Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong has been the subject of countless biographies and music histories. Yet scant attention has been paid to the remarkable array of writings he left behind. Louis Armstrong: In His Own Words introduces readers to a little-known facet of this master trumpeter, band leader, and entertainer. Based on extensive research through the Armstrong archives, this important volume includes some of his earliest letters, personal correspondence with one of his first biographers in 1943-44, autobiographical writings, magazine articles, and essays. Here are Armstrong's own thoughts on his life and career--from poverty in New Orleans to playing in the famous cafes, cabarets, and saloons of Storyville, from his big break in 1922 with the King Oliver band to his storming of New York, from his breaking of color barriers in Hollywood to the infamous King of the Zulus incident in 1949, and finally, to his last days in Queens, New York. Along the way Armstrong recorded touching portraits of his times and offered candid, often controversial, opinions about racism, marijuana, bebop, and other jazz artists such as Jelly Roll Morton and Coleman Hawkins. Indeed, these writings provide a balanced portrait of his life as a musician, entertainer, civil rights activist, and cultural icon. Armstrong's idiosyncratic use of language and punctuation have been preserved to give the reader an unvarnished portrayal of this compelling artist. This volume also includes introductions to the writings, as well as an annotated index of names and places significant to Armstrong's life.

Drawing from contemporary journalism, reviews, program notes, memoirs, interviews, and other sources, Keeping Time lets you experience, first hand, the controversies and critical issues that have accompanied jazz from its very birth. Edited by Robert Walser, these sixty-two thought provoking pieces offer a wealth of insight into jazz. Some of the giants of jazz speak to us here, including Jelly Roll Morton, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus and Wynton Marsalis. And there are pieces by writers such as Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer, and Ralph Ellison, and by critics such as Leonard Feather and Gunther Schuller. Readers will find Louis Armstrong on what makes swing, Dizzy Gillespie on bebop, and Miles Davis on jazz-rock fusion. Equally important, Walser has selected writings that capture the passionate reactions of people who have loved, hated, supported, and argued about jazz. One can read, for instance, a dismissive article written in 1918 that relegates jazz to the "servant's hall of music" along with "the clatter of the clogs, the click of Slavic heels." Or a debate between Wynton Marsalis and Herbie Hancock over the merits of free jazz and electric instruments. Or Duke Ellington's claim that jazz is neither highbrow nor lowbrow, but "goes back to something just about as old--and as natural--as the circulation of the blood." In the end, the focus here remains on how the music works and why people have cared about it. Filled with passionately felt, insightful writing, Keeping Time will increase one's historical awareness of jazz even as it provokes lively discussion among jazz aficionados, whether in clubs, concert halls or classrooms.

The early swing era of jazz, from 1930 to 1941, represents both an extension of developments of the previous decade and an introduction of new tendencies that influenced subsequent periods of jazz history. Major big bands and individual artists established important styles that brought wide popularity to the music, while small groups created innovative approaches that determined the directions jazz would take in the years to come. Oliphant's reference guide to this period is an invaluable source of information on its artists, methods, innovations, and recordings. Organized in a biographical format, the volume discusses many individuals and groups that have not been considered so fully before, and provides a critical assessment of a major period in American music.

Here is the book jazz lovers have eagerly awaited, the second volume of Gunther Schuller's monumental The History of Jazz. When the first volume, Early Jazz, appeared two decades ago, it immediately established itself as one of the seminal works on American music. Nat Hentoff called it "a remarkable breakthrough in musical analysis of jazz," and Frank Conroy, in The New York Times Book Review, praised it as "definitive.... A remarkable book by any standard...unparalleled in the literature of jazz." It has been universally recognized as the basic musical analysis of jazz from its beginnings until 1933. The Swing Era focuses on that extraordinary period in American musical history--1933 to 1945--when jazz was synonymous with America's popular music, its social dances and musical entertainment. The book's thorough scholarship, critical perceptions, and great love and respect for jazz puts this well-remembered era of American music into new and revealing perspective. It examines how the arrangements of Fletcher Henderson and Eddie Sauter--whom Schuller equates with Richard Strauss as "a master of harmonic modulation"--contributed to Benny Goodman's finest work...how Duke Ellington used the highly individualistic trombone trio of Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, Juan Tizol, and Lawrence Brown to enrich his elegant compositions...how Billie Holiday developed her horn-like instrumental approach to singing...and how the seminal compositions and arrangements of the long-forgotten John Nesbitt helped shape Swing Era styles through their influence on Gene Gifford and the famous Casa Loma Orchestra. Schuller also provides serious reappraisals of such often neglected jazz figures as Cab Calloway, Henry "Red" Allen, Horace Henderson, Pee Wee Russell, and Joe Mooney. Much of the book's focus is on the famous swing bands of the time, which were the essence of the Swing Era. There are the great black bands--Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Earl Hines, Andy Kirk, and the often superb but little known "territory bands"--and popular white bands like Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsie, Artie Shaw, and Woody Herman, plus the first serious critical assessment of that most famous of Swing Era bandleaders, Glenn Miller. There are incisive portraits of the great musical soloists--such as Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan, and Jack Teagarden--and such singers as Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Helen Forest.

The origins of jazz were in the barrelhouses of New Orleans and the speakeasies of Chicago. By the nineteen fifties, a musical renaissance transformed jazz into a high art form. Paul Lopes shows how the rise of a jazz art world was a unique movement--a socially diverse community of musicians, critics, collectors, producers, and enthusiasts that struggled in various ways against cultural orthodoxy in America. This accessible, interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, cultural studies, American studies, African-American studies, and jazz studies.