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Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong

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Louis Armstrong stands as one of the legends of twentieth century music. During five decades as a performer he thrilled audiences with his cornet and trumpet virtuosity, while his gravelly voice made him one of the most popular and recognizable singers of his day. Such a career became the stuff of legend, making it difficult to discern the truth underneath. In this book, Terry Teachout undertakes the difficult task to sift though the legend to discover the man underneath.

In this he is aided by Armstrong, who left behind two autobiographies and numerous audio recordings. From them we learn a man unashamed of his impoverished beginnings in the "black Storyville" neighborhood of New Orleans. The musical scene of the town's brothels and clubs provided the young Armstrong with both his early musical education and his first employment. Teachout goes on to describe his journey during the 1920s from promising young cornet player into the headlining talent he became by the end of the decade. Teachout rightly gives this period, one that saw some of his most innovative music, considerable attention, but he challenges critics such as Gunther Schuller who dismiss Armstrong's work with the big bands of the 1930s and 1940s. These decades dominate the biography, taking up eight of the book's twelve chapters. The final chapters chronicle the established entertainer who faced the twin challenges of aging and the disdainful attitude of the younger generation of musicians who followed in his giant footsteps.

In examining Armstrong's life, Teachout brings to bear his skills as detective and storyteller. He succeeds in depicting a very human yet enormously gifted performer, a talented musician who was also a superb entertainer. His book easily supersedes earlier biographies of Armstrong in its thoroughness and readability, yet it remains frustratingly incomplete by itself. For while Teachout does an admirable job of describing Armstrong's music, the book really is best enjoyed when accompanied by the songs Teachout describes. Though the author identified thirty songs in an appendix that can be downloaded by the reader, the sheer amount of music he describes warrants more comprehensive collections, such as The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings and Louis Armstrong: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings. It is only when listening to them in conjunction with Teachout's book that the degree of Armstrong's achievement is best understood.

Pops isn't just a good biography of Louis Armstrong's full and varied life. It's an exceptionally good biography. It shouldn't replace Laurence Bergreen's excellent Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant life (New York Times Notable Book for 1997) in anyone's library. But Teachout's book complements Bergreen's and it stand on its own as a model of sympathetic, scrupulously researched biographical writing. For those who are interested in him, there is little new that they can learn about the well examined life of this American icon.

As soon as popular critics and serious scholars started writing about that uniquely American pop music, jazz, they wrote about Armstrong. They couldn't avoid it because Armstrong, more than any other individual, set the standards and many of the conventions for jazz, in his playing and his singing. (Where would Bing Crosby have been without Louis to imitate?) He wasn't the first great jazz soloist: Sidney Bechet holds that honor by a few years. And Armstrong's seminal group, the Hot Five (later Hot Seven), played outside the recording studio just one time. It was never a working group, never a combo formed to play in the clubs and dance halls where jazz was being forged in the twenties and thirties.

Trying to imagine jazz without Armstrong is like trying to imagine modern art without Picasso or the essay form without Montaigne. His contemporaries knew it and admitted it. Even those who were on the outs with him -Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins--knew that Louis was The Man. Red Allen, the trumpeter with (to my mind) the most beautiful sound in jazz, wanted nothing more than to sound like Louis. Jack Teagarden tried to play him on the trombone (and succeeded). Even harbingers of modernity like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, who were offended by what they saw as Armstrong's Uncle Tom antics on stage, admitted that Armstrong was The One.

A virtue of Teachout's fine book is to place Armstrong's on-stage antics and off-stage persona in context. Armstrong was by temperament, especially while performing, a sunny person, who enjoyed performing and did not draw a line between clowning and serious music making. (That's not quite accurate. Music making was the thing he cared about most in the world -even over home and his much beloved wife Lucille--and he was deadly serious about his music, but he didn't find it incongruous to perform well, to appeal to the audience. In short, as Teachout eloquently explains, Armstrong, like many performers of his generation, saw himself as an entertainer as well as and complementary to a musician. He wanted to do well in both guises, and did.

Teachout also does the reader a favor by his sympathetic and wise assessment of Louis's later performances and recordings, from the 1930s on. This is a body of work that many critics dismiss as the wreckage left over after Louis's artistic vision left him. (Even so savvy a critic as Gunther Schuller dismissed Louis's later work as uninspired.) Teachout does not argue for virtues that aren't there in Louis's often dreary big band recordings from the thirties, but he does point to individual recordings of excellence, and I found his assessment of the small group Louis led from 1947 on, the Louis Armstrong All-Stars, convincing. (Like me, Teachout finds Russ Garcia's arrangements for Louis in the late fifties an embarrassment, and, like me, wishes that Ellington and Armstrong had made more out of their one outing together, when all that happened was that Ellington sat in on piano with Louis's All-Stars.) I have decided! It's time for me to listen to more of the Louis of the thirties and forties. I've been missing out on a potential treat! I bought my first jazz record sixty years ago, when I was thirteen. It's time for me to listen to ALL of Louis, not just cherry pick across the decades.

In reading POPS, I figured that I was going to fill in some of the few gaps of my personal knowledge of Louis Armstrong. After all, I told myself, I played trumpet for a third of my life, have been a fan of jazz for nearly four decades, and actually own several albums of Armstrong's solo and collaborative works. So, how much more could I learn about one of my musical heroes?

A lot, it turns out. My personal gaps were both many and multi-dimensional.

My perception of how Louis (never "Louie") Armstrong and his music were affected by his environment --- his family, contemporaries and mentors --- as well as the influence he had on others and their music was woefully incomplete and in some instances downright inaccurate.

In POPS, author Terry Teachout uses numerous sources simultaneously to paint a picture of what was happening at several points in Armstrong's career --- including adding his subject's own voice via his legacy of letters and personal writings to complete the canvas. He goes into great detail describing Armstrong's relationship with his early mentors and how they shaped both his style and his outward personality. Despite talent and fame that had surpassed those of his mentors, Armstrong always remained deferential; even while occasionally playing second fiddle as a guest in his former master's bands, he never showed them up by outplaying or upstaging them. His respect for the craft and those who had introduced him to it was immense.

In describing Armstrong's early recording sessions, Teachout details the technology available at the time and the limitations it imposed on the instrumentation for the recordings. He then portrays how each member of the recording ensemble related to Armstrong both personally and musically. Finally (and probably most impressive to the jazz geek inside me), Teachout painstakingly describes note for note how Armstrong played some of his early and seminal original compositions. Several times, I found myself putting down the biography and looking for a recording to listen to for confirmation, only to find the author had nailed it dead on.

Teachout continues this impressive level of detail and completeness throughout --- which gave me a breadth and depth of understanding of Armstrong that frankly was an extremely pleasant surprise. I was even treated to several nuggets about Armstrong and his influencers and those influenced by him. I did not know, for example, that Armstrong was not only a fan of Bing Crosby but also incorporated the crooner's distinct style into his own. I was also surprised to learn that Flea (the bass player for the LA-based band "The Red Hot Chili Peppers") considers Armstrong to be among his favorite artists of all time.

Teachout has scored a hit with his biography of one of the most iconic and original personalities in musical history. And he spares no source to make certain that his description of Armstrong is complete, accurate and entertaining.

--- Reviewed by Mark Shinn

Louis Armstrong's music and personality made him one of the most important and interesting cultural figures of the Twentieth Century. Known around the world as a jazz musician, an actor, a showman, even a memoirist, reactions to his life have revealed cultural shifts, changing values and critical trends for decades. Some see an avant-garde musical genius, others an old-show biz trouper embodying nineteenth century entertainment conventions. Some see him as a pioneer for African American pride, others an Uncle Tom.

His long, complex life and society's complex reactions to it are sensitively traced in Teachout's wonderful biography. The great stories of New Orleans and early years in Chicago and New York are fun and full of the tasty anecdotes that make Armstrong come alive in these pages. At the same time, his musical evolution is evoked through contemporaneous reviews and accounts of those who saw his most electrifying performances. All the while, the author traces the history of society's reaction to Armstrong, his music, his recordings and his persona.

The book is admirably serious for a popular biography, but even more important, it's always fun! Armstrong was a true character and his personality shines through the stories and memories here. That may be the book's greatest value - communicating the humor, the passion, the musical range and the sense of fun this great man brought to audiences for over fifty years.

This is a great, highly recommended book that's sure to increase your appreciation of Armstrong and to send you back to his music with a fresh ear.

Upon hearing of Louis Armstrong's death in July 1971, Bing Crosby wrote, "I know of no man for whom I had more admiration and respect." This essential biography explains why. Nicely written and researched, Terry Teachout's "Pops" brings us closer to the man behind some of the 20th century's finest music. Armstrong loved to perform and he loved to create - simple pleasures that never left him. Teachout places Satchmo's multifaceted artistry and emotional complexity in its proper perspective. The chapters on the jazz musician's formative years (including his legendary apprenticeship with the great King Oliver) are particularly compelling. Along with a detailed bibliography, the author offers a chronological list of Armstrong's "Thirty Key Recordings" from 1923 to 1963 - a daunting task, indeed.

To give you an idea of how much I like this book, I should tell you that half way through it I downloaded "The Essential Louis Armstrong" for my IPod so I could play the songs after reading Terry Teachout's descriptions of them. Teachout is a drama critic and a former professional musician who writes about music with an enthusiasm and detailed accuracy I have never before encountered. He takes us into Armstrong's world, from his New Orleans beginnings through his Chicago stint with King Oliver's Creole Jazz band, to his rise to stardom in New York and his development into a national icon and and International music ambassador. Teachout quotes extensively from Armstrong's own writing throughout revealing a great deal about his large and compassionate soul. Never before seen photographs enrich the book as do assessments of Armstrong's unrivaled contribution to 20th century American music. If you know a lot about Armstrong this book will deepen and expand your knowledge. And if you don't know much about him it's an absolute "must read."

A terrific read! Teachout spent years sifting through the audio tapes Armstrong made of his conversations with just about everyone he met and it's fascinating stuff. Pops was an original and so is this book!

Terry Teachout's biography of the great Louis Armstrong is cohesive and revelatory of Armstrong's extraordinary, loving, loyal character and his dazzling talent. If you are a fan of Armstrong and want to know the inside story of the session that produced West End Blues and the Hot Fives and Sevens recordings, this is your book. If you're a purist who thinks that Armstrong's career went downhill fast after his early small group recordings, then Teachout may talk you down from your perch. He spends much of the book working to promote Armstrong's later recordings as the equals of his early ones, and he almost succeeds. The other editorial strand in the book is Teachout's thoughtful take on Armstrong's relationships with his white managers, particularly Joe Glaser, centered on Armstrong's view that if he wanted success and a secure career he needed a white protector, no matter the cost to him in money and independence. It's hard to understand this now, but that was then, sad as it seems.

Terry Teachout has done a masterful job in painting a detailed portrait of Louis (pronounced "Lewis") Armstrong. Like many good show-business biographies, "Pops" draws upon numerous sources, interview subjects, and firsthand accounts of people, places, and events. But Teachout is more than a mere researcher or anthologist. His outstanding skill is the interpretation of this data. He smoothly integrates the many voices heard in the book, and puts Armstrong's life and times into a perspective that is easily accessible. (His 22-page prologue introducing Armstrong is enough to get you hooked on the story: it could easily stand alone as a capsule biography, and sets the tone for the detailed biography that folllows.)

Louis is frequently quoted throughout. Teachout had access to his personal correspondence and hours upon hours of his home-recorded monologues, with the happy result that the narrative is punctuated by candid, pertinent comments from the subject himself.

If you're interested in Louis Armstrong, celebrity biographies, or the history of jazz, "Pops" is recommended very highly.

If Satchmo had lived in our times, he would be blogging and twitting his life away. That was his hobbie after he had stopped playing: type letter after letter on his typewritter. Terry Teachout had access to Louis personal archives and so Louis get to tell his side of the story. This is not your average biography that tells the story of the divorces and the king of the vipers stories, but also a book that explains Louis highest achievments as the most influential artist of the 20th century. A book for all: fans and casual readers alike. Red Beans and rice to you!