[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong book reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

I don't agree with the last paragraph.  

--Bob Ringwald


"What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years." Ricky Riccardi.
Pantheon, 400 pp., $28.95.
by Benjamin Ivry
Newark Star-Ledger, June 26, 2011
Toms River resident and pianist Ricky Riccardi launched a blog (
http://dippermouth.blogspot.com/
 ) to express his love for Louis Armstrong and works as project archivist for the
Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens.
Riccardi has drawn from this archival material to explain the mature Armstrong, whose
performances were often criticized by jazz purists. Compared to genre-defining 1920s
and '30s recordings with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, Armstrong's hits from
the 1960s (such as "Hello, Dolly!" and the pop song adopted as this book's title)
are Satchmo being Satchmo, not a founding father of jazz. Riccardi stresses that
such late records still offer delights, and Armstrong's jazz ensembles in the 1950s
also produced superb material.
This may seem obvious to Louis-lovers everywhere, but Riccardi quotes contemporary
journalists dismissing Armstrong as "shoddy jazz" and "vaudeville." Even colleague
Dizzy Gillespie called Armstrong a "plantation character." Yet the serious Armstrong
comes through clearly here, as a ferocious opponent of segregation during the 1957
Little Rock crisis: "When I see on television and read about a crowd in Arkansas
spitting on a little colored girl -- I think I have a right to get sore."
Riccardi delivers a valuable account, marred only by an introduction full of meaningless
banalities ("one of the most unique human beings to ever grace the planet") and sloppy
English.


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

"Politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."