Louis Armstrong

Armstrong in Chicago 100 years ago sparked jazz

Lest we forget: In 1922 Louis Armstrong arrived in Chicago from New Orleans, with his wife Lil Hardin,

Louis Armstrong, Lil Hardin Armstrong/Frank Driggs Collection

mentor King Joe Oliver and colleagues such as the Brothers Dodd (clarinetist Jimmy, drummer Baby) kick-starting jazz into the most spontaneous, joyful, virtuosic, collaborative art form the U.S. has yet produced. The Jazz Institute of Chicago celebrated this anniversary throughout 2022 — here are four brief articles Kent Richmond and I co-wrote for the JIC JazzGram, telling the story with playlist embedded.

Hurray for Treme

“Do Watcha Wanna,” the season finale of Treme, had everything I watch the series for:

Compelling characters embodied by terrific actors;
plausible and suspenseful quick-cutting across and interweaving of plot strands;
confident command of realities afflicting post-Katrina/pre-Gulf oil spill New Orleans, and
the extraordinary depiction of living, breathing, hugely enjoyable music as a central factor in peoples’ lives, whether or not they’re professionally involved.

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Jazz, blues & beyond in Amman: Pops, Bird, Diz, Lady Day @ UJordan

I spoke on jazz and blues at the University of Jordan, a modern 45,000-student institution, in an event sponsored by the American Embassy while in Amman on family matters a couple weeks ago. About 50 avid students of music, arts and literature and their informed faculty watched videos of Louis Armstrong at age 32 doing “Dinah,”Â Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie playing “Hot House,”Â Billie Holiday with all-stars singing “Fine and Mellow”Â and Muddy Waters among other immortals from the American Folk Blues Festival, 1962-69, vol. 3.Â I talked about blues and jazz being one in essence, but different in practice. Then second-year Jordanian student Nabil Gonzalez played banjo, harmonic and sang two original numbers in a U.S. folkie style. “I’m passionately in love with bluegrass music!” Gonzalez told me. Other of the young people were eager for jazz and blues, but said they had little access to the music or information about it.

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The jazz of victory and celebration

It’s odd that of all the nuances of expression jazz can convey, the thrill of victory and celebration of success is hard to find among the music’s classics. Barack Obama’s heartening win of the presidency prompts me to search out joyous music, but I can’t think of a movement akin to the bells ringing in Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” in the repertoire of Miles, Ornette, Cecil or Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, Bird and Diz, or Ellington, Basie and Goodman. The crowning last chorus of Armstrong’s “Tight LIke This” comes to mind, though the satisfaction bespoke in the trumpeter’s final ringing notes seems to reflect gratification that’s more personal than socio-political. Where’s jazz’s happy party music?

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What every infant should hear

So Boston Globe staffer Jeremy Eichler has enlisted his infant son Jonah as a test subject for early musical perception and education. Why limit the kid’s choices to Mozart and Schoenberg? How ’bout some good ol’ American prime Louis Armstrong, introducing the concepts of improvisation and swing?Â

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