[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong vs. Jay-Z and Kanye West

[Robert Ringwald]

Who the hell are "Jay-Z and Kanye's?"  And, who the hell cares?   
 
If you forward this, or actually, when forwarding any emails, always exercise "Netiquette."
Delete all names, email addresses, extra forwarding material, etc.  Do not send all
that garbage on to be forwarded on and on forever...


The Self-Indulgence of Jay-Z and Kanye's New Album
by David Hajdu
The New Republic blog, August 12, 2011
Forty years ago this July, a few weeks before what would have been his seventieth
birthday (on August 4), Louis Armstrong died of a heart attack in the brick shoebox
house in Corona, Queens that is now a museum in his honor. The pallbearers included
Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Dizzy Gillespie, and Frank Sinatra, all of whom had
shared the stage with Armstrong at multiple points over his long career. An amiable
collaborator revered by other artists, Armstrong was called upon often to perform
with musicians of all sorts, and he developed early mastery of the delicate art of
the celebrity duet. His presence in a duo setting conferred both stature and pop
appeal. Armstrong extended respect to his collaborators, out of respect for the audience
they shared.
I thought about Armstrong and the collaborations he did with his great peers as I
listened this week to "Watch the Throne," the new superstar match-up album by Kanye
West and Jay-Z. I admire both Kanye and Jay-Z as artists (as I've said before in
the pages of TNR), and I think, broadly speaking, that they complement each other;
Jay-Z can rhyme, and Kanye has a genius for production. "Watch the Throne" is densely
textured -- sonically, if not lyrically -- and it has a few surprising moments, including
the downright sweetly affecting "New Day." For the most part, though, the album is
opulent tedium.
Naturally, it revels in the narcissistic tropes of hip-hop hedonism; that's what
Kanye and Jay-Z do. For that, I give them some credit, actually. This work, absorbed
with the gratifications of extravagant wealth and sexual exploitation, feels honest;
it comes off as true to its makers' experience and values, however dubious the listener
may find them (and I find them abhorrent). I consider this music defensible in principle,
in that it seems a genuine expression of its makers' vile attitudes. It's legitimately
contemptible. Its terminal problem is aesthetic, rather than moral; "Watch the Throne"
is boring, the sound of two men who have been lounging in the VIP room, taking in
unspeakable indulgences, for much too long.
Boredom is one of the things Louis Armstrong would never allow, not even in his final
years, when his health had declined and he could no longer play with his old facility.
To show Armstrong's gift as a duo collaborator, I tried to find a YouTube clip of
him performing with Ella Fitzgerald, with whom he made three superb albums for Verve
in the 1950s (including a definitive version of "Porgy and Bess"), only to find no
footage of them. They never appeared together on television, according to the critic
Will Friedwald, who knows more about pre-rock singers than anyone I know. Nor is
there footage of Armstrong with Duke Ellington, with whom he recorded two fine albums
of Ellington compositions in 1961. Fortunately, YouTube has preserved a rarer moment
in Armstrong's life as a collaborator: "Blue Yodel #9," a song Armstrong had originally
recorded with Jimmy Rodgers, performed on "The Johnny Cash Show" as a duet with Cash.
Thrones are only implied. Watch the musicians:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47MeAVHpvxU
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-famous-door/93533/watch-the-throne-cash-kanye-jay-z-armstrong


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book."  
-- Ronald Reagan, B2/6/1911 - D6/5/2004