Louis Armstrong

Zusatztext "Bergreen writes with genuine love and respect for Armstrong's art....This is likely to be the standard biography of Armstrong for some time." --Washington Post "A full-bodied portrait of the artist and the man that is far more interesting than his already colorful legend." --USA Today "No one has done a better job than Bergreen of making emotional sense of Armstrong's four marriages and uncounted affairs. . . . The fullest and frankest account of Armstrong to date." --Boston Sunday Globe "A meticulously researched! vibrant biography! which has the potential to become the definitive word on Armstrong's life and remarkable career." --Variety Informationen zum Autor Laurence Bergreen was born in New York City and educated at Harvard University. He is the author of As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award); James Agee: A Life; and Capone: The Man and the Era. A frequent contributor to Esquire, Newsweek, the New York Times, and other publications, he lives in New York City with his family. Klappentext Louis Armstrong was the founding father of jazz and one of this century's towering cultural figures! yet the full story of his extravagant life has never been told. Born in 1901 to the sixteen-year-old daughter of a slave! he came of age among the prostitutes! pimps! and rag-and-bone merchants of New Orleans. He married four times and enjoyed countless romantic involvements in and around his marriages. A believer in marijuana for the head and laxatives for the bowels! he was also a prolific diarist and correspondent! a devoted friend to celebrities from Bing Crosby to Ella Fitzgerald! a perceptive social observer! and! in his later years! an international goodwill ambassador. And! of course! he was a dazzling musician. From the bordellos and honky-tonks of Storyville--New Orleans's red light district--to the upscale nightclubs in Chicago! New York! and Hollywood! Armstrong's stunning playing! gravelly voice! and irrepressible personality captivated audiences and critics alike. Recognized and beloved wherever he went! he nonetheless managed to remain vigorously himself. Now Laurence Bergreen's remarkable book brings to life the passionate! courageous! and charismatic figure who forever changed the face of American music. In the beginning, he was a sound, and only a sound: a strange blend of happy cacophony and tormented caterwauling. Nothing like it had ever been heard before, not in New Orleans, where he was born in 1901, or Chicago or St. Louis, where he played as an emerging virtuoso cornetist, and certainly not in New York, where Duke Ellington said of his first exposure to that sound, "Nobody had ever heard anything like it, and his impact cannot be put into words." Nor had it ever been heard in Europe, or South America, or Africa, but everywhere it would be known as the sound of America. With this sound, he established more popular songs than any other musician. The sound had two components. There was, initially, a cornet--and later a trumpet--that was more expressive than a mere instrument: sweet, stinging, lilting, cajoling, teasing, ebullient. And then there was his voice, the unforgettable voice that behaved like a huge instrument: growling, laughing, demented, soothing, fierce. The combination of the voice that sounded like an instrument and the instrument that sounded like a voice created the universally recognized persona of Satchmo. He looked and felt like a glowing lump of coal, hot and alive and capable of igniting everything around him. For him, music was a heightened form of existence, and he sang and he played as if it could never be loud enough, or last long enough, or go deep enough, or reach high enough. He believed there could never be enough music in the world, and ...

Autorentext
Laurence Bergreen was born in New York City and educated at Harvard University.  He is the author of As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (winner of the Ralph J.  Gleason Music Book Award); James Agee: A Life; and Capone: The Man and the Era.  A frequent contributor to Esquire, Newsweek, the New York Times, and other publications, he lives in New York City with his family.

Klappentext
Louis Armstrong was the founding father of jazz and one of this century's towering cultural figures, yet the full story of his extravagant life has never been told.

Born in 1901 to the sixteen-year-old daughter of a slave, he came of age among the prostitutes, pimps, and rag-and-bone merchants of New Orleans. He married four times and enjoyed countless romantic involvements in and around his marriages. A believer in marijuana for the head and laxatives for the bowels, he was also a prolific diarist and correspondent, a devoted friend to celebrities from Bing Crosby to Ella Fitzgerald, a perceptive social observer, and, in his later years, an international goodwill ambassador.

And, of course, he was a dazzling musician. From the bordellos and honky-tonks of Storyville--New Orleans's red light district--to the upscale nightclubs in Chicago, New York, and Hollywood, Armstrong's stunning playing, gravelly voice, and irrepressible personality captivated audiences and critics alike. Recognized and beloved wherever he went, he nonetheless managed to remain vigorously himself.

Now Laurence Bergreen's remarkable book brings to life the passionate, courageous, and charismatic figure who forever changed the face of American music.

Leseprobe
In the beginning, he was a sound, and only a sound: a strange blend of happy cacophony and tormented caterwauling.  Nothing like it had ever been heard before, not in New Orleans, where he was born in 1901, or Chicago or St. Louis, where he played as an emerging virtuoso cornetist, and certainly not in New York, where Duke Ellington said of his first exposure to that sound, "Nobody had ever heard anything like it, and his impact cannot be put into words." Nor had it ever been heard in Europe, or South America, or Africa, but everywhere it would be known as the sound of America.

With this sound, he established more popular songs than any other musician.  The sound had two components.  There was, initially, a cornet--and later a trumpet--that was more expressive than a mere instrument: sweet, stinging, lilting, cajoling, teasing, ebullient.  And then there was his voice, the unforgettable voice that behaved like a huge instrument: growling, laughing, demented, soothing, fierce.  The combination of the voice that sounded like an instrument and the instrument that sounded like a voice created the universally recognized persona of Satchmo.  He looked and felt like a glowing lump of coal, hot and alive and capable of igniting everything around him.  For him, music was a heightened form of existence, and he sang and he played as if it could never be loud enough, or last long enough, or go deep enough, or reach high enough.  He believed there could never be enough music in the world, and he did his damnedest to fill the silence with all the stomping, roaring, screeching, sighing polyphony he could muster.

He was not just America's greatest musical performer, he was also a character of epic proportions: married four times, with countless romantic involvements in and around his marriages ("Take your shoes off, Lucy, and let's get juicy," he growls in "Baby, It's Cold Outside"); a lifelong believer in marijuana for the head and laxatives for the bowels; an accomplished storyteller who tossed off letters and memoirs with the same abandon he tossed off riffs; and an enthusiastic correspondent who as a young man turned to his typewriter to record his experiences and his glorious hard times, the record of a black man trying to make his way in twenti…

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