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(mp3 3.7 MB)
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performer: Ethan Hein
composer: Louis Armstrong
genre: hip-hop
completed: 01 04 07
The track I sampled all this from:
Lazy River
Some background on the maestro from wikipedia:
Armstrong was born August 4, 1901, to
a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana. Nicknamed "Satchel
Mouth", Louis Armstrong spent his youth in poverty
in a rough neighborhood of uptown New Orleans, as his
father, William Armstrong (1881-????), abandoned the family
when Louis was an infant. His mother, Mary Albert Armstrong
(1886–1942) then left him and his younger sister
Beatrice Armstrong Collins (1903–1987) under the
upbringing of his grandmother Josephine Armstrong. He
first learned to play the cornet (his first of which was
bought with money loaned to him by the Karnofskys, a Russian-Jewish
immigrant family) in the band of the New Orleans Home
for Colored Waifs, where he had been sent multiple times
for general delinquency, most notably for a long term
after (as police records show) firing his stepfather's
pistol into the air at a New Year's Eve celebration.
He began recording under his own name with his famous
Hot Five and Hot Seven with such hits as "Potato
Head Blues", "Muggles" (a reference to
marijuana, for which Armstrong had a lifelong fondness),
and "West End Blues", the music of which set
the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years
to come. His recordings with Earl "Fatha"
Hines (most famously their 1928 "Weatherbird"
duet) and Armstrong's trumpet introduction to "West
End Blues" remain some of the most famous and influential
improvisations in jazz history. In 1964, he recorded
his biggest-selling record, Hello, Dolly!. The song
knocked the Beatles off the pop charts, making Armstrong,
at age 63, the oldest person to ever have a number-one
hit.
The "Satchmo" nickname and Armstrong's warm
Southern personality, combined with his natural love
of entertaining and ability to evoke a response from
the audience, resulted in a public persona — the
grin, the sweat, the handkerchief — that came
to seem affected and even something of a racist caricature
late in his career. He was also criticized for accepting
the title of "King of The Zulus" (in the New
Orleans African American community, an honored role
as head of leading black Carnival Krewe, but bewildering
or offensive to outsiders with their traditional costume
of grass-skirts and blackface makeup satirizing southern
white attitudes) for Mardi Gras 1949.
The seeming racial insensitivity of Armstrong's King
of the Zulus performance has sometimes been seen as
part of a larger failing on Armstrong's part. Where
some saw a gregarious and outgoing personality, others
saw someone trying too hard to appeal to white audiences
and essentially becoming a minstrel caricature. Some
musicians criticized Armstrong for playing in front
of segregated audiences, and for not taking a strong
enough stand in the civil rights movement suggesting
that he was an Uncle Tom. Billie Holiday countered,
however, "Of course Pops toms, but he toms from
the heart."
Armstrong, in fact, was a major financial supporter
of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights
activists, but mostly preferred to work quietly behind
the scenes, not mixing his politics with his work as
an entertainer. The few exceptions made it more effective
when he did speak out; Armstrong's criticism of President
Eisenhower, calling him "two-faced" and "gutless"
because of his inaction during the conflict over school
desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 made
national news. As a protest, Armstrong canceled a planned
tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department
saying "The way they're treating my people in the
South, the government can go to hell" and that
he could not represent his government abroad when it
was in conflict with its own people.
The older generation of New Orleans jazz musicians
often referred to their improvisations as "variating
the melody"; Armstrong's improvisations were daring
and sophisticated for the time while often subtle and
melodic. He often essentially re-composed pop-tunes
he played, making them more interesting. Armstrong's
playing is filled with joyous, inspired original melodies,
creative leaps, and subtle relaxed or driving rhythms.
The genius of these creative passages is matched by
Armstrong's playing technique, honed by constant practice,
which extended the range, tone and capabilities of the
trumpet. In these records, Armstrong almost single-handedly
created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what was
essentially a collective folk music and turning it into
an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual
expression.
Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing,
but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it.
He had a hit with his playing and scat singing on "Heebie
Jeebies" when, according to some legends, the sheet
music fell on the floor and he simply started singing
nonsense syllables. He also sang out "I done forgot
the words" in the middle of recording "I'm
A Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas". Such records were
hits and scat singing became a major part of his performances.
Long before this, however, Armstrong was playing around
with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases,
interjecting improvisations, using his voice as creatively
as his trumpet.
Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from the most
earthy blues to the syrupy sweet arrangements of Guy
Lombardo to Latin American folk songs to classical symphonies
and opera. Armstrong incorporated influences from all
these sources into his performances, sometimes to the
bewilderment of fans who wanted Armstrong to stay in
convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted
into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence.
Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking
version of "Saint Louis Blues" from the WC
Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.
Many of Armstrong's recordings remain popular. More
than three decades since his passing, a larger number
of his recordings from all periods of his career are
more widely available than at any time during his lifetime.
His songs are broadcast and listened to every day throughout
the world, and are honored in various movies, TV series,
commercials, and even anime and computer games. "A
Kiss to Build a Dream On" was included in the computer
game Fallout 2, accompanying the intro cinematic.
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