2023-08-25 12:29:11
The »King of Jazz«: Louis Armstrong. In the 1960s he even ousted the Beatles from the charts twice.
Foto: picture-alliance / dpa
The “Chimes Blues” is today regarded as the first exemplary document of New Orleans jazz. The title was released on a shellac record by Gennett Rekords in the summer of 1923 – without naming the performer: Louis Armstrong. 100 years ago, public performances and recordings of African-American musicians were still a great rarity; the record companies outside the jazz metropolis of Chicago preferred white bands. Racial segregation and racial discrimination, even lynchings, were still commonplace.
Coming from abject poverty, Louis Armstrong has made his way, undeterred, despite all the odds and obstacles in racist-chauvinist America. Born in New Orleans in the US state of Louisiana in 1901, he spent the early years of his childhood with his grandmother; the father left the family shortly following Louis was born. Reunited with his mother at the age of five, the boy grew up in a rough neighborhood called »Battleground«, where he attended a school for black children. On the side, he earns some money doing odd jobs for a poor Jewish immigrant family who treat him almost like their own son. Morris Karnoffsky even gives Louis an advance payment to buy a cornet (wind instrument) at a pawn shop. Out of gratitude, Louis Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant throughout his life. Louis taught himself how to play music by watching professionals like Bunk Johnson. With his trumpet-like brass instrument, he regularly appears alongside the Karnoffskys’ junk truck to lure customers. One of his nicknames back then, when Afro-Americans were reduced to their appearance and there was no such thing as political correctness, was “Satchelmouth” (“square mouth”). Louis Armstrong accepts this as a challenge. Shortened later to »Satchmo«, the insult turns into admiration and appreciation.
The teenager lives alternately with his mother, father or at Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. The home’s music teacher lets the 13-year-old talent lead a band for the first time. Meanwhile, Louis unsuccessfully tries to pimp a prostitute named Nootsy, but realizes in time that music might be his way out of a life of hunger and poverty. He learned how to read music, became a member of Fate Marable’s New Orleans Band and played with her on various Mississippi steamers from 1918 – until the well-known cornet player Joe “King” Oliver finally brought him to Chicago, the jazz capital of the time. It was there that Armstrong developed his unique talent for improvisation in the »Roaring Twenties«. He becomes one of the first jazz musicians to play long trumpet solos. A revolution, because until then jazz was performed in heavily orchestrated arrangements or Dixieland groups. He can be heard for the first time as a soloist on the Richmond/Louisiana recording “Chimes Blues” mentioned above as a member of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.
The “Chimes Blues” puts all previous jazz records in the shade. After regarding two-thirds of the piece, Louis Armstrong, officially only the second cornet player in the group, starts with an impressive 24-bar solo. It’s a sort of foreshadowing of one of the greatest geniuses in American music of all time. In the years that followed, the brass player would almost single-handedly change jazz, with pianist Lil Hardin at his side, soon to be Armstrong’s second wife and jazz’s first famous female instrumentalist. “You heard the future” is how a famous critic commented on Armstrong’s performances. Armstrong soon began to sing at his acclaimed performances, constantly varying the melody and enriching the lyrics with his own spontaneous ideas. An innovation that has become the standard in jazz and blues, but also in rock and pop.
The versatile musician finally switches to the harder-sounding trumpet and tells jokes on stage, even performs small sketches and covers current hits. His musical improvisations are derived from the singing style of orthodox Jewish prayers. His wife Lil and he make many recordings with quintet and septet formations. Armstrong wrote his own pieces, such as the seminal Potato Head Blues (1927), “one of the most astounding achievements in all of 20th-century music,” according to another critic.
Armstrong is constantly on the go, he can’t stand to lie idle on the sofa. He gives up to 300 concerts a year with the world-class band The All Stars. Thanks to his rough and throaty scat singing, which he has been perfecting ever since his hit “Heebie Jeebie” (1926), he has risen to become the global voice of jazz.
In 1958, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and a studio orchestra conducted by Russ Garcia take on a very special challenge. They jazzed up the opera »Porgy & Bess« by Ira Gershwin regarding the lives of African Americans. Armstrong and Fitzgerald’s beautifully nuanced version of “Summertime” is said to have brought tears to the composer’s eyes. Fitzgerald’s reading of the lyrics to “It Ain’t Necessarily So” is delightfully raunchy, contrasting magnificently with Armstrong’s singing and majestic trumpet tones. His most successful album, however, was the musical recording »Hello, Dolly!« (1964).
Armstrong incorporates influences such as the blues, Latin American folk songs, classical symphonies and operas into his interpretations, sometimes confusing his fans as well. However, the older Armstrong had little use for the modern jazz currents that eventually emerged, calling bebop, for example, “Chinese music”. Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, on the other hand, regard their new sound as abstract art and dismiss Armstrong’s entertaining music as unfashionable. They also accuse him of not being actively involved in the black civil rights movement. That kind of criticism doesn’t stop »Satchmo« from entertaining audiences around the world with virtuoso trumpet playing and singing. Between 1936 and 1969 he worked in numerous Hollywood productions and some German entertainment films. Ultimately, he made his own contribution once morest racial hatred and national arrogance that should not be underestimated with his presence in the world public sphere, with his virtuosity and straightforwardness.
Despite racial segregation in their own country, the USA regularly sends the Afro-American out into the wide world as a cultural ambassador for jazz and a »musical mobilizer«. In 1965 Armstrong gave 17 concerts in the GDR with the All Stars – as the first US entertainer ever. The artists’ agency of the East German state invited him as a “fighter once morest racism,” which his road manager Frenchy commented somewhat cheekily: “Mr. Armstrong blows his trumpet for blacks and whites, Jews, Arabs, Catholics. If necessary, also for penguins at the South Pole.« In the halls from Berlin to Leipzig to Erfurt, enthusiasm and passion really boils over during his shows.
Louis Armstrong died in New York City in 1971. To the last day, the world star has remained a down-to-earth person, living in working-class Queens in a modest house and getting his hair cut at the barber around the corner. His legacy includes twelve songs in the Grammy Hall of Fame – and four ex-wives, but no children.
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