Harvard University-based historian and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr. will be the editor-in-chief of Oxford’s new dictionary entitled the Oxford Dictionary of African American English.
This dictionary, slated to debut in 2025, will provide a comprehensive collection of words and phrases created and used by Black Americans, past and present.
Gates Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, announced the project officially in an interview with the New York Times.
“Just the way Louis Armstrong took the trumpet and turned it inside out from the way people played European classical music,” Gates Jr. said. “Black people took English and “reinvented it, to make it reflect their sensibilities and to make it mirror their cultural selves.”
“The bottom line of the African American people, these are people who love language.” I am proud to announce I will be the editor in chief for the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. Read more here: https://t.co/fUakIdNo45
— Henry Louis Gates Jr (@HenryLouisGates) July 21, 2022
“Words with African origins such as ‘ ‘goober,’ ‘gumbo’ and ‘okra’ survived the Middle Passage along with our African ancestors,” Gates Jr. said. “And words that we take for granted today, such as ‘cool’ and ‘crib,’ ‘hokum’ and ‘diss,’ ‘hip’ and ‘hep,’ ‘bad,’ meaning ‘good,’ and ‘dig,’ meaning ‘to understand ’— these are just a tiny fraction of the words that have come into American English from African American speakers … over the last few hundred years.”
Resources could also include books like “Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue: a Hepster’s Dictionary,” a collection of words used by musicians, including “beat” to mean tired; “Dan Burley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive,” published in 1944; and “Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner,” published in 1994.
Researchers can look to recorded interviews with formerly enslaved people, Salazar said, and to music, such as the lyrics in old jazz songs. Salazar said the project’s editors also plan to crowdsource information, with call outs on the Oxford website and on social media, asking Black Americans what words they’d like to see in the dictionary and for help with historical documentation.
“Maybe there’s a diary in your grandmother’s attic that has evidence of this word,” Salazar said.
In addition to word and phrase definitions, the Oxford Dictionary of African American English will also provide also where they came from and how they emerged.
“You wouldn’t normally think of a dictionary as a way of telling the story of the evolution of the African American people, but it is,” Gates said. “If you sat down and read the dictionary, you’d get a history of the African American people from A to Z.”
We end our celebration of #JazzAppreciationMonth today with a short tribute to a seminal architect of the sound, the legendary New Orleans son, Louis Armstrong.
To read about Armstrong, read on. To hear about him, press PLAY:
[You can subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or listen every day here on the main page. Full transcript below]:
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Saturday, April 30th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Today, we’d like to close out #JazzAppreciationMonth, with a short tribute to a primary architect of the sound, the legendary New Orleans son, Louis Armstrong:
[“St. Louis Blues” by Louis Armstrong]
“No him, no me,” is how jazz innovator Dizzy Gillespie described the impact of musician Louis Armstrong.
Widely believed to be the first great jazz soloist, Armstrong’s improvisations on the cornet and trumpet influenced every jazz musician after him and elevated the musical style to a new, exciting standard.
Born in August of 1901, during one of the more challenging times of his childhood, Armstrong was sent to a home for boys in 1912 after firing his stepfather’s gun in the air during a New Year’s Eve celebration.
While at the “Colored Waifs Home for Boys” as it was called, Armstrong learned how to play the cornet. When Armstrong was released, as he worked odd jobs he was mentored on his horn by one of the best players in town — Joe “King” Oliver – and eventually replaced Oliver on cornet in Kid Ory’s band.
Armstrong soon reunited with Oliver when Oliver formed his own band in Chicago, which lead to Armstrong’s first recorded solo on record, 1923’s “Chimes Blues.”
[Excerpt of “Chimes Blues”]
Armstrong soon left his mentor to join Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra, the top Black big band in New York. But the big city lifestyle and creative restraints Armstrong encountered lead him back to New Orleans to play with his wife Lil Armstrong’s band at the Dreamland Café.
Armstrong also began recording with his studio band – first the Hot Five and then Hot Sevens – even though they weren’t who he played with for live performances.
These recordings with smaller groups of musicians were an early influence on what would that become the norm after the swing band/orchestra’s hey day in the 1930s that ushered in the bebop era in the 1940s.
Armstrong’s stop-time solos on numbers like “Cornet Chop Suey” and “Potato Head Blues” changed jazz history, featuring daring rhythmic choices, swinging phrasing and incredible high notes.
[Excerpt “Potato Head Blues”]
Armstrong also innovated with his vocals, and his riff-style “scat” singing was emulated by popular singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.
[Excerpt of “Heebie Jeebies”]
Armstrong’s influence on other musicians was impactful and immediate. A young pianist from Pittsburgh, Earl Hines, assimilated Armstrong’s ideas into his piano playing, and together, they made some of the greatest recordings in jazz history in 1928, including their duet on “West End Blues”:
[Excerpt of “West End Blues”]
“West End Blues” proved without a doubt that popular dance music like jazz music was also capable of producing high art.
As Armstrong’s reputation grew, he toured in Europe, began recording hit songs of the day and appeared in Hollywood movies such asPennies From Heaven and High Societywith Bing Crosby, The Glenn Miller Story with Jimmy Stewart and New Orleans with Billie Holiday. Armstrong also recorded with a smaller six-piece combo, the All Stars.
The personnel of this combo would frequently change, but Armstrong would perform live with his All Stars until the end of his career. Members, at one time or another, included Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, Sid Catlett, Barney Bigard, Trummy Young, Edmond Hall, Billy Kyle and Tyree Glenn, among other jazz legends.
During this time in the 1940s and 1950s, Armstrong had hits with his versions of songs such as “That Lucky Old Sun,” “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” “Blueberry Hill” “La Vie En Rose” and one of the biggest hits of his career, his version of “Mack The Knife”:
[Excerpt from “Mack The Knife”]
As times advanced and changed, Armstrong’s style was seen as outmoded and outdated. He received criticism for remaining silent on politics and not lending his voice to the fight against racism and for civil rights.
Even when Armstrong did speak up, as in 1957 when he called out President Eisenhower for allowing Governor Orval Faubus to use the National Guard to prevent the Little Rock Nine from integrating Little Rock Central High School, he was met with criticism from whites and Blacks alike – the former for saying anything and the latter for seeming to speak out too late.
Yet and still, Armstrong kept on with doing what he wanted to do musically and defying all odds and at the height of the British invasion of the rock and roll era, he scored a #1 Billboard pop hit in 1964 at the age of 63 with his version of “Hello, Dolly”:
[Excerpt of “Hello, Dolly”]
In 1965, Armstrong started performing the Fats Waller tune “Black and Blue” live again a decade after removing it from his repertoire. He changed a lyric from being “I’m white inside” to “I’m right inside” and turned it into a protest that he would continue to play for the rest of his life:
[1965 version of “Black and Blue” from East Germany]
Three years later however, Armstrong’s version of “What A Wonderful World” did not get the same reception in the United States. But it was a number one hit overseas in England and South Africa in 1967, and after its appearance almost two decades later in the 1986 movie Good Morning, Vietnam, “What a Wonderful World” became a signature tune and perennial favorite of Armstrong’s, known the world over to this day.
[Excerpt of “What a Wonderful World”]
Armstrong’s home in Corona, Queens, which he shared with his fourth wife Lillian from 1943 until his passing in 1971, was declared a National Historic Landmark in in 1977. Today, the house is home to the Louis Armstrong House Museum, which annually receives thousands of visitors from all over the world.
Even though his most famous nickname was “Satchmo” for his “satchel mouth,” New Orleans native Armstrong was more lovingly known among musicians as “Pops,” as he was the father of it all.
You can also watch the 1957 documentary Satchmo the Great which is currently posted on YouTube, Ken Burn’s Jazz miniseries on PBS, and be on the lookout for what Apple Original Films announced last year would be the definitive Louis Armstrong documentary produced by Imagine Entertainment where the story will be told entirely through Armstrong’s own words titled Black & Blues: The Colorful Ballad of Louis Armstrong.
And speaking of Louis Armstrong’s words, let’s hear a bit of him speaking about love and life from an audio clip posted on louisarmstronghouse.org:
[Clip of Louis Armstrong speaking]
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
Excerpts from Louis Armstrong’s music are included under fair use.
If you like these Daily Drops, follow us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon,Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.
For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
GBN is pulling a trifecta today — celebrating #MusicMonday, #JazzAppreciationMonth, and dropping in on absolutely one of the best singers past, present — or ever — Ella Fitzgerald!
Born 105 years ago #OnThisDay, through her stunningly timeless gifts (and vast catalog), Ella Fitzgerald is still surprising and delighting music lovers and casual fans alike.
To read about her, read on. To hear about her, press PLAY:
[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, April 25th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Today, we offer a quote from the “First Lady of Song” born 105 years ago on this date, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald.
“The only thing better than singing is more singing.”
Born in 1917 in Newport News, Virginia, Ella Fitzgerald’s earliest artistic ambitions were to become a dancer.
When the loss of her mother when she was 15 lead to a relocation to Harlem to live with her aunt and stints in an orphanage and a state reformatory school for girls, Fitzgerald hustled to get by on the streets and at 17 took her terpsichorean talents to Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater.
But when she saw two sisters with a dance act go on before her and wow the crowd, Ella didn’t think she could compete so she switched up her talent from dancing to singing and took to the stage to sing “Judy” and “The Object of My Affection” and won first prize in 1934.
Although she didn’t record either at the time, in 1968 Ella gave “The Object of My Affection” another onstage go when she sang it for her Live At Chautauqua, Volume1 LP:
[Excerpt from “The Object of My Affection”]
Ella’s Amateur night win lead to an audition with Chick Webb to become the girl singer in his orchestra, and one of the best collaborations between bandleader and singer in the swing era.
Webb and Ella had hits with “Love and Kisses,” “(If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)” and the classic turn on a nursery rhyme co-written by Ella that become of the best-selling songs in it’s decade, “A Tisket, A Tasket”:
[Excerpt from “A Tisket, A Tasket”]
Even as Chick Webb took the young Ella under his wing, his serious health challenges ended his life way too soon in 1939.
Ella stepped up and lead and toured with the orchestra for a few more years until she went solo as jazz turned increasingly towards the newer sounds of bebop.
It was around this time, while working with Dizzy Gillespie and his band, Ella developed her scat singing style, lauded on songs such as “Oh, Lady Be Good” and “Flying Home”:
[Excerpt from “Flying Home”]
Ella not only navigated and interpreted jazz standards with dazzling dexterity and clarity, during her heyday, she, like her quote implied, sang and sang and sang some more.
Ella took on several of America’s most popular composers with her unparalleled series of “songbooks,” where she devoted entire albums to covering the songs of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hart, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin.
You can’t go wrong with any of these incredible recordings, so I’ll share a personal favorite from Ella Sings Gershwin – Ella’s plaintively tender version of “Someone to Watch Over Me”:
[Excerpt of “Someone to Watch Over Me”]
Ella also paired up with jazz royalty, recording an album with Count Basie, three with Louis Armstrong, four with guitarist Joe Pass and four with Duke Ellington, one which included her version of – I can’t think of any better word than “banging” because Ella just goes so hard in “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”:
[Excerpt of “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”]
From big band to bebop to Broadway, standards, pop and R&B, throughout her career, Ella Fitzgerald recorded over 200 albums and 2,000 songs.
Because frankly, with a voice like hers, the only thing better than Ella singing was more Ella singing. I’m going to put a link to a much longer Ella playlist in the show notes, but let’s hear from her one more time, in 1977, when one of her biggest fans, Stevie Wonder, lovingly sings her praises right before she helps him sing his song:
And of course, buy or stream as much of her music as you can. Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and in the episodes full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
All excerpts of Ella Fitzgerald’s music are included under Fair Use.
If you like these Daily Drops, follow us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.
For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
In continued celebration of #JazzAppreciationMonth, today we drop in on Billie Holiday, the singer and artist who not only influenced peers and progeny alike with her innovative interpretation of and phrasing in songs, but also composed several of her signature songs which became jazz and blues standards in the decades that followed.
To read about Holiday, read on. To hear about her, press PLAY:
[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Tuesday, April 19th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Billie Holiday famously said she styled her singing after two major influences – blues empress Bessie Smith and jazz trumpeter and legend Louis Armstrong.
The alchemy Holiday found by combining her favorites inspired many of her contemporaries as well as subsequent generations of singers, who were impressed with her pioneering phrasing and improvisation.
What is less often praised about Holiday is her songwriting skill. She wrote several signature songs that are now standards. Let’s start with “Fine and Mellow,” which Holiday first recorded in 1939:
Happy #JazzAppreciationMonth, good people! For most the word “Jazz” conjures up images of the giants like Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, and Louis Armstrong.
Though this collection, “Ear Food: A New Jazz Playlist“ features a new school of Jazz artists re-imagining and reinventing Jazz for today:
They are staying true to the game while infusing a spectrum of R&B, Hip-Hop and other influences.
Many will recognize names like Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, Meshell Ndegeocello, Esperanza Spalding, and the late Roy Hargrove, but this collection features some new talents that are not as well-known.
I hope you’ll dig artists like: Ezra Collective, Al Strong, Steam Down, Somi, Nubya Garcia, Tom Misch, and Moses Boyd, too.
It’s great to see and hear a new generation adopt and reinvent the sound of a timeless genre, proving that Jazz not only still lives, but thrives.
While I’ve generally moved to monthly offerings, I’ll be back during this month devoted to Jazz appreciation with another collection next week.
In continued celebration of #JazzAppreciationMonth, today we drop in on virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson, who hailed from Canada, composed the de facto Civil Rights Movement anthem “Hymn to Freedom,” and was dubbed the “Maharaja of the Keyboard” by none other than fellow piano master Duke Ellington.
To read about Peterson, read on. To hear about him, press PLAY:
[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:
Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, April 11, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Being called the “Maharaja of the Keyboard” by Duke Ellington was a lot for Canadian-born jazz pianist Oscar Peterson to live up to – and he did.
In a career spanning over six decades, the classically trained Peterson showed off his virtuosity and dexterity in his compositions such as 1964’s Canadiana Suiteand 1962’s “Hymn to Freedom,” which was embraced by people around the world as the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement:
[Excerpt from “Hymn to Freedom”]
Peterson also excelled as accompanist to greats like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, and as front man of his world-renowned Oscar Peterson Trio in the 1950s, who recorded such treasures such as “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”:
[Excerpt of “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”]
“Something’s Coming” from West Side Story:
[Excerpt of “Something’s Coming”]
and “C Jam Blues”:
[Excerpt of “C Jam Blues”]
Peterson won eight Grammy awards and was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1978 and the International Jazz Hall of Fame in 1997.
Later this month over the April 22nd weekend, the Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festivalwill be held in Toronto, Canada and feature contemporary jazz artists Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Brad Mehldau and Brian Blade, among others.
And, of course, buy or stream as much of Oscar Peterson’s music as you can, including the latest 2021 posthumous release, A Time For Love, a recording of Peterson’s quartet live concert in Helsinki in 1987, which you can get on 180 gram blue vinyl if you’re into that through oscarpeterson.com.
Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.
Intro and outro provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
All excerpts of Oscar Peterson’s music included are permitted under Fair Use.
If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.
For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
Hey, it’s Lori, GBN’s Editor-in-Chief, with this week’s Music Monday share. Although it’s one day early, I offer a list to set the vibe for what February signifies to many in these United States: Black History Month!
Today’s playlist, “Black and Proud: Songs About Being Black” features songs that examine, express, critique and celebrate differing iterations of what it means to be Black in America.
The gamut of human emotions are present in this collection, as African Americans have been creating genres like Jazz, Blues, Soul and Hip Hop and transforming others from the 1600s on.
Artists such as Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Esperanza Spalding, india.arie, Prince, Janet Jackson, Mickey Guyton, Nas, Jay Z, Common and Kendrick Lamar all have their takes on Blackness and the perceptions of it by themselves, lovers, strangers, authorities and oppressors.
I’ve also included several versions of “Young, Gifted and Black” by Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway and Big Daddy Kane who each in their own way interpret the phrase popularized by playwright Lorraine Hansberry to great effect.
I hope you enjoy this compilation and that it gets you into the mood, groove and spirit of Black History Month.
After Ida tore through the northeast of the country, leaving turmoil in its wake, I have been thinking of, and listening, to the beautiful music to emerge from the Crescent City. Here’s a collection of New Orleans Jazz to take you through this week.
From early 20th century figures like Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong to modern masters like Trombone Short and Christian Scott, this collection is full of classic grooves. I couldn’t help but include some fine brass band music too.
Hope you enjoy this eclectic playlist of artist from and/or based in New Orleans.
Whether you are among those celebrating the Christmas holiday with loved ones (via Zoom or in the same room) or doing it solo, you may want some mellow-yet-festive holiday music playing as you spend the day.
From Take 6 to Duke Ellington to Geri Allen to Oscar Peterson, this playlist includes vocal and instrumental jazz renditions of traditional and modern Christmas and end-of-year classics for all to enjoy.
Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Betty Carter, Dianne Reeves, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Esperanza Spalding and Billie Holiday are among the female jazz vocalists represented on “Cool Yule,” with Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Leslie Odom, Jr. and Louis Armstrong lending their deeper pipes to the playlist.
Also represented are jazz titans Miles Davis, John Coltrane, the Count Basie Orchestra, Benny Carter, Kenny Burrell, Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, the McCoy Tyner Trio, Jimmy Smith, the Elvin Jones Quintet and the Ramsey Lewis Trio.
Wishing you all the best tomorrow and in the coming new year. Enjoy!
(Photograph: Eddie Adams/AP)
On October 31, 1965, Louis “Pops” (or “Satchmo”) Armstrong gave his first performance in New Orleans, his home town, in nine years. As a boy, he had busked on street corners. At twelve, he marched in parades for the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, where he was given his first cornet. But he had publicly boycotted the city since its banning of integrated bands, in 1956. It took the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to undo the law. Returning should have been a victory lap. At sixty-four, his popular appeal had never been broader. His recording of “Hello, Dolly!,” from the musical then in its initial run on Broadway, bumped the Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” from its No. 1 slot on the Billboard Top 100 chart, and the song carried him to the Grammys; it won the 1964 Best Vocal Performance award. By the time the movie version came out, in 1969, he was brought in to duet with Barbra Streisand.
Armstrong was then widely known as America’s gravel-voiced, lovable grandpa of jazz. Yet it was a low point for his critical estimation. “The square’s jazzman,” the journalist Andrew Kopkind called him, while covering Armstrong’s return to New Orleans for The New Republic. Kopkind added that “Among Negroes across the country he occupies a special position as success symbol, cultural hero, and racial cop-out.” Kopkind was not entirely wrong in this, and hardly alone in saying so. Armstrong was regularly called an Uncle Tom.
Detractors wanted Armstrong on the front lines, marching, but he refused. He had already been the target of a bombing, during an integrated performance at Knoxville’s Chilhowee Park auditorium, in February, 1957. In 1965, the year Armstrong returned to New Orleans, Malcolm X was killed on February 21st, and on March 7th, known as Bloody Sunday, Alabama state troopers armed with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips attacked nearly six hundred marchers protesting a police shooting of a voter-registration activist near Selma. Armstrong flatly stated in interviews that he refused to march, feeling that he would be a target. “My life is my music. They would beat me on the mouth if I marched, and without my mouth I wouldn’t be able to blow my horn … they would beat Jesus if he was black and marched.”
When local kids asked Armstrong to join them in a homecoming parade, as he had done with the Colored Waif’s Home in his youth, he said no. He knew the 1964 Civil Rights Act was federal law, not local fiat. Armstrong had happily joined in the home’s parades in the past, but his refusal here can be read as a sign of the times. The Birmingham church bombings in 1963 had shown that even children were not off limits.
And yet little of what Armstrong said about the civil-rights struggle registered. The public image of him, that wide performance smile, the rumbling lilt of his “Hello, Dolly!,” obviated everything else. “As for Satchmo himself,” Kopkind wrote, “he seems untouched by all the doubts around him. He is a New Orleans trumpet player who loves to entertain. He is not very serious about art or politics, or even life.”
* * *To be fair to Kopkind, and many others who wrote about Armstrong, they did not know much of what Armstrong thought, because, at the time, Armstrong’s more political views were rarely heard publicly. To the country at large, he insisted on remaining a breezy entertainer with all the gravitas of a Jimmy Durante or Dean Martin. Fortunately, that image is now being deeply re-examined. This month, the publication of Thomas Brothers’s Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism and the Off Broadway opening of Terry Teachout’s Satchmo at the Waldorf (which follows his 2009 biography, Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, which was reviewed by John McWhorter) provide a rich, nuanced picture of what was behind Armstrong’s public face.
Armstrong’s thoughts were scattered about in uncollected letters, unpublished autobiographical manuscripts, and tape recordings. He brought a typewriter with him on the road, and an inquisitive fan who sent a letter stood a good chance of getting a reply from Satchmo himself. When reel-to-reel tape decks were introduced, he bought one so that he could listen to music, study his own performances, and record conversations with friends and family to get down his own version of events. Scholars and researchers have been studying his writing and recordings for a number of years. Teachout’s play, a one-man show starring John Douglas Thompson, is based on more than six hundred and fifty reels of tape stored at Queens College, all of which reveal an Armstrong who did indeed take art, politics, and life seriously.
Armstrong also began recording with his studio band – first the Hot Five and then Hot Sevens – even though they weren’t who he played with for live performances.
As Armstrong’s reputation grew, he toured in Europe, began recording hit songs of the day and appeared in Hollywood movies such as Pennies From Heaven and High Society with Bing Crosby, The Glenn Miller Story with Jimmy Stewart and New Orleans with Billie Holiday. Armstrong also recorded with a smaller six-piece combo, the All Stars.
Watch incredible clips of her on YouTube performing with 
To learn more about Oscar Peterson, read his 2002 autobiography 
