The Pop Story

Louis Armstrong - Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954)

Louis Armstrong via last.fm

“Technology and economics must always be combined with life-enhancing charm.” I read that phrase in a review of Juhani Pallasmaa’s ‘The Thinking Hand’, a book about architecture, while I was listening to this album. What we build (or compose or paint or perform) should be “a direct expression of the senses and the intellect, the hand and the mind”. Later on the review states that Pallasmaa “is saddened that we have turned our back on our hands, as it were, and imagined that we can create modern cities and buildings without their mark.”

Life-enhancing charm, and the mark of human hands - both these things seem relevant here. At the end of the version of ‘Louis Armstrong Plays…’ on Spotify, there are a number of rehearsal out-takes. What’s obvious is how much fun everyone is having, and how so much of that fun emanates from Armstrong, who seems to exude an (obviously much-remarked upon) ability to charm his fellow musicians, and also charm performances from them that are once virtuoso and knockabout - quite a feat.

And the mark of human hands? Well, it’s everywhere in the jazz I’m listening to, but more evident here than elsewhere. Whether you like this music or not (and, to be honest, I’m indifferent), it roars from the speakers with intent, the sound flowing direct from Armstrong’s mind and out of his mouth or trumpet at purely instinctual speeds. Hearing the rehearsal out-takes seems strange in that sense, because you can’t imagine this music, on first listen, being practiced and refined when it sounds so intuitive and instant.

Well, this has all been highly pretentious (I’m beginning to learn that’s a risk you run when writing about jazz), so I will finish by saying: be warned - this also contains scat singing, a style about which it’s impossible to write anything positive, let alone meaningful.

Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy on Spotify