[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong book reviewed, The Art Of Staying Hot

[Robert Ringwald]

The Art of Staying Hot
Critics may have dismissed Louis Armstrong in his later years, but audiences loved
him -- with good reason
by Tom Nolan
Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2011
The family of jazz in the 20th century, like many another multi-generational household,
seemed to spend nearly as much time splitting into factions and nursing grudges as
it did celebrating its own achievements. Performers and enthusiasts alike fell out
over real and imagined divisions of race, over the conflicting demands of art and
show business, and over the imperatives of a musical form that seemed to change drastically
every five years or so. Thus it came to pass that, in the last 20 years of his life,
Louis Armstrong (1901-71) -- one of the most important figures in the history of
jazz and, in Ricky Riccardi's phrase, "arguably the most recognizable entertainer
on the planet" -- had a hard time, in certain quarters of the jazz community, getting
much respect.
Since his death, though -- thanks to informed commentary and a few fine biographies,
not to mention the enduring value of his music -- Armstrong's reputation has grown
and grown. With "What a Wonderful World," Mr. Riccardi, an archivist for the Louis
Armstrong House Museum in Corona, N.Y., celebrates the trumpeter-singer's twilight
years, a period sometimes slighted in otherwise appreciative accounts of his life.
Armstrong's career began in earnest in 1922, when he moved to Chicago to play with
his New Orleans mentor, King Oliver. The vigorous and lyrical recordings that he
made there, with his own Hot Five and Hot Seven combinations, laid the foundation
for all jazz to come and influenced generations of musicians. Armstrong combined
high-note virtuosity with blues ability and a strong sense of swing. He also introduced
scat singing into his inimitable vocals. By the 1930s he was justly celebrated as
a powerhouse performer. But over time he found himself eclipsed by new currents in
jazz, which featured a more orchestral approach during the big-band era and, with
bebop, more advanced harmonies. As jazz progressed, "smart opinion" relegated Armstrong
to the status of mere entertainer.
And yet, as Mr. Riccardi reminds us, Armstrong's latter-day career highlights are
extraordinary. He was a fantastically popular live performer throughout the 1950s
and 1960s, drawing crowds around the globe -- in Asia, Africa, Latin America and
behind the Iron Curtain -- and earning him the unofficial title of America's No.
1 ambassador of goodwill. In 1949, Armstrong's plane had to delay its landing in
Stockholm because 40,000 fans had jammed the airport. At an open-air event in Ghana
in 1956, Armstrong's combo drew a crowd estimated at 70,000. In Budapest, the crowd
exceeded 100,000. When Armstrong visited the Belgian Congo during its civil war,
Mr. Riccardi notes, "both sides stopped fighting and welcomed him grandly, bearing
him on a red throne" before a huge concert in a soccer stadium. "Members of warring
parties sat together, danced, and cheered the music." For sheer exuberance, Mr. Riccardi
cites the 1959 world tour, which had Louis "blowing with sometimes frightening power...
notes much higher than as a younger man... with astonishing ferocity."
The strength and melodic invention were present, as well, on the discs that Armstrong
made in his final decades, including such superlative George Avakian-produced Columbia-label
LPs as 1954's "Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy" -- probably "the greatest album
Armstrong ever recorded," according to Mr. Riccardi. Though the critics largely ignored
these later albums, they were as important and beautiful in their way as the Columbia
recordings of the same era by Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. Equally notable were
Armstrong's collaborative sessions with Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson
and Mr. Brubeck. With good cause Armstrong could state in 1956: "I'm playing better
now than I've ever played in my life."
Then there were the out-of-the-blue 1960s hit records: "What a Wonderful World" (which
made the international charts a second time after Armstrong's death) and "Hello,
Dolly!," which knocked the Beatles off the hit parade's No. 1 perch at the height
of the British group's 1963 mania.
Other matters, though, marred Armstrong's reputation, at least in America. His commercial
success was thought antithetical to jazz, and critics decried his stage act's vaudeville
antics -- e.g., the dance splits of his vocalist Velma Middleton. Not that audiences
seemed to mind. As one of his clarinet players said: "It's a show, not a jam session."
What really hurt was when his fellow African-Americans called Armstrong an Uncle
Tom, not only for his "mugging" stage mannerisms but for his failing to take a strong
public stand against racial intolerance. But when he did speak out, during the Little
Rock, Ark., school-integration events of 1957 -- he chided President Dwight Eisenhower
for not acting soon enough and denigrated Gov. Orval Faubus for his bullying obstructionism
-- he drew rebukes from certain blacks, who criticized his remarks as intemperate
or hypocritical. Even so, he later spoke out again, saying (while in Denmark) of
those who attacked voter-rights demonstrators in Alabama: "They would even beat Jesus
if he was black and marched."
As Mr. Riccardi makes clear, it was awkward for Armstrong to comment on his country's
faults while making goodwill tours on its behalf; yet it was hard to ignore current
events, especially when prodded by foreign reporters. Armstrong preferred to speak
through music. One of the most affecting passages in "What a Wonderful World" comes
in Mr. Riccardi's account of a concert in East Berlin in 1965, after the events in
Selma, Ala., had prompted Armstrong to perform, for almost the first time in a decade,
the solemn Fats Waller-Andy Razaf anthem "Black and Blue" -- called by some "the
first protest song": "Armstrong stoically played a full chorus of melody, pacing
himself dramatically.... He now assumed the air of a preacher, pointing a finger
skyward.... The tension exploded when he began his final [instrumental] eight bars
with a three-note phrase leading to a screaming high concert B, not the highest note
he had ever hit, but arguably the angriest.... Here was dangerous intensity personified."
Clearly this was no fading master, nor anybody's fool.
Mr. Riccardi -- writing with the fervor of an advocate, the skill of a critic and
the knowingness of a musician (he is a pianist as well as a writer) -- gives us something
vivid on every page of "What a Wonderful World." Along the way, he does justice to
both Armstrong the artist and Armstrong the entertainer, a unique American creator
who knew that "any kind of music could become jazz if played from the heart."
____________________
Satchmo in Prose
"Satchmo" by Gary Giddins (1988). This absorbing biographical essay broke the 87-year-old
news of Armstrong's true birthday (August 4, 1901) with a reproduction of his baptismal
registration (in Latin, no less) from a New Orleans Catholic church. Hundreds of
other remarkable documents show Satchmo in all phases of his career, while Mr. Giddins's
empathetic text sketches the life story of a poor boy "raised in a house of cards
in the middle of a gale." As Mr. Giddins puts it: "Here is a man who saw life from
the gutter up and learned to accept it all."
"Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words," edited by Thomas Brothers (1999). In addition
to being a master trumpeter, Armstrong was a prolific writer: He produced two books
of memoirs, most notably "Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans" (1954). Thomas Brothers's
volume gathers selections from various autobiographical documents, including letters.
Armstrong describes the Jewish family in New Orleans who hired him when he was young:
"The Karnofsky Family kept reminding me that I had Talent -- perfect Tonation when
I would Sing.... They could see that I had music in my Soul."
"Louis Armstrong: The Offstage Story of Satchmo" by Michael Cogswell (2003). This
pleasingly informal volume, assembled by the director of the Louis Armstrong House
and Archives, offers a wondrous array of Armstrong photographs as well as examples
of Armstrong souvenirs and products bearing his likeness, from a British teapot to
Russian nesting-dolls. Of special note are collages that Armstrong made to decorate
the boxes of his home-recorded audiotape reels. These offer, as Mr. Cogswell writes,
"yet another angle of vision into the mind of a creative genius."
"Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong" by Terry Teachout (2009). This thorough, appreciative
work (by The Wall Street Journal's theater critic) stands above all other Armstrong
biographies. Drawing on Armstrong's own words, acknowledging the efforts of earlier
writers and incorporating original research, Mr. Teachout describes his subject's
quirks and foibles as well as his many achievements. The result is an all-the-more-endearing
portrait of a man who "took his music seriously, but never himself."
__________
Mr. Nolan is the author of "Artie Shaw, King of the Clarinet: His Life and Times"
(Norton).


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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