Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz is written by Joshua Berrett, a professor of music at
Mercy College in New York. Professor
Berrett has his work cut out for him.
Although almost everyone knows who Louis Armstrong is, realtively few
will know anything about Whiteman.
Paul Whiteman is recognized for a number of things. From the 1920s and well into the 1940s, was
the leader and guiding force behind one of the most consistently popular bands
of the day, known collectively as Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra. His orchestra was known for cultivating and
promoting the talents of musicians like George Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael, Bix
Biederbecke, Frank Trumbauer, Bing Crosby, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and Jack
Teagarden, among many others. As you
might imagine, his orchestra was, as a recording ensemble and on tour, a model
of profitable enterprise. Though he
never laid claim to the title, for decades, Whiteman did let himself be
promoted as the so-called “King of Jazz.”
In 1930, a big-budget movie bearing the title of King of Jazz was released, featuring Whiteman and his players. Paul Whiteman is also known in some jazz
circles as the “white man” who stole the creative fruits of African American
musicians, watered it down for mainstream white audiences, and took his money
straight to the bank, thank you very much.
Berett’s book does a fair job of dispelling this unfair
characterization.
As for Louis Armstrong, well, everyone knows his
essential role in creating the basic vocabulary of jazz expression and, in a
larger sense, of 20th century American music.
But even as late as the 1940s, Armstrong’s central importance to the
music was largely overlooked. In 1949, a
Time magazine cover showing Louis with
a crown made of trumpets appeared to bequeath the title of King of Jazz to what
was more likely its proper owner.
Interestingly, Berrett highlights evidence of Armstrong’s playing more
traditional – so-called – classical forms of music at certain points early in
his career.
Just as Whiteman might not have been as much of a square
as some thought, neither was Armstrong completely unschooled in more
traditional European forms of music.
Berrett’s book, Two
Kings of Jazz, makes it clear that neither musician thought much of the
title of “King.” Likewise, the
definition of the word jazz itself
has always been somewhat, well, controversial.
Whiteman hesitated to call his particular type of popular orchestrated
music strictly jazz, usually preferring the term symphonic jazz. In his later years, he often said he hoped he
had made a contribution to “the American musical form.” And while Louis Armstrong certainly played
jazz music, he was known to have defined jazz as “anything that can be
communicated to the public.” Whiteman,
it seems, understood jazz as a style that he could incorporate into his largely
commercial music; Armstrong understood jazz in a very broad and artistic
manner. If generalizations apply in the
stories of Whiteman and Armstrong, then, its not as much about the difference
between race as the difference between commerce and art.
Where Two Kings of
Jazz does a real service is in finding the common ground between Whiteman
and Armstrong – in the music they shared, the musicians who played with them
both, and in the common musical times they both lived in. To some extent, the segregation between the
white world and black was nothing the musicians could have overcome on their
own. Racism ran too deep into the roots
of American society.
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