Gary Giddins on Louis Armstrong - Blog

Blog Transcript: Gary Giddins on Louis Armstrong

When you hear him sing it’s always for real. It doesn’t matter what he does. He made a record for the Disney Company in his very last years. I think it was called Disney Songs the Satchmo Way, and he does “Chim-Chim-Cheree.” I mean, the arrangement is as hip as the version John Coltrane made in the same decade, all one a very modal-styled vamp. And my favorite solo is on “The Ballad of Davey Crockett.” I mean, he just sings that song as if he were having more fun than anybody in the world, and to dismiss that is to completely miss the fact of Armstrong’s approach to music, which is that he is an extremely generous man. He’s generous in every way and he’s generous to the culture, and everything that he embraces he makes better, he makes part of himself. He is superior to nothing. That’s part of his genius. He knows how great he is. I mean, we know that from his letters. We know it from his memoir. We know it from private interviews that were recorded. He never had any doubt, even when black bandleaders like Fletcher Henderson wouldn’t let him sing because of the gravel in his voice, he said Henderson had a million dollars in the band and never even knew it. He knew how good he was, but he had his incredible humility in the way he approached material. He never approached it condescendingly. He looked at it and said, “What can I do with this?” and he almost always could do something.