BIG BAND Alliance - storage.googleapis.com€¦ · Louis Armstrong, since he joined the Armstrong...
Transcript of BIG BAND Alliance - storage.googleapis.com€¦ · Louis Armstrong, since he joined the Armstrong...
OCTOBER 2020 NEWS
by JAY and CHRISTOPHER POPA
Life begins at 40, so it is said…..
But for one man, arguably the top Louis Armstrong
aficionado, author, and archivist in the world, it seems certain!
His name is Ricky Riccardi. He’s from Toms River, New
Jersey, and he turned 40 on the 8th of last month.
If you’re familiar with the 1956 Armstrong album
“Ambassador Satch” (Columbia CL 840), you know that the
above image, courtesy of Mr. Riccardi, is a perfect spoof of its
cover—so we can add “ambassador” to his achievements.
Riccardi has been an official ambassador, so to speak, of
Louis Armstrong, since he joined the Armstrong House and
Museum in 2009.
From then until now, he has digitized the archive’s
extraordinary collection of photographs, correspondence, and
reel-to-reel tapes, lectured about Armstrong at locations all
around the world, co-produced numerous Armstrong reissues
(including downloads, CDs, and LPs), extensively written
about Satchmo, and presently serves as Director of Research
Collections at the Armstrong House and Museum.
BIG BAND Alliance
SPECIAL
BOOK REVIEW EDITION
The 432-page Heart Full Of Rhythm: The Big Band Years Of
Louis Armstrong (New York City: Oxford University Press,
2020) is not Riccardi’s first book; that was the 400-page What a
Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years
(New York City: Pantheon Books, 2011). With both works,
Riccardi has done an incredible, comprehensive analysis of
Armstrong’s life during two different periods.
We especially appreciated Riccardi’s choice of quotes
throughout his new narrative, both to help provide some context
for Armstrong’s actions and to respond to various critics. For
example, the late actor and tap dancer Honi Coles observing,
“Louis Armstrong was criticized for Tomming, for instance, but
that’s the way Pops was off the stage. He was the most entirely
natural man I ever met in my life.” And trumpeter Nicholas
Payton pointing out, “. . . he developed the whole idea of the
virtuoso vocal and instrumental soloist in the Pop idiom. It was
his voice that shaped what would become the Popular song.”
On the other hand, the late composer / conductor / author
Gunther Schuller once wrote that Armstrong succumbed “to the
sheer weight of his success and its attendant commercial
pressures.”
Riccardi is quick to refute Schuller’s and similar claims by
Armstrong biographer James Lincoln Collier and jazz critics
John Hammond and Leonard Feather, by citing Armstrong’s
nationwide box-office successes to cheering audiences, varied
best-selling OKeh and Decca and Victor recordings (I Can’t
Give You Anything But Love, Ain’t Misbehavin’, When It’s
Sleepy Time Down South, All of Me, Old Man Mose, Jeepers
Creepers, When You’re Smiling, etc.), radio broadcasts and film
appearances, his autobiography Swing That Music (New York
City, Longmans, Green & Co., 1936), and, certainly, the respect
that other musicians gave him.
Of course, there was a lot of professional and personal
drama in the time period covered in Riccardi’s new book —
1929 to 1947 — including Louis’s struggles to sustain his
reputation and high standards of playing, to still be able to hit
those high “C’s” for which he was famous, some negative press
reviews, his relationships with others (like when in 1930 he first
met Lionel Hampton - “Wha-a-t you say, Pops?” to which
Armstrong replied, “Wha-a-t you say, Gates?”), as well as
traveling through the prejudiced South, and the vocalized
allusions to marijuana (“We always looked at pot as a kind of
medicine, ya know,” Armstrong would report in 1970).
Nonetheless, Riccardi jumps right in with a prologue
containing an account of Armstrong’s numerous triumphs at the
Apollo Theatre in New York City from 1935 to 1952
(troublesome that Satchmo didn’t appear there at all during the
last 19 years of his career, even when he was having huge pop
hits such as Hello, Dolly!, because his act supposedly no longer
“fit in” as hip with the latest trends).
Again, a quotation in Riccardi’s text, this time from
Armstrong himself in 1959, gives a fitting response: “I’m my own
audience and no critic in the world can tell me how I should play
my horn, and I won’t do it anyway.”
Riccardi also helps us get to know Armstrong as a person,
often using Louis’ own words from his personal writings and
tapes and scrapbooks.
Despite being a big star, Armstrong was modest, charming,
caring, had a sense of humor (a natural comedic ability) and a
great smile, was generous to his friends and the less-fortunate;
yet not perfect, unfaithful in his marriages.
Riccardi also follows the encouragement of and influence on
Armstrong from such people as his wives Lil and Alpha and
Lucille, booking agents Tommy Rockwell and Johnny Collins
and Joe Glaser, and trombonist and future Armstrong band
member Jack Teagarden (“I’m a spade and you an ofay. We
got the same soul—so let’s blow,” Armstrong is quoted as
saying about ‘T’.)
A poster from Armstrong’s “big band” years, performing at
the Collinsville Park Ballroom in Collinsville, Illinois on Friday,
August 6, 1937.
A 1947 trade ad for Armstrong, still doing what he did so
well: entertaining audiences and making people happy. “Ain’t
no music out of date as long as you play it perfect,” he said.
Portrait of a master musician and entertainer, from, as
Riccardi’s first book put it, the “later” years.
We also wanted to share this photo, a United Press
International (UPI) image, taken on June 23, 1971, just a few
weeks before Armstrong passed away. The beautiful spirit was
still there!
Throughout the pages, we enjoyed when Riccardi would
offer his opinion, such as calling the 1931 Okeh version of Star
Dust “Armstrong’s single greatest recording” or when he
mentioned that - even during the Depression - Armstrong record
sales in 1931 topped 100,000 and that Louis traveled with 20
trunks full of clothes. And when he “fact-checked” Armstrong’s
story of how he got the nickname “Satchmo.”
Did you know, for instance, that in 1931 Louis purchased a
new eight-cylinder Buick convertible with whitewall tires, a radio,
and a rumble seat for $2800? That he and Coleman Hawkins
just didn’t get along? That Armstrong lived in Paris for half a
year in 1934? That Joe Glaser, Louis’ manager from 1935 on,
considered himself “something of a dandy,” liked to wear
expensive clothes, and got in trouble with the law more than
once for his scandalous attraction to teenage girls? That the
late George Avakian’s letters to Columbia urging that Arm-
strong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven records be made available
again resulted in a reissue program that was the first of its kind?
That Riccardi commutes 2-1/2 to 3 hours each way - everyday -
to work (he must r-e-a-l-l-y like his job!)? All of these stories
and many more are in the book
It was startling to read on page 139 about the rumored death
of Armstrong in 1933 (of course, he lived to age 70 in 1971).
We think that the cover of the new Heart Full Of Rhythm is
an attractive design, using a picture from the Jack Bradley
Collection held at the Louis Armstrong House and Museum.
Meanwhile, we liked seeing the numerous photographs
courtesy of the Armstrong House spread throughout the book.
We still shake our heads in disbelief, after hearing several
years ago that most young people, when asked “Who was Louis
Armstrong?,” thought he was the man who walked on the moon.
(Should anyone reading this not know, that was the astronaut
Neil Armstrong, in 1969.)
We both believe that Satchmo should never be forgotten in
any setting, not as an innovative jazz musician, a distinctive
singer, an internationally-renowned entertainer with a big band
or with his later All-Stars groups, or, more simply, as a human
being with great joy in his soul and a magnetic personality.
Riccardi touches on all of these qualities in his book, which
covers what, up until now, had been the comparatively forgotten
years of Armstrong’s career, 1929 to 1947. He was in the right
place at the right time with the right skills, able to conduct new
research with access to Armstrong’s own archives.
Through his work with the Louis Armstrong House and
Museum, Riccardi seems to now be having the time of his life,
and that makes us happy to see! We’re confident that, with his
latest book, he will continue to build upon the story of
Armstrong, one of the greatest jazz artists and entertainers ever
(and those are two quite distinct attributes). Thank you to Ricky
for his Heart Full Of Rhythm, for including all those enlightening
quotes, and for continuing to find and spread joy through music
(just like Louis did)!
And you can quote us on that!