Ellington and Armstrong

*Includes pictures
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
*Includes a table of contents

Louis Armstrong once claimed that “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans…It has given me something to live for.” This statement conjures an image which most anyone familiar with jazz music can recall: Armstrong clutching his trumpet forcefully, his eyes closed in a manner that distances him from his physical surroundings in favor of a perfect harmony between the man and his instrument. As Armstrong alludes to in this remark, this connection also speaks to the enduring influence of his New Orleans background, which informed his musical style and indeed continued to live on through his music. To be sure, while performing, Armstrong appeared lost in a reverie, a condition that imbued his performances with a kind of mythical flair, as if one were watching a man consumed by a moment of transcendence. In other words, if the music of Louis Armstrong produced an emotional response in the listener, this invariably paled in comparison with the deep, organic pathos he was able to produce through his music.

Of course, Armstrong’s testament to the power of New Orleans is also particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that New Orleans was hardly the benevolent city that one might assume on the basis of his testimony. It is well known to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Armstrong that New Orleans was the site of Armstrong’s nascent love for music, but also an environment that took no prisoners and exposed him to sights that would traditionally be shielded from the eyes of children: extreme violence, prostitution, and abject poverty. Throughout his life, Armstrong was not afraid to make frequent reference to New Orleans, yet the frankness with which he spoke did not preclude maintaining an appreciation for the city—and, indeed, crediting it with fostering his nascent interest in music as a boy. There was, accordingly, a remarkably complex relationship between Louis Armstrong and the city of New Orleans, as the city simultaneously served as an environment that forced him to confront extreme adversity, and assumed a crucial role in developing his musical sensibilities.

In 1956, Duke Ellington was featured on the cover of Time Magazine after a bravura performance at the Newport Jazz Festival that summer. This remains one of his most iconic achievements, and a landmark for jazz music as a whole (only four jazz musicians were ever displayed on the cover of Time). At the same time, however, this recognition stands as one of the prevailing ironies of Ellington’s career, as he was deep into the latter stages of his performing life by this point. Indeed, there is a way in which everything that Ellington had done up to that point in his career was obscured. Put differently, it is misleading to recognize Duke simply for his accomplished performance at the festival, as one could ju