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"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)