[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong biography reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Louis Armstrong biography reviewed

New Book Explains Why Louis Armstrong Was Such an Icon
by Jeremy Gerard
Bloomberg News, February 24, 2010

Woody Allen and the Smithsonian Institution immortalized Louis Armstrong's 1927 landmark
recording of "Potato Head Blues."
Now we have Terry Teachout to explain why the recording not only matters, but why
it still has the power to thrill.
The number, which the young cornetist wrote for his "Hot Seven" ensemble, climaxes
with the band going silent but for a few staccato chords, Teachout explains in "Pops:
A Life of Louis Armstrong," (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 512 pages, $30).
"Against this sparse background Armstrong flings a tune that links the chords together,"
he writes. Armstrong "gradually lengthens his phrases until he is leaping boldly
across the band's chords...."
Treasure that choice of the verb "fling," which is exactly what comes to mind as
you listen to the tune on the Smithsonian's definitive "Collection of Classic Jazz,"
and which Allen, in "Manhattan," ranks with Mozart and Flaubert among things that
make life "worth living."
To this fine, exhaustively researched and only occasionally pedantic biography, Teachout
brings an insider's knowledge -- he was a professional jazz musician before launching
a career as cultural critic and biographer.
It started early
Teachout tells us how the early recordings made Armstrong an icon. They were far
more important than his later best-selling recordings of "Hello, Dolly!" and other
standards.
In addition to the technique and improvisational gift that blew other musicians away,
"Armstrong's music, like his personality, was fundamentally optimistic," Teachout
writes. "Armstrong was a major-key artist who would always be disinclined to lament
the woes of the world, aware of them though he was."
Louis Armstrong would claim he was born in New Orleans on Independence Day in 1900.
In fact, he was born a year and a month later, on Aug. 4, 1901, the son of a skirt-chaser
and a devoted mother who Teachout says was almost certainly a Storyville prostitute.
As a teenager, Armstrong hauled coal 10 hours a day and then played his cornet (only
later would he switch to the more elegant trumpet) in bars for tips from the whores.
Armstrong apprenticed with, but quickly surpassed, Joe "King" Oliver, whom he idolized,
and made a name for himself first in Chicago, then New York. He became a creature
of the television age, appearing regularly on the "Ed Sullivan Show," among others.
His tidy home in Queens is a museum.
A writer as well
Armstrong was almost as prolific a writer as he was a musician, turning out two memoirs
and long letters to correspondents, from world figures to lonely Vietnam soldiers
alike. The bugged eyes and broad smile did not always conceal a caustic anger, which
came out when he publicly called President Dwight Eisenhower "two-faced" and said
he had "no guts" for dragging his feet in desegregating the schools of Little Rock,
Ark.
In his letters (which can be read in the invaluable "Louis Armstrong, in His Own
Words: Selected Writings," edited by Thomas Brothers) he could be scathing about
his treatment because of his race. Bing Crosby, whom he counted among his close friends,
never invited him into his home.
Composer Jerome Kern famously said of Irving Berlin that he "has no place in American
music, he is American music." "Pops" invokes a similar notion about Armstrong. Like
Sammy Davis Jr., Armstrong was criticized by other black artists for pandering to
white audiences, while their genre-changing talents became lost in the fog of the
past.
Teachout quotes bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie: "If it weren't for Louis, there wouldn't
be any of us." It's a simple but truthful testament.
-30


--Bob Ringwald K6YBV
rsr at ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
916/806-9551

Check out our latest recording at www.ringwald.com/recordings.htm

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