Completing Louis Armstrong

AROUND THE TIME Louis Armstrong moved from a big band to a small-group setting in 1947, grumblings were being heard. At first, it came from the Black community, especially from fellow musicians. Dizzy Gillespie termed him a “plantation character” in a DownBeat article, and would later amplify that sentiment. Miles Davis went after both Armstrong and Gillespie, writing “I hated the way they used to laugh and grin for audiences.” The general argument was that Armstrong’s onstage antics were too reminiscent of minstrelsy, an era laden with racist baggage. And this attitude was writ in stone by white critic Gunther Schuller in his 1967 book Early Jazz, wherein he praised Armstrong’s innovative genius, “at least until the early 1930s, when he did succumb to the sheer weight of his success and its attendant commercial pressures.”

This chorus of misguided criticism would crescendo throughout the 1950s and ‘60s as the critics parroted one another, not unlike the classical-world phenomenon of ritually calling Jascha Heifetz’s performances and recordings “cold,” a judgment only attainable without listening to the artist. But critics tend to be reliably sheeplike.

This is why it’s a good thing that Armstrong authority Ricky Riccardi began his three-volume biography of the jazz genius with the third book in the series, What a Wonderful World, published in 2011. It picks up Armstrong’s story from 1947, when he made the important transition to the small-group setting that he’d use for public performances for the rest of his life. The most important task for anyone wishing to paint a balanced portrait of the man’s life is to objectively present those criticisms, then counter them with thoughtful analysis.