Archives for November 30, 2009

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong will be officially “published” on Wednesday. That’s a formality, of course: it’s been available from online booksellers for a month and started showing up in bookstores three weeks ago. Over the long holiday weekend, Pops appeared on Michiko Kakutani’s top-10 list in the New York Times and was prominently featured in the the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Kansas City Star, the Los Angeles Times, and my own paper, The Wall Street Journal. For the past week, it’s been Amazon’s top-selling jazz book.
All this good news notwithstanding, December 2 is still a big day for me, not least because that’s when my coast-to-coast book tour gets going. I leave for Boston in the afternoon after making two radio appearances, and on Thursday night I’ll be speaking at the Boston Athenaeum. After that I’ll be in and out of New York City through December 18, when I wrap up my tour in New Orleans and head home to Smalltown, U.S.A., for the holidays.
In case you didn’t see it in this space the other day, here’s a complete and updated list of the personal appearances I’ll be making in December. Come out and see me!
* * *
• BOSTON, DECEMBER 3: Boston Athenaeum, 10½ Beacon St., 6 p.m.
• NEW YORK, DECEMBER 7: Barnes & Noble Lincoln Triangle, 1972 Broadway, 7:30 p.m.
• LOS ANGELES, DECEMBER 8: Los Angeles Public Library, 630 W. Fifth St., 7 p.m.
• BALTIMORE, DECEMBER 9: Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St., 6:30 p.m.
• PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 10: Philadelphia Free Library, 1901 Vine St., 7:30 p.m.
• CHICAGO, DECEMBER 15: Highland Park Library, 494 Laurel St., 7 p.m. (note the time change)
• ST. LOUIS, DECEMBER 16: Maryville University (with Left Bank Books), Buder Commons, 650 Maryville University Drive, 7 p.m. (note the address change)
• NEW ORLEANS, DECEMBER 17: Garden District Bookshop, 2727 Prytania St., 5:30 p.m.

Marc Myers, whose JazzWax has become one of the most widely read and influential jazz sites on the Web, interviewed me about Pops earlier this month. This week he’s posting a five-installment series devoted to that interview.
Here’s part of today’s installment:

JW What did Armstrong understand about simplicity that was lost on so many other musicians?
TT Simplicity is absolutely central to Louis’ development as an artist. Louis started out as a young virtuoso who was in love with the sound of his own horn. When you can play anything you hear, you want to hear yourself play. Louis apprenticed with King Oliver, who ingrained in him the centrality of melody to the jazz musician. Armstrong’s exposure to Oliver and his view of melody made him feel that it was not only appropriate to embrace simplicity but also vital to appeal to audiences in an immediate way.
JW But Oliver was certainly less technically gifted than Armstrong.
TT That’s true. Yet it’s Oliver who made Armstrong believe it was far better to be simple than complicated. Armstrong internalized these lessons at age 21, and he lived by them throughout his career….

To read the whole thing, go here.

To celebrate the publication this week of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, I’ll be posting Armstrong videos every day.
In today’s video, an excerpt from a 1958 Timex All Star Show telecast, Armstrong, Ruby Braff, and Jack Teagarden perform “Jeepers Creepers,” originally recorded by Armstrong in 1939:

“Ain’t nobody played nothing like it since, and can’t nobody play nothing like it now. My oldest record, can’t nobody touch it. And if they say, ‘Which record do you like the best?’ I like them all, because I didn’t hit no bad notes on any of them.”
Louis Armstrong (quoted in Terry Teachout, Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong)