11/12/2022 0 Comments Chicago 1930 image![]() ![]() “Louis had a way of swinging all the notes, it’s so melodic. ![]() His soloing helped move jazz from a rough-and-tumble form of dance music to an art form that was more sophisticated and expressive. A musician in Chicago in the early 20s was treated and respected just like some kind of God.” Among his peers in Chicago were clarinetist-composer Sidney Bechet and pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton, former New Orleanians who, like Armstrong, collectively pushed the limits of the music.Īlthough he started out as a sideman in Oliver’s band, Armstrong’s playing - bright and buoyant - put him front and center. Armstrong played in Carroll Dickerson’s Sunset Cabaret orchestra there in the 1920s, billing himself the ‘World’s Greatest Trumpeter.’ STM-008601991, Al Podgorski / Chicago Sun-Timesįor Armstrong, Chicago offered “plenty of work, lots of dough flying around, all kinds of beautiful women at your service. “My boyhood dream had come true at last,” he wrote.Īn advertisement for the Sunset Café, a former jazz club located in Bronzeville. “Let the youngster blow!” someone yelled out. In his 1954 autobiography, Armstrong described his first night in Oliver’s band as transformative. King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band dominated Lincoln Gardens, the biggest dance hall on the South Side at 31st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.Īrmstrong would head there in a cab his first night in town to hear the group play. As a bandleader, Oliver led concerts in clubs with such opulent names as the Deluxe Café, Dreamland Café, the Sunset and the Elite Café. In fact, Joe Oliver, his mentor in New Orleans, had rechristened himself King Oliver and became de facto royalty in Chicago’s South Side jazz nightclubs. But Chicago promised him the same things it did other Black Southerners who migrated to Chicago between 19: prosperity, sophistication and transformation. Growing up impoverished in a vice district of New Orleans where he dropped out of school early and learned trumpet at a home for juvenile delinquents, Armstrong heard the early sounds of jazz in brothels and riverboats. ![]() His life to that point had moved rapidly. A dream comes true in ChicagoĪrmstrong stepped off the train at Illinois Central Station on Aug. When you think Chicago and jazz, it is Louis Armstrong who built that house,” he said. “Michael hasn’t played for years, yet he built that house. Davis, the artistic director of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, compares Armstrong’s fundamental contribution to jazz in Chicago to Michael Jordan’s reign over the Chicago Bulls and the United Center. ![]()
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