"I
wasn't a lover of Carnatic music to start with. Till I was nearly 30 I
was only fond of Western music. I loved Beethoven and Brahms, Chopin
and Tchaikovsky. I loved New Orleans jazz, and I admired Louis
Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. I was thrilled by the powerful voices
of Mario Lanza, Benjamino Gigli and Paul Robson. . . " -- So I had
written in an article in the Evening News in New Delhi in 1975, which I
recalled in my blog How The Maestro Gave Me A Glimpse Of God And Converted Me To Carnatic Music!
For
half a century my fascination for Louis Armstrong had been based on my
impressions gained mainly from a few long-playing records and marginally
from radio broadcasts. It's only in the Internet era that I've
been able to hear his music extensively, thanks to YouTube. And in 2008
I happened to read some books on his life and music, from which I was
tempted to quote some significant thoughts in the following article:-
---------- ----------
THE HINDU
Friday review
November 28, 2008
The magic of Satchmo
Two
weeks ago in this column (November 14), I had used a rather unusual but
significant expression ‘classical jazz’, referring to the early styles
of jazz which had evolved in America (mainly in New Orleans, Chicago and
New York) in the first half of the 20th Century. These were the trends
known as Dixieland Jazz, Swing, and Dixieland Revived. Recently I have
been refreshing my impressions of classical jazz with some serious
reading and some online listening. And I’ve come across such
well-expressed views on Louis Armstrong -- alias Satchmo, the
towering black musician who dominated those trends and influenced them
forcefully -- that I am tempted to string together a few detailed
quotations here.
Growling and glowing
Lawrence
Bergreen, a distinguished American journalist and biographer, describes
Louis Armstrong’s unique musical skills as follows : “There was,
initially, a cornet -- and later a trumpet -- that was more expressive
than a mere instrument : sweet, singing, lilting, cajoling, teasing,
ebullient. And then there was his . . . unforgettable voice which
behaved like a huge instrument : growling, laughing. . . . soothing,
fierce.
"The
combination of the voice that sounded like an instrument and the
instrument that sounded like a voice created the universally recognized
persona of Satchmo. He looked and felt like a glowing lump of coal, hot
and alive and capable of igniting everything around him. For him,
music was a heightened form of existence, and he sang and he played as
if it could never be loud enough, or go deep enough, or reach high
enough.” (Louis Armstrong : An Extravagant Life, Broadway Books, New York, 1997).
In
fact, Armstrong’s rustic and rasping voice often echoed the vigorous
and vibrant tone of his horn, infusing very ordinary lyrics with a
soulful quality ; sometimes even scat-singing (which meant producing
senseless vocal effects such as ‘rip-bip-ee-doo-dee-doot-doo...’) in
fascinating ways. And one of his most famous gramophone records (1928)
attracts the following rave review from Bergreen :-
“If a single recording could be said to represent the peak of Louis’s art, it would be West End Blues.
Like many of his other masterpieces, the tune . . . was unremarkable on
its own . . . (But) in Louis’s hands, (it) became a tapestry of pain,
joy and transcendence through musical artistry. He starts off with what
would become the most famous horn solo in jazz, a nine-measure opening
cadenza of dizzying difficulty that for decades aspiring horn-players
would struggle to imitate. It is a summons to the soul, dignified and
daring.
“Once
the horn has gotten the listener’s attention, the song shifts gears,
slows down and dawdles along, until Louis begins scat singing in a
light, delicate voice, trading phrases with the clarinet, and trolling
in the lower registers. Then, without explanation or apology, Louis
takes a second solo, holding a note for so long that it pierces through
the fabric of the music like a gleaming arrow. With brilliant timing,
he finally lets go of it . . . with a shudder of . . . cymbals.”
Hallmark of excellence
Now
let us also hear what the authors of two other important books on jazz
have to say about this supreme example of technical and artistic
excellence. Richard Hadlock, jazz critic and American radio host, says :
“West End Blues, perhaps Armstrong’s finest recorded
performance of his career. . . has everything : big-toned bravura
trumpet-playing ; effective contrast of expressive simplicity and
instrumental complexity ; logical development of mood and theme from
beginning to end ; a heart-warming, tender scat vocal refrain ; a
perfect balance of all historical aspects of the Armstrong musical
personality. . . West End Blues is a milestone in the history of jazz". (Jazz Masters of the Twenties, Collier Books, New York, 1974).
Gunther
Schuller, horn-player, composer, and president of the New England
Conservatory of Music, Boston, says: “When on June 28, 1928, Louis
Armstrong unleashed the spectacular cascading phrases of the
introduction to West End Blues, he established the general stylistic direction of jazz for several decades to come . . . The clarion call of West End Blues served notice that jazz had the potential capacity to compete with the highest order of previously known musical expression". (Early Jazz -- Its Roots and Musical Development, Oxford University Press, New York, 1968).
If
you wish to understand the true significance of those glowing words of
adoration and critical acclaim, all you have to do is to look online for
West End Blues (easily accessible on YouTube) and play the
three-minute 78-rpm gramophone plate of OKeh Records made 80 years ago,
which, according to the overall assessments by eminent and sensitive
observers in America, features the finest sample of Louis Armstrong’s
music. And if you do take the trouble of getting that far, surely you
will not be able to resist hearing many other recordings of the maestro,
all of which invariably contain the very essence of what I call
classical jazz!
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