[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong music writing abilities

[confit at isp.com]

Steve B. wrote...

"Regarding Louis, at the time he probably could not write music. Lil could,
and she was just as much an embellisher as anyone else. So IF Louis
composed, Lil wrote it down and could easily put L. Armstrong down as
composer fooling him while taking credit after they drifted apart. So I
question who wrote what. Did the original composer credit say L. Armstrong
or Lillian Armstrong? In the back of my mind is a nagging feeling that the
composer credit was originally 'L. Armstrong.'"

The Library of Congress has a lead sheet dated 1922 for "Cornet Chop
Suey," clearly written in Armstrong's hand. Therefore he could write
music. Other music from that time period, from his association with
Oliver, is probably in Lil's hand. There are quite a lot of copyright
deposits of tunes composed by Lil, Oliver and Louis and many appear to
have been written by the same person.

The big question is whether there is a copyright deposit on file for
"Struttin." I have never seen one, but there is also a file card for each
deposit of written music. If this music has gone astray, the file card may
still exist, and the cards generally had more info on them than the music
(full name of composer, addresses, publisher, etc.)

Cheers,
Chris





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