Original subtitles

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

I am Mr. Armstrong,

and let's play an old woman and good music for you,

a beautiful number: "I Cover the Waterfront".

"I Cover the Waterfront".

When it is spoken of Louis Armstrong,

It talks about feelings human beings

and of the highest level of musical sophistication.

It's a rare occurrence in the history of music.

He was chosen to bring

the feeling, the message and

the identity of jazz for all.

I brought them to everyone. the musicians.

It took them all over the world.

He is the personification of jazz.

The twentieth century had not yet completed two decades ago when

the first jazz record reached the public in 1917.

But the world had already passed by transformations that no one

could have predicted.

And the unmentionable carnage of the First World War was just

part of this change.

In the new modern world, humans could fly.

Photographic records, by the use of X-rays

allowed to see, through the skin, even the bones.

Sigmund Freud, listening to his patients lying on a div in your office

discovered new ways of understanding the human mind.

Pablo Picasso painted his models from all points of view

at the same time.

And Albert Einstein described a continuous space-time.

Jazz became the soundtrack of this modern world.

The music was still closely linked to ragtime

metallic and vigorous

The soils were practically nonexistent.

But when World War I World has come to an end

and the Jazz Age had its start in earnest

music started to change

The history of jazz became history of two large American cities ...

Chicago where black musicians from New Orleans

found fame and a new public, white.

And New York, where two neighborhoods Times Square, Times Square

and Harlem, housed a dedicated group of musicians

each struggling to find his own voice.

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., Edward Kennedy Ellington, one thing

middle class pianist who had left school

I was starting to write their own compositions

and wondered if he could be successful as a musician

broader horizons.

And in New Orleans, the cradle of everything

a teenager was playing trumpet in espeluncas, attracting many people

and began to transform into art the turbulent and almost always violent

spinning world around you.

His name was Louis Armstrong.

And for many, your extraordinary genius

seemed to be a godsend.

I do not believe that Louis Armstrong

was a real human being.

I still believe that God sent him to earth

as a special messenger to make people happy.

The music therapy.

For me, music always been so intoxicating

how much alcohol, a base or any drug.

Your sound may stimulate in me

love, happiness, creativity.

I think Armstrong was sent here

as a messenger of God to make people happy.

And that's what he dedicated his life.

In a way, Armstrong

the Bach, the Dante, the Shakespeare of American music.

It comes at a given point of its history.

Not at birth, because it had existed for 30 years,

but when it transforms in an art form.

He is the figure that codes,

that assimilates everything that there was before

and shows the direction of the future.

SECOND EPISODE A DIVA

The trumpet is an instrument sacrificial

the most difficult of wind instruments

which requires more and he played it

with a vigor never seen before

nor after. I do not say that

do not play higher than him.

But with its strength and vigor? No one.

He was everything.

Although I have always believed who was born on July 4

1900, Louis Armstrong, actually came to the world

August 4, 1901 in a violent area

of New Orleans that was called of "Field of Battle".

His father, a day laborer called William Armstrong

I had left the family, and their children rarely saw him.

His mother, Mayann, had only 16 years when he was born

and sometimes prostitute herself to maintain the family.

Armstrong said that, sometimes, I did not know what I was going to eat.

And that sometimes the level of poverty

it was so much that I did not know which would follow.

He had become accustomed to snoring of the stomach.

Fights with knives, firearms, razors, this was the

in which Louis Armstrong grown up.

He saw a certain side of life.

But he saw everything on this side. of life.

No cliché on which it is written.

He did not see this side. according to

Someone from outside, That say:

"What a terrible thing!" He saw the whole picture.

The humor, the beauty, the sordid, he saw everything.

And he understood.

At age seven, he went to work for the Karnoffsky

a family of Jewish immigrants Russians who delivered coal

Storyville prostitutes.

Louis was riding along in the carriage, playing a long, thin horn

in order to advise customers of Karnoffsky they were coming.

It is little boy who

realizes that something is wrong.

Do not know what but you soon realize

of which is the color of your skin.

called "Creole",

see a grown man be called a "little boy"

of depreciative form.

Suddenly, in this Middle, people arrive

just as he will turn

demean your acquaintances, but who treat him well.

They invite you to your house.

They try to take care of him. and feed it

It was then, with the Karnoffsky, still a child, that he understood

that we are all human beings.

Mrs. Karnoffsky insisted that he had dinner well before returning home

and Armstrong never forgot of the goodness of the family.

Throughout his life, he would use the star-of-davi

and the lullabies of Mme. Karnoffsky would be expensive.

One day, Louis discovered a well beaten bugle

in a store window of pawns and asked

to the Karnoffsky five dollars to buy it.

"After blowing it up for a little while," recalled Armstrong.

I realized that I could play Home Sweet Home.

So the blues came. "

I'm sure that, from the 1st. Turn

who picked up the trumpet, he was great.

He was one of these people who have something supernatural.

He had that understanding which comes from the Creator of mankind.

He knew it was good. I really did.

He claimed that his talent it was a godsend.

It said, "You Imagine l no C u

with the archangel Gabriel? I'll send him to the corner. "

Armstrong loved listening to jazz.

A Kid Ory Band Mutt Carey

Bunk Johnson, Freddy Keppard

and Sidney Bechet.

But of all bands which Armstrong heard

the one led by the cornetist King Oliver

was the one that touched him the most.

Joe Oliver was a band-leader dur o.

Hard as pig iron, described a musician.

He started his career. as trombonist and then

passed to the bugle, becoming one of the favorite musicians

in one of the most city ​​heavy goods

Pete Lala's in Storyville.

Armstrong was delivering coal to a prostitute who lived

next to Oliver and took as long as he could

just to listen his dolo touch.

King Oliver created vocal effects like this.

Oliver was a huge guy it's impressive.

His sound was fantastic. He had authority

and he knew how to set up a band.

And Oliver obviously I liked him.

Armstrong could carry his trumpet, which was an honor.

Oliver, in a way, sought to protect him.

"I loved Joe Oliver," said Louis Armstrong.

"He did more for young guys than anyone you know. "

Between one commitment and another, Oliver sometimes stopped in the street.

and gave advice to Armstrong about how to play.

We found J. Oliver when we climbed Rampart Street

and we got a lesson relating to a music

was bothering us.

I said, "Papa Joe, How do you share that? "

It stopped, it does not matter where was going, and showed us,

while the others musicians said:

"No, I have to get there." soon to the Eagle Saloon. "

That's why everyone We adored Joe Oliver.

In 1918, the year in which the Americans went to war

King Oliver left New Orleans, going to great Chicago

and Armstrong replaced him, playing trumpet in his ex band.

His reputation has grown, and soon he also had offers

of work of other cities.

But Armstrong had no intention some of leaving New Orleans.

He was married now with a former prostitute named Daisy.

And, besides, it will already too many musicians to fail.

"No one will let me New Orleans, "he said

"not to be Papa Joe."

In 1920, something happened. Great for jazz.

They enacted the law stupid

of US history: The Dry Law.

From a handful of salons in the whole country

thousands of of clandestine bars.

Especially in the biggest cities.

At one point, Manhattam, in NY there were five thousand of them.

And with the competition to attract the people, there was the music.

So suddenly there work for jazz musicians.

At the same time, The Law Dries vineyard

relaxing customs, producing the opposite effect of the intended.

For example, women they did not drink in salons,

but they certainly drank in clandestine bars.

Thus, the "Jazz Age" became a

symbol type for all this relaxation,

for all this drunkenness, thanks

when everyone drank more than they should

only to challenge a law impossible to enforce.

"In the midst of all this tumultuous effervescence, jazz

followed its course, traveling exultant in the current.

However, the end of civilization has not arrived yet

So, or jazz be tamed and transformed

in an artistic success, or else it will disappear altogether

of our environment as a living force.

But even if it comes to disappear totally,

he will not have existed in vain,

because your record will remain " as an interesting human document

the spirit of the written age in the music of the people. "

R.W.S. Mendel, in "The Appeal Of Jazz"

The United States was now totally amazed by jazz.

But the jazz by which most of Americans went crazy

was still primarily a decorative music.

Frantic, fun, the perfect accompaniment

for fast dance and appropriate times.

It would take the genius of musicians like Louis Armstrong

to broaden your message, deepen your emotion

and transform it into art.

Blessed

My story It's very simple.

You know, like, Once upon a time

beautiful lady and one nice gentleman

that they fell in love and got married.

And God blessed them with a wonderful little boy.

They held him by the hand

they took care of him and spoiled him up to 7 or 8 years of age.

So they put their by the floor

and as soon as they did, he left running through the front door

passed the lawn and crossed the street.

And on reaching the other side, Someone said:

"Hey, Edward, this way."

The kid, there, was me.

At the next corner, they said:

"Edward, to the right. Then turn left.

There's no mistaking it. " And this comes

occurring since then. That

the history. It's my bio.

On April 29, 1899, at 1212 T Street

in a comfortable black neighborhood of middle class,

in northwest Washington D.C., Edward Kennedy Ellington was born.

One day he would be exalted as the greatest of all

the American composers the most prolific and least

recognizable jazz genius.

His father, James Edward Ellington, he was a butler

and sometimes served in the White House.

He was a man of few resources, but who created your family?

said his son, as if it were a millionaire.

Your mother, Daisy, was entirely dedicated to the child.

And she was always the person most important in your life.

"As if I were a child very special, "he recalled.

"my mother would say: Edward, you are blessed. "

I asked him How was your childhood?

if he was taken, was ready

if he was scolding, what kind of boy was he?

He said: "I was treated the p o-de-l .

My mother was very careful. "

Daisy stood at the foot of the bed. every time he got sick.

Every Sunday, she would take him twice the Baptist church

of 19th Street, and took care that he had regular piano lessons.

My grandmother must have demonstrated some

exceptional quality since the beginning to their parents.

And I think your mother he really paid attention.

She identified something different in it.

She would provide him with all

opportunities to use this something different

and take advantage of it.

My mother bought it. sheet music

unbound and played them at the piano.

And I will always remember her playing

"Meditations". It made me cry.

L , on that wall, h a picture from my mother

It was painted after she moved to NY.

Daisy told her son that he did not he should let nothing stop him.

Unpleasant facts and barriers should be

simply be ignored. He could do anything else he did.

And because she believes it, Ellington would always believe.

Your teacher of the fourth year of high school,

on William L. Garrison Junior High School,

emphasized good oratory and good manners.

"As representatives of the black race, we should get respect

for our people, " Ellington remembered.

"They were proud of Queen L . An enormous pride of the race. "

The ways that were taught had much

to do with racial prejudice.

They taught us that our modes,

our sense of what we can do it

would allow us to transpose contempt and insults.

It was always up to us to act in a way

superior to them, because, in fact, we were.

But Ellington was also having another type of education.

It may have been created in a respectable middle-class family,

but at the age of fourteen he began to attend secretly

the billiard room of Frank Holiday, in the Sete Street with the T,

and went to the Gayety Burlesque Theater after classes

Ragtime pianists they became his heris.

Ellington spent hours working on the piano,

with ears in p , according to him.

He loved to play the piano, because the girls looked like

be attracted by pianists, and he was attracted to the girls.

Ellington started to dress with such elegance that both

The family how much friends have spent to call him Duke the Duke.

And he also started composing his own music.

His first piece was called "Soda Fountain Rag".

He soon left school. and formed his own group:

The Duke's Serenaders.

Whenever he was going to perform at a club or in a dance hall,

He was sending a friend to the front. to open the door and announce:

"Get out of the way, because here comes Duke. "

Your elegance and your ability to autopromoo got you

a lot of work. He played ragtime. and soft music to dance in clubs,

embassies and the most elegant White Washington parties.

In January 1923, Duke Ellington, now married and with a small son,

bought a ticket in the section segregated from the Howard Theater

to hear the master of New Orleans, Sidney Bechet.

Ellington never forgot of what he heard that night.

"It came from the soul," he said, "everything came from within."

"No matter what I touched, Bechet seemed to be calling someone.

It was my first date.

with the style of New Orleans, " Ellington remembered.

"It was a sound and a conception entirely new to me. "

As the fervor of the Jazz Age increased,

the career of Ellington he began to take off.

But he felt frustrated playing the type of music

that Washington society wanted to hear.

He longed for something more, I knew I had something to say

and started looking for new worlds to conquer.

CHICAGO

Louis Armstrong was a of my first idols.

I idolized him and wanted to be like him.

I read the story of how King Oliver had

called to Chicago to play with it.

Therefore, always that practiced,

I did it with my trumpet

pointed out from the window,

in the hope that Louis passed,

listen to me and hired me to

play in your band. But Louis never passed

On August 8, 1922, Louis Armstrong boarded

in "Central Illinois" in New Orleans, bound for Chicago.

He was 21 years old, I was separated from the woman

and finally he was going to join to his dolo, King Oliver.

The only person who would make him leave

New Orleans was King Oliver.

Thus, when receiving Oliver's telegram for

who met him in Chicago, his mother made him a sandwich,

he took the train and left.

He carried with him only the case with the horn

and an old case, which contained his shabby, patched tuxedo.

Your mother, Mayann, made sure of which he would wear ceroulas.

She knew that the place to it was very cold,

even in the summer.

Armstrong was joining to the fleeing blacks

suffocating poverty and repressive segregation laws

who continued to rule in the South of the country.

Since the start of the First World War,

hundreds of thousands of men and women had boarded

on trains looking for work and freedom.

This became known as "The Great Migration,"

and most of the rails led to Chicago.

He arrives in Chicago, get off the train

and everyone started to giggle

when you see him, then he looks like

with a gravedigger. He wore a

thick black coat, a suit and your hair

was combed foward.

I did not understand the customs of the city.

It took 2min to become the king of

city, but that's one another story.

With Armstrong in the group, Creole Jazz Band

of King Oliver never He played so well.

The two men perfected a duet style in which

Armstrong seemed to know by instinct exactly

what your boss would play and always had the perfect complement.

Nothing like it had ever been heard in Chicago before.

Ran from mouth to mouth that Joe Oliver

had a second cornetist, and that the two were

making breaks and other things.

Which were imperishable.

I listened to Joe Oliver and knew how he played.

I knew practically everything What was he doing.

So I added notes and surprised him.

I could do duets for anything.

I was doing a duet for this.

And all the musicians they thought it was good.

They tried, but no. they concentrated as we did.

They could not do it. Unless

was written. But we never wrote anything.

News stories than Oliver and Armstrong were doing at Lincoln Gardens

spread throughout The city and soon

some white listeners they were also seen.

"When you open the door, the King or Louis trumpets

or both, were heard above all else.

The whole place shook. Tables, chairs, walls,

people moved with the rhythm.

It was hypnosis at the first audition. Armstrong seemed to be able to hear

and play at the same time which Oliver improvised.

So the two of them sewed around each other as women

suspicious talking about the same man. Eddie Condon. "

A young and fascinated musician described that there was so much music in the air

that if someone raised a instrument, he would play alone.

On April 5, 1923, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong

and the Creole Jazz Band boarded a train

from Chicago to Richmond, Indiana, home of Gennett Records.

Louis Armstrong would record for the first time.

The band used to play around

of a metal, and the sound was recorded on a disk of wax.

But they could not work with

Armstrong in the middle, because he drowned the others.

So he had that stay 3m

4.5m behind the others. They put

on the corridor so that your sound stayed

in balance with that of the other musicians.

They recorded a record, it's that

was undoubtedly a mark

in the history of jazz. It was called "Chimes Blues".

As his first solo, have

to Armstrong or trio strain.

They did not ask or want to improvise any note.

But he played with such virtuosity

and thermal intensity who, on hearing it,

the future is perceived.

It's more exciting than all the improvisation

that the set does around him.

And that force, that sacred sound that he has ...

at that moment, it is known that something is coming up

and which will never be contained.

And just two years later he

enters the studio on its own account

and virtually encodes what the jazz

it would be next half century.

I think finally we have what

the musicians call "counting its history ".

One should tell a story, say something personal.

And that's what you have with Louis,

this quality of a human being

chatting with you counting

a coherent history It is fascinating.

I think be the essence

of Armstrong's genius.

NEW YORK

"If you go north, along the Isle of Manhattam,

cross Central Park and get off at Stima Avenue

or at Lenox Avenue, at 110th Street,

you can not leave to be surprised

with the sudden change that you see yourself in people.

In the center and in the lower part from the city you might notice

black faces here and there. But when we left Central Park,

we see you all over.

And as we go up any of these two great articles

from the north, we see more and more black people walking the streets,

looking through the windows, trading in stores,

eating in restaurants, leaving the theaters,

that, near 135th Street, 90 percent of people seen,

including transit guards, they are black

We are glimpsing the Harlem,

the black metropolis. James Weldon Johnson "

The Great Migration continued, and in 1920,

New York was home to more blacks

than any other city from the north, including Chicago.

Most of them lived Uptown,

in a beautiful neighborhood formerly called Harlem.

It was home to the National the Progress of People of Color.

The Urban League Headquarters I was staying in Harlem.

And also Universal Association

for the Progress of the Black, by Marcus Garvey.

Writer James Weldon Johnson, the poet Langston Hughes,

writer Zora Neale Hurston and the civil rights activist,

W. E. B. DuBois, they all lived in Harlem.

Like many other artists who sought to understand

the meaning of being black and American,

part of what would be called the "Harlem Renaissance".

Jazz musicians also were attracted to Harlem.

There was plenty of work in theaters, nightclubs and dance halls.

And, with the metr , Broadway and record labels

they were to a small distance from there.

The Harlem Music Hermis were the masters of a dazzling

virtuoso style of piano: The stride.

"It was orchestral piano", one of his stars is remembered,

"with expanded chords, full, round,

alternated with respect to Right hand. "

Its practitioners called themselves of "tick-fangs",

but the nicknames that gave to each other - "The Bear",

"The Beetle", "The Beast", "The Gross" - they looked more like warriors,

appropriate to the eternal wars of piano,

called "cut contests", that they were locked together.

In the beginning of 1923, Duke Ellington and two old friends,

the drummer Sonny Greer and saxophonist Otto Hardwicke,

moved to Harlem, eager to discover

if they had the talent they needed to win in the city that the musicians

of jazz would soon call of "The Big Apple".

"For us," Ellington recalled, "Harlem had the weather

most glamorous in the world. We had to go there. "

His first job in New York was to accompany a vaudeville musician

named Wilbur Sweatman, which insisted that members

of his band used p -de-arroz to lighten the countenance.

When Sweatman left the city, Ellington and his friends were fighting.

work at all costs, Sometimes cheating on billiards.

to be able to if you feed,

but always listening to the pianists masters of stride.

Willie "the Lion" Smith sympathized with Ellington and his friends.

He drove Ellington to work and encouraged

to try my hand at "cut" contests.

In the fall of 1923, Duke Ellington, Sonny Greer and Otto Hardwicke

moved to the center to play at the Hollywood Inn,

a pork club close to Times Square.

They were part of now a band

of six callers "The Washingtonians"

specialized in music soft to dance.

She was led by the banjo player and small business owner Elmore Snowden.

When the musicians discovered that Snowden was pocketing

more than your part of the payment of the band,

they expelled him and made Duke Ellington the new leader.

"It was at the Hollywood Inn", said Ellington,

"that our music has acquired new colors and features. "

He was absorbing everything: ragtime that he had heard as a boy in Washington;

the most sophisticated style of Harlem stride masters;

and the sound looser, soaked in the blues of New Orleans,

by Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong.

All this soon would reflect on your music.

In the beginning, he played music "of society".

He would do ...

I played with this type of vibrato.

And he heard the band. of King Oliver.

It was about ...

He said, "That's it. I want to do.

I want to hear the clarinet, the trombone,

I want this rhythm and the beat in 4/4. "

In 1924, Duke Ellington was doing his name in New York.

He would start recording and managed to sell some songs

for music editors of Tin Pan Alley.

But he was still unsatisfied. And confessed his unhappiness

to his friend Will Marion Cooke, a classical teacher

and composer of Broadway.

During long races of txi by Central Park,

the two were talking about music.

Cooke recommended Ellington that he obtained

a classic formation in the conservatoire.

Ellington felt that no had time for this.

"They are not teaching I want to learn, "he complained.

"In that case," Cooke told him, "first find the logical path;

when you find it, avoid it and let it your inner self manifest and guide you.

Do not try to be anyone not to be you. "

It was advice that Duke Ellington would go on for his entire life.

Duke Ellington knew how to pick up what "could be"

and transform it in something concrete.

He understood what it was I need to

transform something invisible visible.

"We meet for the first time - jazz and me -

I do not dance of the Barbary Coast.

He squealed and roared at me. on an improvised stage,

in the middle of a smoky environment cigarette and beer steaming.

And it hit me hard. Strident Yes.

Rough? Undoubtedly.

Musical? As sure as you're alive. Paul Whiteman "

Paul Whiteman was a violinist from Colorado,

formed in conservatoire, who has abandoned a classic career

after listening to a jazz band one night in S o Francisco.

He was totally amazed.

There was so much force, was funny.

He got up sad and came back

at home at night floating.

He had a good time.

In view of their formation

Your father was a teacher. of music and played

Viola in an orchestra symphonic -

he did not think to play jazz

that way, but in converting it to its mode.

Whiteman was convinced that could find a way to

to orchestrate jazz, to make it even more more commercially viable,

to retain their rhythm and harmony while making him so precise

and predictable the classic music.

His arrangements, he said, to make jazz a lady.

He got his first big success in 1920 with the album "Whispering".

Smooth, broadly orchestrated,

he sold 2 and a half million units,

more than 250 times what "Chimes Blues" of Oliver and Armstrong, would sell.

The Paul Whiteman Orchestra soon became the most celebrated

and imitated from the United States, launching a new trend

In dance music of society.

On February 12, 1924, a crowd appeared

at the Aeolian Hall in New York, to listen to the orchestra of Paul Whiteman

to play what has been announced as a "modern music experiment".

The concert included a brand new work,

specially commissioned to a young New York composer,

son of Russian immigrants, called George Gershwin,

who, like Duke Ellington, had spent hours and hours

listening to black pianists in Harlem.

The music of Gershwin was something entirely new,

a classic piece impregnated of jazz feeling.

And she would become one of the most loved compositions

of all American music: "Rhapsody in Blue".

The concert was a huge success. Four hours of elegant music

and orchestral, with no sign of improvisation.

And almost immediately Paul Whiteman was appointed as the King of Jazz.

Of course it left many blacks,

at the time and then, crazy of life,

because it was too obvious: Paul "White Man"

was the king of jazz. Apparently,

Whiteman himself will never intended to be none of that.

One day critics would accuse Whiteman of diluting the jazz,

and steal it from black Americans.

But Whiteman has always acknowledged the debt he had.

The whites got involved with jazz

not for the purpose to mock the blacks

or devilt them, but taking into account

that was an art form

that they wanted to get express in its own way,

respecting it and raising it.

That makes it Whiteman important.

He wanted to get that music

with its own terms.

This would have a about all those

associated with this music, white or black.

Whiteman was working behind the cloth to black arrangers

and wanted to hire musicians too. black for your orchestra.

But even in the Jazz Age this was impossible.

In the same year of triumph of Whiteman at Aeolian Hall,

a young black band leader, called Fletcher Henderson,

presented in the main salon of New York dances, the Roseland,

Times Square, playing only for whites.

Soft-spoken, Henderson was a son of a piano teacher

and a school principal, and had come Northern New York State

behind a chemistry degree at the University of Columbia.

But when their economies were over, he turned to music

and was swept away by jazz madness.

At Roseland, he became famous for playing music to dance

with a refinement unmatched by any other

black band-leader from James Reese Europe.

There were two kings of the scene of bands in NY.

There was the white king, Paul Whiteman,

that had the best white musicians of the country,

and there was F. Henderson, who had the

best black musicians. They were friends

and if they helped, exchanging arrangements etc.

One night, Whiteman took his band to hear Henderson's.

And then i said to their musicians who,

if Fletcher were white, would be a millionaire.

But like Duke Ellington, Henderson became restless

with conventional dance music that had been playing.

He was determined to create a style of yours.

I wanted to combine elegance of your previous arrangements

with something more exciting,

more stimulating, more spontaneous.

Fletcher Henderson started looking for a soloist, a jazz specialist,

so he called him, that could help him.

He knew of a trumpeter of King Oliver's band in Chicago,

whose genius other musicians they began to speak.

It would take a while, but when managed to convince that specialist

to go to New York, jazz would change forever.

TO MAKE THE ANGELS CHORAREM

For almost two years, Louis Armstrong remained

in the Creole Jazz Band of King Oliver.

There was also in the band a pianist named Lil Hardin.

She was unlike any other a woman Armstrong had known.

I always listened the musicians speak

about little Louis and how

he would be a great trumpeter

Little Louis. And when they brought him

to Dreamland to to know me,

I saw that he was about 100kg.

I asked, "Why do they call him of little Louis,

with all that size? "

I was not at all impressed.

I did not like it at all,

the way of dressing, of the way of speaking.

At last, he climbed the platform.

And I played ... You know, the girls

used leagues to hold the stockings.

When I sat down to touch,

I lowered my socks even the height

below the knee.

A 1a. Thing that Louis saw it was my knee.

And how he looked at him. I thought: "It's better.

he does not transform their ideas in words. "

Lil Hardin was ambitious,

articulated and, like Armstrong, unhappy in marriage.

Despite its first impression, she eventually fell in love with him.

On February 5, 1924, Louis Armstrong, recmm-divorced

of his first wife, he married with Lil Hardin in Chicago.

Lil encouraged Armstrong to follow his own way, but he was

reluctant to leave the man who I still called him Mr. Joe.

He said that he owed her a lot. and that was not right

if it would be successful on its own account.

But Lil persisted: "I do not want to be married to the second trumpeter.

I want you be the first. "

Then, in the spring of 1924, Armstrong received a proposal

that I could not ignore.

Fletcher Henderson wanted he would go to New York.

As on his arrival in Chicago, two years before,

Armstrong's estrangement in New York it was not auspicious.

"Drummer Kaiser Marshall had a car and took us

to the center for know Louis.

He was big and fat and wore tennis shoes. long barrel with tabs.

When I saw that, I thought to myself, Who the hell is this guy?

It can not be Louis Armstrong. ' Don Redman. "

Louis Armstrong, raised in poverty the streets of New Orleans,

it could not be more different than your new and sophisticated employer.

But almost from the start, Armstrong influenced

one in every two musicians of the city.

I came to NY in 1924. It was the first time

I heard Louis live.

Fletcher did not have music for him at this time.

He would sit there, holding the trumpet,

waiting for the time to manor.

And when he arrived the moment he gets

stood up and played made the devil.

The public was delirious.

The Armstrong Solos transformed the band.

Don Redman, the Henderson Arranger, started writing new pieces

which featured the powerful trumpet by Armstrong

and his unrivaled rhythmic sense, what Henderson himself called

of the "balance" of New Orleans by Armstrong.

"One night at Roseland, Armstrong began to play 'Shanghai Shuffle'.

I think they made him play about ten solos. And I was silent,

feeling half-hearted, thinking if he could someday achieve a

small part of Armstrong's greatness. Coleman Hawkins. "

Armstrong transformed the orchestra,

the musicians of it and, in the last instance,

everyone else in NY who were playing jazz,

and popular musicians.

He brought, first,

a tremendous rhythmic animation.

Armstrong was economical. He played

few notes, but each counted

and it represented something. Therefore,

equally important, he brought the blues.

Armstrong demonstrated what the blues

maybe it was the biggest musical gift

already produced in the USA.

He played blues with such conviction,

feeling and vigor that everyone wanted it.

Duke Ellington I was in NY.

He accompanied singers, Had one

small band, but he lacked something.

And he did not know what it was even hear Armstrong.

Suingue take note right at the right time,

neither before nor after.

Therefore, in jazz, that a rhythmic music,

I need to have time and pulse.

By touching, you make ...

it can not be

(I.e.

And keep it up. Do not change.

Like the beat of the heart.

You look at the audience, he understand,

begins to accompany with the p

and then it goes stand up and swing.

This is what makes jazz solo

and with such greatness.

"No one," said one musician,

"I knew what it was to whistle until Louis appears. "

The arrival of Armstrong in September 1924

was fundamental, because he was the most

important musician world jazz

and was at greater city ​​of the country,

teaching your band more important to swing.

He plays dances to young black people in Uptown

and change careers such as those of

Rex Stewart, G. Rogers and musicians

of the saxophone section of Ellington.

Russel Procoe was violinist when

heard Armstrong. He said, "I will play

an appropriate instrument for this music. "

And started playing high saxophone

In addition, nY was the best place

for recordings. Louis Armstrong

can make recordings freelance.

He recorded with Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey,

and Clarence's Blue Five Williams, with Sidney Bechet.

And the disks reach a public who

You can not go to Roseland. or Uptown.

Jazz is signed because Louis came

to NY and taught the world to wheeze.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's give one

Little back in the jungle and we want

that you all follow us.

That tiger is running very fast

and it will be necessary some solos to reach it.

So count on me. Yes sir.

This trumpet Selmer will escape

of you this time. Careful, boys, I'm ready.

Louis Armstrong invented a new style of playing.

He created the coherent soil.

He merged the blues sound with the American popular song.

Armstrong extended the reach of the trumpet.

Created melodic vocabulary and rhythmic

of which big bands wrote the music.

In the last instance, Armstrong

fits the definition of a genius.

I think, in part, for listening

something that no one else hears.

He listened to rhythms, melodies and a sound,

a means of extending your voice on the trumpet. All very original.

The result is so powerful,

spiritual person how much is enough

to make the angels cry.