[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism

[Joe Carbery]

Dear Listmates,

Here's the text of a review of the above book I submitted to Amazon:

Review of *Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism*

By

Thomas Brothers

(Norton)

I ordered this book on-line and received it with some excitement. I was
very disappointed. Brothers is a professor of music at Duke University, so
I expected a learned treatise from a musicological point of view. Instead
Brothers takes a sociological approach, emphasising racial issues
throughout the book. Not being an American I may be missing the need for
the racial emphasis, but it appears to be much over-emphasized to me.

Some examples: "....he slayed the ofay demons with *West End Blues." *(Apart
from not being able to make sense of this statement, I would have thought
"ofay" an insulting racial epithet.

He says Louis sang *Sleepy Time Down South *"to assure white audiences on a
deep level that he had no designs on social progress." So he didn't
actually like the song? Why did he continue to sing it to the end of his
career?

On page 443 he makes reference to "the white mind." What or whose white
mind? This implies all "white" people have the same attitude. Did John
Hammond have the same mindset as a KKK member? Does Brothers himself? This
sort of lazy generalisation is extremely irritating and is unbecoming from
an academic musicologist.

Speaking of a Betty Boop cartoon: "the lure of African-American jazz and
its dangerous potential to seduce white women and, with that, the threat to
*the* purity of the white race." What balderdash!

His musical analysis can obfuscate more than it illuminates: "What made
Louis Armstrong great? Put generally, his greatness emerged from a unique
combination of where he came from, who he was, and the conditions that
shaped his career. The inspired melodic results of this configuration still
hold a powerful attraction, many generations later." What meaningless
piffle! It tells us nothing. Put "Mozart" in the sentence and it would tell
us just as little about him.

The record Lil & Louis made with Jimmy Rodgers is "heavily laden with
racist ideologies." I've heard this recording for years and just heard a
country singer making Lil and Louis really stretch their ears!

I wonder if Brothers has played any jazz. In *Blue Yodel Number 9 *he says
Lil was using a lead sheet. I doubt Rodgers would or could have prepared on
(who would for a blues) and if he had it'd be useless since he wouldn't
stick to it!

He says of Louis' solo on *Body & Soul *"Armstrong stays very close to the
tune; he probably felt constrained by the unusual and challenging harmonies
of the original."  This is an amazing statement from a musician. As
written, the chords of the tune are simple. The tricky bits are the two
modulations in the middle eight. Once one is aware of them the tune is
simple. I wonder if Brothers ever played it? Or can he play.

The book is full of such flawed conclusions.

Finally, he accuses Bix Beiderbecke of pederasty and masochism as part of a
"shadowy sexual deviance" but offers no supporting evidence.

I could go on, but I think the above shows why I was so disappointed.



Joe Carbery.