Customer Reviews

Louis Armstrong: An American Genius

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Whatever else you might want to know about Louis Armstrong, the chances that you'll find anything else as comprehensive and unbiased as this are slim indeed. This is made the more so because of the many other unreliable texts there are available, many of them drawing uncritically on what Armstrong himself said, much of which has been shown to be unreliable. Collier does a fine job of walking the line between serious music critic and biographer.

Collier did a great job! His historiography is as brilliant as ever. It seems to me that the mainstream of Jazz so-called "scholars" don't like Collier because he's got no race bias and because of his impartiality. Actually, Mr. Collier is the best American writer on the subject, as he knows musical theory and is also a fine researcher.

I was completely disapointed by this book. SInce the begining the author is only taking advantage of the trapped reader to show him how much he knows about the origins of technical jazz. There is really little about Louis and his lif per se. The author rather gives a rough background stating that little is known (he shouldn't have written a book about such a personality if little was known about him)and the few facts that he states he refutes arguing they are not true or completely true. Even refering to Louis autobiography trying to demonstrate that the artist himself was wrong in his own words.

Just a well written account of Jazz origins dressed up as a Louis Armstrong Biography, maybe the only way James Lincoln Collier could sell a copy. Disguising the buyer and cheating on the reader.

Strongly not recomended !!!