Vanity Fair is going to be posting a pair of “audio excerpts” from Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong on its Web site later this fall, so I spent the morning taping them. In one of the two passages, Armstrong repeatedly uses a twelve-letter word that has never appeared on this blog but is part of the working vocabulary of many jazz musicians. I read it into the microphone five times in a row without blinking an eye, and as I did so, it occurred to me that my own mother, who has never heard me use such language, might not approve.
Fortunately, my mother doesn’t have a computer, so I think I’m in the clear. Nevertheless, I hope nobody tips her off that her son is going to be talking dirty on the Internet….
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
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