Linking to Louis

If you are new to Blogville and wonder what those underlined words in blue are all about, you should know that they are links. When you click on a link, you are spirited away from Rifftides to another place on the internet that amplifies, explains or demonstrates the linked term. Happily for Rifftides, all you have to do is close out of the linked site to get back to home base.

Perhaps you'd like to try it. Click on this link. You will be rewarded.

(Pause)

Welcome back. That was Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five in 1927, playing "Hotter Than That." It is a recording not discussed as often or as deeply as other Hot Fives; "West End Blues" or "Cornet Chop Suey," as examples. The jazz scholar William R. Bauer is doing something about that. Professor Bauer is writing a book that will analyze Armstrong's early work and pay particular attention to the astonishing cornet and vocal solos in "Hotter Than That." The book, The Early Recordings of Louis Armstrong: The Codification of Jazz Performance Practice, will be published by Scarecrow Press in 2008.

That makes two important Armstrong books in the works. My artsjournal.com colleague Terry Teachout (see the item titled Coherence) is writing a full-scale Armstrong biography, also targeted for publication next year. If you had no reason to look forward to 2008, you now have two reasons.