why would he have made them otherwise?</BLOCKQUOTE> 
 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Louis' hobby seems to have been making tapes.&nbsp; He did it all of the time, at home or on the road.&nbsp; He taped recordings, he taped his performances, he taped conversations and he taped personal rants.&nbsp; I can't imagine that he was doing this for 'history.'&nbsp; He just liked doing it. 
 
&nbsp; We may be making to much of this as none of us have actually heard these tapes.&nbsp; The wise thing to do, I think, would be to archive them and they could be available for serious students of Armstrong's work.&nbsp; 
 
What galls me about much of this attention on Armstrong, and I am not referring to anybody on this list, is that a bunch of name writers and musicians, who sneered at and ignored Armstrong when he was alive, now fall over each other in proclaiming his genius and their love for his music. I remember well the contempt that many musicians held for Louis.&nbsp; Ask Ruby Braff and he will rant on for an hour on the New York jazz writers and musicians who wouldn't bother to ever go see Louis in performance but now they are feverishly writing and proclaiming their undying admiration for him.&nbsp; The Ken Burns Crockumentary was a prime example of this. 
 
Don't get me started on this. 
 
Jim Beebe</HTML>

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