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Satchmo CDs
Best Of Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong /
Louis Armstrong - All-Time Greatest Hits /
The Hot Fives & Sevens
The Definitive Collection /
The Essential Louis Armstrong
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Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans
By Louis Armstrong
Learning Jim Crow
It was my first experience with Jim Crow. I was just five,
and I had never ridden on a street car before. Since I was the
first to get on, I walked right up to the front of the car
without noticing the signs on the back of the seats on both
sides, which read: FOR COLORED PASSENGERS ONLY. Thinking the
woman was following me, I sat down in one of the front seats.
However, she did not join me, and when I turned to see what had
happened there was no lady. Looking all the way to the back of
the car, I saw her waving to me frantically. "Come here,
boy," she cried. "Sit where you belong."
The Humor of Jim Crow
There is something funny about those signs on the street cars
in New Orleans. We colored folks used to get real kicks out of
them when we got on a car at the picnic grounds or at Canal
Street on a Sunday evening when we outnumbered the white folks.
Automatically, we took the whole car over, sitting as far up
front as we wanted to. It felt good to sit up there once in a
while. We felt a little more important than usual. I can't
explain why exactly, but maybe it was because we weren't
supposed to be up there.
Respecting Everything and Everybody
As I grew up around Liberty and Perdido I observed everything
and everybody. I loved all these people and they loved me. The
good ones and the bad ones all thought that Little Louis (as
they called me) was O.K. I stayed in my place. I respected
everybody and I was never rude or sassy. Mayann [his mother] and
grandmother taught me that. of course my father did not have
time to teach me anything; he was too busy chasing chippies.
Learning the People's Language
On the night my mother and I went out cabareting we went
first to Savocas' honky-tonk at Saratoga and Poydras Streets.
This was the headquarters and also the pay office for the men
working on those boats. And many times I went right in to the
gambling table and lost my whole pay. But I didn't care -- I
wanted to be around the older fellows, the good old hustlers,
pimps and musicians. I like their language somehow.
Source:
Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans
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Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans
By Louis Armstrong
"In all my whole career
the Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played
in. It was the honky-tonk where levee workers would
congregate every Saturday night and trade with the gals
who'd stroll up and down the floor and the bar. Those guys
would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles
would come flying over the bandstand like crazy, and there
was lots of just plain common shooting and cutting. But
somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all, I was so happy
to have some place to blow my horn." So says Louis Armstrong
about just one of the places he grew up in, a tough kid who
also happened to be a musical genius. This story of his
early life, concluding with his departure to Chicago to play
with his boyhood idol King Oliver, is a fascinating
document. |
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Contrary to popular belief, it turns out that life in
New Orleans was an amazingly eventful and a basically
happy experience for Louis Armstrong-and he ought to
know-for in no other city in the world at the time could
a boy discover and learn about the music that he loved,
for this was New Orleans, and he was Louis Armstrong.
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Buddy Bolden was a lover of music
The Great Buddy Bolden—Buddy
Bolden Blues
Part of a recording of an interview of Jelly Roll Morton
by Alan Lomax in 1938. Jazz history archive material.
Jelly sings and plays Buddy Bolden Blues, and tells of
his experiences watching Buddy in New Orleans, and talks
about the great Buddy Bolden. "Buddy was the blowinest
man since Gabriel!".
Buddy Bolden Story with Wynton Marsalis
Jelly Roll Morton—Buddy Bolden's Blues
Jelly Roll Morton playing and singing his composition of
"Buddy Bolden's Blues"
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Buddy
Bolden’s Blues
Lyrics by Jelly Roll
Morton.
I thought I heard Buddy
Bolden say
You nasty, you dirty—take
it away
You terrible, you awful—take
it away
I thought I heard him say
I thought I heard Buddy
Bolden shout
Open up that window and let that bad air out
Open up that window, and let the foul air
out
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say
I thought I heard Judge Fogarty say
Thirty days in the market—take
him away
Get him a good broom to sweep with—take
him away
I thought I heard him say
I thought I heard Frankie Dusen shout
Gal, give me that money—I’m
gonna beat it out
I mean give me that money, like I explain
you, or I’m gonna beat it out
I thought I heard
Frankie Dusen say |
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Let That Bad Air Out: Buddy Bolden's Last
Parade
A
Novel in Linocut by Stefan Rerg
In a series of
brilliantly rendered linocut relief prints,
Berg tells the story of Buddy Bolden, a New
Orleans jazz musician living from 1877 to
1931. Each crisp image masterfully succeeds
in evoking a feeling of the fluidity of the
music, the boisterousness of the community,
and the darkness of the events surrounding
the musician's demise. An introduction by
Donald M. Marquis, author of In Search of
Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz, and an
afterword by renowned artist, George A.
Walker, round out this collection.
Fans of the graphic
novel genre and enthusiasts of linocut
relief printmaking will surely be pleased
with Let That Bad Air Out: Buddy Bolden's
Last Parade. Highly recommended. |
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Stefan Berg revives the wordless
graphic novel in his portrait of he `first man of jazz'. Very little is
known of Buddy Bolden. His music was never recorded and there is only
one existing photograph, yet he is considered to be the first bandleader
to play the improvised music that has since become known as jazz.
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Katrina
New Orleans Flood Index
What's Going On by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band
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Louis Armstrong—Do you know what it means to miss New
Orleans
Kid
Ory 2—Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans
Fats Domino—Do You Know What It Means, To Miss New
Orleans
Billie Holiday—Do You Know What It Means To Miss New
Orleans?
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Billie Holiday—Do You Know What It Means To Miss New
Orleans
Performed by Billie Holiday & Louis
Armstrong (New
Orleans 1947)
Music by Louis Alter, Arthur Lubin, Zutty
Singleton, Barney Bigard,
Kid Ory, Bud Scott, Red Callender & Charlie Beal
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Do
You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
Lyrics by Eddie Delange.
Do you know what is means to miss New
Orleans?
And miss it each night and day
I know I'm not wrong the feeling's getting
stronger
The longer I stay away
Miss the moist covered vines, the tall sugar
pines
Where mocking birds used to sing
And I'd like to see the lazy Mississippi...
a hurrying into spring
The Mardi Gras memories of creole tunes that
filled the air
I dream of oleanders in June
And soon I'm wishing that I was there
Do you know what it means to miss New
Orleans?
When that's where you left your heart
And there's something more
I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans |
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Dianne Reeves—Do You Know What It Means To Miss New
Orleans?
Aaron Neville—Do You Know What It Means To Miss New
Orleans
Sweet Home New Orleans—Dr. John
James Rivers—New Orleans Zulu Lundi Gras JAZZ
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Panel on Literary Criticism
26 March 2010
National Black Writers Conference
Patrick Oliver, Kalamu ya Salaam,
Dorothea Smartt, Frank Wilderson discuss
the use of literature to promote
political causes and instigate change
and transformation. The event is at the
Medgar Evers College at the City
University of New York.
C-Span Archives
Panel on Politics and Satire
26 March 2010
National Black Writers Conference
Herb Boyd, Thomas Bradshaw, Charles
Edison and Major Owens discuss how
current events are reflected in the
writings of African Americans. The
event is at the Medgar Evers College at
the City University of New York.
C-Span Archives |
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The Katrina Papers is not your
average memoir. It is a fusion of many kinds of
writing, including intellectual autobiography,
personal narrative, political/cultural analysis,
spiritual journal, literary history, and poetry.
Though it is the record of one man's experience of
Hurricane Katrina, it is a record that is fully a
part of his life and work as a scholar, political
activist, and professor.
The Katrina Papers provides space not only for the traumatic events but
also for ruminations on authors such as Richard
Wright and theorists like Deleuze and Guattarri. The
result is a complex though thoroughly accessible
book. The struggle with form—the search for a
medium proper to the complex social, personal, and
political ramifications of an event unprecedented in
this scholar's life and in American social history—lies at the very heart of
The Katrina Papers . It
depicts an enigmatic and multi-stranded world view
which takes the local as its nexus for understanding
the global. It resists the temptation to simplify
or clarify when simplification and clarification are
not possible. Ward's narrative is, at times, very
direct, but he always refuses to simplify the
complex emotional and spiritual volatility of the
process and the historical moment that he is
witnessing. The end result is an honesty that is
both pedagogical and inspiring.—Hank Lazer
The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008)
is a marvelous resource! It's not like any
encyclopedia I've seen before. Already, I have spent hours reading
through the various entries. So much is there: people, themes,
issues, events, bibliographies, etc., related to Wright. Yours is a
monumental contribution! The more I read Wright (and about him), the
more I am amazed at the depth and breadth of his work and its impact
on the worlds of literature, philosophy, politics, sociology,
history, psychology, etc. He was formidable!
Floyd W. Hayes
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updated 28 December 2008 |
