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introduction “Music is my life, and I live to play” Louis Armstrong’s Jazz Autobiographics To study jazz, we are often told, means to study something uniquely and centrally American. In his opening remarks to the seminal anthology The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (1998), Robert O’Meally calls jazz “a massive , irresistibly in›uential, politically charged part of our culture” and “the master trope of this American century: the de‹nitive sound of America in our time.” Reaching for Du Boisian heights, O’Meally argues that “[t]he sound of the American twentieth century is the jazz line.”1 If jazz is elevated to the status of America’s master trope and de‹nitive sound, and if it sonically encapsulates the problem of race that W. E. B. Du Bois diagnosed as the de‹ning issue of the twentieth century, then Louis Armstrong is much more than a musician and entertainer loved by audiences in the United States and across the world.2 Indeed, his life was so closely interwoven with many of the most central developments in twentieth-century American history that he emerges as a crucial ‹gure far beyond his musical innovations and popular appeal. As a trumpeter, Armstrong was the major innovator of the 1920s and early 1930s. He was the driving force in the development from traditional New Orleans ensemble playing to the prominent role of the jazz soloist, often stylized as a quintessentially modern artist, a “Master of Modernism ,” as promotional pamphlets and placards informed audiences in 1927.3 His studio work with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in 1923 resulted in some of the earliest jazz recordings by African American musicians , and while prominent bebop trumpeters such as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis initially attacked Armstrong during the postwar years for what they interpreted as racially self-deprecating and submissive performance antics, they ultimately acknowledged their debt to his musical and personal achievements: “If it weren’t for him, there wouldn’t be any of us,” Gillespie 1 exclaimed during the birthday concert organized by jazz impresario George Wein in 1970. “You can’t play nothing on trumpet that doesn’t come from him, not even modern shit,” Davis would eventually concede.4 And indeed, players as diverse as Lester Bowie and Wynton Marsalis have paid tribute to Armstrong’s style and technique, as well as to his role in American music. Marsalis’s commentary in documentaries such as Gary Giddins and Kendrick Simmons’s Satchmo (1989) and Ken Burns’s Jazz (2001) leaves little doubt about his devotion to Armstrong, and his solos in Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra performances of “Portrait of Louis Armstrong ” (originally composed for Duke Ellington’s New Orleans Suite of 1970, featuring Cootie Williams on trumpet) evoke Armstrong’s brilliant tone, rhythmic feel, and melodic ingenuity.5 Bowie, known for his innovative work with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded “Hello Dolly,” Armstrong’s biggest pop hit, as a duet with pianist John Hicks for his solo album Fast Last! (included on the double CD American Gumbo; 32 Jazz, 1974). This recording not only recalls Armstrong’s acclaimed version of “Dear Old Southland” with Buck Washington on piano (Apr. 5, 1930) and thus illustrates Bowie’s interest in connecting his avant-garde trumpeting with Armstrong’s lyrical tone. It also adds a sonic dimension to Bowie’s understanding of Armstrong as a “true revolutionary” in American music and culture.6 As a singer, Armstrong shocked audiences with inventive scat improvisations , and he pioneered vocal techniques that made a lasting impact on singers such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Tony Bennett, and many more.7 In her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Holiday recalls being trans‹xed by the suggestive powers of Armstrong’s melodic scatting on “West End Blues” (June 28, 1928), and her vocal rendition of “The Blues Are Brewin’” with Armstrong and his orchestra in the movie New Orleans (dir. Arthur Lubin, 1947) forcefully illustrates how strongly she was affected by his singing.8 Ella Fitzgerald’s indebtedness to Armstrong’s vocal mannerisms and scat techniques is amply documented on the albums Ella and Louis (1956) and Ella and Louis Again (1957). Bing Crosby’s duets with Armstrong in ‹lms such as High Society (dir. Charles Walters, 1956), on the many radio broadcasts they did together between 1949 and 1951, on the Bing & Satchmo album (1960), and on television programs such as the Edsel Show...

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