Wow. Louis Armstrong Actually Is An Amazing Trumpet Player.
Now, I like my jazz kinda... avant garde. My tastes are comparatively out there. I don't really listen to much really 'free' stuff too often but it's probably fair to say that a lot of people wouldn't dig a lot of the stuff I do.
Now, I've always liked American spirituals, and hey, I like blues, I'm not mad, and I have a taste for wicked old stuff, but I never really dug Louis Armstrong. I thought he was this... showman with a supergruff voice that old people who've given up on music like. Actually, kinda Uncle Tommy, if anything.
I was wrong. Oh lordy, have you ever really checked old Satchmo?
A friend of mine gave me an album to digitize. It's called 'The Good Book', and it's an album of standards, spirituals like 'Rock My Soul', 'Go Down Moses', 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' and 'Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child', and I put it on. Then I turned it up and listened.
Holy shit. It's amazing.
OK. The tunes are deep. Properly deep. A choir, beautiful harmonies, some laid back piano vamps like spliffed out jazzy hip hop, and the songs are... well, everyone should check some good ole negro spirituals, yes sir. But the trumpet. Dude, he could really, really play. Amazing control, super-nifty vibrato, a whopping tone. And the phrasing. Just how late can you play a note, Louis? It's old fashioned, but it's got this... size about it.
Louis Armstrong. I finally get it. I say this to my bottomless shame.
Altogether now.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen...
Now, I've always liked American spirituals, and hey, I like blues, I'm not mad, and I have a taste for wicked old stuff, but I never really dug Louis Armstrong. I thought he was this... showman with a supergruff voice that old people who've given up on music like. Actually, kinda Uncle Tommy, if anything.
I was wrong. Oh lordy, have you ever really checked old Satchmo?
A friend of mine gave me an album to digitize. It's called 'The Good Book', and it's an album of standards, spirituals like 'Rock My Soul', 'Go Down Moses', 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' and 'Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child', and I put it on. Then I turned it up and listened.
Holy shit. It's amazing.
OK. The tunes are deep. Properly deep. A choir, beautiful harmonies, some laid back piano vamps like spliffed out jazzy hip hop, and the songs are... well, everyone should check some good ole negro spirituals, yes sir. But the trumpet. Dude, he could really, really play. Amazing control, super-nifty vibrato, a whopping tone. And the phrasing. Just how late can you play a note, Louis? It's old fashioned, but it's got this... size about it.
Louis Armstrong. I finally get it. I say this to my bottomless shame.
Altogether now.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen...
Comments
Well, Kenny G released a record where he overdubbed himself on a classic Louis Armstrong record. Pat Metheny objected and produced probably the best rant I ever read, on any subject. I read this a couple of months ago, and I thought it was great, but now I have a vested interest other than Kenny G bashing, and it makes even more sense. It's... um... it's a classic. Even if you don't like jazz, this is masterful.
Here's a taste. Pat Metheny, what do you think of Kenny G and his record?
But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.
I think this is why many audiences don't revere his talent, in the same way as we revere a Coltrane, or Ravi Shankar.
Miles thought it was one thing to play up to a white audience to put food on the table but he thought Armstrong was beyond that.
but shit he invented the solo........ponder that.
"(Armstrong was) the key creator of the mature working language of jazz. Three decades after his death and more than three-quarters of a century since his influence first began to spread, not a single musician who has mastered that language fails to make daily use, knowingly or unknowingly, of something that was invented by Louis Armstrong."
-- Dan Morgenstern - Oxford Companion to Jazz
"Armstrong is to music what Einstein is to physics and the Wright Brothers are to travel."
-- "Jazz" documentary producer Ken Burns
I'd highly recommend watching that episode, if not the entire Burns series.
Armstrong was probably the most famous musician in the world for a while, but never let it get to his head the way more modern ego tripping 'performers' seem to.
And man, could he blow.
I'm becoming something of a Louis Armstrong expert. I've been reading up and I've been playing my two Louis Armstrong albums.
Speaking of Miles on Louis, once asked about Armstrong's Uncle Tomming he said "When Louis Armstrong Toms, he Toms from the heart." Which is an acknowledgement of... something. I think he's special case, actually. If he was, and I don't really care, we're sort obliged to forgive him anything. He invented the jazz solo and he's a proper bona fide genius on the trumpet.
Supposedly, in some old footage you can see drops of blood on the handkerchief.
Originally posted by crazychester
Satchmo Trivia. I am informed (and I'll warn you in advance this could be utter BS) he is really a cornet player, he is regarded as having an amazing ombrasure (sp?), and that the white handkerchief he is so often seen holding was used to mop up the blood from below his bottom lip which repeatedly split open because of his amazing ombrasure. (I'm sure it had a role to play in regard to the whole spit thing as well.)
Supposedly, in some old footage you can see drops of blood on the handkerchief.
IIRC, that's in the Burns documentary series, and he did start as a cornet player... one of the few who could regularly nail High C (which caused lip split at times)
http://www.redtrumpet.com/software/i...sid=1205698726
Originally posted by curiousuburb
Ken Burns' excellent series Jazz includes an episode pretty much dedicated to Armstrong, complete with backstory which goes a little ways to addressing the beefs made by Miles in terms of Armstrong's performances for audiences of various colours. The fact that Armstrong broke ground for many cross-cultural performers in an era of segregation and rampant racism says a lot about the power of music to overcome prejudice.
I'd highly recommend watching that episode, if not the entire Burns series.
I was thinking the same thing as I looked at this thread. And I think you understate it - I remember there being several episodes focusing heavily on Louis A, probably overstating his role in jazz, which is probably truly very large. Unfortunately that series petered out around 1960, but it is good if you're into the old stuff.
ombrasure (sp?)
Embouchure.
The entire "free" movement was not even given an entire episode even though it;s probably the most influential on young players playing today. But hey, todays players were ignored as well.
The electronic revolution was ignored as well, and that should have been explored for no other reason other than it may be responsible for jazz no longer being a popular music form.
more Louis armstrong trivia: he smoked reefer in the white house.
Originally posted by superkarate monkeydeathcar
more Louis armstrong trivia: he smoked reefer in the white house.
He was really cool.
Originally posted by superkarate monkeydeathcar
more Louis armstrong trivia: he smoked reefer in the white house.
Um, what resident of the WH since Ford hasn't?
more Louis armstrong trivia: Moon Indigo...coolest tune ever.
Smoke a blunt and turn the lights out and you won't be able to sit still in your chair because the awesome runs up and down your spine like black lightnin'.
--B
Originally posted by bergz
Um, what resident of the WH since Ford hasn't?
more Louis armstrong trivia: Moon Indigo...coolest tune ever.
Smoke a blunt and turn the lights out and you won't be able to sit still in your chair because the awesome runs up and down your spine like black lightnin'.
--B
I'm going to test this assertion right now.
Now you've been blue, but you ain't been blue 'til you've have that mood indigo.
Originally posted by superkarate monkeydeathcar
The entire "free" movement was not even given an entire episode even though it;s probably the most influential on young players playing today.
The most influential, really? Not in my experience. I haven't been heavy into the jazz scene, but I've played with lots of difference folks and been to my share of jazz concerts - even played in some (went to Indiana University for grad school) and I've never known anyone influenced by it at all. My experience obviously is limited to my own small group, but that surprises me.
Originally posted by BRussell
The most influential, really? Not in my experience. I haven't been heavy into the jazz scene, but I've played with lots of difference folks and been to my share of jazz concerts - even played in some (went to Indiana University for grad school) and I've never known anyone influenced by it at all. My experience obviously is limited to my own small group, but that surprises me.
Not the most influential in my experience either (professional, on and off for 20+ years), but I usually played with a bunch of older guys. They either ignored the whole thing or made fun of it. The young guys usually didn't know what it was.
BTW, my dad and grandfather, both professional musicians at one point, thought that LA's early stuff was great, but that he sold out later. I grew up with LA, and Al Hirt. But my dad had a thing for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, too. Go figure.