Black and Blue
Louis Armstrong’s rendition of the Hot Chocolates “Black and Blue” is efficient in of displaying the unique characteristics of the music that makes jazz such a special genre and sound. The Hot Chocolates first preformed the song at the end of the 1920s, right when the blues started to become more intertwined with jazz music and performers like Mammie Smith started to become relevant. Louis Armstrong also derived a lot of inspiration from blues which is why his version of the song incorporated blues scales. The Hot Chocolates version of the song relies more heavily on the vocals than Armstrong’s version. In the original, you hear Edith Wilson’s voice come in well before the song’s half way point; in Louis version his trumpet takes
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over the majority of the song and his singing doesn’t come in until the song is two thirds of the way done.
This small but distinct difference is what makes Louis such an important and influential figure in Jazz. About five years before Louis recorded this song, band leader Fletcher Henderson brought Armstrong onto his band to play shows in New York. (Singer 2) Originally, Fletcher’s band was a band primarily proficient in reading and playing music inspired by White bands at the time such as Vincent Lopez and Paul Whiteman. (DeVeaux 123 ) When Armstrong played with the band he brought a new element to it, he showed off his ability as a Jazz soloist. The nearly 2 minutes of primarily trumpet in the beginning of Armstrong’s version of “Black and Blue” is a reflection of what he brought to the table in Fletcher Henderson’s band. His trumpet stood out when he played with the band because it was such an improvisational and new element being brought to a somewhat traditional sound of music. Louis Armstrong even described this himself and very humbly tacked it all up to his inability to read the music as fast, “Well, I knew I couldn’t read music as fast as them cats, and Fletcher never let me sing. They’d got me there to blow that hot stuff. Lot of the time all I had to play in the arrangement was a 8 bar, maybe 16 bar solo. First time I did it, they went …show more content…
wild and I did too. Them cats all stood up and applauded and cheered. Just another night to me, you know, but it’s a good feeling to know that they satisfied that you’re with them” (Harding 1). Listening to the different versions of “Black and Blue” can really give you an insight on how Armstrong made such a great impact on how Jazz was recorded and preformed into the 1930’s. When the song was made for the Hot Chocolates, Black and Blue it was written to be a “funny number” where “a little colored girl” sang about how hard it was to be black.
(Singer 216) With minstrel shows being popular at the time along with going “black face” on stage to make fun of colored people, its no surprise this song was intended to be humorous. The original idea for the song came from Dutch Shultz, the “financial angel” for Connie’s Inn where Hot Chocolates was playing. (Singer 216) He came up with the idea of the “funny number” and directed writer Andy Razaf to come up with the Lyrics. Razaf didn’t like the idea of the song but since he was essentially forced to write it, he did it his own way. He made the song about intraracial prejudice between blacks of lighter and darker skin and in doing that went behind Shultz back who just wanted the song for its comic appeal. The song was received well though, by people of all color, and Razaf unknowingly wrote America’s “first racial prejudice song”. (Singer 219) The song ended up being a hit and in 1929 Louis Armstrong recorded his own version of the song; however, in Armstrong’s version he “…dropped the verse and turned the chorus into a threnody for blacks of all shades.” (Teachout 139) Louis took the original songs hidden meaning and highlighted it in a way that made it more noticeable but still subtle. He turned it into a song that, as Ralph Ellington put it, “demanded action, the kind of which I was incapable of” in
reference to racial protesting. He did all this without making the song sad or too intense, he made it with a good sense of humor that translated well to all audiences. Because of this, the song was able to be popular among all races and have a powerful meaning that empowered African Americans. Louis Armstrong’s version of Black and Blue was recorded in 1929, near the beginning of his career. This established Louis’ position on racism and as his career went on he expanded off this position and even became a U.S. ambassador for Ghana. Some criticized Armstrong however, for posing as an ambassador for his own people but not acting to advance the equality of his race. One example of this type of criticism came from Jim Bishop, an author at the time who made some remark about Armstrong’s response to Little Rock and the segregation of schools, “I checked the newspaper files to see what Louis Armstrong had done for his people… I haven’t found anything and now I ask the musician himself: What have you done for your people except hurt them?” (Meckna 37) This is quite a bold criticism by Bishop and he even advocated a boycott of Louis’ shows. If Bishop had understood what Armstrong had done with the recording of “Black and Blue” I do not think he would have wrote such a critical statement. Putting out a racial protest song nearly 30 years before segregation was even abolished in America was dangerous for both Armstrong’s career and his safety. He was one of the first to do it and he did it with such elegance that it was popular, a racial protest song in the 1930s was popular among all audiences, even whites. “Black and Blue” was such a universal message that when Armstrong played it in Ghana the prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, was caught on camera with tears in his eyes. (Von Eschen 63) If Armstrong truly didn’t care for his race like Bishop claimed why would he go out of his way and make a racial protest song? Armstrong put himself in harms way for the advancement of his race’s equality and did it with such grace. “Black and Blue” truly proves Louis was an effective advocate for the progression of racial equality.
Bix Beiderbeck and Louis Armstrong, both legendary jazz musicians and trumpet players, had quite a different career and life. They received different levels of recognition at the time. This is not because of their style, as they both are legendary complex stylists who are great at messing with the beat, but rather the changes they bring to the world of jazz. Bix Beiderbecke defined and performed great jazz music while Louis Armstrong revolutionized jazz and innovated numerous performing techniques that led to the jazz we love today.
Developed in the early 1940's, Bop had established itself as vogue by 1945. It's main innovators were alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. In this stage in jazz, improvisation differed immensely. Bebop soloists engaged in harmonic improvisation, often avoiding the melody altogether after the first chorus. Usually under seven pieces, the soloist was free to explore improvised possibilities as long as they fit into the chord structure. Popular and influential jazz artists include: Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, & Cannonball Adderley. Armstrong is most known for his involvement in hot jazz as a trumpeter, but is especially renowned for his improvisation capabilities. Louis Armstrong, born August 4, 1901 right in the beginning stages of the jazz movement, was originally from New Orleans. Armstrong was a bandleader, soloist, comedian/actor, and vocalist. Another famous, Miles Davis, is what some consider to be the best trumpeter of the era. Davis was born on May 26, 1926 in Alton, Illinois. One unique thing about Davis was that he was taught to play without vibrato, which was incredibly contrary to the popular way of
Louis Armstrong was known for his “hot jazz” while Bix Beiderbecke was known more for his “cool reflective” jazz style. Louis Armstrong developed a new style of jazz music that took New Orleans by storm, and many other bands decided to move to north Chicago because of it. In 1925 Louis recorded his first Hot Five records and this was the first time he developed songs under his name. Then later on he made the Hot Seven and these two records are considered some of the biggest jazz classics. These records really established Louis Armstrong’s “hot jazz” style and many people recognized that. Many people and critics also considered these records as some of the finest jazz recordings in history, solos began to emerge and that really characterized jazz. These tracks were very important because it not only expressed Louis style but it influenced a lot of the jazz world. After the tracks many people began to change from polyphony to soloists, from embellishment to improvisation, and changing from breaks to having solos and their was much more influence. Then there was Bix Beiderbecke who was known for his “cool reflective” jazz. He was known for having a unique lyric tone, he had a vibrant sound, and he and he was different from other trumpet and cornet players. These were the type of things that led to the development of what is known as “cool jazz”. Everything that he went through in his life, the sadness, his heroic side, all this led to his music style. These two had a huge impact with their type of styles, which is the reason for their success. There uniqueness is what led to their style and them being known for their type of jazz, one simply can not say that one is better than the other because they simply did not have the same
The year was 1966 Frank Sinatra was at the peak of his career. There he stood on the stage in the Copa Room at the Sands Hotel and Casino in front of Count Basie and his Orchestra recording what is considered the best album of his career. The album “Sinatra at the Sands” would be his first album recorded live to be released and the album would achieve gold in sales. Sinatra was in his environment, a cozy salon style venue with an enthusiastic crowd in Las Vegas. The album was recorded by Reprise and the label engineer was Lowell Frank and produced by Sonny Burke. Reprise had formerly recorded two other albums: “Sinatra-Basie” and “It Might As Well Be Swing” with Sinatra and Count Basie, but it was their performance at the Sands Hotel that would promote both performers carriers beyond what either one of them were able to do on the own.
His “hot bop” style was heard in places like the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theatre. Everyone from all over the country would come to see him. Armstrong recorded such works as I’m in the Mood for Love, and You Rascal You (http://library.thinkquest.org/26656/english/music.html). Another famous person during this era was Coleman Hawkins, a saxophone player. Hawkins is recognized as the first great saxophonist of jazz.
and the people around him. His mother did not even care enough to keep his birth
He starts of the song with the lyrics “Cold empty bed, springs hard as lead” this describes how Armstrong is living in a bad condition. This is an everyday lifestyle for Armstrong he sings “Feel like Old Ned, wish I was dead.” “All my life through, I’ve been so black and blue.” Old Ned is the slang term for the devil, which just like Armstrong is living in hell, but this has been they why he lived his whole life. This song may seem odd to his white audience because he was always seen as a happy Black person who can play jazz. The song continues, but it touches on the racism he has to deal with, because he is black.” My only sin...is in my skin” like African Americans today being black is considered something negative despite your behavior. The only bad act that Louis has ever did wrong is having black skin, which cannot be changed and is given to him from birth. The last stanza in the song is interesting because he says “How would it end...I aint got a friend …My only sin...is in my skin…What did I do...to be so black and blue?” This notes that oppression has Armstrong feeling helpless, and wondering how will this misery end. Louis Armstrong like many African Americans today live with the psychological and depression caused by racism in
But Armstrong and his jazz, more often than not, supported the civil rights movement. For example, in his 1929 song, “Black and Blue,” Armstrong speaks out, or moreso, sings out, against racism. This was a precarious topic to sing about as a black musician, let alone in front of white audiences. And later, in response to the Little Rock Crisis in 1957, Armstrong openly criticized the prevention of desegregation and canceled his tour in the Soviet Union as cultural ambassador of the United States in retaliation
As human beings, we have a certain expectation of how we should be addressed and respected. A lack of respect can draw from different sources age, race, religion, and other factors. In history, this condescension can be seen as racism, prejudice, discrimination, exploitation, or segregation. A significant point in time was set in America during the first half of the twentieth century when segregation of whites and blacks was prominent. During this time period, blues music made an appearance and its popularity grew immensely. The songs I Wonder When I’ll Get to be Called a Man and Black, Brown and White, composed by William “Big Bill” Broonzy, illustrate the impertinence felt by African Americans from the rest of America. Ultimately the genre,
He has a large collection of his own and other recordings. He enjoyed listening to his own recordings, and comparing his performances musically. In addition, the enthusiasm and sense of humor in Armstrong's stage performance is the main reason for the popularity of jazz music. Many young people started to like jazz after hearing his songs or seeing his shows. He was a jazz musician who appeared in various media, and even today, Armstrong's music often appears in radio and concert programs.
When the piece was originally written for the Hot Chocolates, it was considered to be “America’s first `racial protest song`… [and] certainly Razaf’s lyric stripped bare essences of racial discontent that had very rarely if ever been addressed by any African American musically” (Singer 219). The music was created to express the hardships of the black community and the intra-racial discrimination, evident by the line: Browns and yellers all have fellers, gentlemen prefer them right. This illustrates that within the black community, those of fairer complexion were preferred. In Armstrong’s performance, the piece was removed from its original context of a Broadway show and placed as a stand-alone piece. In doing this, the emotion created by the Broadway performance and the stage scene were lost and “Black and Blue” became just another bluesy piece. Further, his “recitativo vocal style underscore[d] the song’s plaintive quality, while his exuberant embellished trumpet solos at the beginning and the end … counteract[ed] despair” (Meckna 38). However, Armstrong dropped the verse about intra-racial prejudice and made the chorus a “threnody for blacks of every shade” (Teachout 139). In doing this, he altered the music from being just about intra-racial issues to a global of scale of the battle between black and whites and the prejudices.
In order to see the parallel between the novel and jazz, one must first see how Ellison incorporates jazz music in the prologue of the novel. He not only sets the scene with jazz music in the background but also gives the narrator a deep understanding of music. The music that the narrator listens to is Louis Armstrong’s “Black and Blue,” which is appropriate because Armstrong is a prominent African-American jazz musician who protests the treatment of African-Americans through his music. The narrator embraces every line of the song and gives an apt description of its message:
Potato Head Blues is written in a 32 bar form typical of the Dixieland style period and features a stop time section with iconic developmental solos on clarinet and trumpet including one of Louis Armstrong’s most famous solo over the stop-time section of the form. The song begins with polyphony between the clarinet and the trumpet. The piece also makes use of a large dynamic range as well as abundantly using inflections and individual expression in playing style. After the introduction, an initial verse is played by Armstrong on the trumpet for 16 bars, followed by Johnny Dodds playing his inspiring 32 bar clarinet solo over the full ABAC form. This is followed by a 3 bar banjo break which leads into the famous stop-time solo played by Louis Armstrong. This solo takes place over the full ABAC form and features Armstrong playing on the beat for the first half of the solo and meeting the downbeat of each second bar. Armstrong then seems to completely ignore the pulse and plays an intensely syncopated solo which then leads back into the collective improvisation over the AC form for 16
The beginning of racism in the music industry began only 13 years after the creation of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Recorded sound was still pretty new at the time, but it didn’t take long for record companies to form: Berliner, Edison, and Columbia, all of which functioned under the plan that the artist didn’t matter, but the song did. Under this plan, companies skipped over the talent from stage and focused on finding anyone who could carry a turn and had good diction. By the 1890’s, they “had established a cadre of profession white recorders” that “could reproduce works of African American performers with “authentic” dialect”. This group of white singers were grouped together and made to sound like black artists
Jazz is the best-known artistic creation of the Harlem Renaissance. “Jazz is the only pure American creation, which shortly after its birth, became America’s most important cultural export”(Ostendorf, 165). It evolved from the blues. In the formally standardized, instrumentally accompanied form of “city blues”(as opposed to the formally unstandardized and earlier “country blues”), the blues was to become one of the two major foundations of 1920s jazz (the other being rags). City blues tended to be strophic songs with a text typically based on two-line strophes (but with the first line of each strophe’s text repeated, AAB) and a standard succession of harmonies underlying each strophe’s melody.... ...