[78-L] Louis Armstrong

[fnarf at comcast.net]

Julian Vein:

> Unfortunately, whatever Armstrong's qualities as a human being, we are 
> left with his recorded legacy, a lot of which is superficial and 
> patronizing to his audiences and routine.

I know you're being deliberately provacative here, but you couldn't be more wrong, even if you'd said "Duke Ellington was a mediocre rock guitarist from Slovenia".

For starters, Armstrong's legacy includes the invention of jazz and the invention of jazz singing. He is by a wide, wide margin the most important figure in American music, and in ANY music since 1900. In MY pantheon, Louis Armstrong is the single most important American who ever lived, with Lincoln and perhaps Mark Twain up there on the podium with him.

Yes, yes, I know other people were playing "jazz" before him, but Armstrong broke through the rhythmic and tonal barriers that imprisoned all early players. His innovations led to EVERYTHING; there is before Louis and after Louis. He was the big bang. In a way, every instrumental player since Armstrong, in every genre, has been trying to recapture the magic of the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens. And mostly coming up short. The thing is, you can come up short to Armstrong and still be the best ever in your field.

And singing: he's not just the first, he's still by a wide, wide margin the best that ever was. NO ONE has ever phrased like him. And, as with playing, every singer since him has tried to capture that warmth and tone and rhythm. Every jazz and pop singer in the post-Jolson world owes him EVERYTHING. What a singer; his voice was so much larger, and had so many more rooms in it, and so many fabulous, jaw-dropping, and beautiful ways to get around a word, he doesn't even sound like a man; he sounds like an entire nation of men. You could pick out single NOTES that surpass most careers.

When people talk disparagingly about Armstrong's recorded legacy, they're talking about a handful of records from late in his career when he was certainly no longer an innovator. But there are two things to say about that: innovation is overrated, and Armstrong had already packed more innovation in his career than any other musician in history, so who cares? Armstrong innovated more one ONE DAY in November 1925 than any other jazz musician did in his entire career. 

And after that, he made a HELL of a lot of great, great records. His later sessions with Ella Fitzgerald are stone cold magnificent. If he had only ever recorded those, as a vocalist, and never touched a trumpet in his life, he'd be an all-time great. You can say that about a lot of his stuff; if the only thing he ever did was "High Society" he'd be revered today.

No one has a recorded legacy like Armstrong. No one.

I haven't even read the Teachout book yet!