The Story Behind the Smile: Terry Teachout's "Pops"

I just finished reading Terry Teachout's biography of Louis Armstrong, Pops, which is now out in paperback, and can recommend it wholeheartedly. Teachout, the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal, had access to a lot of previously unavailable material on Armstrong, including over 650 reels of tape recordings made by "Satchmo" during the last two decades of his life. This provides a very intimate and fascinating look at the man behind the very public persona: his dope smoking, his marriages, his run-ins with the mob, his generosity, and his unadulterated joy in music.

     Armstrong was universally recognized as an artist who changed everything about jazz when he burst on the scene in the late 1920s. And he was also roundly criticized over the years for his on-stage and on-screen antics - a kind of fawning or clowning to please the audience - which many people, including other jazz musicians, considered demeaning or even "Uncle Tomming."

     What we see in the book is that Armstrong was very much a product of his time. He grew up in poverty in the New Orleans of the early twentieth century and he lived in a time when race was an everyday issue. Armstrong also grew up without the presence of a father, so he often had a father-like figure in his life that he relied on - other musicians such as Joe Oliver or his long-time manager Joe Glaser. So, there was an aspect to his personality that wanted to please others, but it was not some kind of showmanship he put on.

     We also see Armstrong the savvy career man. He made the conscious decision in the early Thirties to try to become more mainstream and, frankly, appeal to white audiences. This led to more emphasis on his singing and less on his trumpet playing and to a string of mostly forgettable movie appearances. His bands and musical arrangements for much of the decade were also primarily mediocre. It worked, and "Pops" became a crossover star.

     But the jazz world was moving along while he stood still. The Big Band era came and went and bebop came along in the Forties. Armstrong had a revival in the late Forties and Fifties when he switched to a small-group format. He toured relentlessly, but often played the same tunes every night. And then he had his biggest hit of all with "Hello, Dolly!" in the Sixties, which beat the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" to be the most popular tune in America.

     Through it all, he played and audiences around the world fell in love with the sheer joy that came through in his performances. Armstrong never made a differentiation between art and showmanship - he was an unapologetic entertainer. But this is why his critics were so off the mark: there was nothing phony or fawning about "Pops"; it just wasn't in his DNA.

A Fine Vintage Wein

George Wein knew and/or worked with just about everyone in jazz over the last half century. His autobiography, Myself Among Others (Da Capo, 2004), written with Nate Chinen, is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the life of a jazz producer and sometime performer.

     Wein grew up in the Boston area and opened the Storyville Club there in 1950. But he is the creator, most famously, of the Newport Jazz Festival, which helped take the popularity of jazz to a whole new level in the 1950s and launched the careers of numerous jazz greats. Wein’s book shows the struggles, financial and otherwise, in putting on a jazz festival. Local politics, money problems, and artist egos all make for numerous headaches. But Wein’s dedication to jazz and jazz musicians shines through.

     Over the subsequent years, from the 1960s to the present day, Wein also produced the Newport Folk Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Newport Jazz Festival - New York, the Ohio Valley Jazz Festival, KOOL Jazz Festivals, the Grande Parade du Jazz (in Nice, France), the JVC Jazz Festival, and more. He also produced the foreign tours of numerous artists, including Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. In many ways, he was a lifeline for jazz musicians (and the jazz tradition itself) during some difficult times, when rock ‘n’ roll was on the rise and jazz was superceded in importance in American culture.

     The later parts of the book become a bit repetitious, as we get yet more lists of musicians at yet another concert. Nevertheless, Myself Among Others is a great look past the stage at the people in the wings putting on the show. Wein has some great anecdotes and insights into many of the musicians he numbered among his friends, and enemies. For example, Wein tried to recruit Josephine Baker for a 1974 tribute concert, and spent several days fruitlessly scouring Manhattan for two Russian wolfhounds, which were stipulated in her contract. She canceled her appearance anyway. Tidbits like this make the book a highly enjoyable read.

Aural History

For fans of Miles Davis’s legendary 1959 record, and for jazz fans in general, Ashley Kahn’s Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece is a compelling read. It’s an insider’s look at people involved in the recording of this most popular of jazz records, including never-before-seen session photos. Kahn provides some historical context on Miles Davis’s development as a trumpet player from the tentative late 1940s dates with Charlie Parker, through finding his own sound in the mid-1950s with his classic quintet, and on to the development of modal jazz that blossoms forth on Kind of Blue. The book also covers the two recording sessions that produced the record, song by song, discussing the false starts, the studio conversations, and the final song versions. One really gets a vivid sense of the personalities involved - in addition to Davis, that includes John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, and Paul Chambers. There’s also coverage of Columbia Records’ marketing of the record and a look at its lasting legacy in the jazz world. This “recordography” of Kind of Blue will have you listening to this LP with renewed appreciation for the artistry behind it.

Story of a Sound

"I start from one point and go as far as possible," wrote John Coltrane in 1961. "But, unfortunately, I never lose my way. I say unfortunately, because what would interest me greatly is to discover paths that I'm perhaps not aware of." This is the essence of the musician who emerges in Ben Ratliff's excellent book, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. As the subtitle suggests, the book is only partially a biography. Mainly, it traces the sources and progression of Coltrane's music, from the early rough and fast chord changes, through the "sheets of sound" phase, and finally to the modal and experimental "spiritual" phase of his last few years. The book also considers his influence on jazz after his death, at age 40, from liver cancer in 1967. He experimented and innovated with music until the very end, and he haunts all jazz since then with the unanswered question - What would Coltrane have played next?
     Coltrane's story was not one of meteoric rise and fall. Many jazz musicians seemed to appear on the scene fully formed with a breakout performance in a nightclub or on vinyl - the years of struggle to get there lost in obscurity. But audiences got to see and hear Coltrane's struggles and growth, and this is perhaps an underappreciated reason why many listeners are so attached to him. That and the fact that he absorbed and transformed just about everything there was to know about the saxophone.