LOUIS ARMSTRONG
Born August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, LA
| Died July 6, 1971, in New York City
“My whole life has been happiness,” Louis Armstrong said, and
indeed, he managed to make everyone who heard him feel that
everything was bound to turn out all right. The story of Armstrong’s rise from poverty to become the most influential innovator in the history of jazz is astonishing, and utterly American.
While in Fletcher Henderson’s band in 1924 and 1925, he introduced the world to the super-syncopated interpretation of
the 4/4 rhythms that became the art of big band swing. His Hot
Five and Hot Seven recordings made between 1925 and 1929
turned jazz into a soloist’s art. And for the 40-plus years that followed, Armstrong was the universally recognized ambassador
of America’s music. Along the way he extended the range of his
instrument, fused the blues with American popular song, and
revolutionized American singing. He was, as trumpet player and
Armstrong contemporary Max Kaminsky wrote, “the heir of all
that had gone before and the father of all that was to come.”
SIDNEY BECHET
Born May 14, 1897, in New Orleans, LA
| Died May 14, 1959, in Paris, France
“There’s this mood about the music, a kind of need to be moving,”
Sidney Bechet wrote. No jazz musician was more restless—or
played more memorable music—than this master of the clarinet
and soprano saxophone. A child prodigy born into a music-loving Creole family, he was still in his teens when he developed
the huge, impassioned sound that ensured no other instrument
could ever drown him out. He toured Europe as a young man,
and in 1923 he recorded two sides, “Wild Cat Blues” and “Kansas
City Man Blues.” Afterward, he was the center of attention from
the first measure to the last, and he inspired a host of young reed
players to follow in his footsteps. His last years were spent in
France, where he became a national icon. Bechet was often edgy
and combative in person, but when it came to music, he said,
“You got to mean it, and you got to treat it gentle.”
BUDDY BOLDEN
Born September 6, 1877, in New Orleans, LA | Died November 4, 1931, in Jackson, LA
JELLY ROLL MORTON
Born October 20, 1890, in New Orleans, LA
| Died July 10, 1941 in Los Angeles, CA
“It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans
is the cradle of jazz,” Jelly Roll Morton once said, “and I, myself,
happened to be [its] creator in the year 1902.” Ferdinand Joseph
Lamothe didn’t create jazz—no single person did—but he was a
master of piano ragtime, the first important jazz composer, the
first to demonstrate that New Orleans music could be formally
arranged, and the first to break down the elements of the music
so that musicians beyond the city of his birth could learn it. Best
known for the recordings he made with his Red Hot Peppers
between 1926 and 1928, he was one of the most creative—and
colorful—artists in jazz history. His admonitions remain as valid
today as when they were first set forth: “A lot of people have the
wrong conception of jazz,” he said. “Jazz music is to be played
sweet. Soft, plenty rhythm. When you have your plenty rhythm
with your plenty swing it becomes beautiful.”
KING OLIVER
Born May 11, 1885, in or near New Orleans, LA | Died April 8 or 10, 1938, in Savannah, GA
Cornetist Joe “King” Oliver was a showman in the swaggering
street-wise tradition of his mythic Crescent City predecessor,
Buddy Bolden. But it was his craft that helped earn him his regal title. A master of mutes, he used an arsenal of water glasses,
buckets, kazoos—anything that would fit in or near the bell of
his horn—to make it crow like a rooster, cry like a baby, or shout
like a preacher on revival day. And his celebrated three-chorus
1923 solo on “Dippermouth Blues” was memorized by a generation of trumpet hopefuls. His Creole Jazz Band taught aspiring
musicians the difference between polyphony and cacophony,
and they could play so softly, the drummer Baby Dodds remembered, that “you could hear the people’s feet dancing.” Oliver
was “rough as pig iron,” according to the trombonist Kid Ory,
but his gruff exterior belied the patience of a lifelong mentor.
“I loved Joe Oliver,” his prize pupil, Louis Armstrong, said. “He
did more for young musicians than anyone I know of.”
JAZZ: AN AMERICAN STORY
9
MAJOR ARTISTS
The growls and shouts that attended the birth of jazz came, by
most accounts, from New Orleans cornet king Buddy Bolden.
Though he was never recorded, he remains among the most
revered of all jazz musicians. Jelly Roll Morton called Bolden
“the most powerful man in the history [of jazz].” Bold, brassy,
and brimming with the emotional power of the blues, his sound
seemed capable of crossing the entire Crescent City, and it carried
with it both the fire and humor of Bolden’s personality. Born in
1877, Bolden absorbed every musical style his city had to offer; he
played dance music of all varieties—waltzes, mazurkas, polkas,
and rags. He did not improvise freely, but he ornamented melodies and made them his own, and he was among the first to combine the syncopation of ragtime with the blues. Audiences responded to Bolden with the enthusiasm of the faithful at a church
revival. “He had a moan in his cornet that just went through
you,” one musician attested, “just like you were in the church.”