The Jazz on the Tube podcast just hit an important milestone. We did our 50th program last week. This week’s program reviews some of the highlights of the last 50 shows. It’s time to take a breather… While we’re taking a break, you can do two things.
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
Corrections: 1. Bob French was Gerald French’s uncle, not father. 2. The name of Judy’s new album is Can You Love Once More?
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
#1 – Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901 not July 1, 1900 as he and his mother said – and there is conclusive documentary evidence that establishes the August 4th date.
FALSE
There is no valid documentary evidence that proves a birth date other than the one Armstrong and his mother claimed: July 4, 1900.
The document that supposedly “proves” his birth as being on August 4th is literally nothing more than a scrap of paper without provenance. It’s certainly not an official birth certificate or baptismal certificate.
Further, the idea that Louis Armstrong, a poor black child, would have been baptized at an all white Catholic Church in Mid-City (Sacred Heart of Jesus) during a period of strict segregation is far-fetched in the extreme.
It would be like boxer Mike Tyson, another young black boy born into difficult circumstances, being baptized at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
#2 – After he moved to Chicago in 1922, Armstrong virtually stopped coming to New Orleans, essentially boycotting the city for the rest of his life.
FALSE
The official ledger of the black musicians union in New Orleans – of which Armstrong was a member – clearly records that he performed at least 14 times in New Orleans during a period “historians” say he boycotted the city.
Where did he perform? At black-only clubs, this at a time when audiences were racially segregated by law.
(Ask Dr. John how many times as a young man he was arrested and taken to jail in handcuffs for performing with black musicians at the Dew Drop Inn.)
#3 It’s certain and proven that Louis Armstrong’s mother worked as a prostitute.
FALSE
There is no documentary evidence of any kind that establishes that Armstrong’s mother worked in any “crib” or brothel or as a prostitute
The record only shows that she lived for a while in a rooming house in a “bad section” of town, one of the few housing options available to low income blacks in that city at that time. The assertion that her exact profession is known is based on nothing more than a guess by “historians”
Louis Armstrong, Little Rock, and Eisenhower
On September 29, 1957, about ten days after he put his career on the line by publicly denouncing Eisenhower for failing to provide protection to black school children threatened by racist mobs in in Little Rock, Arkansas, Armstrong appeared on the DuPont Show of the Week called “Crescendo.”
At the 1:05 mark, he looks heavenward and quotes “The Star Spangled Banner” briefly – a tune he had pointedly stopped playing publicly.
I recommend you watch this clip a couple of times so that you can see what I see in it:
Armstrong is praying for his country’s soul.
In between Armstrong’s very strongly worded public comments and this performance, on September 26 Eisenhower finally sent US troops to Little Rock to make sure black students there could enter their school safely.
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
Click here for more information about the book New Orleans Remix by Jack Sullivan
With the critical role it played in the origins of jazz, R & B and early rock and roll, and funk, New Orleans can rightly stake a claim for being the country’s most important musical hotbed.
However, anyone who thinks the city’s glory days as a major creative crossroads are over would be gravely mistaken as Jack Sullivan amply documents in his new Book New Orleans Remix.
In fact, New Orleans has been experiencing a major artistic renaissance since the 1990s.
Though temporarily and violently interrupted by the failure of the US Army Corps of Engineers levee system in 2005 (often referred to the in short hand “Katrina”), the city is as vital as ever and should be a destination for every lover of music especially jazz.
Click here for more information about the book New Orleans Remix by Jack Sullivan
Video references
Treme Brass Band
The Treme Brass Band performs a second line for the Spotted Cat when it sold and changed hands in April of 2009. Fortunately, the club’s format survived the change of ownership.
Video produced by Jazz on the Tube’s FoodMusicJustice project (temporarily dormant, but always ready for new energy.)
Panorama Jazz Band
The band was formed in 1995 by Ben Schenck.
Started as a traditional New Orleans jazz band, it’s continuously added music to its repertoire from the Caribbean and Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Balkans and this piece from the South African composer Hugh Masekela.
Aurora Nealand on alto sax and Ben Schenck on clarinet. Filmed at the French Quarter Jazz Fest in 2008 by Jazz on the Tube.
The artistic vanguard
New Orleans born poet Chuck Perkins recites the names of the musicians who returned to New Orleans after the levee failures – “my artist vanguard who came back when times were hard…who second lined my people all the way back home…” Produced by Jazz on the Tube’s FoodMusicJustice project in 2009.
Many of the artists named in the song are profiled in New Orleans Remix.
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
Click here for more information about the book Flavor and Soul by John Gennari
“There is no other than Gennari—a huge-hearted scholar of voracious curiosity and impeccable taste—to productively mine what happens when black and Italian meet. He sees the third thing those two galaxies of history and self-expression create at the crossroads.
Cooking and eating, sports, film, and, of course, music are where the most potent and telling cultural action is, where we go to experience the true beauty and meaning of life in a world where we may know ourselves deeply along cultural lines but then find so much more at the recombinant intersection.
Flavor and Soulis brilliant, encyclopedic scholarship that also accomplishes the rare work of speaking directly to and from the heart. This is a passionate treasure book of scholarship and ultimately a handbook for living a rich, surprising, culturally-guided life.”
(Elizabeth Alexander, author of The Light of the World: A Memoir)
Famed Sicilian-American New Orleans record producer Cosimo Matassa (born 1926) recalls life in the French Quarter growing up in the 1930s and 40s.
Click here for more information about the book Flavor and Soul by John Gennari
Not covered in the interview, but this seem like a good place to put it for now:
“I’m beginning to find out that an awful lot of early jazz history is totally wrong. Here is a quick example. There are a number of well-known New Orleans trumpet players who came out of New Orleans at the same time. A third of them were White Italians, and the Italians were just as despised as Blacks and they lived in the same neighborhoods and they played the same music. Gerald Early, a very famous professor of African-American history at Washington University always starts his lectures showing that whites have been in this from day one. It’s an American music.”
Note from Ken: Sicily, which was the source of most of the Italians who landed in New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th century, has a rich tradition of…brass bands that march in well put together uniforms. If I were a betting man, I’d say African-Americans adopted this tradition from their Sicilian brothers in New Orleans and made it their own.
Video references
Jon Batiste on the influence of opera on Louis Armstrong
The opening cadenza to West End Blues – one part opera, one part blues
Louis Armstrong and opera
After completion of my season at the Metropolitan Opera during the 1950’s, I would go to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas where Louis and I performed both singly and together for a few weeks. We had special material written for us where we reversed roles, doing opera versus jazz; he singing ”Vesti la giubba” and I singing ”Honeysuckle Rose.” Between shows, he would regale me with reports of his European tours, especially in Italy, where he made a point of visiting opera houses, and tell me, ”Man, I met all of them cats over there.”
ROBERT MERRILL
New Rochelle, N.Y.
From a letter to the New York Times dated April 2, 2000
Louis Prima, his then-wife and “straight man” Keely Smith, Sam Butera and the Witnesses
Frank Sinatra and Count Basie and his Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones (1965)
Qunicy Jones talks about Frank Sinatra
New Orleans “soul” music – Aaron Neville sings “Ave Maria”
Click here for more information about the book Flavor and Soul by John Gennari
– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
