Satchmo by Gary Giddins
Author:Gary Giddins [GARY GIDDINS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2012-01-23T00:00:00+00:00
Armstrong never revealed whose voice he heard on the phone; it may have been Rockwell or Connie Immerman or their gangland sponsor, Owney Madden, who had a distinctive voice and was alive and well long after Armstrong wrote Goffinâas was the increasingly powerful Rockwell. In any case, Louis had humored the thugs, but he had no intention of going to New York. Collins managed to sneak him out to Louisville on the eve of the Kentucky Derby, whereâeven on the runâhe managed to make history by leading the first black band ever to play the Roof Garden of the Kentucky Hotel. From there, the band toured the Midwest and the South, including Armstrongâs first return to New Orleans, where he played Suburban Gardensâa white nightclub in Jefferson Parishâfor three months, visited the Waifâs Home, and presided over a baseball team named after him. The boys were so proud of the uniforms, emblazoned with the name ARMSTRONG, and so nervous about tarnishing them, that their playing sufferedâmuch to the chagrin of the teamâs sponsor. The visit itself was tarnished on the night he opened at Suburban Gardens, when a radio announcer said, âI havenât the heart to announce the nigger on the radio.â With the quick-wittedness that made him legendary, Armstrong asked the band for a chord, calmly took the microphone in hand, and did his own introductions. Similarly, when his appearance before a black audience was cancelled without reason, he made sure the black community got word of his promise to make a secret trip to New Orleans to play only for blacksâa vow he kept in 1935, when he slipped into town to play a black dance hall called the Golden Dragon, and was gone before the press ever knew about it.
In the fall of 1931, the band passed through Chicago again, to record. Although Armstrong avoided playing New York and Chicago for most of the next four years, his discography does not indicate much of a disruption in his career because the records he made that year were, as he said, among his best. âSleepytime Down Southâ would soon become his theme song. â(Iâll Be Glad When Youâre Dead) You Rascal Youâ also became an Armstrong trademark, especially after it was reprised the following year in a Betty Boop cartoon in which his disembodied head wails it at a fleeing white figure. Armstrong said that at a 1932 concert in England, he dedicated it to George V with the words, âThis oneâs for you, Rex.â Itâs a motley group we hear on those Chicago sessions, a comedown from the spit-and-polish band on the West Coast, but Louis is a blithe spirit, whether heâs crooning âWhen Your Lover Has Goneâ or scaling peak after peak on âChinatown,â the latter a vaudeville tune thatâlike so much other unlikely materialâwould become a jazz standard after Louis showed everyone how to make it work. His glissando-break on âLazy River,â following a whirlwind double-time vocal, is so precipitous that skeptical musicians accused him of using a slide trumpet.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Classical | Country & Folk |
Heavy Metal | Jazz |
Pop | Punk |
Rap & Hip-Hop | Rhythm & Blues |
Rock |
Cecilia; Or, Memoirs of an Heiress — Volume 3 by Fanny Burney(30949)
Cecilia; Or, Memoirs of an Heiress — Volume 2 by Fanny Burney(30907)
Fanny Burney by Claire Harman(25792)
We're Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union(18086)
Plagued by Fire by Paul Hendrickson(16645)
Cat's cradle by Kurt Vonnegut(13896)
Bombshells: Glamour Girls of a Lifetime by Sullivan Steve(13119)
All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda(12775)
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson(11919)
4 3 2 1: A Novel by Paul Auster(11075)
Adultolescence by Gabbie Hanna(8154)
The remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro(7577)
Note to Self by Connor Franta(7030)
Diary of a Player by Brad Paisley(6871)
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin(5896)
What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickinson(5535)
Recovery by Russell Brand(4573)
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah(4520)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini(4473)