Wednesday August 4th is the day we normally celebrate
Louis Armstrong's birthday but we've been having so much
fun we got sidetracked.
Here's the Armstrong performance that put Louis on the map
and lit the fuse for the Jazz Revolution.
To See the Video click here:
- Lester Perkins
Jazz on the Tube
On a tangentially related note (no double entendre intended ;-) here's a 1943 cartoon featuring the voice of Louis Armstrong's friend Fats Waller, shortly before Waller's untimely death at age 39. Louis Armstrong wept when he heard of Waller's death. This cartoon is currently banned from American TV for its putative "racist" depictions of Black Americans, but Fats Waller personally and enthusiastically performed in it, and the cartoonist Bob Clampett - in my opinion the most brilliant American animator of all time - intended it as a tribute to Black American culture, from which all Jazz comes.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the putatively "racist" caricatures go, it's a cartoon, and cartoons are ispo facto caricatures. But notice that in the beginning, one young Black woman is depicted as an extraordinary beauty. And this was in 1943; contrast and compare it with how Black women are depicted in degrading ways in today's American "music" videos.
Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wI6DmtFZFA