Louis Armstrong

This essay explores three approaches to “musical writing” from a course called “Writing About Popular Music.”  I designed the course with the help of Dr. Robert Ray while finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Florida and continued to develop it with the help of Li Wei of the music program at the University of Central Florida.

Though this course offers standard approaches to music history, theory, and analysis, it also aims to produce new forms of writing about music that are themselves musical.  To this end, the course explores how information is stored, organized, and processed in music, and it borrows and transforms these musical practices into writing practices.

The course is framed around the following research questions:
1. If music communicates information, what are the modes by which it does so?  What are the processes by which we assign meaning to music?
2. Are storage technologies (sheet music, the phonograph) necessary for music? 
3. How do compositional strategies associated with music relate to writing in other disciplines?  What is the relationship between the history of music and other histories?

To address these questions, we take up theories about composition, performance, syncretism, propaganda, mass media, appropriation, and information technology to look at important music genres and their representative figures, such as jazz (Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller), big band (Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington), popular vocal (Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald), and rock (Elvis Presley, Little Richard).  These musical genres/styles/individuals not only coincided at transitional moments in music technology (recording studios, radio, long-playing phonographs, television, digital and sampler), but also represent stylistic and conceptual contrasts manifested in the dichotomies of "composition/improvisation," "vocal/instrumental," "rhythm/melody," "original/copy," "black/white," "understate/virtuosity," and "art/entertainment."

During the 1930’s, Armstrong, who had established himself internationally as one of the greatest of all jazz musicians during the 1920’s, continued to make prolific musical recordings, appeared in Hollywood films, and maintained a rigorous touring schedule entertaining audiences worldwide. | Goecke, N. Michael, "Louis Armstrong," in Thirties in America, Thomas Tandy Lewis ed. (Salem Press: Pasadena, CA, March 2011).

This essay explores three approaches to “musical writing” from a course called “Writing about Popular Music.” I designed the course with the help of Dr. Robert Ray while finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Florida and continued to develop it with the help
of Li Wei of the music program at the University of Central Florida.

This paper examines the various intellectual discourses surrounding the purposes of black artistic expression that reverberated throughout Harlem during the 1920s, as well as showing the divergent sensibilities between Billie Holiday, who embraced aspects of the New Negro mindset, and Louis Armstrong, who continued to popularize black iconography stemming from the days of Jim Crow minstrelsy.

Often, leadership is studied or examined about those who were labeled by society as leaders.  However, there are times when leadership emerges and is it not until after close examination of the situation a leader is recognized.  This critical analysis explores the impact of Louis Armstrong as a leader.  Using a system theory framework, the life and decisions of Armstrong are examined.  The examination focuses on his background, the systems in which he operated, decisions impacted by those systems, and the followership and leadership.  It is suggested that through the systems approach lens Armstrong was in fact a great emergent leader of his time.

Jazz has a unique character and history that finds analogy in matters of life and death. Its spontaneous and courageous aspect provides compelling models for leadership and social creativity and has a procreative capacity that imitates the eternal cycles of birth and extinction. Jazz’s transformative quality allows reinvention and reinterpretation of old and new forms and can inspire the creation of shared convictions. Its ebb and flow through mentors and griots is a model for preservation and sustainability. Yet, jazz’s emphasis on the moment recalls the brevity of life, the importance of living life to its fullest and the inevitability and finality of death. Deeply embedded in its philosophy and culture, are the historical lessons for transforming adversity into freedom and joy, and for discovering a synchronistic rhythm that makes meaning of “man’s inhumanity to man.” The Buddhist principles of non-violence, dialogue and compassion are the foundations of jazz and form the basis of human life’s highest integrity.

Doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2005

In exploring the semiotics of vocal timbre as a general phenomenon within music, theoretical engagement of the history of timbre and of musical meaning bolsters my illustrative analyses of Laurie Anderson and Louis Armstrong. I outline first its reliance on subtractive filtering imparted physically by the performer’s vocal tract, demonstrating that its signification is itself a subtractive process where meaning lies in the silent space between spectral formants. Citing Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and placing the body’s perceptual experience as the basis of existential reality, I then argue that the human voice offers self actualization in a way that other sensory categories cannot, because the voice gives us control over what and how we hear in a way that we cannot control, through our own bodies alone, our sight, touch, taste, and smell. This idea combines with a listener’s imagined performance of vocal music, in which I propose that because of our familiarity with the articulations of human sound, as we hear a voice we are able to imagine and mimic the choreography of the vocal tract, engaging a physical and bodily listening, thereby making not only performance but also listening a self- affirming bodily reflection on being. Finally I consider vocal timbre as internally lexical and externally bound by a linguistic context. Citing Peirce and Derrida, and incorporating previous points, I show vocal timbre as a canvas on which a linguistic and musical foreground is painted, all interpreted by the body. Accompanying theoretical discussions is a concerto addressing relevant compositional issues.

http://www.renlyon.org/CreoleJazzBand/KOCJB.html
 
The 1923-1924 recordings by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band ("KOCJB") are a cornerstone of early Jazz music. This timeline chronicles the development of the band that created them - beginning in March 1917 with the pre-Oliver edition leaving New Orleans for Chicago (led by clarinetist Lawrence Duhé), continuing through Joe "King" Oliver's own move from New Orleans to Chicago in August 1918, and concluding with the first KOCJB recording sessions on April 5-6, 1923. Over those two days the band cut their first 9 record sides and by the end of 1923 expanded the number of KOCJB sides to thirty-nine. These sides are the first recordings of substance by an African-American jazz band and constitute the most significant corpus of early recorded jazz. (paraphrased from Gene H. Anderson, whose 1994 article "The Genesis of King Oliver's Creole Jazz band" inspired this TimelineJS-based project).

La popolarità e il successo discografico di I'm coming Virginia, brano scritto dai due compositori americani Donald Heywood (1896-1967) e Will Marion Cook (1869-1944), sono da attribuire es-senzialmente a due motivi: uno riguarda la prima incisione del pezzo, ovvero quella del 1926 per la Columbia, arrangiata dallo stesso Cook autore anche delle parole. L'altro, come vedremo più avanti, è collegato ad una delle massime icone del jazz "bianco" degli anni '20: il trombettista Bix Beiderbecke, una breve e intensa carriera la sua, logorato dall'alcol che lo condusse ad una mor-te prematura a soli 28 anni. LA PRIMA INCISIONE. Nella prima incisione Columbia del 18 settembre 1926 alla voce troviamo la popolarissima Ethel Waters, cantante e attrice statunitense cresciuta in solitudine nella periferia di Philadelphia. Dopo un difficile debutto, la sua fama giunse in concomitanza dei suoi primi ingaggi nel "circuito dei bianchi" al punto da diventare già a metà degli anni '20 una delle artiste più apprezzate e pa-gate degli Stati Uniti. Ethel Waters interpretò magnificamente il testo di I'm Coming Virginia scritto da Cook portando il brano in pochi mesi al successo. Ad accompagnare Waters c'era la Singing Orchestra un complesso messo su e diretto dallo stesso Cook. Inst.Intro Verse A A B 14 16 8 8 8 "I'm coming Virginia", Singing Orchestra with Ethel Waters (Columbia, 1926) La Singing orchestra era formata da violino, violoncello, pianoforte, tromba e un piccolo gruppo vocale. In questa incisione si sentono chiaramente tutti i tratti distintivi del mondo del teatro, dove l'accompagnamento musicale è un perfetto e bilanciato contrasto di richiami al blues, con la tromba che ricama attorno al canto nitide linee di improvvisazioni, ma anche al mondo classico con gli interventi degli archi e del piccolo gruppo vocale. L'arrangiamento voluto da Cook come mostra lo schema qui sopra è pensato su una classica forma AAB ritornellata introdotta da un intro strumentale e un verse di 16 battute con il solo ac-compagnamento del pianoforte. Da segnalare anche una citazione nell'accompagnamento piani-stico al verse: si tratta di un frammento del tema di "In the Hall of Mountain" di E.Grieg. : :

This essay investigates an established question in the philosophy of music: whether, and in what respect, music may express narratives. However, this essay departs in two essential respects from traditional treatments of the question. First, the jazz tradition instead of European art music is used as the primary source material. Second, instead of merely posing the question of whether music can harbor a narrative, this essay is oriented by what it argues is a common experience of "narrative flavor" in music -the feeling of having heard a story in non-representational sound. The essay seeks to account for the experiential givenness of "narrative flavor" with the assistance of contemporary philosophical work on narrative and musicological work on improvisation and musical motion. Working with a minimalist definition of narrative that requires (1) the representation of two or more events that are (2) temporally ordered and (3) causally connected, music is found to be able to satisfy the second and third conditions. However, the questionable representation capacities of music lead to the conclusion that music cannot, in the strict sense, harbor a narrative. The experience of narrative flavor is explained with reference to J. David Velleman's concept of emotional cadence, Brian Harker's work on structural coherence in improvisation, and Patrick Shove and Bruno Repp's work on the perception of musical motion. These sources are utilized to demonstrate that improvisations can be structured so as to give the listener the impression of having heard a story by initiating and carrying out an emotional cadence.

This essay examines a controversial memoir Louis Armstrong wrote on his deathbed in New York’s Beth Israel Hospital. I argue that critics have made the mistake of treating each of the narrative’s elements as discreet units. In doing so they have protected the musician’s legacy by detouring around many of the challenges the document poses to some deeply cherished ideas about Armstrong’s life and the significance of his art. Cherry picking aspects of the narrative that reinforce his legacy as a social healer and purveyor of joy, they have reaffirmed his place as an exemplar of American exceptionalism. In order to make this claim they have left out, minimized or created apologetics for his many troubling mediations on the social conditions ordering turn of the century New Orleans. Instead of enriching our understanding of Armstrong, this has reproduced a sentimental analysis of his work. Using the prism of emotional labor I argue that the memoir primarily reflects the ideologies and mores of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era into which he was born. Critics have reinforced this by emphasizing the narrative’s uplift mythos in place of a more complex, and problematic analysis of American racism, capitalist exploitation and political disfranchisement. Above all, the deathbed memoir attests to the lasting negative impact of structural changes in American society initiated at the turn of the century. In particular, I suggest that the narrative forces us to consider the re-imposition of black political and economic subordination in the wake of Plessy v Ferguson. The document demands that we take seriously the consequences of the emotional and structural estrangement of black social life.

About a famous whale caught at the coast of Norway in 1951. The whale was named Mrs. Harøy and came from the whaling station "Brødrene Sæbjørnsen" at Harøy in Møre and Romsdal.
In 1954 she met jazzmusician Louis Armstrong at
Manhattan in New York.

While Louis Armstrong is best known for his singing and trumpet playing, he was also known to be an engaging, witty writer as well as artful bricoleur of collages. Using boxes of Ampex reel-to-reel tape as canvas, he compiled around 500 collages that served as a visual diary of his concerts and anything he wished to document, including ads for his beloved Swiss Kriss laxative. Among his many collages, one holds a visual impression of Brussels, Belgium’s capital. What at first appears to be just another collage dedicated to a concert location, upon closer inspection is rather remarkable. Jazz bassist and historian Matthias Heyman will detail the visual codes embedded in the collage – and use it as a lens on the jazz community in 20th century Belgium.