I do not pretend to be a Jazz ‘connoisseur’ in the very meaning of the word. I know next to nothing about the technicalities of this fascinating kind of music and I had a blank in singing at school.
This was at a time when you had to stand up before the class and sing, and my shy effort always was hopelessly out of key. After this humiliating experience I never tried to sing any ‘pretty songs,’ not even when alone. Music tuition at school has changed tremendously since then. My grandchildren have told me that nowadays even ‘hopeless’ cases like grandmas are encouraged to sing and play instruments, and told that they can learn.
The improvisation, dynamism and rhythm of jazz appealed to me from the very beginning and I realised that even I could ‘crone along’ in an acceptable way. When I was in high school, a man named Louis Daniel Armstrong came into my life and he has stayed there ever since.
At school dances I first became acquainted with St. Louis Blues, Weather Bird, Jeepers Creepers, All of Me etc. His innovative trumpet and cornet solos, shifting the focus from collective improvisation to solo performers made a huge impression on me. He was also an influential singer, with his distinctive gravelly voice, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes.
A school drop out at eleven and juvenile delinquent, he started his musical career by joining a quartet of boys that sang in the streets for money. He developed his cornet playing in the band of the New Orleans Home for Coloured Waifs where he had been sent many times for general delinquency. He got his first dance hall job as a teenager, hauling coal by day and playing his cornet at night. Such was the humble beginning of an artist who has later been described as “perhaps the most important American musician of the 20th century”.
‘Satchmo’ or ‘Pops’ as he liked to call himself, more than any other jazz artist has followed me through life. When feeling a bit down, you get the maximum out of it by playing some of his blues solos or vocals like St. Louis Blues or Saint James Infirmary. If you want to get out of the ‘blueness’ you just have to listen to What a Wonderful World or When the Saints Go Marching In. When having a severe headache, I use to listen to Mack the knife, and to get inspiration for my painting I always listen to his trumpet solos or scat singing, where he uses syllables instead of lyrics. Painting, like all kinds of creative work is very much about improvisation, it´s not just inspection and cold reproduction of what you see, and Pops provides me with a lot of inspiration.
When having to clean the house and not feeling like it, I use to play Hello Dolly, and then it is much easier to get started. Have I become a ‘Satchmo addict?’ Well, it is not the worst kind of addictions.
Now Christmas time is ahead of us, and a part of my Christmas is listening to some of Louis Armstrong’s wonderful Negro spirituals.
Merry Christmas!