contributions
Jazz writers are invited to contribute to this section of the website. All interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs are welcome and should be attached. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.
Louis Armstrong
LOUIS ARMSTRONG: ‘POPS’ WAS A CULTURE-CHANGING GENIUS
Christopher Lydon in conversation with Terry Teachout
Radio Open Source website, January 8, 2009
Terry Teachout’s fine reconsideration of the man called ‘Pops’ solidifies Louis Armstrong’s standing as not just the greatest horn player since the angel Gabriel, but an all-transforming artist at the level of James Joyce or even Shakespeare, and a black American freedom fighter of character and conscience, too. Louis Armstrong’s power to astonish was never in doubt. Hoagy Carmichael, the songwriter of Stardust and Georgia, dropped his cigarette and gulped his drink the first time he heard Louis, barely out of his teens, in 1921…
Duke Ellington & Louis Armstrong (unidentified woman)
KEN BURNS’S JAZZ: INCOMPARABLE, COOL AND HEART-BREAKING
by Carter B Horsley
The City Review, January, 2001
The 10-part series on ‘Jazz’ by Ken Burns on PBS is a very impressive achievement that documents with considerable sophistication the early history of jazz, although it pretty much ignores the last few decades, thereby ignoring to a great extent the realms of ‘fusion,’ ‘electronic’ and ‘world’ jazz that have continued to greatly expand the parameters of the genre…
Richard Williams
JAZZ: THE OBITUARY
by Richard Williams
The Guardian, May 25, 2001
As family tombs go, Ken Burns's 12-part television history of jazz is an impressive construction. Wrought on a large scale with skill and care, it is distinguished by a vast canopy, firm pillars, lifelike effigies, and many panels vividly illustrating the achievements of the kings and queens of a large, disparate and often quarrelsome clan, from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis, from Bessie Smith to Billie Holiday, from Coleman Hawkins to John Coltrane.… But to many of those for whom the music remains a living concern, Ken Burns's Jazz resembles nothing so much as a jam session in a mausoleum…