"Louis Armstrong," says Tony Bennett, "was a genius. He practically invented jazz singing single handedly. And he was the greatest influence not only in jazz, but for all music."

It's an opinion heartily seconded by Laurence Bergreen, author of Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, who offers, "There are many geniuses in the jazz world, but I think Louis is regarded as the tallest tree in the forest."

You can solicit as many professional opinions as you wish. Get a quote about Louis Armstrong, and you might as well transcribe the word genius. In a day and age in which Perry Farrell is described (and self-described) as a genius, the term warrants a fresh look. "The personification of a quality," is one of Webster's offerings. "Particular character or essential spirit or nature of a nation, place, age, etc.," is another, or "Great natural ability (for a particular activity)." Take your pick, and Satchmo measures up. "He is the jazz icon now," Bergreen says. "There was also his great burning spiritual quality. He transcends being a mere virtuoso by having qualities of heart and spirit and other hard-to-find things. That's what people's idea of jazz is. They think of it as this happy found freedom. And Armstrong is really responsible."

For evidence, one need look no further than Columbia/Legacy's splendid new box, Louis Armstrong: The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings. The music on the set's four discs represent ground-zero for the three-quarters of a century of American music that followed.

"Louis Armstrong gave us our style and our soul, which is hard to beat," Bennett says. "He has always been one of my most favorite performers because he always gave 110 percent every time he got on stage and when the show was over, the audience felt great. That's what entertainment is all about, and no one did it better than Louis Armstrong. One of my favorite personal memories of Louis is when he and I performed at an event in Washington, D.C. for a group of scientists and Louis sang 'Hello Dolly,' and did five 'one more time endings.' Those scientists went crazy. My son Danny was with me backstage and he saw Louis get six standing ovations and he comes over to me and says, 'How did you like getting beat, Daddy?'"

Steve Berkowitz, co-producer of the box set, notes that Armstrong "crossed an incredible line of being acceptable in America to both races, to white people and black people."

"We look at jazz music in a particular way," Berkowitz says. "But in the Twenties and Thirties, Louis Armstrong was the Beatles. It might have been jazz music, but jazz music was the popular music of the day. It was popular music and we've now segregated music into splinters. We've been fractured into radio formats and demographics. Louis was hip then, he's hip now, he crossed all lines, the records sold well. During this period, he became a superstar."
In addition to his musical contributions, writer Bergreen echoes Bennett's sentiments that Armstrong's "style and soul" were equally pertinent to his role in American music. "There are lot of extra-musical reasons for why Armstrong was so great," he says. "As influential [as his music] was his dress. Instead of the ragtag musical image, here was a guy with star quality. And his jazz lingo, which he either copied and popularized or invented, was tremendously popular. So many jazz terms we take for granted were really either coined by Armstrong or popularized by him. He was also a fabulous popularizer. He recorded, he had the movies, he was the first African-American to have his network sponsored radio show. He appeared on Broadway. He was everywhere."

Bergreen has taken heat from some jazz critics and historians for his biography of Armstrong, which revealed the entertainer's penchant for marijuana. Bergreen is quick to point out that it was Armstrong, and not himself, who claimed that pot had a positive affect on his music.

"No matter what critics say, he thought it improved his music, and he urged his musicians to get stoned before they played," says the writer. "They recorded many of their famous recordings under the influence of marijuana and he wrote songs about it, such as 'Song of the Vipers' and many others, 'viper' being his slang for marijuana user. He felt that it was a safer high than alcohol. In the end, his use of marijuana throughout his life came back to haunt him because he ruined his lungs. But it was so important to him that when he was going to write his second autobiography, the title was going to be Gage, which was his nickname for marijuana. Only the preface survives, which is his paean to marijuana. But his manager got a hold of it and said, 'This is gonna get you in trouble, we don't want to confess this vice publicly,' so the rest was destroyed. That was another influence of his in the jazz world. A lot of jazz critics want to see him in only an academic light, but it was certainly part of his ethos."

Bergreen's research also revealed that Armstrong was also a believer in the healthy properties of laxatives, passing them off on friends and fellow players, even various foreign heads of state. Between his clowning personality, and synergistic screen and stage persona, Armstrong was occasionally hit with charges of being an Uncle Tom. The century's other titanic trumpeter, Miles Davis reportedly despised photographs of himself smiling, because according to Davis biographer Quincy Troupe, "He hated Louis Armstrong smiling, he hated Charlie Parker smiling." But Bergreen notes that even the curmudgeonly Davis, one of Armstrong's most outspoken critics, admitted Armstrong's influence. "When he got over rebelling against Armstrong, Miles Davis traced back his lineage. Even he said it all goes back to Armstrong."

And so we go back to Armstrong, and what better time to do so. Despite the trumpeter's claims that he was born on the all-too all-American July 4, 1900, evidence has surfaced that suggests August 4, 1901 is closer to his actual birth date. What better year, then than that leading up to the centennial of his birth and the thirty year anniversary of his death (July 6, 1971), to celebrate the musician who was the first frontman, the first recording and radio star, the first true jazz musician and singer. Armstrong was Elvis before there was Elvis, the man who in one way or another is responsible for the presentation of music from the earliest roots of jazz to the branches that became rock & roll. He embodied the cross-pollination of visual and musical that would become MTV more than a half-century before that particular cultural revolution began.

But Berkowitz suggests that haggling over birthdays and anniversaries is irrelevant. He will direct you to the new Hot Fives and Sevens collection or to three reissues (Satchmo the Great, Ambassador Satch and Satch Plays Fats) released last month that capture latter day Armstrong, still at his peak. It's a body of work that charts the progress of a genius from twenty-something musical innovator into an iconic entertainer without peer.

"People should celebrate Louis every day," he says.

ANDREW DANSBY
(August 23, 2000)