[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism

[Marek Boym]

Thanks for the warning, Joe.  You are so right!
But Brothers is not alone.
I have a book, "Stompinng the Blues" by Albert Murray, in which he claims
that whites could not swing.  I see it as poetic justice that he was chosen
to ghost-write the autobiography of Count Bsie, probably the first - or one
of the first - Negro bandleaders to employ white musicians (he employed
Buddy de Franco in the small group he had in the late forties after his big
band disbanded), and later hired a white drummer to power his band.
Cheers


On 8 March 2014 07:58, Joe Carbery <joe.carbery at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
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