Aug 10, 2000
Singing Satchmo's Praises
Whatever you do, don't try to catch Festival Vancouver's tribute to Louis Armstrong at the Chan Centre for the performing Arts on Saturday (August 12). If you do, you'll be disappointed - but only because it's happening downtown at the Orpheum, not out at UBC's luscious new concert hall.
"Some of the promotional material had it taking place at the Chan," says musical director Alan Matheson, "but it's not. It's most definitely at the Orpheum."
Which is probably a good thing. Although the Chan Centre has the best acoustics of any large performance facility in the Lower Mainland, the Orpheum is the kind of venue Armstrong would have played during his 1930s and '40s heyday - and it's a suitably regal setting for the man who, almost 100 years after his birth and just 29 after his death, is still the undisputed king of the jazz trumpet.
The festival's Armstrong gala is just a foretaste of what you'll be in for next year: Satchmo's birth took place in a New Orleans slum on August 4, 1901, and the music industry is gearing up to celebrate the trumpeter's centennial. With good reason, too. Without Louis, jazz as we know it would be very, very different.
When asked what was Armstrong's biggest contribution to music, trumpeter, pianist and bandleader Matheson is unequivocal. "The way that he structured the jazz solo," he answers, "and the sense of pacing that he brought to his playing. Louis also extended the range of the trumpet in many ways, especially by playing musically in the upper register. But to me that's a sidebar to the way that he could paraphrase a given melody then create variations on that."
To get a true sense of Armstrong's genius, try this little test: sit yourself down with some of his early recordings - such as the classic Hot Five and Hot Seven dates, which are soon to be reissued in a Sony boxed set - and focus on the solos alone. Stripped of their context, away from the banjo-plucking and piano rags typical of early jazz, Armstrong's trumpet solos sound utterly modern in their forthright intensity.
"I remember reading an article by Marshall Brown in Coda years ago - like, 25 years ago - saying exactly that," Matheson agrees. "They really do stand alone. A Louis Armstrong solo is as complete in itself as a Bach invention for solo violin.
"And of course Louis' influence on popular music was gigantic too. It wasn't so much that he made great tunes out of bad tunes; even with great tunes, the way in which he interpreted them and invested them with deep feeling, via pitch and rhythm and note choice, was truly remarkable. He could take a great tune like 'Stardust' and make it even more expressive."
Matheson has chosen to stay away from simply replicating highlights from Armstrong's 50-year recording career. Rather than book an Armstrong imitator such as the eerily accurate but musically redundant Byron Stripling, he's assembled an eclectic cast of characters, including local swing revivalists Sweet Poppa Lowdown, blues shouter Jim Byrnes, jazz singer Dee Daniels and the Festival Vancouver Jazz Orchestra, which includes among its 20 members pianist Ross Taggart and trumpeter Brad Turner. Assuming Armstrong's trumpet duties is Clark Terry, a veteran of the Duke Ellington and Count Basie big bands as well as several hundred recording sessions with artists ranging from piano radical Cecil Taylor to smooth saxophonist Johnny Hodges.
"It's funny, the reactions we get," Matheson muses. "Some of the more hidebound listeners go 'Well, Terry's not a Dixieland player; he's not a New Orleans player.' But, more than a lot of people around these days on trumpet, he's part of that great lineage of players that runs from King Oliver and Louis and Bix (Beiderbecke) through Roy Eldridge and Rex Stewart. But he's also a true original. You don't expect Dixieland trumpet-playing out of him, but he approaches playing jazz with the same joy that Louis did. Of course, he knew Louis quite well."
Matheson doesn't want to unveil everything that's going to happen on saturday night, and he's adamant about keeping the evening's grand finale a secret. Otherwise he reveals the evening will start out with a more or less chronological look at Armstrong's early days, before getting "kinda blurry".
"I don't want it to be a history lecture," he says, laughing. "We are looking at a little bit of the King Oliver and Hot Five period via some small groups, which is where Sweet Poppa Lowdown comes in. And then Louis' early pop period is represented by 'Ain't Misbehavin'' and 'I'm Confessing That I Love You'. It's not as strictly chronological after that, though."
Even at that, Saturday's concert will only touch on a few of the things that made Armstrong great. But if captures even a small part of the late trumpeter's warmth, invention and rhythmic drive, it'll be a show well worth catching.
- Alexander Varty
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