Beyond his music, Louis Armstrong communicated in montage and audible forms. The Louis Armstorng Museum is filled with his wildly creative scrapbooks, and prodigious recordings of oral history. I recently read that part of the latter included Armstrong musing as he listens to the famous Library of Congress audios of Jelly Roll Morton on the history of jazz. From The Nation article:
Armstrong starts off by giving his predecessor a fine spoken intro, but soon hears Morton make an incendiary claim: Louis Armstrong, Morton says, did not invent scat singing. Armstrong stops the tape to correct the record. “I don’t think I’ll let you get away with this!” he begins, insisting that “nobody used the word ‘scat’ in New Orleans” before he came around. “After all,” Armstrong concludes, “I’m still in the business, and you’re still six feet in the ground, young man.”
Nuff said!
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