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Louis Armstrong |
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Trumpeter/singer
Louis Armstrong was the seminal artist of jazz history -- the first to combine
trumpet virtuosity and an original musical vision with an entertainer's sense
of presence and persona. The result would make him the most influential
instrumentalist of his generation, and bring him the respect and adulation of
musicians of all eras to come, as well as a vast audience beyond jazz that
has never stopped growing. Case in point: The Guinness Book Of World
Records lists Armstrong as the oldest performer ever to chart a No. 1 hit
record, an accomplishment achieved in 1964 when his record of Hello Dolly
unexpectedly displaced the Beatles from the top position. And 17 years after
his death, Armstrong's record of "It's a Wonderful World" generated
a new young audience when it was featured in the 1987 film Good Morning,
Vietnam. Most recent research
gives Armstrong's birth as Aug. 4, 1901. He grew up in New Orleans and
received his first music instruction in 1913 at a children's home. By 1915 he
was sitting in with local bands. He came north to Chicago to join King Oliver
in 1922 and made his first records with Oliver the following April
("Chimes Blues"). Though Chicago would be his base for the next 12
years, he went to New York for the first time in September 1924 to join
Fletcher Henderson's band and record extensively with various blues singers,
including Bessie Smith, as well as with Clarence Williams and Sidney Bechet. In November 1925 he was
back in Chicago, where he began recording under his own name and building the
core work upon which his reputation as a major innovator (as opposed to a
popular entertainer) would forever rest. These included the legendary Hot
Five and Hot Seven sessions and the early years of big band records from 1929
to 1934. During this period his trumpet style exploded from powerful New
Orleans ensemble lead into a solo voice whose majesty seemed to soar with a
voracious and ravenous splendor. In 1929 Armstrong began
recording popular songs, with various dance orchestras providing appropriate
introductions and backgrounds to his vocals and trumpet solos. Unlike the
work of the later swing bands, these orchestras constantly kept Armstrong at
the center of every performance. In masterpieces such as
"Stardust," "Sweethearts On Parade," "Lazy
River" and many others, he helped lay the basis for the joining of jazz
and popular music in the '30s, and set the parameters in which such players
as Red Allen, Harry James, Roy Eldridge, Taft Jordan, Bunny Berigan, Dizzy
Gillespie and others would work for the next 10 to 15 years. By the mid-1930s, as
the swing era began and Armstrong took to performing a more settled
repertoire, the period of innovation in his career came to an end. His key
solos took on a relatively unchanging form, and a long recording association
with Decca Records began. There would be updated arrangements of early
pieces, many of them outstanding, but no new musical breakthroughs. The
personality elements of Armstrong's performance now came forward in radio,
recordings with other Decca artists, and cameo film roles in Pennies From
Heaven, Dr. Rhythm, Going Places, Cabin In The Sky,
and many more. In 1947 Armstrong
officially dropped the big band and resumed performing traditional jazz with
an all-star group that included Earl Hines, Sid Catlett, Jack Teagarden and
Barney Bigard. Armstrong's playing loosened up somewhat, though he never
strayed far from established routines. He toured and recorded with various
versions of the All-Stars for the rest of his career. In 1955 he made his
first concert tour of Europe since the early '30s. Another tour followed taking
him to Africa, which was filmed by the CBS "See It Now" unit and
became both a television profile and feature film documentary (Satchmo The
Great). The international tours in the political context of the Cold War
earned him the title "Ambassador Satch." In the mid-1950s he
recorded his last unmitigated jazz masterpiece work, Armstrong Plays W.C.
Handy, for Columbia. There were also some astonishing reworkings of his
early classics in A Musical Autobiography for Decca, and several
session with Ella Fitzgerald for Verve that became major sellers. He
continued a full touring schedule until 1968, when his health finally yielded
to a weakened heart. Armstrong died in July
1970, a wealthy and much beloved man, though his music was considered by some
to be old-fashioned, and his performing style dated and politically
incorrect. In 1953, Armstrong
became the first musician elected by Readers to the new Down Beat Hall of
Fame.
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