This episode of American Masters covers, as it says in the title the art and life of Louis Armstrong.
Armstrong is one of those artists who, like Sinatra, I can't hear. His work is wonderful, but like Sinatra, so foundational, that it seems the basic, correct way of playing the trumpet. I assess other jazz trumpeters by how they differ. Go back to his early work with King Oliver, and it sounds like Armstrong. Listen to the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, and it sounds like Armstrong. I listen to Cab Calloway scatting, and think "Well, that's a lot higher in energy than Armstrong." His duets with Ella Fitzgerald work because she falls into his rhythms and fills the spaces in call and response. Place him against against Bing Crosby, it's obvious that Crosby is a lot cooler, but listen to Armstrong by himself, and you can hear the obvious control, the deliberate choices, the spaces between the notes as important as the notes, but it doesn't seem to be than just the basic right way to play the piece.
It's obviously my lack not to hear the wonder; serious artists like Wynton Marsalis and Tony Bennett hear these things and marvel at them in more than my "I like that a lot" attitude. And this documentary certainly fills in the gaps of Armstrong's life and situation. It just doesn't affect my attitude about his music, which is "It's great. But I can't really hear what he's doing."
