The first time I ever saw my father cry was when he heard Louis Armstrong died.
It wasn’t obvious: He was pretending his glasses were just fogging up, necessitating use of a handkerchief near his eyes. Still, he couldn’t hide some tears running down his cheek.
Dad pulled an LP from the shelf and began playing it. I looked at the album’s back cover, and either there or on the TV news I distinctly remember a photo of Armstrong on , playing his trumpet with some children.
If this guy was cherished enough to make my father cry, and if he was nice enough to hang out with neighborhood children, I figured I should give him a listen. And, well, wow: I’ve been nearly obsessed, ever since, with traditional New Orleans jazz.
These memories return because this past Tuesday was Louis Armstrong’s 125th birthday. (Is there a name for that? If “hemi” is a half, was it his hemi-semiquincentennial?) We know the exact day because, 38 years ago, New Orleans music historian Tad Jones dug up Armstrong’s baptismal records listing his birth date as Aug. 4, 1901, rather than the July 4, 1900, that the great jazz musician long had claimed.
(As an aside: I didn’t know Jones, but I randomly found myself sitting next to him at the breakfast bar of the old Bluebird Café on Prytania Street in 1988 and striking up a conversation that naturally turned to jazz — at which time he asked if I could keep a secret, and he told me he was just a day or three away from making “a big announcement” about Armstrong’s birth. To say the least, his announcement certainly made big news.)
Of course the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival made a huge celebration of the centennial of Armstrong’s birth in 2001 (I still have the T-shirt). And last weekend the 26th annual took place at the New Orleans Jazz Museum. Moreover, all weekend long, on Frenchmen Street and Bourbon Street and elsewhere around town, traditional jazz bands were plying their trade. The , playing with verve at , were particularly fun.
Coincidentally, the birthdate itself saw an announcement that the documentary “,” about jazz funerals and the city’s music culture, is now getting a nationwide release on public television. It will air on WYES in New Orleans on Aug. 13 at 7:30 p.m. and Aug. 15 at 4 p.m., and on h Public Broadcasting on Aug. 18 at 8 p.m. The , New Orleanian Jason Berry, also was Tad Jones’ co-author (1986) of the acclaimed h music history called “.”
Small world — and, as Armstrong would say, “,” as well.
Now: Apologies if all the information above may seem a tad disjointed, but then again, this is a column about jazz, where individual musicians can improvise in unexpected directions but only while still staying tethered to, and returning to, a central theme.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, the central tune here is that New Orleans traditional jazz is a treasure, as is the particular legacy of Armstrong.
Yet what should worry all of us is that this signature music of the state — which, , joins the Constitution and baseball as this nation’s three most enduring gifts to civilization — seems always on the verge of dying out. Maybe I’m missing something, but no matter how hard I look, I can never seem to find anyone under 50 years old who regularly plays the real, true thing.
Yes, there are bands and musicians semi-rooted in traditional jazz of the sort played by Armstrong, King Oliver, and Buddy Bolden, but most of them are brassier, funkier, less subtle, less wedded to a central melody in each song. They may be playing great music, but it’s not really traditional New Orleans jazz.
Yet we must, we absolutely must, ensure that our native music doesn’t die.
It is heartening, though, to see key institutions devoted to the music’s continuance. There’s the aforementioned jazz museum, and of course there’s the Preservation Hall Foundation, and the New Orleans Jazz and Blues Market, along with numerous clubs that still host the music. And there’s also the ambitious, forthcoming , which will be a grand, museum-plus establishment in the city’s river district.
Through all these outlets, and more, all of us should want to transmit our musical heritage to new generations. Let’s renew our dedication to this task — both as a birthday present to Satchmo and so my late father won’t be shedding tears of loss in heaven.