Terry Teachout talks about his experience writing a biography on Louis Armstrong
This interview with Terry Treachout makes me wish I’d asked questions about his biography he’s writing on the life of Louis Armstrong in the interview I conducted with him.
If jazz is America’s most distinctive contribution to the modern movement in art – and I believe it is – then Armstrong, the key figure in the history of jazz, is by definition a key figure in 20th-century modernism, comparable in significance to Picasso, Stravinsky or Joyce. Unlike those men, however, he was also a great “popular” entertainer whose art was loved by ordinary people all over the world. America has never produced a more important or influential artist.
Never have I seen Armstrong’s character summed up with such eloquence.
