This is a little off our usual topics, I guess, but not by much. Great blues and jazz have lived under the same roof for decades, sharing a toothbrush and an attitude about expressing human emotion with music.
I was reminded of the shared history of all that music when I read a New York Times article earlier today about a new biography of one of the most important musicians of the 20th century -- Louis Armstrong. It's called "Pops," and was written by Terry Teacher, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal.
The article includes this quote from Armstrong about what he feels when he plays:
“When I blow I think of times and things from outa the past that gives
me an image of the tune. Like moving pictures passing in front of my
eyes. A town, a chick somewhere back down the line, an old man with no
name you seen once in a place you don’t remember.”
If that dosn't sound like the blues, I'm not sure what does. I think you can make a case that however you want to describe Satchmo's music, it had its roots in blues, and the language he played was the language of the blues. The great Lena Horne once called the blues the "mother tongue" of jazz, and I like the sound of that.
But this sounds like a fine book, if you're a fan. I read Teachout's articles now and then, and he writes smartly about music when he's not writing about theater. And the list of classic music performances on his blog that he finds on YouTube inspired me to look into that source of music a while back.
Just to make my point about the language of the blues, here's a 1964 video of Armstrong playing "Basin Street Blues." Listen to those notes:
And here's another video, just for fun, because it goes way back to 1933:
I fogot to add this earlier -- I've always remembered the line from Woody Allen's 1979 film, Manhattan,
where Allen's character lists Armstrong's recording
of "Potato Head Blues" as one of the reasons that life is worth living.
Posted
Nov 24 2009, 01:00 AM
by
Jim White