What's In A Name?

Chris B.

Is it churlish to question whether some musicians should be called "jazz" musicians? I doubt it keeps them up at night and in fact, calling yourself a jazz artist is probably a bad career move.  It's not a question of chops and whether someone deserves to be put under the jazz umbrella. I mean, who's the arbiter? And who really gives a crap?

And yet...

Bubber M.

If we care about getting the young 'uns to tune into jazz and discover the rich history of the music, maybe we should be aware that some of the popular performers labeled as "jazz" are probably even less interesting to people under 21 than Pee Wee Russell, Bubber Miley or Roswell Rudd would be.

Youth is a time when the debate about who is "keepin it real" is even more extreme and heated than it is among us elderlys. The DIY movement prefers vinyl to mp3 and I imagine a solid campaign behind 78's with a little surface noise would get traction.

Yea, there's always a lot of "fronting" about realness. Maybe it's the physical needs charged up by hormones run amok, but however you explain it, intensity and challenge are highly valued in the young. And, when everything is so available, difficulty and scarcity create value; create charisma.

Rex S.

I know, this is beginning to look like the "5 reasons not to use the word jazz" list, but let those who care be conscious of how they throw the word jazz out there.  Keep in mind that music that soothes rather than disrupts and lulls rather than challenges will get the swift boot by young people. Give em Trane, Cecil, Rex Stewart and Oscar Pettiford. That might shake some adolescent trees.

The Orchestra Pit & The Pendulum

Dismantling the pit orchestra

The New York Times ran a piece on 3/24 talking about how pit orchestras are being moved out of pits so that more prime seating can be made available to Broadway big-spenders. The orchestras conduct their business by video and audio link from basements and other storage facilities far away from the theater where the show is actually being staged.

I have no quibble with this savvy business move and, in fact, am taking steps to implement a similar program in my own home.

First of all, my daughter's bedroom takes up a lot of space, but does she pay rent? Not on your life, buddy, so I looked up how much a room at the local boardinghouse would cost and calculated the difference between that and how much I could get for renting her room. Result? She's got to go. OK, we'll miss her, but she's a teenager, not around much anyway and her creams and lotions really clutter up the bathroom.

Next, I took a look at the living room. Nice and spacious. Then, I looked at my study-a tiny converted porch. You know which one I get to declare on my taxes. So, as of Monday, all my stuff moves into the big room and I now get to take six times the business office deduction. There'll be room for the TV in my former study and while it gets a bit cold out there in the winter, my wife is fond of camping and I think I can deduct the cost of blankets.

The final move is sheer genius. My mother lives all by herself on the first floor of the house. Meanwhile, I have a whole attic going unused. I can't rent it-it's not insulated and the floor won't pass inspection-so up you go, mom.  It's a pull-down staircase, a bit too heavy for her to operate, but there's usually someone around if she wants to get out. Oh, don't worry, she won't mind, believe me; anything to keep her baby solvent.

The show must go on.

Jazz Makes a Standard

Pianist Robert Glasper said, in reference to The Great American Songbook: "It's time for a new standard. We can't do the old thing forever." Given the many attempts to bring jazz into hip hop or hip hop into jazz, I then posed the question: How far can you bend a standard before it breaks?  

Sung to the tune of Melancholy Baby: "Come to me my broken metatarsal"

Jazz has always been in the business of bending tunes. In fact, it seems completely reasonable to think that the Great American Songbook would be a much smaller part of American musical culture if these now "standard" tunes had not been plucked from their original Broadway or Hollywood context by jazz performers, who dug out and actualized their rhythmic, harmonic and melodic implications.

Going back to the 1920's, there were both vocal and instrumental jazz/pop versions of tunes originally used on stage and in film. Working alone, neither sung versions or instrumental versions could have done the job, but together they showed how a tune could be transmuted into a musical entity that transcended its initial conception and performance.

To see if this process unfolded in a way that is comparable to current cross-fertilization efforts between hip hop and jazz, let's look at how the process traditionally happened, using one of the great jazz war horses: "All the Things You Are."


With music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, Jr. this song originally came from a show called "Very Warm For May." The history of the relationship between this tune and jazz is long and deep and also a little perplexing. All sources say the show opened on November 17, 1939, but according to Dr. Chalfen, there were two jazz-inflected versions recorded before that date: Tommy Dorsey's on October 20, '39 and Artie Shaw's, on Oct. 26. The sheet music says the song wasn't copyrighted until 1940, so maybe someone heard it in previews in Boston or New London and rushed out arrangements before the legal profession could stick its oar in. Sheer speculation.


In any case, this is the way Kern and Hammerstein conceived it to be performed in 1939 (as produced in a later re-creation):


The song was lovely in its fashion, but completely rooted in one particular era and style: Broadway Musical-shading-toward Light Opera. Kern marked the chorus a "Burthen," and "cantabile," (singable). These are archaic and/or fancified terms, reflecting Kern's roots in 1910's musical theatre. Withal, given its sophisticated harmony, it was clearly a song worth the attention of jazz people.


As noted above, in 1939, before the show actually opened, Artie Shaw recorded it with Helen Forrest. The first part (verse) was eliminated. There is a "classy" intro (big brass chords) before the low-down-ish piano slides in. Then, Shaw's clarinet chorus is a great illustration of how jazz claims source material and makes it its own. Forrest's vocal follows Shaw's lead. 

Although we're focusing on vocal transformations, we need to have an instrumental version, done in a style that would have been formative for any jazz vocalist. Here's Charlie Parker, with Red Rodney, Al Haig, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes in 1949. 


This is Ella Fitzgerald in 1963, long after the song had been enfolded by jazz into its protean bosom. The tempo is up a bit, the background is more overtly jazz-like and Ella inflects the song all the way through. Even though Ella could handle a soprano range, the key has been brought down to take the gleam off and give it a darker feeling. When she picks it up after the instrumental, she completely alters the melody, then takes it home.


Through the years, various jazzmen wrote new melodies for the song's chord changes, including "Bird of Paradise" by Charlie Parker, "Prince Albert" by Kenny Dorham and "Boston Bernie" by Dexter Gordon. Charles Mingus retitled it "All the Things You Could Be By Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife was Your Mother." 

Addendum: Who first came up with what became the classic jazz intro for "All the Things You Are?" It's completely unlike the Kern verse. I'm thinking that Dizzy wrote it, but would love to hear from anyone who can spec this out. Thanks, Steve.

The Tenuous Rise of the Singing Class in Jazz-Pt. I

In a recent interview at Jazz wax, Robert Glasper said of existing jazz styles: "I think they've run their course in terms of attracting a new audience."  Glasper also said, in referring to The Great American Songbook, that "It's time for a new standard. We can't do the old thing forever."


He's on to something. Two trend lines are going in opposite directions.

Chet's Funny Valentine

For many years, learning "All the Things You Are," "Laura," etc. served a dual purpose: you could study how the masters negotiated the chord changes and you could play songs that audiences wanted to hear. Today, aspiring jazz musicians continue to learn pretty much the same tunes their forebears have for the last, say, 50 years, but at this point, a rapidly diminishing number of listeners recognize these tunes.  And, the work of any instrumentalist playing standards in the traditional, bop, or swing style will always be compared to the incomparable body of work generated by the great jazz masters. After having heard these tunes played by the likes of Dexter Gordon and Miles, will even these listeners hear the 1000th iteration of "My Funny Valentine" as anything but pleasant background to a nice meal?

Jazz vocalists are apparently surviving this process better than instrumentalists. Of course, singers doing the American Songbook in a jazz style can also be compared to previous jazz giants, but at this point, the abstraction of a note combined with the specific gravity of a lyric (a.k.a. singing a song) continues to foster a free-floating emotional exchange between the artist and a fairly broad range of listeners. This kind of exchange may have once been the norm between mainstream jazz instrumentalist and audience, but it's now a lot rarer.

I have no hard stats to back me up, but my strong perception is that in the last fifteen years, there has been a increasing percentage of vocalists booked into Boston-area jazz venues. Booking follows taste.  Other circumstantial evidence: the various incarnations of Roy Eldridge playing "Rockin' Chair" on YouTube have about 13,000 views. The vocal version done by Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden have hundreds of thousands of views. Michael Buble's "The Way you Look Tonight" has over a million views. I think you'd be hard pressed to total up 50 posted jazz versions of the tune to reach a million.


People often talk about these songs being cyclically re-discovered, but to people under 30 (except those studying jazz), knowing "Just In time" is like knowing who preceded President Taft. 
















Part 2: Can you salvage the standard repertoire by infusing current influences. Or, if you bend a standard too far does it break?

Out of the Mouth of River

 

Snap, Diddly and Squirt, in person

There were a number of fabulous suggestions for re-naming this blog. But-my bombast notwithstanding-I couldn't quite convince myself to completely ditch "Brilliant Corners." Instead, I decided to extend the name with a submission that completely killed me: "Snap Diddley Squirt: A Jazz Blog.'"

Here's my friend Amy's description of how she and husband Ken undertook the process:

"Steve Provizer was looking for a new name for his illustrious jazz blog. Ken and I love a challenge so we started brainstorming. Then River, our 6 year old daughter, chimed in and said, 'Snap Diddley Squirt: A Jazz Blog!'"  We laughed and laughed. It was the best idea of the evening.

We made an audio recording of our brainstorming session for fun.  You can listen to it here:  

http://radiowednesday.blogspot.com/2012/01/radio-wednesday-jazz.html

Hope that works!!  we still sing it for fun - (with Riv's sing-songy touch she added)   it's very memorable."

Thanks, guys. It certainly worked for me.

"Jazz: Analog Music in a Digital Era?" by Steve Provizer

Gentlemen, we must not have an analog/digital Gap

When you talk about the struggle for economic justice for jazz musicians (see posts below), you have to talk about the why's and wherefore's of the shrinking jazz pie. One factor I've yet to see explored is this: People, especially those who grew up in the digital sound era, have become used to a certain kind of "pristine" low-noise (and highly compressed) sound, and attendance at live performances may be taking a hit because of this. In a digital era, I believe that jazz-at least mainstream jazz-is, by its nature, analog.


Let's go back a bit:

We humans tend to adjust our expectations as necessary. Until the mid-1920's and electronic reproduction, recordings were fairly crude and listener expectations were low. When you bought a King Oliver record in 1924, you understood that it would be a vastly inferior sonic experience to hearing him live. During the 30's and 40's, recording technology continued to improve and people expected better audio.  Then, in the 50's, stereo, recording tape and the long playing record significantly raised the bar. When you bought a studio-recorded Blue Note record, you expected to hear audio quality that approached what you got at a live performance. 

A cultural meme was alive and well: "There's nothing like hearing music live."


Up to the 60's, most recordings still represented "performances," an entire band playing together either in an acoustically-controlled environment (studio), or live on location. Then, isolation booths, layered sound and significant editing became much more widespread. Plus, the content of recordings began to seriously diverge from what could be heard live. People did not expect to hear Sgt. Pepper or, for that matter Ascension, in concert.


Over the next few decades, recording moved from the analogue to the digital domain. CD's and digital files replaced the cassette and LP's for personal listening. In every genre, recordings were expected to sound crystal clear (if reduced in quality by compression to MP3's).

While there were always comments along the lines of: "They sounded better on the record"-and popular recorded solos were duplicated live-more and more, rather than conceiving the LIVE performance as something that a recording should try to capture, the RECORDING has become the standard by which the live performance is judged. 

The truism "there's nothing like hearing music live" has been taking on serious water. 

Theatrical spectacle, stacks of amps and enormous woofers get rock and pop fans to live shows, giving them an experience they can't get on their ipods. On television, performances like Robert Glasper's recent appearance on David Letterman demonstrate that TV has the tech to give us the hi-fi experience. Film does too, although with atrocious decibel abuse.  Not so the typical jazz venue.

Ancient fetishists like me, who abide the scratches and clicks that we grew up hearing on vinyl can live with less than stellar sound, but we're already deeply invested in the music. For young people, lower quality audio can be a reason, along with high prices and lack of media attention, to make going out to hear jazz a non-habit.

There's been a lot of blog talk about jazz musicians making more of an effort to relate to the audience-to make a better "presentation." This is important, but jazz venues must reckon with current audio expectations or expect increasing erosion in a demographic whose attention they must capture.


Truth is, I don't know if even a staunch effort to produce better live mixes of acoustic instruments will stem the tide. Recording has become atomistic to the degree that recordings can fairly easily be pieced together note by note and out-and-out mistakes seldom slip through the digital editing net. Plugging in a MIDI cable will always guarantee a cleaner signal than putting a mic on a trumpet-especially in a live performance. 


Jazz is a music that thrives on getting in and out of dark corners, but it doesn't seem to be thriving on the native soil of Digital-Vania.

Jazz &, er, Golf

The action by Justice for Jazz Artists  (see below) is getting a mixed reaction. Most people who contacted me are supportive of the action and there's a great deal of support online. I received emails from a couple of folks involved in the operation of clubs in NYC (sent to everyone who signed the online petition?) that fiercely defended the way they do business. A fellow Boston jazz blogger, Stu Vandermark sent me an email saying that it was a bogus effort. He wrote about these kinds of actions here.


I'm not sure whether the campaign is not well timed or focused, but I continue to believe, especially because of union slacking, that such a campaign is needed. 


I realize that the idea of tarring the mass of jazz club operators with the brush of avarice and lack of concern for jazz musicians doesn't always ring true-good luck if you go into the business of jazz to make a quick buck. The idea of pushing back specifically at them may or may not be the best strategy, but having a specific target means the issue is much likelier to get out there in public. And get out there it must. It's one way to wake people up to the real issue: who gets subsidized in America. 

Think about just one example: golf courses. The golf courses in Las Vegas are estimated to use 22 BILLION gallons of water a year for irrigation. The golf courses on Long Island use 50,000 POUNDS of pesticide a year. Precious water syphoned off, pesticide use running amok and corporations can write off their support of golf tournaments. 


Fine. Let it be. I like a nice chip shot as much as the next guy. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking we haven't made the choice-that it all "just worked out that way." Tax codes are written by Congress. Media conglomeration rules are written by Congress. Government controls the allocation of natural resources, as it does that paltry business known as support for the arts via NEA and NEH; both constantly threatened with defunding. 


Maybe this campaign can help us all start to make some necessary connections.

Jazz Standing Up For Itself

I wanted to make note of the campaign being organized by Justice for Jazz Artists, details of which you can read here.

In a previous post, I talked about the need for musicians to organize and/or collectivize on their own behalf. This organization and this campaign represent a credible way to do just that.

Happily, JJA is savvy enough to know that they have to broaden the campaign to include not just musicians, but everyone in the jazz community and, in fact, anyone who cares about artists in our culture not getting the usual shaft.

I urge you to go to the website and sign on as a supporter and to let your circle of friends know about this campaign.

"Coleman Hawkins: Sonic Gravitas and Bop" by Steve Provizer

A nice comment on my last post cited Coleman Hawkins as prime example of a musician who throughout his life sought new musical input. But, unlike the dramatic musical changes made by Coltrane, Byrd and Miles, Hawkins' playing changed less than the musical context did. He challenged himself by putting himself in situations more "modern" than the one in which he first reached musical maturity, but what he played changed only subtly.

And, while Miles, Trane and Byrd drastically changed their sound, either through mutes, electronics or overblowing, the particular quality of Hawkins' sound-its weight, timbre and vibratto-continued to project classic swing-era Hawkins, making it that much harder for us to hear the way he assimilated new influences into his playing. Our ears are so much drawn to that sound. The effect Hawkins' tone had of drawing the listener into the past became more and more pronounced as Lester Young's lighter tone began to dominate, then Rollins' and Coltrane's-closer to Hawkins, but with much less vibratto.

We'll listen to a few representative Hawkins recordings and try to gain some insight into how the process unfolded.

As a basis for comparison, we won't start with the earliest stuff from the 1920's, but from this recording, made in Paris in 1935, which shows us the basic, mature Hawkins. He's still a few years away from his 1939 Body and Soul triumph, which I won't post here, as it's so well known, but which you can easily find.

The Pothole of Periocity (Donald Byrd)

Here's what I mean: I played some 1950's Prestige tracks for a friend who knows a lot about jazz. He listened and said "I never knew Donald Byrd played like that." 


Another victim of the dreaded Pothole of Periocity. He knew the later stuff, didn't like it and never worked backward. The ease and access of music on the internet has eased the syndrome less than you might think.


Coltrane and Miles are probably the two most well-known examples of musicians who shed audience as they move through different periods. Some only go with Trane through his Prestige period, some through Atlantic, some through early Impulse and a few all the way through to the end.

How often do people who hook into Trane at Meditations go back to Blue Trane? Or, who pick up Miles at Tutu and go back to Embraceable You?

Donald Byrd (b.12/9/32) is another who made extreme enough changes that he exchanged much of his old audience for a new one. In this case, a larger one-and here the bugaboo of "selling out" rears its endless head (No comment). 


Interestingly, Byrd's music became more "pop" and "soul" oriented while he pursued advanced academic degrees: Masters in Music from Manhattan, Law degree from Columbia, Phd from Columbia University Teachers College in 1982. Here are examples of the change:


Straight ahead, 1958:



Soul/modal-1960



Funk/electric-1975:



Gotta say, it's early Byrd for me.


Who have you shed all along the way? Or picked up?

We're Off...

...to bring civilization to the West Coast. Back next week.

Homage a Eldridge

Can't be effusive enough about the great Roy Eldridge and thought I'd mark his birthday with a few comments and a small sampling of his playing.

Roy was sneaky influential. That is, musicians-especially other trumpet players-knew what he meant to jazz, but the public knew him more as showman and less as musical genius (I suppose complicated parallels might be drawn with Louis Armstrong's career).

Roy accessed all the power implicit in the trumpet, but articulated with extraordinary dexterity. He played right in the pocket, even when shape shifting the rhythm of a phrase. He was a more than able vocalist, although he scatted less often than Louis or Dizzy. He tested himself over and over in the crucible of the cutting contest and sent many JATP sessions over the top. Any session he made was pushed into a higher level of commitment. I saw him a few times near the end of his playing career and he blew with intense ferocity. There was nothing little about this man except his nickname. Happy Birthday, Roy.



Listen To more...

More Jazz Necessities

Previously, the introduction of the Chet Baker watch inspired me to release these new products, essential for any jazz fan:

Charlie Parker Day Planner

Trumbauer Guide To Linux

G.I. Lennie Action Figure

Joe Newman Sump Pump

Bill Evans Chest Expander

Keith Jarrett Beard Trimmer

The iTrane

We did so well with these that we are moving into publishing:

Sun Ra: Five Tips for a Groovy Luau

Benny Goodman: Guide to Jazz Etiquette 

Eddie Condon: Why Proust Still Matters

Django & Klugh: 10-Days to Perfect Nails

Charles Mingus: Why Mitt? Why Now?

Ornette Coleman: Conquering the II-V-I
Bix Beiderbecke: Monetize Your Blog!

Small Victories; Jazz & Otherwise

My wife can recognize Miles and Dizzy solos. Next stop: Fats Navarro.

I found a bag of stuff in my house with some books and a 78 of Dinah Shore accompanied by Spade Cooley's Orchestra.


I have 3 half-FULL bottles of valve oil within reach.


The new electric shaver I bought-unlike the last 3-is not a piece of crap.




My daughter knows most of the words to "You Come From Rhode Island." She won't admit that now, but she will in 5 years.

Hamburgers in challah rolls tonight.

Birdbath in backyard not frozen.

A life insurance company turned me down for a policy. That means I don't have to die.

Name the Blog; Arbitrary New Rule Imposed

The Rules Committee, having been released en masse from Wormwood Scrubs, has finally met and tweaked the rules of the contest as follows:

An example

Any contestant who wants to make it to the next round of judging is now required to submit a photo of him or herself in a bathing suit; the more revealing, the better.

Candid shots welcome

Submit to: s.improviz@comcast.net.

On With the Nonsense!

As one of the dozen scam mailings my mother gets everyday would say:

"Dear Entrant: You are one of a very small pool of residents in your area to be chosen to proceed to the next level of competition! Please send in $25 so we may confirm your certified platinum level registration number."

Well, in this here Name the Blog contest, everyone's a winner-at least in this round-and we will absolutely not be swayed by kickbacks (unless you actually send one).

 Only first names are given, to protect the innocent.


Enjoy some Salieri while you contemplate these worthy entries:

Felonius Junk -Di

You got a problem with 'Brilliant Corners,' bub?" -Larry

Brilliant Jazz and Other Joys (from BOSTON) -Brew

Third Balcony Jump -Harvey

Jazz speaks for life   -Dave

Jazz Hands!!!   Bleeding Gums Murphy Speaks  -Aaron

Dizzy Atmosphere, Six Flats Unfurnished   -Rob

Snap Diddley Squirt: A Jazz Blog -Kiddo

Jazz Pants, Learn a New Word Everyday, Life Improv, Carried Away with Steve, Jazz Scratch Fever, Jazz Happy, Sharps and Flats, The Flying Jazz Project, Captain Jazz, Jazz Serious, Jazz Kidding  -Amy and Ken

Not Just Another Jazz Blog -Dick

ImProvizing or ImProvizer 
or ProVizions,

 See Sharp,

 Sounding, Brass

Sections,

 Mouth Pieces

Horning In,

 MOTS (acronym for: Music Of The. Sphere's)(French for "words" too, ErSatch, UrSatch, Dauntless, Iterations -Ed

The Jazz Id-Me

It's not a popularity contest, but groundswells of support will no doubt influence my highly disorganized adjudication methodology.

Exchanges on Pops' Tone

Doug Ramsay was kind enough to feature my Louis Armstrong: Operatic at the Core post on his blog Rifftides. Author of the Armstrong book Ricky Riccardi responded, as did Brew and all concerned have said I could put the conversation on this blog. So, here it is, with an extension:

1. Brew says:
   January 17, 2012 at 5:14 am
   There is also a great similarity in attitude, and stage appearance of Pops and many stars of the opera: Love for good food, the company of nice folks (Armstrong’s backstage room was always crowded), and …

   … the inevitable white handkerchief which for example Pavarotti used, too (he had his own of course!).

   Pops’ phrasing, and his tone, and authority in the 1950′s are indeed not to top, except by Maria Callas, Kathleen Ferrier & Mario Lanza who possessed the most unique operatic voices in the 1950′s.

   Come on, folks, the time machine problem has not been solved yet!
   REPLY
2. Ricky Riccardi says:
   January 17, 2012 at 5:34 am
   Agree with every word, Doug and Steve. No one–and there’s been some that have come close–has ever equalled Louis’s tone. Even in his last years, when the chops were hurting and his range was decreasing, the tone was still there; you could still tell it was him, even on the recordings that survive from 1971 (which I’ll be sharing in my next blog). I now work as Archivist at the Louis Armstrong House Museum and that’s where all of Louis’s private tapes and records are kept. I cannot tell you how many opera records he owned and listened to on his tapes. Naturally, a big chunk of Louis’s concept was rooted in opera but I also love the quotes he sometimes played from specific operas. He always played a lick on “Muskrat Ramble” in the 1950s that sounded so familiar, but I couldn’t place it. One of my readers finally nailed it as being from Sigmund Romberg’s “The Student Prince.” I went to check Louis’s collection and sure enough, he had “The Student Prince” on vinyl and on his tapes! Here’s a blog I did about that, where you can hear the lick:

   Anyway, thanks to you both and thanks for reminding your readers that Louis was great–and had that tone–from the beginning to the end.

   Yours in Pops,

   Ricky

   Steve responded:

   Ricky-

   What do you think about my idea of Pops’ vulnerability via a vis the love of the audience? (I ask knowing that it’s seldom that anyone whose book I review agrees with anything I say).

   • REPLY
     • Ricky Riccardi says:
       January 22, 2012 at 5:07 am
       Fine with me, too, Steve. And please, fire away with any other questions and comments you have. Regarding the vulnerability aspect, yes, I think Armstrong’s connection with audiences and the obvious effort he put into his performances could make him seem somewhat vulnerable. But I don’t think I would connect vulnerability with that tone. That tone is one of the most identifiable sounds in jazz and it’s what set Louis apart from other trumpet players. He himself claimed to be a “freak about tonation” and even when discussing King Oliver, he wasn’t afraid to knock Oliver’s tone. In fact, in a 1956 Voice of America interview, Louis complained that the 1923 Oliver recordings were hard to listen to because Oliver’s tone wasn’t strong and Oliver should have let Louis play more lead and more solos. Armstrong astutely brought up Erskine Hawkins’s hit records that featured solos by Dud Bascomb, but had Hawkins’s name on the record and brought Erskine the fame and money.

       So Louis knew what he had. He worked tirelessly on that tone and was very proud of it. He used to like to talk about a time he sat in with the Count Basie Orchestra in Miami in 1958. Basie called “Royal Garden Blues” and in addition to soloing, Louis played in the trumpet section. According to Louis, Basie couldn’t get over it, saying he had never heard a tone like that in a trumpet section before. Louis would tell the story proudly and then would say that all of the trumpet players in Basie’s band were fine musicians but they were too lazy to work on their playing to get a tone and sound like Louis had.

       I share these two stories because they illustrate something that not everyone associates with gentle, smiling Louis: the man had an ego. And that is not a bad thing. I’ve listened to thousands of hours of Armstrong’s interview and I can tell you that he knew 100% how special his sound was and he worked very hard to get it and wasn’t bashful to let anyone know about it. He was confident in his music, he was confident that audiences would love it and he was confident in his ability to put on the best show in jazz.

       So when you weigh in those feelings of ego and confidence, that’s where I think the vulnerability aspect loses a little steam. Audiences might view Louis as vulnerable (and surely, his playing could be completely vulnerable at times, in addition to the soaring operatic statements; look up an unissued “Lonesome Road” on my blog from 1956 to hear both sides in one performance), but that tone was shaped by hard work and determination and was carried out by a genius with absolute, supreme confidence in what he was doing.

       That’s just my feeling about the vulnerability angle but every other word your wrote about Louis’s tone and operatic tendencies is spot on. Thanks for writing it and thanks for mentioning the book (though man, a “work-man like effort”? I devoted every day of half my life to that thing! haha, just kidding, any publicity is good publicity….).

       Yours in Pops,

       Ricky

       
       

       Steve responds:

       I realize it's counter-intuitive to call the strongest sound in jazz trumpet history "vulnerable." I'm not talking about an ego-based process. In fact, the opposite. There's always some artifice in a performance and Pops' careful planning is testament to that. But the tone, ore that he assiduously burnished throughout his life, was a kind of "cri de coeur;" a direct look into the (vulnerable) heart of another person. It's not about weakness or lack of confidence. In fact, how strong must a person be to expose so much? 

       That's the sense in which I use the word vulnerable.

       Thanks,

       Steve