-
I think "What a wonderful world" is one of the most beautiful songs of all time forever and ever. Could say it is overplayed, but most of the time, there is a reason for this overplay.
Haven't heard it for 20 years randomly from radio or somesuch.
But I like "A kiss to build a dream on" more because Fallout 2 was the most best computer games of all time and the soundtrack for it was insane - the thing that made it all work.
But it is a matter of taste. Why would anyone try to alter someones musical taste with words in a forum? Why even ask for it?
-
06-22-2025 02:30 PM
-
I’m on my way back from the New Orleans Trad Jazz Camp, and if anything would help you getting into Louis, attending that might help. Nice way to spend a week to find out how solid your rhythm playing really is, eat some good food, and have fun.
-
Those recordings have since been attributed to John Cage.
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
-
I know it's silly but... someone names Charlie Parker asking for help to appreciate Louis Armstrong. You gotta admit the irony of the situation. Originally Posted by emanresu
-
-
Louis Armstrong was universally loved for the joy and humanity of his playing and singing. (Or is it the other way around?) The indisputable master of the trumpet in his day. (It's said he blew 100 high C's in a row on the bandstand one night.) One might well assert that there wouldn't have been Roy Eldridge if not for Louis Armstrong just as one might well assert there wouldn't have been Dizzy Gillespie without Roy Eldridge.
-
Louis is a godfather and founding pillar of jazz. There's nothing to not like- even his later stuff that he got guff over, singing with the "white guys" and such. The man loved & was music. His "contribution" was far more than a contribution. What Charlie Christian did for jazz guitar, Louis Armstrong did not just for trumpet, but for the entire jazz genre.
He has 2 autobiographies, one about his early years, one about his later years. HIGHLY recommended reading.
-
Is it strange? I appreciated Bartok and Stravinsky before I learned to love Mozart. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
-
It's not the order that's strange, plenty of us have gone backwards in discovering music genres. But your post makes it sound like you HAVE listened to Armstrong, and still don't appreciate him. Even after being a Parker fan. That's the weird bit. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
But hey- you can't like everybody. But for a jazzer to say they don't appreciate Armstrong is like a blueser saying he doesn't appreciate BB King. I say, if you go back and check out his catalog, especially the older stuff before the movies came a-callin', you'll "get it."
I also say if you read even his 1st autobiography, you'll appreciate him more, knowing where that music came from (and I'm not talking about just geography.)
-
I'll be honest. It took me a long time to really appreciate Pops. There were a lot of things I could relate to in modern contemporary jazz. It fit with the world around me. It was a great sound track to the world I lived in. Originally Posted by charlieparker
Louis Armstrong, not at all.
So I get the question. But I'm not CharlieParker so I don't know what I would like about my own music if I WERE CharlieParker. It's a long journey from taking a name and knowing the story of what he did.
I came to really appreciate Louis Armstrong when I transitioned from being a listener/follower to being a player. At that point I shifted from being fascinated with licks and the impossibility of long intricate melodic lines and I started to see how beautifully challenging it was to craft a good melodic line.
Good melody was the heart of what it was about for me, and it started me following the river upstream, from Kurt, to John Abercrombie, to Lee Konitz, to Charlie Christian, to Lester Young, to Frankie Trumbauer and each of them, once I overcame the prejudice against early recording technology limitations, it unearthed the pure genius of creating melody from melody; creating something new and totally personal from something given.
If you want recordings that can help you appreciate him, listen to how Lee Konitz rewrote a song, listen to how Lester Young rewrote a song, listen to the respect Django has for melody and how they all knew the value of the original song before they played a single note of an improvisation. Listen for melody. Know what that means.
I came to respect just how hard it is to do this well. And when I got to the headwaters of the river, there was Louis Armstrong: Taking melodies and songs from the air of popular song...and making something totally new and joyous from them.
NOBODY was doing this before him. Not the way he did.
And out of his bold new artform which he arguably created with the creative musicians of New Orleans comes everything we know and try to do in the creative language of jazz.
I didn't get Armstrong until I did the work. The deeper I became as a jazz explorer, the more I came to appreciate and love Pops. And the more I put into my own music, the more I saw my own connection to him.
It took time, but he is the granddaddy of this music and his music is as vital as it was then...if you can hear what he came out of and what came out of him.
-
Thanks to all the replies. I really appreciate some of the earlier recordings of Louis that I hadn't listened to before. For me, I want to understand the tradition and where this music came from and transcribe some of his music.
-
You aren't in conversation with OP Here. Originally Posted by ruger9
-
Well it’s not my OP, but I didn’t appreciate early jazz until long after I’d appreciated later jazz. Originally Posted by ruger9
With Pops there’s some barriers. A lot of the later music as excellent as it is very mainstream. It wasn’t really my sort of thing .
OTOH the historically influential music used to be hard to listen to both because the style was remote but also because of the era’s recording.
In fact I had this a bit with Bird early on. I like Trane better.
You have to spend time with something sometimes.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
-
When I was a kid playing trumpet in the school band, Louis Armstrong was this old guy that would come on TV and play a bunch of corny stuff that I couldn't relate to.
I later found out what a musical giant he was. A few months ago when I was in New York, I got to tour his home and museum in Corona/Flushing. It was an extremely interesting and moving experience. His bathroom is a trip! Although he was world famous and quite wealthy, he lived relatively humbly and had a reputation as a nice guy
Here is a 4 CD set on the JSP label that contains all the Hot Five and Seven material. It has been remastered and sounds great, and the liner notes are exhaustive and informative. Highly recommended, if you can find it used online. All the players are first-rate and they're not just jamming, everything's superbly arranged. I listen to it all the time...
-
That's the set I've got. Originally Posted by Gilpy
When I was a kid playing trumpet in the school band, Louis Armstrong was this old guy that would come on TV and play a bunch of corny stuff that I couldn't relate to.
I later found out what a musical giant he was. A few months ago when I was in New York, I got to tour his home and museum in Corona/Flushing. It was an extremely interesting and moving experience. His bathroom is a trip! Although he was world famous and quite wealthy, he lived relatively humbly and had a reputation as a nice guy
Here is a 4 CD set on the JSP label that contains all the Hot Five and Seven material. It has been remastered and sounds great, and the liner notes are exhaustive and informative. Highly recommended, if you can find it used online. All the players are first-rate and they're not just jamming, everything's superbly arranged. I listen to it all the time...
-
I realize that. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
-
No one has to like Satchmo. But if you love jazz, you have to appreciate his influence.
He basically invented jazz, at least how we think of jazz. He created the template for the hot solo player who played over the band, not just in sync with it. He rose from nothing, and became the jazz ambassador to the world. Everyone at least in the 60s knew who Louis was. And anyone who knew anything about jazz respected him.
(Now I am aware of Miles' somewhat diss of Louis, mainly related to his public persona, which to Miles was not appreciated. But Miles also said "it was impossible to play anything on a horn that Armstrong hadn't already played.")
Anyway, if you want to learn about Louis and his work, read the excellent book Pops by Terry Teachout.
Here's an early film of Louis introducing Europeans to hot American jazz. Look beyond the mugging, which was Louis' default personality coming out as much as anything. The Danes didn't know what hit them!
-
The Hot Fives and Sevens Recordings are the place to start for the historical importance alone.
But it would be a mistake to view them as dusty museum relics, or music that has been superseded by more modern stuff. Yes, the traditional New Orleans jazz sound can be an acquired taste. Some people think it sounds old fashioned and corny. In the hands of lesser musicians, it definitely can be.
But there is nothing corny about Armstrong's actual playing. In fact, with no offense intended towards fine players like Johnny Dodds, part of the fun of the Hot 5s/7s is hearing just how far ahead Armstrong is relative to his peers.
Here's a fun experiment: pick a classic track, listen to the trumpet solo, and try to play along with it. You are going to realize just how difficult it is. Not because of the note choices, but because of the rhythm. His time feel and note placement were unbelievable. His ability to subdivide beats were so precise that your ears trick you into thinking he's slowing up and speeding down, were it not for the fact that he always lands his lines perfectly and he's always right in the pocket.
That was his gift -- more than any other artist, he completely transformed how American music relates to rhythm. I don't think it's an exaggeration to suggest that what we think of as swing feel in jazz is a kind of failure to fully absorb what Armstrong was doing. The rhythmic feel of players like Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Christian, etc is the sound of a generation listening to Pops, collectively throwing their hands up, and saying, "Sorry, this is the closest we're going to get."
-
Damn. That’s heavy. Originally Posted by dasein
-
I've been playing around with Skokiaan a little bit and this is 100% on the money. His timing and phrasing are 2nd to nobody. Originally Posted by dasein
-
Yeah, Bird, he called your music 'Chinese Music" when it first came out, so why should you give a damn about Pops? Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
-
I thought that was Cab Calloway who said that. Originally Posted by sgcim
Either way, I'm Chinese and I play bebop and more. I wear that nomer proudly!
-
It was Armstrong. Louis was about playing music for the public. He thought bebop was music w weird notes invented by musicians for musicians and he wasn't about that. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
-
Just my $0.02... Originally Posted by wintermoon
I think there's alot of truth to that. I think the complication of bebop played a large roll in removing jazz from the popular music lexicon; of course the birth of rock and roll did most of the work, but bebop... especially the more complicated it got, just went over too many casual listeners heads. The melodies that could be remembered and even sung by the "common folk" became fewer and farther between.
I think if you played, for example, Louis Armstrong (earlier stuff) or Lester Young to a "normal person/listener", they would enjoy that much more than Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie. Again- this is just my $0.02, it's not really an arguable point (there is no objective "truth").
I could easily use the same analogy saying Chet Atkins vs Steve Vai. It can't be argued both were groundbreaking virtuosos, but I'd bet most "common folk" would be more apt to listen to Chet than Vai. (ironically, I personally can't stand Chet, but love Vai)
-
I guess the sentiment was widespread. Originally Posted by wintermoon
The story of Cab was relayed to me from his grandson, whom I got lots of interesting stories from.
This was more common than history might have us believe.
This:
Cab projects, in his singing on records, something of the vital magic of his stage presence, a boundless exuberance and enthusiasm. His orchestral backing during the Thirties and Forties included many well-known names in jazz. At various times, Milt Hinton, Danny Barker and Cozy Cole were in his rhythm section.The reeds included the late, great Chu Berry as well as Ben Webster. Dizzy Gillespie was in the band, some members of which, at odd moments, served as a laboratory for the style to be called Bop. “This whole new chord structure idea was interesting to me,” Milt Hinton recalled, “and I would walk the new chords behind his playing.” Cab wasn’t the least enthusiastic. Danny Barker quoted him as saying, “I don’t want you playing that Chinese music in my band.”
Now we can thank Pops for that phrase coinage.
Reply With Quote
Recommandations for Hollowbodies for $600 and under?
Today, 05:20 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos