Terry Teachout, Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin, 474 pages, $30)
A good biography of a musician makes the reader want to listen. Alexander Wheelock Thayer triggered that compulsion with his life of Beethoven, Marion Hildesheimer with Mozart, Richard Sudhalter with Bix Beiderbecke. Terry Teachout’s Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong can be a workout; all that getting up and down. Reading it, I repeatedly set aside the book to go to the shelves and exhume Armstrong recordings. Teachout evokes the essence of the artist. Here he is on the musicology and genealogy of “Muggles” by Armstrong and his Hot Five (1928):

It is because of Armstrong’s climactic two-chorus explosion that “Muggles” belongs to the ages. He charges in on (clarinetist Jimmy) Strong’s heels with a two-bar break in which he doubles the tempo, proceeding directly to the most memorable of his many fantasias on one note, a chorus in which he rocks back and forth between a B-flat below middle C and the same note an octave higher, screwing up the tension to a pitch reminiscent of the last chorus of “West End Blues,” then releasing it with a dark-blue phrase borrowed from Joe Oliver’s solo on the Creole Jazz Band’s 1923 recording of ‘Jazzin’ Babies Blues.”

Teachout’s discussion of “Stardust.” (1931) is another instance of his ability to hook readers. Few could resist playing the recording as they read the author’s transcription of Armstrong’s vocal invention. Armstrong would have been as enchanted by that effect as Hoagy Carmichael was with the singer’s interpretation.

…Armstrong’s vocal is a paraphrase of Carmichael’s tune and Parish’s lyric, whose words he reshapes with a desentimentalizing freedom that delighted the composer: SometimesIwonderwhyIspendsuchlonely night (oh, baby, lonely nighnnmmmm) / Dreaming of a song (melody, memory) / And I am once again with you. Even for him it was a daringly imaginative transformation, much more so than the instrumental portion of the record, in which he mostly stays within earshot of the tune.

Teachout emphasizes in a hundred small and large ways that Armstrong accomplished his goal of making people happy, did it spectacularly, while producing music that set artistic standards influencing American music to this day. His genius remade jazz from a collective folk form into a soloist’s art and touched all areas of serious music. There is a bit of the influence of Armstrong in every aspect of popular culture, from three-chord rock and roll to no-chord free jazz, to the language and attitudes of fiction and the way certain actors move and speak on stage and screen. Great popular singers — Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald — would not have had their styles without Armstrong’s example. Armstrong and the quintessential bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie feuded over styles, but ultimately became good friends. Gillespie summed up the pervasiveness of Armstrong’s sway: “No him, no me.”
As I wrote in selecting Pops as a Doug’s Pick (center column), “Teachout combines with the advantage of unique access to Armstrong’s archives deep musical understanding and the gift of writing clearly about complex matters.” Those matters concern not only the workings of music but also of racism, politics and the Byzantine power economics of show business. Was Armstrong’s longtime manager Joe Glaser an exploiter who had moorings in organized crime? Yes. Was he good for Armstrong? Yes. Teachout shows that the dependent psychological makeup formed by his background and reinforced by the advice of his mentor Joe Oliver, ordained that Armstrong have Glaser or a white man like him take care of business. He also makes clear that Armstrong knew about the outsized share of his money that Glaser was taking and accepted it as the price of the freedom to concentrate on his music and “always give a good show.”
Was Armstrong as some blacks charged, a kowtowing Uncle Tom? No. He was a black man who grew up in a city where segregation could be vicious, and he was conditioned accordingly. Teachout presents evidence of outrageous incidents demonstrating that Armstrong’s fame and visibility gave him no immunization against racist humiliation in the south or the north. One of his most demeaning mistreatments, when he was at his peak of renown, was not in Mississippi or Alabama, but when he was denied the use of a restroom in Connecticut. In 1957 when the chips were down for his people during the civil rights struggles in the south, he attacked President Eisenhower as “two-faced” and gutless for not enforcing the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. For good measure, he bestowed on Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus a scatological title. His angry outburst made headlines. Within days, Eisenhower ordered Federal troops into Little Rock to escort nine black children into the school. Teachout is persuasive in suggesting that, despite a lack of administration acknowledgement, pressure from news coverage of Armstrong’s outspokenness played a role in forcing the Federal government to act.
Through the access he was allowed, Teachout went more deeply into Armstrong’s archives than was possible for previous scholars. A result of his research is that many of the most fascinating parts of Armstrong’s saga come from his own writings and from hundreds of hours of reel-to-reel tape recordings. He was a constant writer and a tireless recordist of his thoughts, his household activities, his wife, his band members, his friends. He taped himself at home playing along with his classic recordings of the 1920s and ’30s. Teachout works material from the tapes into the fabric of the book, adding new detail to one of the most unlikely of all rags-to-riches stories. He does not gloss over Armstrong’s faults and foibles; a lifelong affair with marijuana, a string of troubled early marriages, a short temper. He balances the downsides with accounts of a mostly happy and faithful final marriage, a trail of generosity to friends and neighbors, reluctance to retain anger or hold many grudges, a keenly inquiring mind and the love of laughter.
As for Armstrong’s beginnings in the rawest part of the underbelly of New Orleans, his introduction to music, the bloom of his genius and the globe-spanning arc of his life, Teachout tells the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of the story with the clarity and flow he brings to all of his writing.
In the eulogy at Armstrong’s funeral in 1971, his friend Fred Robbins said, “he was truly the only one of his kind, a titanic figure in his and our time, a veritable Picasso. A Stravinsky. A Casals. A Louis Armstrong.” Pops: A Life Of Louis Armstrong is persuasive and entertaining in support of that truth.
To see and hear the recent one-hour Brian Lamb interview of Terry Teachout on C-Span’s Q&A, go to this archive video. Be patient; it loads slowly and has a false start, but once it gets underway it is proof that conversation on television can be illuminating. “Talking heads” needn’t be a pejorative.

Critical carping and misguided stylistic arguments aside, in every period of his career Louis Armstrong was formidable in his playing and singing. His appearance with the All-Stars at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival reminded many who had taken Armstrong for granted of the power of his art. Through Bert Stern’s and Aram Avakian’s film Jazz On A Summer’s Day, his performance that night has reached untold thousands of listeners miles and years beyond the concert in Freebody Park.
The All-Stars were trombonist Trummy Young, clarinetist Peanuts Hucko, pianist Billy Kyle, bassist Mort Herbert and drummer Danny Barcelona. Jack Teagarden, Armstrong’s brother under the skin, was a guest for “Rockin’ Chair.” Willis Conover made the introduction.

Drummer Jake Hanna died last night in Los Angeles of complications from a blood disease. He was 78. Versatile across all jazz styles, in small groups and large Hanna swung with unremitting flexibility and power. He was the spark plug of big bands led by Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson and Harry James and worked with a score or more of small groups including Supersax and Toshiko Akiyoshi.
Here is Hanna in 1964 driving the Herman band in Bill Holman’s arrangement of “After You’ve Gone.” The video quality is a bit watery. The music is anything but.

In recent years, Hanna was in demand at jazz festivals and parties all over the US and abroad. To see and hear him jamming with trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, bassist Jeff Fuller, guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, pianist John Bunch, cornetist Warren Vaché and tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton, go here.
DevraDoWrite, aka Devra Hall, has a story about the time her father Jim played a trick on Hanna the trickster. To read it, go here.

Author Nick Catalano recently had occasion to revisit the JazzHouse in Copenhagen. The club is the successor to the Montmartre, which presented dozens of the world’s best jazz artists in the 1950s and ’60s. Rifftides pieces about Bud Powell and the Montmartre’s masks stimulated considerable comment. The staff thought you’d be interested in Nick’s observations about the JazzHouse.

The atmosphere at Copenhagen JazzHouse is informal, the decor is charming and the crowd is serious. The room was packed on both nights and the audiences displayed that close attention which is so pervasive among European jazz patrons. People never whisper or otherwise distract listeners.

How refreshing. To read all of Nick’s piece about the club before and since its reincarnation, go to his New York Beat column at All About Jazz.

It is the custom of trumpeter John McNeil to disseminate notices about his band’s engagements at Puppet’s, a Brooklyn, New York, night club. Late today, he issued a special edition:

Once in a great while, I encounter a photograph so good that it is necessary to dream up a reason to use it. In the case of the one beow, no dreaming was necessary. The lighting, sharpness and definition are so right, the shot looks like 3-D. The tenor saxophonist is Hadley Caliman. The conductor is Michael Brockman of the Seattle Jazz Repertory Orchestra. The SRJO is preparing for two concerts called Big Band Monk and Mingus, in early March.

From the SRJO news release:

These concerts will feature rare performances of numerous historic works, including Thelonious Monk’s “Bye-ya,” Mysterioso” and “Evidence,” and Charles Mingus’ “Good-bye Porkpie Hat,” “Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife,” “Fables of Faubus,” “Better Get Hit in Your Soul,” “Don’t Be Afraid, The Clown’s Afraid Too,” and “Self Portrait in Three Colors.” The concert will feature original arrangements by Seattle jazz writer and pianist Bob Hammer for classic recordings by the Mingus Orchestra such as Mingus Ah Um and Let My Children Hear Music. Many of the Mingus works show off the lyrical side of his composition skills.
In tribute to the victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti, the SRJO will also perform Mingus’ civil rights era work, Haitian Fight Song.

If you live in or near Seattle or find yourself in the neighborhood and haven’t heard the SRJO, this would be a fine opportunity to get to know an impressive collection of musicians. For more information, go here.
There is little of the SRJO on web video, but here is a sample from an outdoor concert. Brockman’s co-leader Clarence Acox introduces the piece. The trumpet soloist is Jay Thomas.

As for Hadley Caliman (remember the picture?), see this recent Rifftides item.

With fairness, it could be charged that Rifftides has been too concerned lately with the old and the dead. Well, certain observances and acknowledgements needed to be made. But let’s move on. David Liebman wrote with an antidote. Here’s his message:

ok–it’s a cliche now that “they”(meaning the kids) get better earlier-check this out–he’s already doing classical stuff since he was a babe–jazz for two years–Ravi (Coltrane) turned me on to him before I went to Israel a few weeks ago
13 yr old from Tel Aviv in a club there–just jamming
what’s next, out of the womb burning or what?

The 13-year-old’s name is Gadi Lehavi. Now you know about as much about him as I do, except for how he plays “Autumn Leaves” with Dave Liebman. Here they are, less than a month ago.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.–Friedrich Nietzsche

It is all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.–George Bernard Shaw

For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!–Robert Louis Stevenson

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible — and achieve it, generation after generation.–Pearl S. Buck

Youth is a quality, not a matter of circumstances.–Frank Lloyd Wright

I’ll tell ‘ya how to stay young: Hang around with older people.–Bob Hope

What three administrations in the White House have refused to do, the people have done. They have recognized Willis Conover, the Voice of America broadcaster who may have been America’s greatest cultural diplomat of the Cold War. He now has his own Facebook page, The Willis Conover Club. Will that lead to his getting a long overdue posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom? Possibly not, but his page, up only a day or two, is rapidly accumulating fans. One of them typifies the many musicians who huddled around their shortwave radios behind the Iron Curtain and were inspired by the jazz that Conover sent around the world during some of the most perilous decades of the 20th century. This is his message on the Conover Facebook page.

Dear everybody, Please join the Willis Conover Club, He had done for Jazz as much as Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Horace Silver, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie etc….. Valery Ponomarev

Ponomarev went on to migrate to the United States from the Soviet Union, play trumpet with Art Blakey and become an international jazz artist whose career continues. For background about Willis and a personal Rifftides recollection, go here. To read the many other items about Conover in this blog, go to the archives, click on “edit,” then “find” and enter “Conover” in the search box.

Politicians and bureaucrats have downgraded the VOA to a remnant of its former power to objectively inform the world about the United States. Much of what Conover accomplished lingers in the good will he created toward his country with the music and dispassionate commmentary he disseminated for years by way of his Music USA program. In these daunting times, with the US so in need of good will, perhaps a swell of recognition from the bottom up will persuade the administration in Washington that cultural diplomacy is a potent tool.

If you are a Facebook member, enter Willis Conover in the Facebook search box. If you are not, you can go here to sign up.

Sad news from London that Johnny Dankworth –Sir John Dankworth– has died at 82. The alto saxophonist, composer and band leader and his wife, the singer Cleo Laine, have been pillars of jazz in England since the early 1950s. To read the BBC’s announcement of his death, go here.