"Jazz" The Gift: 1917-1924

1 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:12,074 2 00:01:29,200 --> 00:01:34,270 [applause] 3 00:01:34,310 --> 00:01:35,770 Now, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. 4 00:01:36,610 --> 00:01:37,980 I'm Mr. Armstrong, 5 00:01:39,650 --> 00:01:43,480 and we're gonna swing one of the good ol' good ones for you. 6 00:01:43,620 --> 00:02:04,770 Beautiful number-- I cover the waterfront, I cover the waterfront. 7 00:02:04,900 --> 00:02:07,270 w. Marsalis: You talk about Louis Armstrong, well... 8 00:02:07,310 --> 00:02:08,640 You're talking about 9 00:02:08,770 --> 00:02:11,380 the deepest human feeling, 10 00:02:11,510 --> 00:02:12,510 and the highest level of 11 00:02:12,550 --> 00:02:15,450 musical sophistication. 12 00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:24,920 So that's a rare occurrence in the history of music. 13 00:02:25,160 --> 00:02:27,760 He was chosen to bring the feeling and the message 14 00:02:27,890 --> 00:02:30,630 and the identity of jazz to everybody. 15 00:02:30,660 --> 00:02:32,400 He brought it to all the musicians. 16 00:02:32,430 --> 00:02:35,900 He brought it all over the world. 17 00:02:35,930 --> 00:02:54,720 He's the embodiment of jazz music. 18 00:03:02,730 --> 00:03:07,730 [Pianoflagplaying] 19 00:03:07,870 --> 00:03:10,630 Narrator: The 20th century was not even two decades old 20 00:03:10,670 --> 00:03:16,170 when the first jazz record reached the public in 1917. 21 00:03:16,410 --> 00:03:18,240 But the world had already changed 22 00:03:18,380 --> 00:03:22,210 in ways no one could have predicted. 23 00:03:22,450 --> 00:03:24,650 And the unspeakable carnage of world war I 24 00:03:24,780 --> 00:03:29,750 was only part of that change. 25 00:03:29,890 --> 00:03:34,220 In the new, modern world, human beings could fly. 26 00:03:35,730 --> 00:03:42,130 X-ray photographs could see through skin to bones. 27 00:03:42,370 --> 00:03:46,200 Sigmund Freud, listening to his patients as they spoke to him 28 00:03:46,340 --> 00:03:47,400 from a couch in his office, 29 00:03:48,810 --> 00:03:53,910 found new ways to understand the human mind. 30 00:03:53,950 --> 00:03:57,980 Pablo Picasso painted his subjects from every viewpoint-- 31 00:03:58,120 --> 00:04:01,250 all at once. 32 00:04:01,490 --> 00:04:07,760 And Albert Einstein described a continuum of space and time. 33 00:04:07,890 --> 00:04:14,030 Jazz music became the soundtrack to that modern world, 34 00:04:14,170 --> 00:04:28,150 and in america, it became a national craze. 35 00:04:28,380 --> 00:04:32,250 Thanks to the phonograph record, it was everywhere. 36 00:04:32,380 --> 00:04:34,520 Black and white bands delighted dancers-- 37 00:04:34,650 --> 00:04:35,950 and outraged their elders-- 38 00:04:36,190 --> 00:04:44,930 in every American city. 39 00:04:45,060 --> 00:04:47,730 The music was still closely linked to ragtime-- 40 00:04:47,870 --> 00:04:52,940 brassy and hard-driving. 41 00:04:53,070 --> 00:04:59,910 Solos were virtually unknown. 42 00:04:59,950 --> 00:05:01,680 But when the first world war came to an end 43 00:05:02,750 --> 00:05:05,180 and the "jazz age" started in earnest, 44 00:05:05,320 --> 00:05:13,860 the music began to change. 45 00:05:13,990 --> 00:05:18,460 The story of jazz became the story of two great American cities: 46 00:05:18,700 --> 00:05:22,970 Chicago, where black New Orleans musicians found fame 47 00:05:23,100 --> 00:05:24,970 and a new white audience, 48 00:05:26,310 --> 00:05:30,010 and New York, where two very different neighborhoods-- 49 00:05:30,140 --> 00:05:32,510 Times Square and Harlem-- 50 00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:35,680 played host to a group of dedicated musicians, 51 00:05:35,820 --> 00:05:43,090 each struggling to find his own distinctive voice. 52 00:05:43,220 --> 00:05:45,920 Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., 53 00:05:46,060 --> 00:05:48,790 the privileged son of middle-class parents, 54 00:05:49,030 --> 00:05:51,600 a debonair piano-playing high school dropout 55 00:05:51,730 --> 00:05:54,000 named Edward Kennedy Ellington, 56 00:05:54,230 --> 00:05:56,900 was beginning to write his own music, 57 00:05:57,040 --> 00:05:59,200 and wondered whether he could succeed as a musician 58 00:05:59,440 --> 00:06:02,370 in the wider world. 59 00:06:02,510 --> 00:06:06,780 And in New Orleans, where it had all begun, 60 00:06:06,910 --> 00:06:12,780 a teenage boy was playing cornet in honky Tonks, pulling in crowds, 61 00:06:12,920 --> 00:06:25,700 beginning to make art out of the turbulent, often violent world around him. 62 00:06:25,830 --> 00:06:28,700 His name was Louis Armstrong, 63 00:06:28,930 --> 00:06:31,600 and to many, his extraordinary genius 64 00:06:31,740 --> 00:06:43,050 would seem like a gift from god. 65 00:06:44,850 --> 00:06:49,990 Jacobs: I don't believe Louis Armstrong was a real human being. 66 00:06:50,120 --> 00:06:52,720 I believe, I still believe, that god sent him to this earth 67 00:06:54,290 --> 00:06:56,890 to be a special messenger, to make people happy. 68 00:06:57,030 --> 00:06:58,700 You see, I think that 69 00:06:58,730 --> 00:07:01,330 music is therapy. 70 00:07:01,370 --> 00:07:04,570 For me, music has always been as intoxicating 71 00:07:04,700 --> 00:07:06,640 as alcohol, or a reefer, 72 00:07:06,770 --> 00:07:09,170 or any kind of drugs. 73 00:07:09,210 --> 00:07:12,480 The sound of music could stimulate in me 74 00:07:12,610 --> 00:07:16,480 love, happiness, creativity, 75 00:07:18,380 --> 00:07:21,250 and I think Louis Armstrong was sent here as a messenger of the good lord 76 00:07:21,290 --> 00:07:23,220 to make people happy. 77 00:07:23,360 --> 00:07:28,290 And that's what he dedicated his life to doing. 78 00:07:28,330 --> 00:07:30,260 Giddins: Armstrong is, in a way, 79 00:07:30,500 --> 00:07:32,460 American music's bach, American music's Dante, 80 00:07:32,600 --> 00:07:34,330 American music's Shakespeare. 81 00:07:34,470 --> 00:07:36,170 Why? Because he comes at a point 82 00:07:36,300 --> 00:07:36,430 in the music's history. 83 00:07:37,540 --> 00:07:38,400 It's not the birth of the music; 84 00:07:38,540 --> 00:07:41,370 it's been around for 30 years. 85 00:07:41,510 --> 00:07:44,970 But it's the moment when it becomes an art form. 86 00:07:45,110 --> 00:07:49,280 He is the figure who codifies, who assimilates everything that's happened before, 87 00:07:49,420 --> 00:08:07,160 and he shows where the future is going to be. 88 00:08:08,300 --> 00:08:26,620 [Basin street bluesPlaying] 89 00:08:40,570 --> 00:08:42,400 The trumpet is a sacrificial instrument. 90 00:08:42,540 --> 00:08:43,570 It's the most difficult of 91 00:08:44,570 --> 00:08:45,770 the wind instruments to play, 92 00:08:45,900 --> 00:08:47,740 it's the most demanding, 93 00:08:47,970 --> 00:08:52,040 and he played it with a power 94 00:08:52,280 --> 00:08:55,250 that it never had before, and has not had since. 95 00:08:55,280 --> 00:08:56,680 I don't mean people don't play higher than he played. 96 00:08:58,020 --> 00:09:00,680 But the sheer force and power that he played with, 97 00:09:00,920 --> 00:09:08,760 nobody--i mean, he was like the--he was it. 98 00:09:08,890 --> 00:09:12,400 Narrator: Although he always believed that his birthday was July 4, 1900, 99 00:09:13,700 --> 00:09:19,400 Louis Armstrong was actually born on August 4, 1901, 100 00:09:19,540 --> 00:09:20,900 in a section of New Orleans so violent 101 00:09:22,110 --> 00:09:30,480 it was called "the battlefield." 102 00:09:30,620 --> 00:09:34,450 His father, a day laborer named William Armstrong, 103 00:09:34,590 --> 00:09:38,560 had left the family, and his children rarely saw him. 104 00:09:38,590 --> 00:09:43,190 His mother mayann was only 16 when he was born, 105 00:09:43,430 --> 00:09:45,500 and she sometimes worked as a prostitute 106 00:09:45,630 --> 00:09:49,870 to support herself and her children. 107 00:09:49,900 --> 00:09:51,630 W. Marsalis: Louis Armstrong talks about how sometimes 108 00:09:51,770 --> 00:09:54,500 he didn't know what he was going to eat, 109 00:09:54,740 --> 00:09:56,570 and that sometimes they were on a level of poverty 110 00:09:56,710 --> 00:09:58,580 where he didn't know what was going to come next. 111 00:09:58,610 --> 00:10:01,380 He was used to his stomach growling. 112 00:10:01,510 --> 00:10:05,280 Knife fights, gun fights, razor fights-- 113 00:10:05,420 --> 00:10:09,790 this is the environment that Louis Armstrong grew up in. 114 00:10:09,920 --> 00:10:12,390 He saw a certain side of life. 115 00:10:12,520 --> 00:10:15,230 But he saw everything in that side of life. 116 00:10:15,360 --> 00:10:17,460 He didn't see the cliche like what we'd write about. 117 00:10:17,600 --> 00:10:18,630 He didn't see that side of life 118 00:10:18,760 --> 00:10:20,200 from the standpoint of an outsider 119 00:10:20,230 --> 00:10:21,900 who's, "oh, this is such a terrible thing." 120 00:10:21,930 --> 00:10:23,500 He saw the whole thing of it. 121 00:10:23,640 --> 00:10:25,130 He saw the humor in it, 122 00:10:25,270 --> 00:10:27,170 the beauty in it, the ugliness of it. 123 00:10:27,210 --> 00:10:28,710 He saw it all, and he understood it all. 124 00:10:29,740 --> 00:10:31,780 [Texas moaner bluesPlaying] 125 00:10:32,010 --> 00:10:34,840 Narrator: At the age of 7, he went to work for the karnoffskys, 126 00:10:34,980 --> 00:10:37,210 a Russian Jewish immigrant family, 127 00:10:37,350 --> 00:10:39,820 who delivered coal to the prostitutes of storyville. 128 00:10:40,850 --> 00:10:42,450 Louis rode in their wagon, 129 00:10:42,590 --> 00:10:44,860 and blew a long tin horn 130 00:10:45,090 --> 00:10:49,830 to let the karnoffsky's clients know they were coming. 131 00:10:49,960 --> 00:10:51,490 W. Marsalis: You have to think about a little kid 132 00:10:51,630 --> 00:10:54,670 that realizes something is wrong. 133 00:10:54,800 --> 00:10:55,670 And they don't know what it is, 134 00:10:57,400 --> 00:11:01,770 but soon they realize that what's wrong is the color of their skin-- 135 00:11:01,910 --> 00:11:04,370 being called "nigger," 136 00:11:04,510 --> 00:11:09,550 seeing grown men called "boy" and addressed in a disrespectful fashion. 137 00:11:09,680 --> 00:11:12,820 And then, into this environment comes somebody 138 00:11:12,950 --> 00:11:16,490 who's like the people that you have seen degrade all the other people you know. 139 00:11:16,620 --> 00:11:20,120 But all of a sudden, they're nice to you. 140 00:11:20,160 --> 00:11:22,560 They invite you into their home. 141 00:11:22,700 --> 00:11:26,500 They try to look out for you, and "have you had something to eat?" 142 00:11:26,730 --> 00:11:28,800 It's then, with the karnoffskys as a boy, 143 00:11:28,930 --> 00:11:33,140 he understands, well, we're all human beings. 144 00:11:33,270 --> 00:11:35,710 Narrator: Mrs. Karnoffsky insisted he eat a good dinner 145 00:11:35,740 --> 00:11:38,580 every evening before going home, 146 00:11:38,810 --> 00:11:42,510 and Armstrong never forgot the family's kindness to him. 147 00:11:42,650 --> 00:11:46,080 All his life, he would wear a star of David, 148 00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:51,120 and Cherish Mrs. Karnoffsky's lullabies. 149 00:11:52,760 --> 00:11:57,090 One day, Louis spotted a battered cornet in a pawnshop window 150 00:11:57,230 --> 00:12:00,900 and asked the karnoffskys to advance him the $5.00 to buy it. 151 00:12:00,930 --> 00:12:12,110 [Home sweet homPlaying] 152 00:12:12,140 --> 00:12:14,910 "After blowing into it a little while," Armstrong remembered, 153 00:12:15,050 --> 00:12:18,380 "I realized I could play Home sweet home... 154 00:12:18,520 --> 00:12:28,420 then, here come the blues." 155 00:12:28,560 --> 00:12:30,360 The first time he touched the trumpet he sounded great. 156 00:12:30,500 --> 00:12:32,460 I'm sure of that. 157 00:12:32,700 --> 00:12:33,930 He just was one of those people who had the spirit-- 158 00:12:34,070 --> 00:12:37,000 the spirit was in him. 159 00:12:37,140 --> 00:12:40,840 And that understanding that comes from the creator of humanity--he had that. 160 00:12:40,970 --> 00:12:42,410 He knew he was good, you know. 161 00:12:42,540 --> 00:12:44,240 He did know that. 162 00:12:44,380 --> 00:12:46,010 He said, "what I have is 163 00:12:46,040 --> 00:12:48,650 god-given." that's what he said. 164 00:12:48,780 --> 00:12:51,480 And he'd always say, "can you imagine me and Gabriel up there? 165 00:12:51,720 --> 00:12:52,980 I'm gonna blow him out of the clouds." 166 00:12:53,120 --> 00:12:55,390 He'd say that all the time, too. 167 00:12:55,620 --> 00:13:01,190 [Make me a palle Playing] 168 00:13:02,690 --> 00:13:05,500 Giddins: It's a general rule that children look for heroes. 169 00:13:05,630 --> 00:13:08,900 They look for people to emulate. 170 00:13:08,930 --> 00:13:11,800 And in that community, at that time, 171 00:13:11,940 --> 00:13:15,270 you were going to either emulate the guy with the pistol 172 00:13:15,410 --> 00:13:16,840 who, you know, whipped his whores in the bar in front of everybody 173 00:13:17,810 --> 00:13:19,510 to show what a man he was, 174 00:13:19,640 --> 00:13:21,380 or the musicians, 175 00:13:21,610 --> 00:13:22,110 because the musicians were very highly respected. 176 00:13:23,480 --> 00:13:26,280 They were an essential part of the community. 177 00:13:26,420 --> 00:13:30,720 Every family function from a birth, to a Sunday picnic, to a funeral, 178 00:13:30,860 --> 00:13:34,260 was a musical event. 179 00:13:34,390 --> 00:13:36,690 Musicians were important. 180 00:13:36,730 --> 00:13:41,600 They dressed well, they were treated well. 181 00:13:41,730 --> 00:13:45,240 Narrator: At age 11, Armstrong dropped out of school for good, 182 00:13:45,370 --> 00:13:47,970 formed a vocal quartet that sang and danced 183 00:13:48,010 --> 00:13:51,340 on the street corners of black storyville, 184 00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:59,480 and listened to the new jazz music that was everywhere around him. 185 00:13:59,620 --> 00:14:03,420 But Armstrong also got into trouble. 186 00:14:03,560 --> 00:14:06,190 "I remember running around with a lot of bad boys 187 00:14:06,220 --> 00:14:08,290 which did a lot of crazy things," he said, 188 00:14:08,530 --> 00:14:11,660 and in 1913 he was arrested 189 00:14:11,800 --> 00:14:17,170 for firing his stepfather's pistol on new year's Eve. 190 00:14:17,300 --> 00:14:20,970 Man: January 2, 1913. 191 00:14:21,010 --> 00:14:25,680 6 white boys were arrested in canal street for disturbing the peace. 192 00:14:25,910 --> 00:14:27,380 The most serious case last night was that of Louis Armstrong, 193 00:14:28,210 --> 00:14:30,450 an 11-year-old negro, 194 00:14:30,480 --> 00:14:34,720 who discharged a revolver at rampart and perdido streets. 195 00:14:34,850 --> 00:14:37,450 Being an old offender, he was sent to the colored waif's home. 196 00:14:38,690 --> 00:14:41,220 New Orleans Times picayune. 197 00:14:41,460 --> 00:14:46,730 [my marylanPlaying] 198 00:14:46,870 --> 00:14:50,200 Narrator: Within a few months of his arrival at the colored waif's home, 199 00:14:50,340 --> 00:14:54,900 Armstrong was the best cornet player in its marching band, 200 00:14:55,040 --> 00:14:58,810 even though its manager was convinced that no boy from "the battlefield" 201 00:14:58,940 --> 00:15:02,380 would ever amount to anything. 202 00:15:02,510 --> 00:15:08,420 Soon, he was the leader. 203 00:15:08,550 --> 00:15:12,960 When Armstrong led the band through his old neighborhood for the first time, 204 00:15:12,990 --> 00:15:17,430 "all the whores, gamblers, thieves, and beggars were waiting for the band 205 00:15:17,560 --> 00:15:21,730 "because they knew that mayann's son would be in it. 206 00:15:21,870 --> 00:15:25,470 They ran to wake up mama, so she could see me go by," he remembered. 207 00:15:27,010 --> 00:15:29,740 "They never dreamed that I would be playing the cornet, 208 00:15:29,870 --> 00:15:34,480 blowing it as good as I could." 209 00:15:34,610 --> 00:15:36,510 Man: He was marching along with the band, 210 00:15:36,650 --> 00:15:38,210 so we got up real close to him 211 00:15:38,350 --> 00:15:40,650 to see if he was actually playing those notes. 212 00:15:42,250 --> 00:15:46,090 We didn't believe he could learn to play in that short time. 213 00:15:46,220 --> 00:15:49,830 I can still remember he was playing Maryland, my Maryland. 214 00:15:51,200 --> 00:15:53,760 and he sure was swingin' out that melody. 215 00:15:53,800 --> 00:15:59,070 Zutty singleton. 216 00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:00,740 Narrator: The onlookers were so proud to see that "little Louis"-- 217 00:16:02,210 --> 00:16:04,770 someone from their neighborhood-- had done so well, 218 00:16:04,910 --> 00:16:07,640 that they dropped enough coins in the boys' hats 219 00:16:07,780 --> 00:16:09,680 to pay for brand-new instruments and uniforms 220 00:16:09,920 --> 00:16:15,180 for the whole band. 221 00:16:15,320 --> 00:16:17,920 The only way to sum up music-- 222 00:16:18,060 --> 00:16:22,390 it ain't but two things in music: Good and bad. 223 00:16:22,530 --> 00:16:25,360 Now if it sounds good, you don't worry what it is. 224 00:16:25,600 --> 00:16:28,300 Just go on and enjoy it, see what I mean. 225 00:16:28,430 --> 00:16:33,470 Anything you can pat your foot to is good music. 226 00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:38,140 Narrator: In 1914, the year the first world war started in Europe, 227 00:16:38,280 --> 00:16:42,310 Louis Armstrong was released from the waif's home. 228 00:16:42,550 --> 00:16:45,750 [Krooked blu Playing] 229 00:16:45,980 --> 00:16:49,790 He began playing in parades and dance halls 230 00:16:49,820 --> 00:16:55,160 and in seedy bars frequented by a rough and often notorious clientele. 231 00:16:55,290 --> 00:16:58,430 There was funky Stella, and cross-eyed Louise, 232 00:16:58,460 --> 00:17:02,200 roughhouse camel, cocaine buddy, 233 00:17:02,430 --> 00:17:06,740 and black Benny Williams, a 6-foot-6 sometime parade drummer 234 00:17:08,110 --> 00:17:12,580 who acted as young Armstrong's protector for a time. 235 00:17:12,810 --> 00:17:15,750 His new "friends" showered him with new nicknames-- 236 00:17:15,880 --> 00:17:18,680 "rhythm jaws," "gatemouth," 237 00:17:18,920 --> 00:17:22,650 "dippermouth," and "satchelmouth." 238 00:17:22,690 --> 00:17:26,220 He played his cornet whenever he got the chance, 239 00:17:26,260 --> 00:17:29,960 and astonished older musicians with his tone, his power, 240 00:17:30,200 --> 00:17:33,830 and his musical ideas. 241 00:17:33,970 --> 00:17:35,900 W. Marsalis: The thing that made him so great as a musician 242 00:17:36,030 --> 00:17:38,670 is that he heard what everybody was playing. 243 00:17:38,900 --> 00:17:39,340 And not only did he hear what they were playing, 244 00:17:40,910 --> 00:17:42,470 well, he heard what they were Try Ingto play. 245 00:17:42,610 --> 00:17:45,570 And all of that he played. 246 00:17:45,810 --> 00:17:48,950 And people loved him because, you know, they could feel that coming out of him. 247 00:17:49,080 --> 00:17:52,750 So he might be with black Benny, or old stinky rag, 248 00:17:52,880 --> 00:17:54,880 or some of all these different characters that he was around, 249 00:17:55,020 --> 00:17:58,220 and they would call him "little Louis"--they loved him. 250 00:17:58,260 --> 00:18:00,990 Narrator: Armstrong loved listening to jazz: 251 00:18:01,130 --> 00:18:02,860 The kid ory band, 252 00:18:02,990 --> 00:18:05,260 mutt Carey, 253 00:18:05,400 --> 00:18:07,860 bunk Johnson, 254 00:18:07,900 --> 00:18:10,130 Freddie keppard, 255 00:18:10,270 --> 00:18:14,140 and Sidney bechet. 256 00:18:14,270 --> 00:18:17,110 But of all the bands Armstrong heard, 257 00:18:17,240 --> 00:18:19,980 it was the one led by the cornetist "king" Oliver 258 00:18:20,010 --> 00:18:24,050 that meant the most to him. 259 00:18:24,180 --> 00:18:27,520 Joe Oliver was a tough band leader-- 260 00:18:27,650 --> 00:18:30,720 "rough as pig iron," one musician said. 261 00:18:30,960 --> 00:18:33,320 He had begun his career as a trombonist, 262 00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:35,820 then switched to the cornet 263 00:18:35,960 --> 00:18:39,330 and became a perennial favorite at one of the city's toughest clubs, 264 00:18:39,560 --> 00:18:45,840 Pete lala's, in storyville. 265 00:18:45,970 --> 00:18:47,840 Armstrong remembered delivering coal 266 00:18:47,970 --> 00:18:50,640 to one prostitute who lived next door, 267 00:18:50,880 --> 00:18:52,840 and lingering as long as he could 268 00:18:52,980 --> 00:18:56,680 just to hear Oliver, his idol, play. 269 00:18:56,920 --> 00:19:05,090 [Dippermouth blu Eplaying] 270 00:19:05,220 --> 00:19:25,740 So king Oliver would create vocal effects like this one. 271 00:19:53,900 --> 00:19:55,340 Giddins: Oliver was a big, impressive-looking man. 272 00:19:56,210 --> 00:19:58,640 He had a gorgeous sound. 273 00:19:58,780 --> 00:20:00,880 He had a lot of authority, and he knew how to put together a band. 274 00:20:01,110 --> 00:20:03,380 And Oliver obviously liked him. 275 00:20:03,510 --> 00:20:06,350 Armstrong was allowed to carry his trumpet, which was an honor, 276 00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:11,350 and I think he took him kind of under his wing. 277 00:20:11,590 --> 00:20:14,490 Narrator: "I loved Joe Oliver," Louis Armstrong said. 278 00:20:14,630 --> 00:20:17,660 "He did more for young musicians than anyone I know of." 279 00:20:19,160 --> 00:20:22,470 Between engagements, Oliver would sometimes stop on the street 280 00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:26,740 and offer Armstrong advice on how to play. 281 00:20:26,870 --> 00:20:28,070 Armstrong: We'd be walking up rampart street 282 00:20:28,210 --> 00:20:29,510 and run into Joe Oliver. 283 00:20:29,740 --> 00:20:31,610 We might have a lesson or a piece of music 284 00:20:31,740 --> 00:20:33,580 that was buggin' us. 285 00:20:35,080 --> 00:20:39,320 And I'd say, "papa Joe, how do you divide that?" 286 00:20:39,450 --> 00:20:41,680 He'd stop, no matter where he was going, and show it to us, 287 00:20:41,920 --> 00:20:42,280 while the rest of the musicians would say, 288 00:20:43,250 --> 00:20:45,520 "boy, I ain't got no time! 289 00:20:45,660 --> 00:20:48,260 Breaking my neck to get to the eagle saloon," see? 290 00:20:48,290 --> 00:20:51,760 That's why we all love Joe Oliver. 291 00:20:51,800 --> 00:20:56,100 Narrator: In 1918, the year American troops went to war, 292 00:20:56,230 --> 00:20:58,900 king Oliver left New Orleans for the big city of Chicago, 293 00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:02,910 and Armstrong took over as cornetist in his old band. 294 00:21:03,710 --> 00:21:05,310 His reputation grew, 295 00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:10,250 and soon he, too, had offers of work from out of town. 296 00:21:10,380 --> 00:21:13,780 But Armstrong had no thought of ever leaving New Orleans. 297 00:21:14,020 --> 00:21:18,490 He was married now to an ex-prostitute named Daisy, 298 00:21:18,620 --> 00:21:23,760 and besides, he had seen too many other musicians fail. 299 00:21:23,900 --> 00:21:25,860 "Wasn't nobody going to get Me To leave New Orleans," he said, 300 00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:28,100 "but papa Joe." 301 00:21:28,330 --> 00:21:33,900 [Potato head blu Eplaying] 302 00:21:34,040 --> 00:21:37,610 Armstrong spent the next 3 summers playing aboard steamboats 303 00:21:37,840 --> 00:21:40,910 plowing up and down the Mississippi, 304 00:21:41,050 --> 00:21:44,310 from New Orleans all the way north to St. Paul, Minnesota, 305 00:21:44,450 --> 00:21:46,520 but always back home again. 306 00:21:48,120 --> 00:21:50,550 Armstrong remembered that "we were the first colored band 307 00:21:51,990 --> 00:21:55,020 to play most of the towns at which we stopped." 308 00:21:55,260 --> 00:21:57,630 The white people, "the ofays," he said, 309 00:21:57,860 --> 00:22:00,160 "were not used to seeing colored boys blowing horns 310 00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:03,730 "and making fine music for them to dance by, 311 00:22:03,970 --> 00:22:22,790 but before the evening was over, they loved us." 312 00:22:23,020 --> 00:22:26,050 When his boat tied up at Davenport, Iowa, 313 00:22:26,190 --> 00:22:29,030 a 17-year-old high school student named bix beiderbecke 314 00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:36,370 heard him play-- and never forgot it. 315 00:22:36,400 --> 00:22:42,410 Neither did a young Texas trombonist named Jack teagarden, 316 00:22:42,440 --> 00:22:46,040 who happened to be standing on the New Orleans levee one moonlit evening 317 00:22:46,180 --> 00:22:48,810 when he heard the distant sound of a cornet 318 00:22:49,050 --> 00:22:53,580 from somewhere across the water. 319 00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:59,420 [Cornet continues playing] 320 00:22:59,560 --> 00:23:02,190 He couldn't see anything at first, 321 00:23:02,330 --> 00:23:04,460 just the vague form of an excursion boat 322 00:23:04,700 --> 00:23:08,400 gliding toward him through the mist. 323 00:23:10,070 --> 00:23:14,200 But the sound, growing louder as the boat neared shore, 324 00:23:14,340 --> 00:23:17,370 was unlike anything he had ever heard before. 325 00:23:17,610 --> 00:23:24,880 [Cornet continues playing] 326 00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:28,450 It was Louis Armstrong, he remembered, 327 00:23:28,590 --> 00:23:47,800 "descending from the sky like a god." 328 00:24:11,630 --> 00:24:16,730 Early: Jazz seemed to so much capture the absurdity of the modern world, 329 00:24:16,770 --> 00:24:18,270 because of course the modern 330 00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:19,400 world had become absolutely 331 00:24:19,540 --> 00:24:30,580 absurd because of world war I. 332 00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:33,120 Narrator: As Americans prepared for war with Germany, 333 00:24:33,250 --> 00:24:35,720 African-Americans living in Harlem 334 00:24:35,850 --> 00:24:37,550 persuaded the governor of New York 335 00:24:37,690 --> 00:24:39,360 to Grant them their own unit: 336 00:24:39,490 --> 00:24:43,360 The 15th infantry regiment. 337 00:24:43,490 --> 00:24:48,060 They would also need their own regimental band. 338 00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:50,930 The man who was asked to lead it was James Reese Europe, 339 00:24:52,300 --> 00:24:55,140 the best-known orchestra leader in New York, 340 00:24:55,270 --> 00:24:58,340 who had begun to incorporate elements of jazz 341 00:24:58,380 --> 00:25:02,680 into his infectious, syncopated ragtime music. 342 00:25:02,810 --> 00:25:14,520 [My chocolate soldier Sammy bo Yplaying] 343 00:25:14,660 --> 00:25:17,490 [La marseillaisPlaying] 344 00:25:19,130 --> 00:25:26,900 The regiment arrived in France on new year's day, 1918. 345 00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:30,610 Europe and his men played The marseillaise With such drive and excitement 346 00:25:30,740 --> 00:25:48,490 that the waiting French crowd took a while to recognize it. 347 00:25:48,630 --> 00:25:52,800 American officers were so impressed with Europe's unique sound 348 00:25:52,930 --> 00:25:59,230 that they sent the band on a tour of army camps and French villages. 349 00:25:59,370 --> 00:26:01,700 They played French and American marches, 350 00:26:01,740 --> 00:26:03,940 "plantation melodies," 351 00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:07,280 and the song Europe had made famous-- 352 00:26:07,510 --> 00:26:12,010 the Memphis blues. 353 00:26:12,150 --> 00:26:22,830 [Memphis blu Playing] 354 00:26:23,060 --> 00:26:26,130 Man: With a soul-rousing crash of cymbals, 355 00:26:26,260 --> 00:26:29,500 cornet and clarinet players began to manipulate notes 356 00:26:29,630 --> 00:26:36,070 in that typical rhythm which no artist has ever put down on paper. 357 00:26:36,210 --> 00:26:40,110 Then, as the drummers struck their stride, their shoulders shaking in time, 358 00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,110 the audience could stand it no longer. 359 00:26:43,250 --> 00:26:45,210 The "jazz germ" hit them 360 00:26:45,350 --> 00:26:48,780 and it seemed to find the vital spot, 361 00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:52,620 loosening all muscles and causing what is known in American 362 00:26:52,760 --> 00:27:00,200 as an "eagle rocking it." 363 00:27:00,430 --> 00:27:03,170 And I am satisfied that American music 364 00:27:03,300 --> 00:27:07,270 will one day be the world's music. 365 00:27:07,410 --> 00:27:11,340 Private noble sissle. 366 00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:13,740 Narrator: French and British band leaders were convinced 367 00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:17,210 that Europe's men were using trick instruments. 368 00:27:17,350 --> 00:27:26,690 Otherwise, they said, such sounds were not possible. 369 00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:34,030 [Explosions] 370 00:27:34,270 --> 00:27:36,970 On April 20, 1918, 371 00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:42,000 lieutenant James Reese Europe accompanied a French night patrol 372 00:27:42,140 --> 00:27:46,740 across no-man's land under heavy enemy fire, 373 00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:55,180 and became the first African-American officer to face combat during the war. 374 00:27:55,420 --> 00:28:00,620 The men of the 15th regiment would survive 191 days of fierce combat, 375 00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:03,030 receive the Croix de guerre, 376 00:28:03,260 --> 00:28:04,190 and be chosen by the French high command 377 00:28:05,300 --> 00:28:08,260 to lead the allied forces to the rhine. 378 00:28:09,670 --> 00:28:14,200 By the end of the war, 171 men of the 15th infantry 379 00:28:14,340 --> 00:28:17,370 were decorated for bravery, 380 00:28:17,510 --> 00:28:24,550 more than from any other American regiment. 381 00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:26,880 The men took special pride in the name the French gave them: 382 00:28:27,020 --> 00:28:28,380 The hellfighters. 383 00:28:29,650 --> 00:28:34,020 [That moaning trombo Nplaying] 384 00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:36,530 And when they came home at last in February 1919, 385 00:28:38,060 --> 00:28:40,300 for a victory parade up fifth Avenue to Harlem, 386 00:28:40,530 --> 00:28:42,660 new yorkers, black and white, 387 00:28:42,700 --> 00:28:54,910 poured into the streets to cheer them. 388 00:28:55,050 --> 00:28:59,380 That spring, Europe and his hellfighters band cut 24 records, 389 00:28:59,620 --> 00:29:02,520 and made a triumphant tour of the country, 390 00:29:02,550 --> 00:29:03,190 spreading their hot new music 391 00:29:04,490 --> 00:29:07,460 and drawing big, cheering, integrated crowds 392 00:29:07,590 --> 00:29:12,230 everywhere they went. 393 00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:13,830 W. Marsalis: Well, James Reese Europe is similar 394 00:29:13,860 --> 00:29:16,500 to many of the great figures in American music 395 00:29:16,530 --> 00:29:19,200 in that he's always trying to synthesize elements around him 396 00:29:19,340 --> 00:29:22,570 that seem to disagree. 397 00:29:22,610 --> 00:29:25,470 And when people start to hear this band, the concert band, 398 00:29:25,710 --> 00:29:28,810 which is usually playing in that kind of strict, stiff way, 399 00:29:28,950 --> 00:29:31,710 playing this loose, kind of grooving, lilting fashion, 400 00:29:31,850 --> 00:29:34,650 they can't believe what they're hearing. 401 00:29:34,790 --> 00:29:38,190 Man, everybody is going crazy, 402 00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:41,460 and James Reese Europe is looking at the response of the people, 403 00:29:41,590 --> 00:29:48,200 and he's saying to himself, "let's do this some more." 404 00:29:48,330 --> 00:29:51,830 Narrator: James Reese Europe had big plans for peacetime: 405 00:29:51,970 --> 00:29:54,640 To merge jazz and ragtime 406 00:29:54,670 --> 00:29:58,940 into a wholly new kind of African-American music. 407 00:29:58,980 --> 00:30:02,210 "We won France by playing music which was ours, 408 00:30:02,350 --> 00:30:05,080 and not a pale imitation of others," he said, 409 00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:06,210 "and if we are to develop in america, 410 00:30:07,490 --> 00:30:11,520 we must develop along our own lines." 411 00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:14,390 [Memphis blu Playing] 412 00:30:14,530 --> 00:30:16,490 Narrator: On the morning of may 9, 1919, 413 00:30:17,730 --> 00:30:20,360 Europe was in Boston, scheduled to lay a wreath 414 00:30:22,300 --> 00:30:27,040 at the base of the memorial to the 54th Massachusetts volunteers, 415 00:30:27,170 --> 00:30:31,170 the first black regiment to fight in the civil war. 416 00:30:31,310 --> 00:30:34,810 But the evening before the ceremony, 417 00:30:34,950 --> 00:30:37,950 Europe was confronted by one of his drummers, 418 00:30:38,180 --> 00:30:41,880 a high-strung man named Herbert Wright. 419 00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:44,720 The two men had words. 420 00:30:44,860 --> 00:30:48,860 Wright accused his boss of treating him unfairly, 421 00:30:48,890 --> 00:30:54,930 then suddenly stabbed Europe in the neck with a pen knife. 422 00:30:55,070 --> 00:31:01,700 That night, James Reese Europe bled to death. 423 00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:07,040 The loss was incalculable, said the new york Times. 424 00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:11,680 "ragtime may be negro music, but it is Americ Annegro music, 425 00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:14,850 "more alive than much other American music; 426 00:31:14,990 --> 00:31:17,620 "and Europe was one of the Americans 427 00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:24,430 who was contributing most to its development." 428 00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,530 The city of New York gave him an official funeral-- 429 00:31:29,670 --> 00:31:34,100 the first ever granted to a black citizen. 430 00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:37,970 Thousands of mourners, black and white, 431 00:31:38,110 --> 00:31:41,780 turned out to see the procession pass from Harlem 432 00:31:41,910 --> 00:31:50,450 down the West Side to St. Mark's episcopal church. 433 00:31:50,590 --> 00:31:55,160 "He took the colored of this city from their Porter's places," said the priest, 434 00:31:55,390 --> 00:32:05,200 "and raised them to positions of importance as real musicians." 435 00:32:05,240 --> 00:32:15,440 [Military drums playing] 436 00:32:15,580 --> 00:32:19,920 The cheers that had greeted the "hellfighters" did not echo long. 437 00:32:19,950 --> 00:32:24,550 The ku klux klan was on the march now, 438 00:32:24,790 --> 00:32:28,620 in New York state, and new england, and Washington, D.C., 439 00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,790 as well as in the old confederacy, 440 00:32:31,930 --> 00:32:40,540 determined to crush the aspirations of every minority. 441 00:32:40,670 --> 00:32:43,340 During the summer of 1919, 442 00:32:43,370 --> 00:32:47,580 African-Americans were their most frequent targets. 443 00:32:47,710 --> 00:32:50,380 More than 70 blacks were killed by white mobs 444 00:32:50,510 --> 00:32:53,780 during the last 9 months of the year-- 445 00:32:53,920 --> 00:33:01,220 10 of them returning soldiers, still in uniform. 446 00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:04,130 Man: We return from the slavery of uniform, 447 00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:06,930 which the world's madness demanded of us, 448 00:33:07,060 --> 00:33:11,300 to Don the freedom of civil garb. 449 00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:17,570 We stand again to look america squarely in the face. 450 00:33:17,810 --> 00:33:23,980 This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, 451 00:33:24,110 --> 00:33:30,220 is yet a shameful land. 452 00:33:30,350 --> 00:33:35,090 It lynches. 453 00:33:36,230 --> 00:33:40,600 It disenfranchises its own citizens. 454 00:33:40,630 --> 00:33:42,530 It encourages ignorance. 455 00:33:42,670 --> 00:33:45,130 It steals from us. 456 00:33:45,270 --> 00:33:49,910 It insults us. 457 00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:52,610 We return from fighting. 458 00:33:52,740 --> 00:33:57,080 We return fighting. 459 00:33:57,210 --> 00:34:00,050 Make way for democracy! 460 00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:02,450 We saved it in France, 461 00:34:02,590 --> 00:34:04,790 and by the great jehovah, 462 00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:08,690 we will save it in the u.S.A. 463 00:34:08,930 --> 00:34:13,260 Or know the reason why. 464 00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:19,300 W.e.b. Du bois. 465 00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:22,800 [Salty d Playing] 466 00:34:22,940 --> 00:34:25,570 Narrator: Out of the continuing violence against African-Americans, 467 00:34:25,710 --> 00:34:29,240 a new assertiveness grew. 468 00:34:29,380 --> 00:34:32,550 Man: The Old Negro goes. 469 00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:36,280 His abject crawling and pleading have availed the cause nothing. 470 00:34:37,090 --> 00:34:40,720 Harlem Crusader. 471 00:34:40,860 --> 00:34:43,120 woman: The new negro, unlike the old time negro, 472 00:34:44,130 --> 00:34:45,990 does not fear the face of day. 473 00:34:47,060 --> 00:34:49,930 The time for cringing is over. 474 00:34:50,070 --> 00:34:54,740 The Kansas city Call. 475 00:34:54,970 --> 00:34:57,640 narrator: The national association for the advancement of colored people 476 00:34:57,780 --> 00:35:02,140 launched a nationwide crusade against lynching. 477 00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:06,280 Marcus garvey, the black nationalist leader, 478 00:35:06,420 --> 00:35:09,850 called upon his people to abandon any hope of help from white america 479 00:35:09,990 --> 00:35:12,320 and look to themselves. 480 00:35:12,460 --> 00:35:14,420 "No more fear," he said, 481 00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:19,360 "no more begging and pleading." 482 00:35:19,500 --> 00:35:23,830 Everywhere, African-Americans began to build their own institutions-- 483 00:35:23,970 --> 00:35:29,040 banks, businesses, baseball teams. 484 00:35:29,070 --> 00:35:32,240 And black writers and artists and musicians 485 00:35:32,380 --> 00:35:38,950 now began to talk of a cultural rebirth. 486 00:35:39,180 --> 00:35:42,050 Early: You had people who created a music that's really celebrating, 487 00:35:42,190 --> 00:35:45,220 in its own way, Democratic possibilities-- 488 00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:48,860 liberation, freedom of the spirit-- 489 00:35:48,990 --> 00:35:53,490 who really hadn't experienced everything 490 00:35:53,630 --> 00:35:56,130 that Democratic society had to offer, 491 00:35:56,270 --> 00:36:00,100 but who could look around and see the promise embedded in the society. 492 00:36:00,240 --> 00:36:04,010 Jazz is a kind of lyricism about the great American promise... 493 00:36:04,140 --> 00:36:10,710 And our inability to live up to it, in some ways. 494 00:36:11,850 --> 00:36:13,320 [South Carolina charleston Playing] 495 00:36:14,550 --> 00:36:18,450 Man: Jazz is the product of a restless age: 496 00:36:18,490 --> 00:36:20,990 An age in which the fever of war 497 00:36:21,130 --> 00:36:24,330 is only now beginning to abate its fury; 498 00:36:24,460 --> 00:36:26,400 when men and women, after their efforts in the great struggle, 499 00:36:28,330 --> 00:36:33,100 are still too much disturbed to be content with a tranquil existence; 500 00:36:33,240 --> 00:36:35,800 when freaks and stunts and sensations 501 00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:38,970 are the order--or disorder-- of the day; 502 00:36:39,110 --> 00:36:43,080 when painters delight in portraying that which is not, 503 00:36:43,310 --> 00:36:48,520 and sculptors in twisting the human limbs into strange, fantastic shapes; 504 00:36:48,650 --> 00:36:55,260 when america is turning out her merchandise at an unprecedented speed; 505 00:36:55,490 --> 00:36:59,030 when aeroplanes are beating successive records, 506 00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:02,060 and ladies are in so great a hurry 507 00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:06,530 that they wear short skirts which enable them to move fast 508 00:37:06,770 --> 00:37:10,440 and cut off their hair to save a few precious moments of the day; 509 00:37:10,570 --> 00:37:14,840 when the extremes of bolshevism and fascism 510 00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:18,950 are pursuing their own ways simultaneously, 511 00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:26,490 and the whole world is rushing helter-skelter in unknown directions. 512 00:37:26,720 --> 00:37:29,830 Giddins: Then in 1920, the best thing that could have happened for jazz, 513 00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:31,930 they passed the most idiotic law in the history of the United States: 514 00:37:32,060 --> 00:37:34,760 Prohibition. 515 00:37:34,900 --> 00:37:39,130 Well, from a handful of saloons around the country, 516 00:37:39,170 --> 00:37:42,070 you now have thousands and thousands of speakeasies, 517 00:37:42,310 --> 00:37:43,910 especially in all the major cities. 518 00:37:44,140 --> 00:37:44,970 I mean, at one point in New York City alone, 519 00:37:45,110 --> 00:37:48,710 Manhattan had 5,000 speakeasies. 520 00:37:48,750 --> 00:37:51,380 And in the competition, you want to bring in people, you have music. 521 00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:53,250 So suddenly, there's work-- 522 00:37:53,380 --> 00:37:57,550 there's tons of work for jazz musicians. 523 00:37:57,690 --> 00:38:00,820 Also, prohibition is loosening up morals. 524 00:38:00,860 --> 00:38:03,190 It's doing exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do. 525 00:38:03,330 --> 00:38:05,990 Women, for example, did not drink in saloons. 526 00:38:06,130 --> 00:38:09,400 They sure drank in speakeasies. 527 00:38:09,530 --> 00:38:12,530 So the jazz age became a kind of umbrella term 528 00:38:12,770 --> 00:38:14,670 for this whole loosening up, 529 00:38:14,810 --> 00:38:17,710 this whole lubrication thanks to prohibition, 530 00:38:17,940 --> 00:38:19,470 when everybody was drinking more than they should 531 00:38:19,710 --> 00:38:26,380 just to defy an absolutely unenforceable law. 532 00:38:26,620 --> 00:38:29,020 Man: Amid this seething, bubbling turmoil, 533 00:38:29,250 --> 00:38:30,420 jazz hurried along its course, 534 00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:37,390 riding exultantly on the eddying stream. 535 00:38:37,530 --> 00:38:40,230 Nevertheless, the end of civilization is not yet, 536 00:38:41,900 --> 00:38:46,530 and jazz will either be trained and turned to artistic success 537 00:38:46,670 --> 00:38:50,840 or else vanish utterly from our midst as a living force. 538 00:38:50,970 --> 00:38:53,910 But even if it disappears altogether, 539 00:38:54,040 --> 00:38:58,650 it will not have existed in vain. 540 00:38:58,780 --> 00:39:03,450 For its record will remain as an interesting human document-- 541 00:39:03,590 --> 00:39:08,520 the spirit of the age written in the music of the people. 542 00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:14,430 R. W. S. Mendl, The appeal of jazz. 543 00:39:14,570 --> 00:39:18,100 narrator: America was jazz crazy now. 544 00:39:18,130 --> 00:39:20,700 But the jazz most Americans were crazy About 545 00:39:20,740 --> 00:39:24,170 was still primarily a novelty music: 546 00:39:25,010 --> 00:39:27,710 Frenetic...funny... 547 00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:34,420 The perfect accompaniment for fast dancing and high times. 548 00:39:34,550 --> 00:39:37,720 It would take the soaring genius of musicians like Louis Armstrong 549 00:39:37,850 --> 00:39:41,020 to broaden its message, deepen its emotions, 550 00:39:41,260 --> 00:39:54,240 turn it into art. 551 00:39:54,370 --> 00:40:07,820 [Piano playing Black beauty] 552 00:40:08,050 --> 00:40:10,350 Duke Ellington: My story is a very simple story. 553 00:40:10,590 --> 00:40:12,820 You know, it's like once upon a time, 554 00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:16,020 a very pretty lady and a very handsome gentleman 555 00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:18,230 met and fell in love and got married. 556 00:40:18,460 --> 00:40:21,660 And god blessed them with this wonderful baby boy. 557 00:40:21,900 --> 00:40:23,800 And they held him in the palm of the hand, 558 00:40:23,930 --> 00:40:26,000 and nurtured him and spoiled him 559 00:40:26,240 --> 00:40:29,240 until he was about 7, 8 years old. 560 00:40:29,370 --> 00:40:32,370 And then he put, they put his feet on the ground, 561 00:40:32,510 --> 00:40:35,540 and the minute they put his feet on the ground, he ran out the front door, 562 00:40:35,780 --> 00:40:38,180 out across the front lawn, out across the street. 563 00:40:38,420 --> 00:40:40,310 Anyway, the minute he got on the other side of the street, 564 00:40:40,450 --> 00:40:42,320 somebody says, "hey, Edward, up this way." 565 00:40:42,450 --> 00:40:43,920 And the boy was me, incidentally. 566 00:40:43,950 --> 00:40:44,850 [Audience laughter] 567 00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:47,220 And the guy from the next corner says, 568 00:40:47,360 --> 00:40:49,820 "hey, Edward--right. 569 00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:52,330 "Go up there and turn left. You can't miss it." 570 00:40:52,460 --> 00:40:54,530 And it's been going on ever since. 571 00:40:54,660 --> 00:40:56,060 That's the story, that's my biography. 572 00:40:56,100 --> 00:41:00,670 [Laughter] 573 00:41:00,900 --> 00:41:03,510 Narrator: On April 29, 1899, 574 00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:06,710 at 1212 t street 575 00:41:06,940 --> 00:41:09,180 in a comfortable, middle-class, black neighborhood 576 00:41:09,310 --> 00:41:11,880 in northwest Washington D.C., 577 00:41:12,020 --> 00:41:19,150 Edward Kennedy Ellington was born. 578 00:41:19,290 --> 00:41:25,160 He would one day be hailed as the greatest of all American composers, 579 00:41:25,300 --> 00:41:33,070 jazz music's most prolific-- and least knowable--genius. 580 00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,000 His father, James Edward Ellington, 581 00:41:36,140 --> 00:41:39,770 was a Butler who sometimes catered at the white house. 582 00:41:40,010 --> 00:41:41,940 He was a man of modest means, 583 00:41:41,980 --> 00:41:44,480 but raised his family, his son said, 584 00:41:44,620 --> 00:41:48,380 "as if he was a millionaire." 585 00:41:48,620 --> 00:41:53,150 His mother, Daisy, was utterly devoted to her son, 586 00:41:53,290 --> 00:41:57,590 and she would always remain the most important person in his life. 587 00:41:57,630 --> 00:42:01,000 "As though I were some very, very special child," he remembered, 588 00:42:01,130 --> 00:42:05,230 "my mother would say, Edward, you are blessed!" 589 00:42:05,370 --> 00:42:08,000 and when I asked him how his 590 00:42:08,910 --> 00:42:09,800 a bad boy, if he ever did 591 00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:10,710 anything, you know, if he was 592 00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:11,270 reprimanded, what kind of kid 593 00:42:12,310 --> 00:42:12,610 were you, you know. And he said, 594 00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:16,110 "joya, I was raised in the palm of the hand." 595 00:42:16,350 --> 00:42:20,180 He said, "my mother never let my feet touch the ground." 596 00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:24,420 Narrator: Daisy hovered at his bedside whenever he fell ill, 597 00:42:24,550 --> 00:42:28,020 took him twice each Sunday to the 19th street baptist church, 598 00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:32,960 and saw to it that he took regular piano lessons. 599 00:42:33,100 --> 00:42:34,400 M. Ellington: My grandfather must have exhibited 600 00:42:34,630 --> 00:42:37,030 some abnormal quality from the very beginning 601 00:42:37,270 --> 00:42:39,000 to his mother and his father, 602 00:42:39,140 --> 00:42:40,200 and I think his mother was 603 00:42:40,340 --> 00:42:42,940 really listening, and she 604 00:42:43,070 --> 00:42:44,310 recognized that there was 605 00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:47,780 something different about him. 606 00:42:47,910 --> 00:42:51,450 And she was going to give him every opportunity 607 00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:54,050 to use this difference 608 00:42:54,180 --> 00:42:56,250 and to take advantage of it. 609 00:42:56,390 --> 00:42:58,890 My mother used to buy sheet music 610 00:42:59,020 --> 00:43:00,090 and play it on the piano, 611 00:43:01,590 --> 00:43:03,560 and I'll always remember her playing Meditations. 612 00:43:03,590 --> 00:43:05,630 it used to make me cry. 613 00:43:05,860 --> 00:43:10,530 That's a picture of my mother over there on that wall. 614 00:43:10,670 --> 00:43:15,840 This was taken after she moved to New York. 615 00:43:15,970 --> 00:43:19,840 Narrator: Daisy told her son he must allow nothing to stop him. 616 00:43:19,980 --> 00:43:22,580 Unpleasant facts and potential barriers 617 00:43:22,610 --> 00:43:25,310 were simply to be ignored. 618 00:43:25,450 --> 00:43:28,850 He could do anything anyone else could do. 619 00:43:28,990 --> 00:43:30,990 And because shebelieved that, 620 00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:37,630 Ellington would always believe it, too. 621 00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,090 His 8th-grade teacher at William Lloyd Garrison junior high school 622 00:43:41,430 --> 00:43:45,130 emphasized proper speech and good manners. 623 00:43:45,170 --> 00:43:47,800 "As representatives of the negro race, 624 00:43:47,940 --> 00:43:51,470 we were to command respect for our people," Ellington remembered. 625 00:43:51,610 --> 00:43:56,680 "They had race pride there, the greatest race pride." 626 00:43:56,810 --> 00:44:00,020 It really had a great deal to do with racial prejudice, 627 00:44:00,150 --> 00:44:01,550 these manners you were taught. 628 00:44:01,690 --> 00:44:05,690 You would be taught--you... 629 00:44:05,820 --> 00:44:06,850 Your manners, your sense of 630 00:44:07,790 --> 00:44:09,520 what you are capable of 631 00:44:09,660 --> 00:44:12,930 will carry you past these slights and insults. 632 00:44:13,060 --> 00:44:14,660 Always carry yourself as if you're above them, 633 00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:17,530 because, in fact, you are. 634 00:44:17,670 --> 00:44:19,700 He had that sense of himself right from the beginning, 635 00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:21,300 and if he hadn't had that sense, 636 00:44:22,270 --> 00:44:23,170 he would never have been able 637 00:44:23,310 --> 00:44:24,310 to accomplish what he did, 638 00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:26,810 because he had to push through 639 00:44:26,940 --> 00:44:29,080 so many obstacles, 640 00:44:29,210 --> 00:44:31,050 and he had to learn so much himself 641 00:44:31,180 --> 00:44:33,780 in order to do what he did. 642 00:44:33,820 --> 00:44:36,420 And in the end, he left us with this enormous body 643 00:44:36,550 --> 00:44:39,150 of absolutely superb music. 644 00:44:39,290 --> 00:44:42,520 [Gladysplaying] 645 00:44:42,660 --> 00:44:48,330 Narrator: Ellington was getting another kind of education as well. 646 00:44:48,470 --> 00:44:51,100 He may have been brought up in a respectable middle-class family, 647 00:44:51,230 --> 00:44:54,240 but at 14, he secretly began visiting 648 00:44:54,370 --> 00:44:58,240 frank holiday's pool room at 7th and t streets-- 649 00:44:58,370 --> 00:45:06,480 and slipping into the gayety burlesque theater after school. 650 00:45:06,620 --> 00:45:13,320 Ragtime piano players became his heroes. 651 00:45:13,460 --> 00:45:16,260 Ellington spent hours leaning over the piano 652 00:45:16,390 --> 00:45:21,400 with "both my ears 20 feet high," he said. 653 00:45:21,530 --> 00:45:23,770 He loved playing the piano 654 00:45:23,900 --> 00:45:26,670 because girls seemed to be attracted to piano players 655 00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:31,070 and Hewas attracted to girls. 656 00:45:31,110 --> 00:45:33,670 Ellington began to dress with such precocious elegance 657 00:45:33,810 --> 00:45:35,610 that friends and family alike 658 00:45:35,750 --> 00:45:38,650 started to call him "the Duke." 659 00:45:39,780 --> 00:45:43,420 And he also began to compose his own music. 660 00:45:43,550 --> 00:45:48,020 His first piece was called Soda fountain rag. 661 00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:49,290 the soda fountain rag? 662 00:45:49,430 --> 00:46:06,810 sure. 663 00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:22,190 I can't play it anymore, it's too hard. 664 00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:26,230 [Soda fountain r Aplaying] 665 00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:28,430 Narrator: Soon, he dropped out of school 666 00:46:28,570 --> 00:46:33,570 and formed his own group, the Duke's serenaders. 667 00:46:33,700 --> 00:46:35,670 Whenever he was scheduled to appear in a club or dance hall, 668 00:46:37,240 --> 00:46:40,510 he sent a friend ahead to open the door and announce, 669 00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:44,850 "get out of the way, 'cause here comes the Duke!" 670 00:46:44,980 --> 00:46:47,620 His elegance-- and eager salesmanship-- 671 00:46:47,750 --> 00:46:50,920 got him jobs playing ragtime and sweet dance music 672 00:46:51,050 --> 00:46:53,860 at country clubs, embassy dances, 673 00:46:53,990 --> 00:46:59,030 and white Washington's most elegant parties. 674 00:46:59,060 --> 00:47:02,030 From the first, Duke Ellington seemed able to move effortlessly 675 00:47:02,270 --> 00:47:04,870 among the city's many worlds-- 676 00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:06,900 rich and poor, black and white, 677 00:47:07,770 --> 00:47:12,610 and all shades in between. 678 00:47:12,740 --> 00:47:16,610 M. Ellington: Age, nationality, race, types of music-- 679 00:47:16,750 --> 00:47:18,710 anything that had a label, 680 00:47:18,850 --> 00:47:20,750 he did not want to have anything to do with. 681 00:47:21,850 --> 00:47:25,620 If he were to compliment someone, 682 00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:28,790 the best thing he could say about them was that they were beyond category. 683 00:47:28,930 --> 00:47:31,430 Categories to him were something to be ignored, 684 00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:32,730 completely ignored. 685 00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:39,270 [I'm coming virginiaPlaying] 686 00:47:39,500 --> 00:47:42,570 Narrator: In January 1923, Duke Ellington, 687 00:47:42,710 --> 00:47:45,670 married now and with an infant son, 688 00:47:45,810 --> 00:47:49,180 paid his way into the segregated section of the Howard theater 689 00:47:49,310 --> 00:47:54,620 to hear the New Orleans master Sidney bechet. 690 00:47:54,750 --> 00:47:58,690 Ellington never forgot what he heard that night. 691 00:47:58,820 --> 00:48:00,620 It was "all soul," he said. 692 00:48:00,660 --> 00:48:04,760 "All from the inside." 693 00:48:06,260 --> 00:48:10,970 Bechet seemed to be "calling somebody," whatever he played. 694 00:48:11,100 --> 00:48:14,600 "It was my first encounter with the New Orleans idiom," Ellington remembered. 695 00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:20,410 "It was a completely new sound and conception to me." 696 00:48:20,540 --> 00:48:23,240 As the fervor of the "jazz age" accelerated, 697 00:48:23,380 --> 00:48:26,480 Ellington's own career was beginning to take off. 698 00:48:26,620 --> 00:48:29,280 But he was frustrated playing the kind of music 699 00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:33,120 Washington society wanted to hear. 700 00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:34,520 He yearned for something more, 701 00:48:35,930 --> 00:48:38,590 knehe hadad something to say, 702 00:48:38,730 --> 00:48:46,070 began to look for new worlds to conquer. 703 00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:49,500 [Faint train whistle] 704 00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:52,170 Bowie: Louis Armstrong was one of my first idols, 705 00:48:52,310 --> 00:48:54,110 and I really idolized Louis, 706 00:48:54,240 --> 00:48:56,480 and I wanted to be like Louis. 707 00:48:56,610 --> 00:48:58,380 And I read this story of how 708 00:48:58,510 --> 00:49:00,310 king Oliver had called him up 709 00:49:00,450 --> 00:49:03,380 to come up to Chicago to play with him. 710 00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:05,920 So whenever I would practice, 711 00:49:06,060 --> 00:49:11,130 I would practice with my horn aimed out the window, 712 00:49:11,260 --> 00:49:13,230 in hopes that Louis would drive by and hear me, 713 00:49:14,500 --> 00:49:15,660 and hire me to come play with his band. 714 00:49:16,530 --> 00:49:18,700 And Louis never came by. 715 00:49:18,740 --> 00:49:21,070 [Jazzin' babies blue Playing] 716 00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:22,770 Narrator: On August 8, 1922, 717 00:49:24,570 --> 00:49:26,470 Louis Armstrong boarded the Illinois central at New Orleans, 718 00:49:26,610 --> 00:49:29,840 bound for Chicago. 719 00:49:29,980 --> 00:49:34,050 He was 21 years old, separated from his wife, 720 00:49:34,180 --> 00:49:40,320 and finally going to join his idol, king Oliver. 721 00:49:40,460 --> 00:49:41,290 Giddins: The only person who could have brought him out of New Orleans 722 00:49:41,420 --> 00:49:42,560 was king Oliver. 723 00:49:43,860 --> 00:49:45,860 So when he got the telegram from Oliver: 724 00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:49,130 "Join me at the Lincoln gardens in Chicago," 725 00:49:49,270 --> 00:49:50,900 his mom packed him a trout sandwich, 726 00:49:51,030 --> 00:49:53,700 he got on the train, and he was gone. 727 00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:56,400 Narrator: He carried only his cornet case 728 00:49:56,640 --> 00:50:02,280 and an old valise that held his patched, threadbare tuxedo. 729 00:50:02,410 --> 00:50:06,210 His mother, mayann, made sure that he was wearing long underwear. 730 00:50:06,350 --> 00:50:08,220 She had heard that where He Was going, 731 00:50:08,350 --> 00:50:13,650 even in midsummer, it was cold. 732 00:50:13,790 --> 00:50:16,560 Armstrong was joining an exodus of African-Americans 733 00:50:16,690 --> 00:50:18,560 in flight from the suffocating poverty 734 00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:21,000 and repressive Jim crow laws 735 00:50:21,130 --> 00:50:24,570 that continued to grip the deep south. 736 00:50:24,700 --> 00:50:25,700 Since the beginning of world war I, 737 00:50:26,970 --> 00:50:29,000 hundreds of thousands of men and women 738 00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:31,270 had boarded trains and headed north 739 00:50:31,410 --> 00:50:34,880 in search of jobs and freedom. 740 00:50:35,010 --> 00:50:37,480 It was called "the great migration," 741 00:50:37,610 --> 00:50:41,420 and most rail lines led to Chicago. 742 00:50:42,690 --> 00:50:44,590 Terkel: Chicago, to many black people, 743 00:50:44,620 --> 00:50:48,090 especially following world war I, early twenties, 744 00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:50,560 it was the place to go. 745 00:50:50,690 --> 00:50:51,790 People in the fields would hear the whistle 746 00:50:53,030 --> 00:50:54,160 of that Illinois central, going 747 00:50:54,300 --> 00:50:56,700 from New Orleans to Chicago. 748 00:50:56,830 --> 00:51:00,230 Chicago! That where it is! 749 00:51:00,370 --> 00:51:04,640 Chicago, where the work is-- the stockyards, the steel mills, 750 00:51:04,670 --> 00:51:07,280 the farm equipment, the heavy industry. 751 00:51:07,410 --> 00:51:10,010 Sandburg's poem may have been corny, but true. 752 00:51:10,150 --> 00:51:12,450 Chicago--"hog butcher for the world"-- 753 00:51:12,580 --> 00:51:14,880 there was jobs at the stockyards. 754 00:51:15,020 --> 00:51:18,350 "Stacker of wheat," "center of nation's railroads," 755 00:51:18,490 --> 00:51:20,290 a thousand passenger trains each day passing through Chicago. 756 00:51:21,720 --> 00:51:23,720 Pullman car porters, of course, and chefs, 757 00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:25,160 and working the tracks, 758 00:51:25,290 --> 00:51:28,660 and of course, the steel mills. 759 00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:31,570 Chicago was the place where you could get a job possibly, 760 00:51:31,700 --> 00:51:36,070 but life would be Different. 761 00:51:36,210 --> 00:51:38,670 narrator: It seemed to an anxious Louis Armstrong 762 00:51:38,810 --> 00:51:40,440 that he had never been so far from home before, 763 00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:42,940 and when he stepped down at 12th street station, 764 00:51:44,150 --> 00:51:46,250 and no one was there to meet him, 765 00:51:46,380 --> 00:51:51,190 he asked himself if he had made a mistake leaving New Orleans. 766 00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:54,190 The tall buildings intimidated him; 767 00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:59,090 he remembered wondering if they were all "universities." 768 00:51:59,230 --> 00:52:00,630 Giddins: Now he gets to Chicago, 769 00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:02,760 and he gets off the train, 770 00:52:02,900 --> 00:52:04,530 and everybody's like giggling when they see him 771 00:52:04,670 --> 00:52:06,430 because he looks like an undertaker. 772 00:52:06,570 --> 00:52:09,970 He's wearing a box-back black coat, a suit, 773 00:52:10,210 --> 00:52:10,870 and his hair is kind of combed in the front 774 00:52:12,310 --> 00:52:14,240 and he really doesn't understand city ways yet. 775 00:52:14,380 --> 00:52:15,480 It took him about two minutes to become the king of the city, 776 00:52:16,410 --> 00:52:18,480 but that's another story. 777 00:52:18,620 --> 00:52:22,380 [Just go Playing] 778 00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:26,920 Narrator: He asked a redcap how he might find Joe Oliver. 779 00:52:27,160 --> 00:52:30,820 The man, who had been told by Oliver to look out for Armstrong, 780 00:52:30,960 --> 00:52:32,690 put him in a taxi and sent him along to the Lincoln gardens, 781 00:52:34,130 --> 00:52:36,730 an ornate dance hall at 31st and cottage grove, 782 00:52:36,870 --> 00:52:39,570 in the heart of the south side-- 783 00:52:39,700 --> 00:52:42,170 the lively, sprawling neighborhood 784 00:52:42,310 --> 00:52:48,040 where thousands of black newcomers from the south had settled. 785 00:52:48,180 --> 00:52:50,210 When he got to the Lincoln gardens 786 00:52:50,350 --> 00:52:53,110 and heard the music drifting out onto the street, 787 00:52:53,250 --> 00:52:56,650 he went in and said to himself, 788 00:52:56,790 --> 00:52:58,390 "no, I ain't supposed to be in this band. 789 00:52:58,520 --> 00:53:00,450 They're too good." 790 00:53:01,490 --> 00:53:05,060 But then, Oliver spotted him. 791 00:53:05,290 --> 00:53:08,730 "You little fool," he said. "Come on in here." 792 00:53:08,860 --> 00:53:12,330 "I was home," Armstrong remembered. 793 00:53:12,470 --> 00:53:16,270 Joe Oliver's band would remain Armstrong's home-- 794 00:53:16,410 --> 00:53:18,870 his training ground and His"university"-- 795 00:53:19,010 --> 00:53:25,480 for two years. 796 00:53:25,620 --> 00:53:33,420 With Armstrong in the group, king Oliver's creole jazz band never sounded better. 797 00:53:33,460 --> 00:53:35,960 The two men perfected a duet style 798 00:53:35,990 --> 00:53:38,390 by which Armstrong seemed instinctively to know 799 00:53:38,530 --> 00:53:41,260 just what his boss was about to play, 800 00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:46,070 and was always ready with the perfect complement to it. 801 00:53:46,200 --> 00:53:51,040 Nothing like it had ever been heard in Chicago before. 802 00:53:51,270 --> 00:53:51,870 Armstrong: The word had spread around: 803 00:53:53,310 --> 00:53:56,540 Joe Oliver got a little second cornet player, 804 00:53:56,680 --> 00:53:58,710 and they making breaks together 805 00:53:58,850 --> 00:54:02,550 and doing a lot of things together--you got to hear him. 806 00:54:02,690 --> 00:54:05,550 I listened to Joe Oliver, and I learned the way he played, 807 00:54:05,690 --> 00:54:07,320 and I practically know everything he played, 808 00:54:07,460 --> 00:54:09,860 so I put notes to it. 809 00:54:09,990 --> 00:54:12,930 Surprised him, how I could make duets to whatever... 810 00:54:13,060 --> 00:54:15,830 [Scats] 811 00:54:15,870 --> 00:54:18,370 I'll make a duet to that! 812 00:54:18,500 --> 00:54:20,430 And all the musicians thought that was great, 813 00:54:20,570 --> 00:54:22,800 and they tried it and everything, 814 00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:25,470 but they didn't concentrate like we did. 815 00:54:25,510 --> 00:54:27,470 They couldn't do it unless they wrote it down. 816 00:54:28,910 --> 00:54:32,280 But we didn't write anything, never did write it down. 817 00:54:32,420 --> 00:54:34,850 Narrator: News of what Oliver and Armstrong were doing at the Lincoln gardens 818 00:54:34,980 --> 00:54:37,450 spread all across the city, 819 00:54:37,590 --> 00:54:40,720 and soon, a few white listeners came to hear them, as well. 820 00:54:40,860 --> 00:54:45,760 [Snake r Playing] 821 00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:48,700 Man: As the door opened, the trumpets-- 822 00:54:48,930 --> 00:54:50,770 king and Louis, one or both-- 823 00:54:50,900 --> 00:54:54,500 soared above everything else. 824 00:54:54,540 --> 00:54:57,940 The whole joint was rocking. 825 00:54:58,070 --> 00:55:04,750 Tables, chairs, walls, people moved with the rhythm. 826 00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:09,180 It was hypnosis at first hearing. 827 00:55:09,220 --> 00:55:11,150 Armstrong seemed able to hear what Oliver was improvising 828 00:55:12,490 --> 00:55:17,060 and reproduce it himself at the same time. 829 00:55:17,090 --> 00:55:18,860 Then the two wove around each other, 830 00:55:18,990 --> 00:55:23,160 like suspicious women talking about the same man. 831 00:55:23,200 --> 00:55:29,240 Eddie condon. 832 00:55:29,270 --> 00:55:31,170 Narrator: One dazzled young musician remembered 833 00:55:31,310 --> 00:55:33,710 there was so much music in the air 834 00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:36,910 that if you held up a horn, it would play by itself. 835 00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:44,050 [Snake r Continues] 836 00:55:44,190 --> 00:55:47,760 On April 5, 1923, 837 00:55:47,990 --> 00:55:50,990 king Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and the creole jazz band 838 00:55:52,600 --> 00:55:55,200 took the train from Chicago to Richmond, Indiana, 839 00:55:55,330 --> 00:55:59,230 home of gennett records. 840 00:55:59,370 --> 00:56:01,670 Richmond was not especially friendly territory for jazz-- 841 00:56:01,900 --> 00:56:04,610 or black Americans. 842 00:56:04,740 --> 00:56:09,140 Much of Indiana was controlled by the ku klux klan. 843 00:56:09,180 --> 00:56:14,580 But now, Louis Armstrong was about to be recorded for the first time. 844 00:56:14,820 --> 00:56:16,280 Giddins: So they go into the recording studio, 845 00:56:16,420 --> 00:56:17,080 and the first thing that they notice-- 846 00:56:18,690 --> 00:56:21,990 this is one of the great mythological tales of early jazz-- 847 00:56:23,190 --> 00:56:27,430 is that--the band is used to record around a horn, 848 00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:32,670 and then you would cut the sound into a wax disk. 849 00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:33,100 They couldn't work with Armstrong standing around the horn 850 00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:36,540 because he overpowered everybody else in the band, 851 00:56:36,670 --> 00:56:39,440 so he had to stand 10, 15 feet behind the rest-- 852 00:56:39,580 --> 00:56:41,510 they had to open the door and have him in the hallway 853 00:56:41,740 --> 00:56:45,410 so that his sound would be balanced against the other musicians. 854 00:56:45,550 --> 00:56:47,820 They make a record--and I think this is unquestionably 855 00:56:47,950 --> 00:56:50,680 a landmark moment in the history of jazz-- 856 00:56:50,720 --> 00:56:52,950 called Chimes blues. 857 00:56:53,090 --> 00:57:04,270 [chimes bluePlaying] 858 00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:08,200 Armstrong is assigned, as his first solo, the trio strain. 859 00:57:09,170 --> 00:57:10,540 He's not required, or asked, 860 00:57:12,010 --> 00:57:14,370 nor do they desire him to improvise a single note. 861 00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:19,150 But he plays this trio strain with such bravura, 862 00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:21,850 and such rhythmic intensity, 863 00:57:22,080 --> 00:57:25,020 that when you listen to it, you hear the future. 864 00:57:26,520 --> 00:57:29,020 It's more intense and exciting than all the improvisation 865 00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:31,320 that the entire ensemble is doing around him. 866 00:57:31,460 --> 00:57:35,660 And that Might, That holy sound that he has, 867 00:57:35,800 --> 00:57:38,730 at that moment, you know that something is in the works, 868 00:57:38,870 --> 00:57:41,540 and it's never going to be contained. 869 00:57:41,570 --> 00:57:45,110 And it's only two years later that he finally goes into the studio under his own steam 870 00:57:45,240 --> 00:57:49,580 and virtually codifies what jazz is going to be for the next half-century. 871 00:57:49,810 --> 00:58:08,600 [Chimes belPlaying,ng, Armstrong trumpet solo] 872 00:58:12,600 --> 00:58:31,750 [Trumpet solo continues] 873 00:58:42,730 --> 00:58:45,630 Collier: And I think what you finally have out of this 874 00:58:45,670 --> 00:58:48,870 is what musicians call "telling your story." 875 00:58:49,010 --> 00:58:50,670 You're supposed to tell a story. 876 00:58:50,810 --> 00:58:52,610 You're supposed to be saying something personal, 877 00:58:52,740 --> 00:58:54,570 and this is what you have with Louis, 878 00:58:54,710 --> 00:58:58,910 this quality of...A human being standing there talking to you 879 00:58:59,050 --> 00:59:03,780 and telling you a really coherent and fascinating story. 880 00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:07,720 That, I think, is the essence of Armstrong's genius. 881 00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:10,060 When the word first traveled about Louis Armstrong-- 882 00:59:10,190 --> 00:59:12,590 man, there's this trumpet player you have to hear, 883 00:59:12,630 --> 00:59:13,830 he's from New Orleans and nobody can believe it, 884 00:59:14,060 --> 00:59:14,560 I heard him on the riverboat. 885 00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:17,300 You heard him on the riverboat? 886 00:59:17,530 --> 00:59:19,200 Oh, it's unbelievable, the sound and such and such. 887 00:59:19,330 --> 00:59:21,640 Now he's in Chicago. 888 00:59:21,870 --> 00:59:23,640 But now when those records started to come out, 889 00:59:23,770 --> 00:59:24,970 well, then the rest of it is history. 890 00:59:26,310 --> 00:59:30,840 You could hear it-- everybody heard it. 891 00:59:30,980 --> 00:59:32,650 [Keep off the grassPlaying] 892 00:59:32,780 --> 00:59:36,350 Woman: Chicago, January 21: 893 00:59:36,590 --> 00:59:40,690 Moral disaster is coming to hundreds of young American girls 894 00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:44,330 through the pathological, nerve-irritating, sex-exciting music 895 00:59:44,460 --> 00:59:46,460 of jazz orchestras, 896 00:59:46,600 --> 00:59:51,300 according to the Illinois vigilance association. 897 00:59:51,430 --> 00:59:55,300 In Chicago alone, the association's representatives 898 00:59:55,440 --> 00:59:58,470 have traced the fall of 1,000 girls in the last two years 899 00:59:59,240 --> 01:00:01,510 to jazz music. 900 01:00:01,740 --> 01:00:05,510 New york American. 901 01:00:05,550 --> 01:00:08,050 not that the early recordings captured jazz real well, 902 01:00:08,080 --> 01:00:09,750 but it spread jazz. 903 01:00:09,890 --> 01:00:11,080 And people learned from the 904 01:00:11,320 --> 01:00:12,620 recordings, more people were 905 01:00:12,750 --> 01:00:14,190 able to hear this music. 906 01:00:14,220 --> 01:00:15,720 You weren't just-- 907 01:00:15,860 --> 01:00:17,290 and this made jazz seem that much more 908 01:00:17,430 --> 01:00:19,230 like a virus or a disease, 909 01:00:19,360 --> 01:00:21,830 which is what the people who hated jazz said. 910 01:00:21,960 --> 01:00:38,910 You know, "this is a disease, it's coming at us, infecting the country." 911 01:00:39,050 --> 01:00:56,100 [The one I love belongs To someone elsPlaying]G 912 01:00:57,600 --> 01:00:59,530 man: If you ride northward the length of Manhattan island, 913 01:01:01,040 --> 01:01:03,570 going through central park and coming out on seventh Avenue 914 01:01:03,710 --> 01:01:08,040 or lenox Avenue at 110th street, 915 01:01:08,180 --> 01:01:11,240 you cannot escape being struck by the sudden change 916 01:01:11,380 --> 01:01:22,990 in the character of the pple you see. 917 01:01:23,230 --> 01:01:25,430 In the middle and lower parts of the city, you have, perhaps, 918 01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:28,560 noted negro faces here and there. 919 01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:31,600 But when you emerge from the park, 920 01:01:31,830 --> 01:01:40,770 you see them everywhere. 921 01:01:40,910 --> 01:01:44,680 And as you go up either of these two great arteries leading out from the north, 922 01:01:44,910 --> 01:01:46,980 you see more and more negroes, 923 01:01:47,020 --> 01:01:48,110 walking in the streets, looking from the windows, 924 01:01:49,650 --> 01:01:52,150 trading in the shops, eating in the restaurants, 925 01:01:52,190 --> 01:01:54,250 going in and coming out of the theaters, 926 01:01:54,490 --> 01:01:58,020 until, nearing 135th street, 927 01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:00,760 90% of the people you see, 928 01:02:00,800 --> 01:02:07,100 including the traffic officers, are negroes. 929 01:02:07,240 --> 01:02:10,170 You have been having a glimpse of Harlem, 930 01:02:10,310 --> 01:02:13,540 the negro Metropolis. 931 01:02:13,680 --> 01:02:20,210 James weldon Johnson. 932 01:02:20,450 --> 01:02:23,480 Narrator: The real migration for African Americans continued, 933 01:02:23,620 --> 01:02:27,620 and by 1920, New York was home to more blacks 934 01:02:27,760 --> 01:02:32,260 than any other northern city, including Chicago. 935 01:02:32,400 --> 01:02:35,530 Most of them lived uptown, 936 01:02:35,560 --> 01:02:41,970 in a particularly beautiful old neighborhood called Harlem. 937 01:02:42,200 --> 01:02:46,570 It was the home of the national association for the advancement of colored people. 938 01:02:46,710 --> 01:02:50,240 The urban league had its headquarters in Harlem. 939 01:02:50,380 --> 01:02:55,550 So did Marcus garvey's universal negro improvement association. 940 01:02:55,680 --> 01:02:58,720 The writer James weldon Johnson, 941 01:02:58,850 --> 01:03:01,560 the poet Langston Hughes, 942 01:03:01,690 --> 01:03:05,260 the writer zora neale hurston, 943 01:03:05,390 --> 01:03:09,330 and the scholar and civil rights activist w.E.B. Dubois 944 01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:13,570 all lived in Harlem, as did many other artists 945 01:03:13,700 --> 01:03:18,740 eagerly examining what it meant to be black and American, 946 01:03:26,210 --> 01:03:29,650 Jazz musicians were drawn to Harlem, too. 947 01:03:29,880 --> 01:03:34,250 There were plenty of theater and nightclub and dance hall jobs-- 948 01:03:34,390 --> 01:03:43,400 and Broadway and the record companies were only a subway ride away. 949 01:03:43,530 --> 01:03:47,270 But to many middle class blacks, jazz was an embarrassment-- 950 01:03:47,400 --> 01:03:49,440 a vulgar, low-life music, 951 01:03:49,570 --> 01:03:55,610 unworthy of a race now committed to uplifting itself. 952 01:03:55,840 --> 01:03:57,240 But jazz could not be stopped. 953 01:03:58,450 --> 01:04:00,250 [Carolina shouPlaying] 954 01:04:01,420 --> 01:04:04,280 Man: Let the blare of negro jazz bands... 955 01:04:04,520 --> 01:04:08,620 Penetrate the closed ears of the colored, near-intellectuals 956 01:04:08,860 --> 01:04:12,630 until they listen and perhaps understand. 957 01:04:12,660 --> 01:04:16,100 Let them cause the smug negro middle class 958 01:04:16,130 --> 01:04:20,330 to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers, 959 01:04:20,470 --> 01:04:24,570 and catch a glimmer of their own beauty. 960 01:04:24,710 --> 01:04:27,670 We younger artists who create 961 01:04:27,810 --> 01:04:33,280 now intend to express our individual, dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. 962 01:04:33,410 --> 01:04:36,080 If white people are pleased, we are glad. 963 01:04:36,120 --> 01:04:39,590 If they are not, it doesn't matter. 964 01:04:39,720 --> 01:04:42,160 We know we are beautiful 965 01:04:42,290 --> 01:04:45,630 and ugly, too. 966 01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:50,560 The Tom-Tom cries and the Tom-Tom laughs. 967 01:04:50,700 --> 01:04:58,740 Langston Hughes. 968 01:04:58,870 --> 01:05:00,940 Narrator: The musical heroes of Harlem 969 01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:07,410 were the masters of a dazzling virtuoso piano style--stride. 970 01:05:09,050 --> 01:05:12,750 "It was Orchestr Al piano," one of its stars remembered, 971 01:05:12,890 --> 01:05:30,800 full, round, big, widespread chords moving against the right hand." 972 01:05:30,840 --> 01:05:34,770 Its practitioners called themselves "ticklers," 973 01:05:34,910 --> 01:05:36,940 but the nicknames they awarded one another-- 974 01:05:37,080 --> 01:05:41,750 "the bear," "the beetle," "the beast," "the brute"-- 975 01:05:41,880 --> 01:05:46,450 were warlike, befitting the perennial piano wars called "cutting contests" 976 01:05:46,590 --> 01:05:55,960 they waged among themselves. 977 01:05:56,100 --> 01:05:58,500 [The charlestoPlaying] 978 01:05:58,630 --> 01:06:02,000 James p. Johnson was the elder statesman, 979 01:06:02,140 --> 01:06:05,970 a composer and conductor as well as a pianist, 980 01:06:06,110 --> 01:06:08,910 who had made something altogether new out of ragtime. 981 01:06:10,680 --> 01:06:15,920 He had, in fact, written the tune that would define the jazz age, 982 01:06:16,050 --> 01:06:18,350 and his playing had helped inspire 983 01:06:18,490 --> 01:06:22,660 a young Duke Ellington to become a musician. 984 01:06:22,790 --> 01:06:26,790 Johnson was shy and soft-spoken most of the time, 985 01:06:26,930 --> 01:06:31,360 but he loved combat with other piano players so much, one of them remembered, 986 01:06:31,500 --> 01:06:34,900 that his wife would sometimes have to come to Harlem from queens 987 01:06:34,940 --> 01:06:39,310 "and go from street to street until she heard the piano, 988 01:06:39,440 --> 01:06:41,870 "recognized his style, and then go up to the apartment 989 01:06:44,610 --> 01:06:52,150 to get him out of there and take him home." 990 01:06:52,290 --> 01:06:52,890 [Finger bust Er 991 01:06:53,020 --> 01:06:54,450 playing] 992 01:06:54,590 --> 01:06:57,460 Johnson's greatest rival was his good friend 993 01:06:57,690 --> 01:07:00,760 William Henry Joseph Bonaparte bertholoff Smith-- 994 01:07:00,900 --> 01:07:02,530 Willie "the lion" Smith-- 995 01:07:04,000 --> 01:07:04,970 who sometimes said he had earned his nickname 996 01:07:06,330 --> 01:07:10,270 for bravery in battle during world war I, 997 01:07:10,410 --> 01:07:14,570 and at other times claimed he'd been named "the lion of judea" 998 01:07:14,710 --> 01:07:23,950 because of his devotion to judaism. 999 01:07:24,090 --> 01:07:28,390 Smith and Johnson customarily battled to a draw. 1000 01:07:28,520 --> 01:07:31,790 "It was never to the blood," a young piano player remembered. 1001 01:07:31,830 --> 01:07:34,630 "With those two giants, it was always a sporting event. 1002 01:07:35,560 --> 01:07:38,030 "Neither cut the other. 1003 01:07:38,170 --> 01:07:41,940 They had too much respect for that." 1004 01:07:42,070 --> 01:07:46,270 [Mule walk stomPlaying] 1005 01:07:46,410 --> 01:07:49,780 The two men were regulars at Harlem rent parties-- 1006 01:07:49,910 --> 01:07:53,110 all night dances held in crowded apartments, 1007 01:07:53,250 --> 01:08:00,320 where the cost of admission helped hold off the landlord. 1008 01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:02,720 Hughes: The Saturday night rent parties that I attended 1009 01:08:02,860 --> 01:08:07,130 were often more amusing than any nightclub, 1010 01:08:07,260 --> 01:08:09,300 in small apartments, where god knows who lived-- 1011 01:08:09,430 --> 01:08:12,900 because the guests seldom did-- 1012 01:08:13,030 --> 01:08:16,570 but where the piano would often be augmented by a guitar, 1013 01:08:16,700 --> 01:08:23,410 or an odd cornet, or somebody with a pair of drums walking in off the street. 1014 01:08:24,980 --> 01:08:29,520 And the dancing and singing and impromptu entertaining 1015 01:08:29,550 --> 01:08:33,290 went on until dawn came in at the windows. 1016 01:08:33,520 --> 01:08:41,130 Langston Hughes. 1017 01:08:41,360 --> 01:08:44,860 [Gut sto Playing] 1018 01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:49,400 Narrator: In early 1923, Duke Ellington, together with two old friends, 1019 01:08:49,440 --> 01:08:53,570 the drummer Sonny greer and the saxophonist Otto hardwicke, 1020 01:08:53,710 --> 01:08:57,980 moved to Harlem, anxious to see if they had what it took 1021 01:08:58,110 --> 01:09:05,250 to make it in the city jazz musicians would soon call the "big apple." 1022 01:09:05,390 --> 01:09:07,590 "Harlem, in our minds," Ellington remembered, 1023 01:09:07,620 --> 01:09:10,420 "had the world's most glamorous atmosphere. 1024 01:09:10,560 --> 01:09:15,690 We had to go there." 1025 01:09:15,830 --> 01:09:18,060 His first job in New York 1026 01:09:18,200 --> 01:09:22,640 was to accompany a vaudeville musician named wilbur sweatman, 1027 01:09:22,770 --> 01:09:30,080 who insisted that members of his band use powder to lighten their complexions. 1028 01:09:30,210 --> 01:09:33,480 When sweatman left town, Ellington and his friends scuffled for work, 1029 01:09:34,780 --> 01:09:36,880 sometimes hustling pool to feed themselves, 1030 01:09:38,250 --> 01:09:43,020 but always listening to the stride piano masters. 1031 01:09:43,160 --> 01:09:47,030 Willie "the lion" Smith took a shine to Ellington and his friends. 1032 01:09:47,260 --> 01:09:50,060 He steered Ellington toward pick-up jobs, 1033 01:09:50,200 --> 01:09:56,840 encouraged him to try his hand at cutting contests. 1034 01:09:56,970 --> 01:10:00,310 [Choo ch Playing] 1035 01:10:00,440 --> 01:10:06,210 In the fall of 1923, Duke Ellington, Sonny greer, and Otto hardwicke 1036 01:10:06,350 --> 01:10:08,950 moved downtown to play the Hollywood inn, 1037 01:10:10,320 --> 01:10:15,120 a cellar club just off Times Square. 1038 01:10:15,260 --> 01:10:19,390 They were now part of a 6-piece band called the washingtonians 1039 01:10:19,530 --> 01:10:24,430 that specialized in "sweet" dance music. 1040 01:10:24,470 --> 01:10:30,200 It was led by a banjo player and small-time impresario named Elmer snowden. 1041 01:10:30,340 --> 01:10:31,900 When the men discovered that snowden 1042 01:10:32,040 --> 01:10:35,210 was pocketing more than his share of the band's pay, 1043 01:10:35,440 --> 01:10:40,950 they forced him out and made Duke Ellington the new leader. 1044 01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:44,150 It was at the Hollywood inn, Ellington said, 1045 01:10:44,290 --> 01:10:51,360 "that our music acquired new colors and characteristics." 1046 01:10:51,390 --> 01:10:56,630 He was absorbing everything: The ragtime he'd heard as a boy in Washington, 1047 01:10:56,760 --> 01:11:00,370 the more sophisticated style of the Harlem stride masters, 1048 01:11:00,600 --> 01:11:03,300 and the looser, blues-drenched New Orleans sounds 1049 01:11:03,440 --> 01:11:07,870 of Sidney bechet and Louis Armstrong. 1050 01:11:08,010 --> 01:11:12,910 All of it would soon be reflected in his music. 1051 01:11:13,050 --> 01:11:15,720 W. Marsalis: In the beginning, he played society music. 1052 01:11:15,850 --> 01:11:26,930 Like he would say... 1053 01:11:26,960 --> 01:11:28,660 So, you know, he'd be playing along with that kind of vibrato, 1054 01:11:28,700 --> 01:11:30,430 and then he heard king Oliver's band, 1055 01:11:30,570 --> 01:11:46,250 and they were talking about... 1056 01:11:46,480 --> 01:11:49,280 So he said, "oh, ok, I want to do that. 1057 01:11:49,420 --> 01:11:51,180 "I want to hear that clarinet, I want to hear that trombone 1058 01:11:51,320 --> 01:11:52,750 "I want that rhythm and that beat, the big four, 1059 01:11:52,890 --> 01:11:56,660 bum, be bum bum, be bum bum bum." 1060 01:11:56,790 --> 01:12:01,790 So, he started looking around for musicians who had that sound. 1061 01:12:01,930 --> 01:12:02,930 Narrator: The most important addition to the band 1062 01:12:04,870 --> 01:12:09,500 was a young trumpeter from south Carolina, a disciple of king Oliver, 1063 01:12:09,640 --> 01:12:14,310 who carried Oliver's muted effects to new and startling heights. 1064 01:12:14,440 --> 01:12:17,610 His name was James "bubber" Miley. 1065 01:12:17,650 --> 01:12:25,280 [Red hot banPlaying] 1066 01:12:25,420 --> 01:12:27,790 "He used to growl all night long, 1067 01:12:27,920 --> 01:12:31,860 "playing gutbucket on his horn," Ellington said. 1068 01:12:32,090 --> 01:12:35,700 "That was when we decided to forget all about the sweet music." 1069 01:12:35,830 --> 01:12:37,360 And Duke said we just threw 1070 01:12:37,500 --> 01:12:39,830 all that polite music 1071 01:12:39,970 --> 01:12:41,000 out the window, 1072 01:12:41,040 --> 01:12:42,540 and we went for the hot stuff, 1073 01:12:42,670 --> 01:12:46,610 and the whole band changed when bubber came in. 1074 01:12:46,840 --> 01:12:53,180 Narrator: The band would stay at the Hollywood inn for 4 years. 1075 01:12:53,310 --> 01:12:56,850 Collier: The Hollywood inn was a terrible place to play. 1076 01:12:56,980 --> 01:12:58,650 One of the things that you have to remember of course, 1077 01:12:58,790 --> 01:13:01,850 there was no air conditioning in those days. 1078 01:13:01,990 --> 01:13:04,790 So a place like that in the summer would be absolutely unbearable, 1079 01:13:05,030 --> 01:13:05,890 and they had to close it in the summer 1080 01:13:07,130 --> 01:13:09,160 because there was no way anybody could stand it. 1081 01:13:09,400 --> 01:13:12,370 Well, what they would do was sort of every Memorial Day, 1082 01:13:12,500 --> 01:13:14,630 the gangsters who owned the place would torch it, 1083 01:13:14,770 --> 01:13:15,940 shut it down, collect the insurance, 1084 01:13:16,070 --> 01:13:18,400 and open it up again in the fall. 1085 01:13:18,440 --> 01:13:21,010 And they got to the point where they would tell the guys in the band, 1086 01:13:21,040 --> 01:13:24,440 they'd say, "say, Sonny," to Sonny greer, the drummer, 1087 01:13:24,480 --> 01:13:26,110 "think you'd better take your drums home tonight." 1088 01:13:26,150 --> 01:13:28,650 And the guys would clear out their instruments, 1089 01:13:28,780 --> 01:13:30,150 and the next day the thing would be in flames, 1090 01:13:30,280 --> 01:13:32,550 and that was the kind of joint. 1091 01:13:32,790 --> 01:13:34,720 It was a rough club, it was a very rough club, 1092 01:13:34,860 --> 01:13:39,230 even though it was right in the heart of glamorous Times Square. 1093 01:13:39,260 --> 01:13:42,030 Narrator: After one of its strategically timed fires, 1094 01:13:42,160 --> 01:13:45,300 the Hollywood inn closed briefly, 1095 01:13:45,430 --> 01:13:47,300 then reopened as the club Kentucky, 1096 01:13:48,700 --> 01:13:59,350 featuring the new, hot sound of Duke Ellington. 1097 01:13:59,480 --> 01:14:03,720 Billboar Dif anybody can tell us where a hotter aggregation 1098 01:14:03,850 --> 01:14:06,920 than Duke Ellington and his club Kentucky serenaders can be found, 1099 01:14:06,950 --> 01:14:10,520 we'll buy for the mob. 1100 01:14:10,660 --> 01:14:14,030 Possessing a sense of rhythm that is almost uncanny, 1101 01:14:14,160 --> 01:14:17,400 the boys in this dusky organization dispense a type of melody 1102 01:14:17,430 --> 01:14:23,340 that stamps the outfit as the most torrid in town. 1103 01:14:23,470 --> 01:14:25,300 Crouch: He drew from everything that was happening. 1104 01:14:25,440 --> 01:14:27,540 From the movies, from Broadway, 1105 01:14:27,680 --> 01:14:28,510 from religious music, 1106 01:14:29,310 --> 01:14:31,780 from the blues, 1107 01:14:31,910 --> 01:14:33,150 from Louis Armstrong, from king Oliver, 1108 01:14:34,950 --> 01:14:38,080 from jelly roll Morton, from the competition with other bands. 1109 01:14:38,220 --> 01:14:39,650 You know, like somebody coming with a little something, 1110 01:14:39,790 --> 01:14:41,620 he'd hear over and he'd say, "oh, that'll be good. 1111 01:14:41,660 --> 01:14:44,460 I'll take that, put it over here and turn it into this." 1112 01:14:44,590 --> 01:14:46,730 And then, somebody would hear his version and they'd say, 1113 01:14:46,860 --> 01:14:50,700 "hah! Well, I'll take that back, and I'll turn into this!" 1114 01:14:50,930 --> 01:14:53,230 Then he'd say, "oh. Well, that's not a bad idea, and I'll take that." 1115 01:14:53,470 --> 01:14:57,440 And so that was going on, too. 1116 01:14:57,570 --> 01:15:03,210 Narrator: By 1924, Duke Ellington was making a name for himself in New York. 1117 01:15:03,340 --> 01:15:05,740 He had begun to record and managed to sell some of his tunes 1118 01:15:06,850 --> 01:15:10,780 to the song publishers of tin pan alley. 1119 01:15:10,920 --> 01:15:12,820 But he was still not satisfied. 1120 01:15:14,460 --> 01:15:18,290 And he confessed his unhappiness to his friend will Marion cook, 1121 01:15:18,430 --> 01:15:21,990 a classically-trained conductor and Broadway composer. 1122 01:15:22,130 --> 01:15:25,500 [The moo Playing] 1123 01:15:25,630 --> 01:15:28,200 During long taxi rides through central park, 1124 01:15:28,340 --> 01:15:33,310 the two men talked about music. 1125 01:15:33,340 --> 01:15:38,710 Cook urged Ellington to get formal training at a conservatory. 1126 01:15:38,850 --> 01:15:42,710 Ellington didn't feel he had time for that: 1127 01:15:42,850 --> 01:15:47,090 "They're not teaching what I want to learn," he said. 1128 01:15:47,120 --> 01:15:50,620 In that case, cook told him, "first, find the logical way, 1129 01:15:50,760 --> 01:15:54,190 "and when you find it, avoid it, 1130 01:15:54,330 --> 01:15:58,200 "and let your inner self break through and guide you. 1131 01:15:58,330 --> 01:16:02,640 Don't try to be anybody but yourself." 1132 01:16:02,770 --> 01:16:08,940 It was advice Duke Ellington would follow all his life. 1133 01:16:09,080 --> 01:16:12,310 W. Marsalis: Duke Ellington knew how to take what could be and make it what is. 1134 01:16:14,080 --> 01:16:23,760 He understood what it took to make something invisible visible. 1135 01:16:23,890 --> 01:16:25,390 The greatest practitioners of this music 1136 01:16:25,530 --> 01:16:27,630 have been African-American. 1137 01:16:27,760 --> 01:16:29,860 It comes from a particular kind 1138 01:16:30,000 --> 01:16:31,530 of African-American experience with democracy, 1139 01:16:31,670 --> 01:16:33,170 with america, with capitalist society, 1140 01:16:33,300 --> 01:16:35,400 with a whole bunch of other stuff. 1141 01:16:35,540 --> 01:16:37,340 But, it captured something about 1142 01:16:37,470 --> 01:16:41,640 this culture and this society and this life 1143 01:16:41,780 --> 01:16:43,680 that as soon as other people heard it, said, 1144 01:16:44,550 --> 01:16:51,650 "yeah!, that's me." 1145 01:16:53,720 --> 01:16:58,760 Man: Austin, Illinois, was a well-to-do suburb where all the days were sabbaths, 1146 01:16:58,990 --> 01:17:02,890 a sleepy-time neighborhood big as a yawn and just about as lively, 1147 01:17:03,030 --> 01:17:05,430 loaded with shade trees, clipped lawns, 1148 01:17:05,570 --> 01:17:08,100 and a groggy-eyed population 1149 01:17:08,240 --> 01:17:12,440 that never came out of its coma except to turn over. 1150 01:17:12,570 --> 01:17:14,240 Mezz mezzrow. 1151 01:17:14,380 --> 01:17:18,110 [Farewell bluePlaying] 1152 01:17:18,250 --> 01:17:20,380 Narrator: Far from the Lincoln gardens, 1153 01:17:20,620 --> 01:17:24,680 where Louis Armstrong and Joe Oliver were holding forth, 1154 01:17:24,820 --> 01:17:28,790 a group of high school boys in the prosperous Chicago neighborhood of Austin 1155 01:17:28,820 --> 01:17:33,660 got together every day after school in the spring of 1923 1156 01:17:33,790 --> 01:17:39,270 to listen to jazz in an ice cream parlor called the spoon and straw. 1157 01:17:39,400 --> 01:17:41,170 Man: It was just an ice cream parlor. 1158 01:17:41,300 --> 01:17:43,340 But they had a victrola there, 1159 01:17:43,470 --> 01:17:46,970 and we used to sit around listening to records. 1160 01:17:47,110 --> 01:17:49,510 One day, we put on some new records 1161 01:17:49,640 --> 01:17:51,680 by the New Orleans rhythm kings. 1162 01:17:51,910 --> 01:17:53,980 Boy, when we heard that, I'll tell you, 1163 01:17:54,120 --> 01:17:59,490 we were out of our minds. It was wonderful. 1164 01:17:59,720 --> 01:18:02,120 We stayed there from about 3:00 in the afternoon until 8:00 at night, 1165 01:18:02,360 --> 01:18:05,360 just listening to those records. 1166 01:18:05,490 --> 01:18:09,430 And we decided we would get a band and try to play like these guys. 1167 01:18:09,560 --> 01:18:12,870 Jimmy mcpartland. 1168 01:18:13,000 --> 01:18:14,970 Narrator: The aspiring young musicians included 1169 01:18:15,100 --> 01:18:18,500 Jimmy mcpartland, struggling to master the cornet, 1170 01:18:18,740 --> 01:18:21,210 pianist Joe Sullivan, 1171 01:18:21,440 --> 01:18:24,080 clarinetist frank teschmacher, 1172 01:18:24,210 --> 01:18:27,150 tenor saxophonist bud Freeman, 1173 01:18:27,280 --> 01:18:29,310 and a would-be drummer from 1174 01:18:29,450 --> 01:18:34,620 the still more prosperous suburb of oak park named Dave tough. 1175 01:18:34,760 --> 01:18:39,290 They would come to be called the Austin high gang. 1176 01:18:39,430 --> 01:18:42,600 Terkel: Those boys, those high school kids, 1177 01:18:42,730 --> 01:18:44,300 heard something they never heard in their lives. 1178 01:18:44,330 --> 01:18:44,530 They may have been 1179 01:18:45,300 --> 01:18:46,370 in a school band, 1180 01:18:46,600 --> 01:18:47,630 possibly playing marches and 1181 01:18:47,770 --> 01:18:48,970 and stuff. 1182 01:18:49,200 --> 01:18:51,300 But when they heard that, to them, 1183 01:18:51,440 --> 01:18:54,110 it represent a vitality they'd never experienced before, 1184 01:18:54,340 --> 01:18:54,670 and they soared with it. 1185 01:18:55,680 --> 01:18:59,550 Jimmy would say, "we just flew." 1186 01:18:59,680 --> 01:19:01,580 Narrator: The Austin high gang's first heroes 1187 01:19:01,720 --> 01:19:05,950 were the New Orleans rhythm kings. 1188 01:19:05,990 --> 01:19:10,020 They were white musicians who modeled their own distinctive style in part 1189 01:19:10,160 --> 01:19:26,440 on the music king Oliver was playing on the south side. 1190 01:19:26,570 --> 01:19:29,410 Soon, the members of the Austin high gang 1191 01:19:29,440 --> 01:19:31,810 and dozens of other young white kids 1192 01:19:31,950 --> 01:19:34,210 decided to find out for themselves 1193 01:19:34,350 --> 01:19:37,120 the source of the new music they found irresistible. 1194 01:19:37,350 --> 01:19:40,420 [Froggie moo Playing] 1195 01:19:40,560 --> 01:19:42,890 They risked the ridicule of their friends 1196 01:19:43,020 --> 01:19:45,090 and the disapproval of their parents 1197 01:19:45,230 --> 01:19:47,760 to travel to the Lincoln gardens 1198 01:19:47,900 --> 01:19:53,230 to hear Joe Oliver and Louis Armstrong play. 1199 01:19:54,770 --> 01:19:56,940 W. Marsalis: When these white kids come down to hear 1200 01:19:57,070 --> 01:20:00,710 king Oliver and Louis Armstrong playing this music, 1201 01:20:00,840 --> 01:20:02,270 we have to realize that this is some of the most abstract and sophisticated music 1202 01:20:03,610 --> 01:20:07,880 that anybody has ever heard, short of bach. 1203 01:20:08,020 --> 01:20:09,980 But they've been taught their entire lives 1204 01:20:10,220 --> 01:20:13,520 that nothing of any good can come out of some niggers. 1205 01:20:13,750 --> 01:20:17,190 So, here are these kids, 1206 01:20:17,320 --> 01:20:20,490 and here is this new music 1207 01:20:20,730 --> 01:20:21,830 that is not legitimate 1208 01:20:21,960 --> 01:20:23,630 in any way. 1209 01:20:23,660 --> 01:20:26,730 Well, maybe when they first went to hear it, 1210 01:20:26,870 --> 01:20:29,640 it was just part of something, you know, 1211 01:20:29,770 --> 01:20:32,170 the sort of excitement, rebellion, you know. 1212 01:20:33,340 --> 01:20:37,240 Then they hear it, and they realize, 1213 01:20:37,380 --> 01:20:40,250 oh, they want to join this world. 1214 01:20:41,280 --> 01:20:43,250 They want to be jazz musicians. 1215 01:20:43,380 --> 01:20:46,050 They want to become part of something that's new and great. 1216 01:20:47,990 --> 01:20:53,330 They have to sense that and that these black people have to teach them. 1217 01:20:53,460 --> 01:20:56,860 W. Marsalis: That's how it always is in myth. 1218 01:20:57,100 --> 01:20:59,670 Cinderella. The one who you keep out and you push down and you kick, 1219 01:21:01,440 --> 01:21:04,700 that's the one with the moral authority, with the gift. 1220 01:21:04,940 --> 01:21:07,010 That's as old as night and day. That's as old as dust. 1221 01:21:08,140 --> 01:21:09,310 And it's not about black or white. 1222 01:21:10,710 --> 01:21:15,310 But here it is now, that same myth, in black and white. 1223 01:21:17,280 --> 01:21:19,750 If you a trumpet player and you hear Louis Armstrong, you want to play like him. 1224 01:21:19,890 --> 01:21:21,520 Not because he's black. 1225 01:21:21,660 --> 01:21:24,360 Because that's the greatest trumpet you've ever heard. 1226 01:21:24,490 --> 01:21:28,630 That's what you want to play like. 1227 01:21:28,760 --> 01:21:32,730 Man: It was by and for negroes, 1228 01:21:32,870 --> 01:21:34,700 and the white kids in short pants who went there, 1229 01:21:34,840 --> 01:21:35,730 some of them on bicycles, 1230 01:21:37,610 --> 01:21:41,870 to hear the music had good reason to feel slightly uncomfortable 1231 01:21:42,010 --> 01:21:44,240 until they had pushed their way close to the bandstand 1232 01:21:44,280 --> 01:21:48,550 and had been recognized by Oliver. 1233 01:21:50,020 --> 01:21:52,920 A nod or a wave of his hand was all that was necessary. 1234 01:21:53,050 --> 01:21:57,220 Then the customers knew that the kids were all right. 1235 01:21:57,260 --> 01:21:59,290 Night after night we made the trip. 1236 01:21:59,530 --> 01:22:02,460 We sat there, stiff with education, joy, 1237 01:22:02,600 --> 01:22:09,800 and a licorice-tasting gin purchased from the waiters for $2 a pint. 1238 01:22:10,040 --> 01:22:14,310 Oliver and Louis would roll on and on, piling up choruses, 1239 01:22:14,440 --> 01:22:17,210 with the rhythm section building the beat until the whole thing 1240 01:22:17,240 --> 01:22:20,180 got inside your head and blew your brains out. 1241 01:22:20,410 --> 01:22:29,020 Eddie condon. 1242 01:22:30,320 --> 01:22:33,190 [I've found a new ba Bplaying] 1243 01:22:33,330 --> 01:22:36,190 Narrator: The young, white musicians who had ventured to the south side 1244 01:22:36,430 --> 01:22:39,060 now started to develop their own brand of jazz-- 1245 01:22:41,140 --> 01:22:46,940 a blend of New Orleans music with a more agitated, aggressive northern sound. 1246 01:22:47,070 --> 01:22:55,010 It would soon be called "Chicago style." 1247 01:22:55,150 --> 01:22:57,780 Giddins: And as they began to develop, they did develop a style of their own, 1248 01:22:57,920 --> 01:23:00,520 their own idiosyncrasies, their own stylistic gambits. 1249 01:23:01,620 --> 01:23:02,650 And they had a lot of feeling 1250 01:23:02,790 --> 01:23:03,790 and energy, 1251 01:23:03,920 --> 01:23:04,890 and they were wild men. 1252 01:23:05,130 --> 01:23:06,060 You know, Eddie condon said 1253 01:23:06,190 --> 01:23:07,430 when we came to town 1254 01:23:07,660 --> 01:23:10,700 the Republicans, you know, ran for cover. 1255 01:23:10,830 --> 01:23:13,270 But when they were young, they were among the first to go out into this, 1256 01:23:13,400 --> 01:23:18,640 explore this black music and try to claim it for themselves. 1257 01:23:18,770 --> 01:23:21,910 Narrator: Chicago had become, one musician proudly remembered, 1258 01:23:21,940 --> 01:23:27,010 "the jazz capital of the United States." 1259 01:23:27,050 --> 01:23:27,910 But while whites were able to go to the south side 1260 01:23:29,450 --> 01:23:33,150 and hear the music of king Oliver and Louis Armstrong, 1261 01:23:33,190 --> 01:23:38,290 blacks were not welcome in any club downtown. 1262 01:23:38,330 --> 01:23:40,960 There was, in fact, no jazz band in america 1263 01:23:41,090 --> 01:23:47,170 in which blacks and whites played side by side. 1264 01:23:47,300 --> 01:23:49,100 Well, the rules said that we could not play together, 1265 01:23:49,340 --> 01:23:50,540 black and whites together, 1266 01:23:50,570 --> 01:23:51,400 but it had nothing to do with 1267 01:23:51,540 --> 01:23:53,270 our respect for each other as 1268 01:23:53,410 --> 01:23:55,370 musicians, individual musicians. 1269 01:23:55,510 --> 01:23:57,940 So, after hours when the clubs were closed, 1270 01:23:58,080 --> 01:23:58,880 the musicians black and white would get together. 1271 01:24:00,210 --> 01:24:02,310 White musicians could come to the south side, 1272 01:24:02,450 --> 01:24:04,380 and after hours when they got off from their jobs, 1273 01:24:04,420 --> 01:24:06,950 they would come, and we would trade choruses. 1274 01:24:07,090 --> 01:24:09,520 And we would get some of the academics from the white musicians, 1275 01:24:09,560 --> 01:24:12,220 and they'd get some of the creativity from the black musicians. 1276 01:24:12,360 --> 01:24:14,230 And we had what we called, "breakfast dances," 1277 01:24:14,460 --> 01:24:16,430 went on 5:00 in the morning, after everything was closed, 1278 01:24:17,530 --> 01:24:21,400 and we had this great jam session going. 1279 01:24:21,540 --> 01:24:25,540 And, this is why Chicago is the basis of really putting this together, 1280 01:24:25,770 --> 01:24:29,010 because we found out the music is an auditory art. 1281 01:24:29,240 --> 01:24:31,640 We didn't care what color you were or where you came from, 1282 01:24:31,880 --> 01:24:49,360 it's how you sound. 1283 01:24:49,600 --> 01:25:05,440 [Scissor grinder joePlaying] 1284 01:25:06,410 --> 01:25:08,850 Man: We first met, jazz and I, 1285 01:25:08,980 --> 01:25:13,420 at a dance hall dive at the barbary coast. 1286 01:25:13,550 --> 01:25:16,660 It screeched and bellowed at me from a trick platform 1287 01:25:16,790 --> 01:25:19,430 in the middle of a smoke-hazed, beer-fumed room. 1288 01:25:19,460 --> 01:25:21,760 And it hit me hard. 1289 01:25:21,900 --> 01:25:22,690 Raucous? 1290 01:25:22,830 --> 01:25:23,600 Yes. 1291 01:25:24,060 --> 01:25:25,230 Crude? 1292 01:25:25,370 --> 01:25:27,230 Undoubtedly. 1293 01:25:27,270 --> 01:25:28,670 Musical? 1294 01:25:28,800 --> 01:25:31,700 As sure as you live. 1295 01:25:31,840 --> 01:25:41,880 Paul whiteman. 1296 01:25:42,020 --> 01:25:45,480 Narrator: Paul whiteman was a formally trained violinist from Colorado, 1297 01:25:45,520 --> 01:25:48,050 who abandoned a symphonic career after hearing 1298 01:25:48,090 --> 01:25:52,020 a jazz band one night in San Francisco. 1299 01:25:52,160 --> 01:25:53,860 Maher: Absolutely knocked him out. 1300 01:25:53,990 --> 01:25:55,990 It was so driving, it was so much fun. 1301 01:25:56,130 --> 01:25:58,230 He got up that morning with the blues. 1302 01:25:58,370 --> 01:25:59,630 He went home that night feeling floating, you know, 1303 01:25:59,870 --> 01:26:01,130 and had a great time. 1304 01:26:01,270 --> 01:26:02,970 Now, his way of thinking 1305 01:26:03,100 --> 01:26:04,370 because of his training, 1306 01:26:04,500 --> 01:26:05,400 his background, 1307 01:26:05,540 --> 01:26:07,740 his father is a music educator 1308 01:26:07,870 --> 01:26:10,340 playing viola in a symphony orchestra. 1309 01:26:10,480 --> 01:26:13,810 Immediately, he is thinking not about playing itthatway 1310 01:26:13,950 --> 01:26:18,780 but about converting it Hisway. 1311 01:26:19,020 --> 01:26:22,620 Narrator: Whiteman was convinced that he could find a way to orchestrate jazz, 1312 01:26:22,760 --> 01:26:25,420 to make it even more commercially viable, 1313 01:26:25,560 --> 01:26:28,460 to retain its rhythm and Harmony while rendering it 1314 01:26:28,600 --> 01:26:33,000 as precise and predictable as classical music. 1315 01:26:33,130 --> 01:26:35,170 His arrangements were intended, he said, 1316 01:26:35,400 --> 01:26:38,000 "to make a lady out of jazz." 1317 01:26:38,140 --> 01:26:41,610 His concern all the time was 1318 01:26:41,740 --> 01:26:45,680 that this is an amazingly important art form. 1319 01:26:45,910 --> 01:26:48,780 We just need to be able to score it, 1320 01:26:48,920 --> 01:26:52,820 we need to be able to get teams of musicians who can play it. 1321 01:26:52,950 --> 01:26:54,550 We just need to be able to take it from its primitive state. 1322 01:26:54,690 --> 01:26:59,820 [Whisperinplaying] 1323 01:26:59,960 --> 01:27:05,300 Narrator: His first big hit had come in 1920 with Whispering. 1324 01:27:05,330 --> 01:27:11,640 soothing, heavily orchestrated, it sold 2.5 million copies-- 1325 01:27:11,870 --> 01:27:19,650 more than 250 times what Armstrong and Oliver's Chimes blues Would sell. 1326 01:27:19,780 --> 01:27:21,480 Paul whiteman's orchestra soon became 1327 01:27:21,620 --> 01:27:26,320 the most celebrated and most imitated in america, 1328 01:27:26,450 --> 01:27:44,370 launching a whole new trend in society dance music. 1329 01:27:44,500 --> 01:27:50,880 On February 12, 1924, a big crowd turned out to hear 1330 01:27:51,010 --> 01:27:54,110 the Paul whiteman orchestra play what was billed as 1331 01:27:54,350 --> 01:27:56,680 "an experiment in modern music" 1332 01:27:56,820 --> 01:28:02,020 at aeolian hall in New York City. 1333 01:28:02,060 --> 01:28:05,620 The concert included a brand-new specially commissioned work 1334 01:28:05,760 --> 01:28:09,860 by a young New York songwriter, the son of Jewish immigrants, 1335 01:28:09,900 --> 01:28:14,770 named George gershwin, who, like Duke Ellington, 1336 01:28:14,900 --> 01:28:21,310 had spent hours listening to black piano-players in Harlem. 1337 01:28:21,440 --> 01:28:25,410 Gershwin's composition was something altogether new-- 1338 01:28:25,550 --> 01:28:29,750 a classical piece suffused with jazz feeling, 1339 01:28:29,880 --> 01:28:32,350 and it would become one of the best-loved compositions 1340 01:28:32,490 --> 01:28:35,020 in all of American music-- 1341 01:28:35,160 --> 01:28:37,420 rhapsody in blue. 1342 01:28:37,560 --> 01:28:54,110 [rhapsody in blu Playing] 1343 01:29:06,850 --> 01:29:10,290 The concert was a huge success. 1344 01:29:10,420 --> 01:29:15,030 4 hours of elegant and orchestral music without a hint of improvisation. 1345 01:29:16,900 --> 01:29:23,900 But almost immediately, Paul whiteman was billed as "the king of jazz." 1346 01:29:24,140 --> 01:29:27,210 Jefferson: And of course, it's driving many blacks at the time and since crazy 1347 01:29:27,340 --> 01:29:29,610 because, you know it's all too obvious-- 1348 01:29:29,740 --> 01:29:33,210 Paul "white-man," you know, equals king of jazz. 1349 01:29:33,350 --> 01:29:36,580 Whiteman himself actually never seems to have pretended to be any such thing. 1350 01:29:36,620 --> 01:29:40,120 [Lonely melo Playing] 1351 01:29:40,250 --> 01:29:43,420 Narrator: Critics would one day accuse whiteman of diluting jazz, 1352 01:29:43,560 --> 01:29:46,790 of stealing from black Americans. 1353 01:29:46,930 --> 01:29:52,230 But whiteman himself always acknowledged the debt he owed. 1354 01:29:52,270 --> 01:29:55,870 Early: White people went into jazz not with the idea 1355 01:29:56,000 --> 01:29:56,370 that they were going to make fun of black people 1356 01:29:57,670 --> 01:30:00,870 or that it was going to be degrading to black people, 1357 01:30:00,910 --> 01:30:05,780 but that here was an art form that they were willing to take on its own terms 1358 01:30:05,910 --> 01:30:09,850 and wanted to express and actually wanted to respect and elevate. 1359 01:30:09,980 --> 01:30:12,920 This is what makes Paul whiteman important. 1360 01:30:13,050 --> 01:30:17,490 He wanted to take the music on something like its own terms. 1361 01:30:17,620 --> 01:30:20,030 This was going to redound on everyone associated with this music, 1362 01:30:20,160 --> 01:30:24,260 whether you're white or black. 1363 01:30:24,400 --> 01:30:27,270 Narrator: Whiteman gave behind-the-scenes work to black arrangers 1364 01:30:27,500 --> 01:30:29,530 and wanted to hire black musicians for his orchestra. 1365 01:30:30,940 --> 01:30:36,970 But even in the jazz age, that was impossible. 1366 01:30:37,110 --> 01:30:40,910 [Teapot dome blu Eplaying] 1367 01:30:41,050 --> 01:30:43,750 Narrator: The same year as whiteman's triumph at aeolian hall, 1368 01:30:43,880 --> 01:30:45,550 a young black bandleader named Fletcher Henderson 1369 01:30:46,620 --> 01:30:49,950 opened at New York's premier ballroom, 1370 01:30:50,090 --> 01:30:58,260 roseland in Times Square, playing for white dancers only. 1371 01:30:58,400 --> 01:31:02,300 Henderson was the soft-spoken son of a piano teacher and a school principal, 1372 01:31:02,440 --> 01:31:04,740 and he had come north to New York to pursue 1373 01:31:04,870 --> 01:31:08,210 a graduate degree in chemistry at Columbia. 1374 01:31:08,340 --> 01:31:10,540 But when his savings ran out, 1375 01:31:10,680 --> 01:31:18,080 he turned to music and was swept up in the jazz craze. 1376 01:31:18,320 --> 01:31:22,250 At roseland, he made himself famous for playing dance music 1377 01:31:22,390 --> 01:31:30,860 with a Polish unmatched by any other black bandleader since James Reese Europe. 1378 01:31:31,000 --> 01:31:34,030 There were two kings of the band scene in New York. 1379 01:31:34,170 --> 01:31:35,900 There was "white king," Paul whiteman, 1380 01:31:35,940 --> 01:31:38,540 who had the best white musicians in the country, 1381 01:31:38,670 --> 01:31:40,810 and there was Fletcher Henderson, the king of the black musicians, 1382 01:31:40,940 --> 01:31:42,170 who had the best black musicians in the country. 1383 01:31:42,310 --> 01:31:44,680 And they were friends. 1384 01:31:44,810 --> 01:31:48,680 And they helped each other and traded arrangements and so forth. 1385 01:31:48,820 --> 01:31:53,290 Narrator: One evening, whiteman took his band to hear Henderson's, 1386 01:31:53,320 --> 01:31:59,360 then told his men, "if Fletcher was a white man, he would be a millionaire." 1387 01:31:59,390 --> 01:32:01,890 But like Duke Ellington, Henderson grew restless 1388 01:32:01,930 --> 01:32:04,930 with the polite dance music he was playing. 1389 01:32:05,170 --> 01:32:08,770 He was determined to create a style all his own, 1390 01:32:08,900 --> 01:32:12,000 wanted to combine the elegance of his formal arrangements 1391 01:32:12,140 --> 01:32:19,010 with something more exciting, more driving, more spontaneous. 1392 01:32:19,150 --> 01:32:20,480 Fletcher Henderson began to look for a soloist-- 1393 01:32:21,780 --> 01:32:23,550 "a jazz specialist," he called it-- 1394 01:32:23,680 --> 01:32:26,250 who could help him out. 1395 01:32:26,390 --> 01:32:30,090 He knew of a trumpet player in king Oliver's band in Chicago 1396 01:32:30,320 --> 01:32:34,560 whose genius other musicians were beginning to talk about. 1397 01:32:34,690 --> 01:32:37,600 It would take him a while, 1398 01:32:37,730 --> 01:32:40,070 but when he persuaded that "specialist" to come to New York, 1399 01:32:40,100 --> 01:32:47,910 it would change jazz forever. 1400 01:32:48,040 --> 01:33:05,660 [Muggleplaying] 1401 01:33:12,870 --> 01:33:16,430 Glaser: Jazz is the ultimate temporal art form. 1402 01:33:16,570 --> 01:33:22,170 It's about the human experience of time-- how is time embodied. 1403 01:33:22,310 --> 01:33:24,910 So, you listen to Louis playing a quarter note, 1404 01:33:25,040 --> 01:33:29,080 and, suddenly, your whole experience of that day has changed. 1405 01:33:29,220 --> 01:33:31,020 You hear him playing this one quarter note, 1406 01:33:31,150 --> 01:33:38,690 and time is not moving along in the way that it normally moves along. 1407 01:33:38,830 --> 01:33:42,060 He was the first person to embody abstraction musically. 1408 01:33:42,200 --> 01:33:44,530 Other people used abstraction 1409 01:33:44,660 --> 01:33:45,660 in music, but over time. 1410 01:33:47,370 --> 01:33:51,240 Composers would sit down and take an idea and toy with it over time. 1411 01:33:51,470 --> 01:33:55,110 But Louis could spontaneously take a melody and abstract it, 1412 01:33:55,240 --> 01:33:57,340 that is, remove all the unessentials from this melody 1413 01:33:59,110 --> 01:34:07,750 and be left with just this pure vision of what the melody could be. 1414 01:34:07,990 --> 01:34:09,450 W. Marsalis: His sound, more than anything, 1415 01:34:09,690 --> 01:34:13,520 his sound had a light in it. 1416 01:34:13,560 --> 01:34:15,490 That's the only way I can describe it, 1417 01:34:15,730 --> 01:34:19,230 you can't practice to get that. 1418 01:34:19,370 --> 01:34:21,930 It's like, it's a spiritual presence. 1419 01:34:22,070 --> 01:34:24,670 And when that light is in your sound, 1420 01:34:24,800 --> 01:34:27,570 it just, when you hear it, it draws--it attracts you. 1421 01:34:27,710 --> 01:34:31,410 [Tea Playing] 1422 01:34:31,550 --> 01:34:33,710 Narrator: For nearly two years, 1423 01:34:33,850 --> 01:34:37,020 Louis Armstrong stayed in king Oliver's creole jazz band. 1424 01:34:38,450 --> 01:34:43,390 The band also included a piano player named lil hardin. 1425 01:34:43,520 --> 01:34:49,690 She was unlike any woman Louis Armstrong had ever met. 1426 01:34:49,830 --> 01:34:53,230 Hardin: All along I been hearing from all the musicians about little Louis, 1427 01:34:53,470 --> 01:34:57,000 and he's--what a good trumpet player he was going to be, little Louis. 1428 01:34:57,140 --> 01:34:59,700 So when he brought little Louie over to the dreamland to meet me, 1429 01:34:59,840 --> 01:35:03,340 little Louis was 226 pounds. 1430 01:35:03,480 --> 01:35:07,980 So I said, "little Louis, how come you call him little Louis, big as he is?" 1431 01:35:08,220 --> 01:35:09,810 I wasn't impressed at all. 1432 01:35:10,050 --> 01:35:12,250 I didn't like anything about him. 1433 01:35:12,390 --> 01:35:15,150 I didn't like the way he's dressed, I didn't like the way he talked. 1434 01:35:15,290 --> 01:35:16,090 Anyway, he came up on the bandstand. 1435 01:35:18,160 --> 01:35:22,190 I used to play--well you know, girls wore garters, you know, on their stockings, 1436 01:35:22,330 --> 01:35:25,060 so when I'd sit down to play I would roll my stocking down 1437 01:35:25,200 --> 01:35:29,330 so the garter's below my knee. 1438 01:35:29,370 --> 01:35:33,710 And first thing Louis spied was, was my knee, and he was looking. 1439 01:35:33,840 --> 01:35:36,910 And I said, "this guy's got ideas he'd better not put in words." 1440 01:35:37,040 --> 01:35:39,740 [Laughs] 1441 01:35:39,780 --> 01:35:42,450 Narrator: Lil hardin was ambitious, articulate 1442 01:35:42,580 --> 01:35:46,750 and, like Armstrong, unhappily married. 1443 01:35:46,790 --> 01:35:51,260 Despite her first impression, she fell in love with him. 1444 01:35:51,390 --> 01:35:56,130 On February 5, 1924, Louis Armstrong, 1445 01:35:56,260 --> 01:35:58,260 just divorced from his first wife, 1446 01:35:58,400 --> 01:36:02,600 married lil hardin in Chicago. 1447 01:36:02,740 --> 01:36:07,570 Once married, lil went to work on her new husband. 1448 01:36:07,710 --> 01:36:09,910 Lil decided she was going to make Louis over, 1449 01:36:10,040 --> 01:36:11,680 and she tried to get him to lose a little weight, 1450 01:36:13,010 --> 01:36:16,080 she took him out and bought him some proper clothes, 1451 01:36:16,220 --> 01:36:20,280 so he looked more like a Chicago slick than a New Orleans hick. 1452 01:36:20,420 --> 01:36:23,750 And then she decided, you know, that he ought to be out on his own, 1453 01:36:23,890 --> 01:36:27,390 he ought to be out from underneath the wing of Joe Oliver. 1454 01:36:27,530 --> 01:36:31,000 Hardin: I probably would have never paid any attention to Louis's playing 1455 01:36:31,030 --> 01:36:36,130 if king Oliver hadn't said to me one night that Louis could play better than he could. 1456 01:36:36,170 --> 01:36:37,970 He says, "but as long as I keep him with me, 1457 01:36:38,000 --> 01:36:39,940 "he won't be able to get ahead of me, 1458 01:36:40,170 --> 01:36:43,880 and I'll still be the king." 1459 01:36:44,010 --> 01:36:47,480 Narrator: Lil urged Armstrong to strike out on his own, 1460 01:36:47,510 --> 01:36:50,720 but he was reluctant to leave the man he still called "Mr. Joe." 1461 01:36:52,620 --> 01:36:57,020 He owed him a lot, he said, and wasn't sure he could make it on his own. 1462 01:36:57,160 --> 01:37:00,430 But lil persisted. 1463 01:37:00,460 --> 01:37:03,390 "I don't want to be married to a second trumpet-player," she told him. 1464 01:37:03,630 --> 01:37:08,300 I want you to play first." 1465 01:37:08,330 --> 01:37:11,740 Then, in the spring of 1924, 1466 01:37:11,870 --> 01:37:13,870 Armstrong got an offer he could not ignore. 1467 01:37:15,240 --> 01:37:19,510 Fletcher Henderson wanted him to come to New York. 1468 01:37:19,550 --> 01:37:22,480 Like his arrival in Chicago two years earlier, 1469 01:37:22,720 --> 01:37:26,480 Armstrong's debut in New York was not auspicious. 1470 01:37:27,750 --> 01:37:29,490 Man: The drummer, kaiser Marshall, had a car 1471 01:37:29,720 --> 01:37:33,320 and brought us downtown to meet Louis. 1472 01:37:33,460 --> 01:37:37,830 He was big and fat and wore high top shoes with hooks in them. 1473 01:37:37,960 --> 01:37:40,430 When I got a load of that, I said to myself, 1474 01:37:40,570 --> 01:37:42,470 who in the hell is this guy? 1475 01:37:42,700 --> 01:37:44,640 It can't be Louis Armstrong. 1476 01:37:45,300 --> 01:37:47,040 Don redman. 1477 01:37:47,170 --> 01:37:50,240 [Go 'long mu Playing] 1478 01:37:50,480 --> 01:37:54,380 Narrator: Louis Armstrong, raised poor on the streets of New Orleans, 1479 01:37:54,510 --> 01:37:58,450 could not have been more different from his sophisticated new employer. 1480 01:37:58,580 --> 01:37:59,680 But almost from the start, 1481 01:38:01,220 --> 01:38:07,790 Armstrong was influencing every other jazz musician in town. 1482 01:38:07,930 --> 01:38:09,390 Waters: I came to New York in 1924. 1483 01:38:10,900 --> 01:38:13,360 That was the first time that I heard Louis in person. 1484 01:38:13,400 --> 01:38:14,400 So, Fletcher didn't have 1485 01:38:14,530 --> 01:38:16,970 no music for him at that period. 1486 01:38:17,100 --> 01:38:18,540 So, he was just sitting up there 1487 01:38:18,570 --> 01:38:19,240 like this, with his trumpet 1488 01:38:19,810 --> 01:38:21,070 in his hand, 1489 01:38:21,210 --> 01:38:22,910 and waiting for his choruses. 1490 01:38:23,040 --> 01:38:24,410 So when they got his choruses, 1491 01:38:24,540 --> 01:38:26,410 he would stand up and play like hell. 1492 01:38:26,450 --> 01:38:28,850 And the people would just rave. 1493 01:38:29,080 --> 01:38:32,050 [Shanghai shuffl Playing] 1494 01:38:32,090 --> 01:38:36,720 Narrator: Armstrong's choruses transformed the band. 1495 01:38:36,960 --> 01:38:40,690 Henderson's arranger, Don redman, now began writing new pieces 1496 01:38:40,830 --> 01:38:44,260 that showcased Armstrong's soaring horn-- 1497 01:38:44,400 --> 01:38:47,500 and his unprecedented sense of rhythm, 1498 01:38:47,630 --> 01:38:54,070 what Henderson himself called Armstrong's New Orleans "punch and bounce." 1499 01:38:54,310 --> 01:38:55,970 Man: One night at roseland, 1500 01:38:56,110 --> 01:38:59,780 Armstrong began Shanghai shuffle. 1501 01:38:59,810 --> 01:39:04,150 I think they made him play 10 choruses. 1502 01:39:04,180 --> 01:39:07,750 And I stood silent, feeling almost bashful, 1503 01:39:07,890 --> 01:39:10,690 asking myself if I would ever be able to attain 1504 01:39:10,820 --> 01:39:13,990 a small part of Armstrong's greatness. 1505 01:39:14,230 --> 01:39:17,930 Coleman Hawkins. 1506 01:39:17,960 --> 01:39:20,000 Giddins: Armstrong transformed the orchestra, transformed all the musicians in it, 1507 01:39:21,470 --> 01:39:23,770 and ultimately transformed all the musicians in New York 1508 01:39:23,900 --> 01:39:27,670 who were playing jazz, and even popular musicians. 1509 01:39:27,810 --> 01:39:33,280 He brought, first of all, a tremendous, rhythmic excitement. 1510 01:39:33,410 --> 01:39:37,150 Armstrong was an economist, you know, he played very few notes, 1511 01:39:37,280 --> 01:39:39,880 but every note counted, and it stood for something. 1512 01:39:40,020 --> 01:39:45,920 Then, equally important, he brought the blues. 1513 01:39:46,060 --> 01:39:48,890 Armstrong demonstrated that the blues 1514 01:39:49,030 --> 01:39:56,730 might be the greatest musical gift ever to come out of america. 1515 01:39:56,870 --> 01:39:59,940 And he played it with such conviction and such feeling and force 1516 01:40:00,170 --> 01:40:01,870 that everybody wanted that. 1517 01:40:03,940 --> 01:40:07,480 I mean, Duke Ellington was already in New York, he was accompanying singers, 1518 01:40:07,610 --> 01:40:10,680 he had small band of his own, but he was missing something, 1519 01:40:10,820 --> 01:40:16,690 he didn't know what he was missing until he heard Armstrong. 1520 01:40:16,820 --> 01:40:20,220 Narrator: Armstrong's great contribution is impossible to notate, 1521 01:40:20,360 --> 01:40:23,260 but it is the characteristic that most clearly defines jazz-- 1522 01:40:23,900 --> 01:40:28,270 swing. 1523 01:40:28,400 --> 01:40:32,700 Shaw: Swing is getting the right note at the right time, 1524 01:40:32,840 --> 01:40:36,610 not before or not after. 1525 01:40:36,740 --> 01:40:40,140 So in jazz, which is a rhythmic music, 1526 01:40:40,280 --> 01:40:42,410 you've got to have the time, and you've got to have the pulse. 1527 01:40:43,780 --> 01:40:44,750 You going to be playing, you say... 1528 01:40:44,880 --> 01:40:47,480 (Imitates bass) 1529 01:40:47,620 --> 01:40:48,520 You can't say... 1530 01:40:48,760 --> 01:40:51,660 (Imitates bass) 1531 01:40:51,690 --> 01:40:52,860 You got to say... 1532 01:40:53,090 --> 01:40:58,300 (Imitates bass, clicking fingers) 1533 01:40:58,430 --> 01:41:00,870 You got to just keep that going. Don't move, that's the way. 1534 01:41:01,000 --> 01:41:03,100 And believe me when I tell you, that's like a heartbeat. 1535 01:41:03,240 --> 01:41:05,340 And you look at the audience, they all get it. 1536 01:41:05,470 --> 01:41:09,010 And you see them first start tapping their foot. 1537 01:41:09,040 --> 01:41:10,640 And they going to start swinging around. 1538 01:41:10,780 --> 01:41:13,440 That's what makes jazz so unique. 1539 01:41:13,580 --> 01:41:16,580 Unique and so great. 1540 01:41:16,720 --> 01:41:19,450 Narrator: "No one," one musician said, 1541 01:41:19,590 --> 01:41:24,820 "knew what swinging was till Louis came along." 1542 01:41:24,960 --> 01:41:28,260 Schaap: Louis Armstrong's arrival in September of '24 1543 01:41:28,390 --> 01:41:31,060 is pivotal because he's the most important jazz musician on the face of the earth 1544 01:41:31,300 --> 01:41:32,360 and he's coming to the country's 1545 01:41:32,500 --> 01:41:34,000 biggest city, playing with its 1546 01:41:34,130 --> 01:41:35,130 most important band 1547 01:41:35,270 --> 01:41:45,780 and teaching them how to swing. 1548 01:41:47,280 --> 01:41:50,080 Uptown, he plays dances for the young black adolescents 1549 01:41:50,320 --> 01:41:53,650 and turns careers around like Rex Stewart's, gene Rogers', 1550 01:41:53,890 --> 01:41:55,820 and the men who play in the saxophone section for Duke Ellington. 1551 01:41:57,620 --> 01:42:00,260 Russell procope, he was a violinist when he heard fat Armstrong. 1552 01:42:00,390 --> 01:42:00,830 And he said, "unh-unh, man, I'm going with a horn 1553 01:42:01,960 --> 01:42:02,890 that you can make this music with." 1554 01:42:03,030 --> 01:42:06,430 And he switched to alto saxophone. 1555 01:42:06,570 --> 01:42:09,100 Plus, New York was the hotbed of recording activity, 1556 01:42:09,240 --> 01:42:11,440 and the great Louis Armstrong gets to make 1557 01:42:11,470 --> 01:42:13,240 freelance record dates. 1558 01:42:13,270 --> 01:42:15,810 He records with bessie Smith and ma rainey, 1559 01:42:17,240 --> 01:42:21,110 and Clarence Williams's blue five, with Sidney bechet. 1560 01:42:21,250 --> 01:42:26,520 And those records get to audiences who can't even make it to roseland or go uptown. 1561 01:42:26,750 --> 01:42:33,220 Jazz arrives because Louis came to New York and taught the world to swing. 1562 01:42:33,260 --> 01:42:35,690 [Applause] Now, ladies and gentlemen, 1563 01:42:35,830 --> 01:42:38,100 we're going to take a little trip through the jungle at this time, 1564 01:42:38,230 --> 01:42:40,230 and we want you all to travel with us. 1565 01:42:40,370 --> 01:42:43,270 The tiger is running so fast, 1566 01:42:43,400 --> 01:42:44,170 it's going to take a few choruses to catch him, 1567 01:42:45,200 --> 01:42:47,070 so I want you to count with me. 1568 01:42:47,110 --> 01:42:48,870 Yes, sir. See if this little selmer trumpet 1569 01:42:49,010 --> 01:42:50,710 is going to get away from you this time. 1570 01:42:50,840 --> 01:42:55,510 Look out there, boys, I'm ready. 1571 01:42:55,650 --> 01:43:13,160 [Plays Tiger rag] 1572 01:43:28,780 --> 01:43:32,450 W. Marsalis: Louis Armstrong invented a new style of playing. 1573 01:43:32,690 --> 01:43:36,290 Louis Armstrong created the coherent solo. 1574 01:43:36,420 --> 01:43:39,720 Louis Armstrong fused the sound of the blues with the American popular song. 1575 01:43:39,860 --> 01:43:43,330 Louis Armstrong extended the range of the trumpet. 1576 01:43:43,460 --> 01:43:45,930 Louis Armstrong created the melodic and rhythmic vocabulary 1577 01:43:46,070 --> 01:44:00,810 that all of the big bands wrote music out of. 1578 01:44:00,850 --> 01:44:07,750 Giddins: I think Armstrong boils down to how do you define genius. 1579 01:44:07,790 --> 01:44:13,960 And I guess it's partly that you hear something that no one else has heard. 1580 01:44:14,090 --> 01:44:19,060 He heard rhythms and melodies and a sound, 1581 01:44:19,100 --> 01:44:21,670 a way of extending his voice into the trumpet, 1582 01:44:21,800 --> 01:44:24,840 all of which was original with him. 1583 01:44:24,970 --> 01:44:28,870 And the result is so overpowering and so spiritual, 1584 01:44:30,140 --> 01:44:45,290 it's enough to make the angels weep. 1585 01:44:45,430 --> 01:44:49,830 [Red hot banPlaying] 1585 01:44:50,305 --> 01:45:50,758