Synopses & Reviews
Nearly 100 years after bursting onto Chicago’s music scene under the tutelage of Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong is recognized as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. A trumpet virtuoso, seductive crooner, and consummate entertainer, Armstrong laid the foundation for the future of jazz with his stylistic innovations, but his story would be incomplete without examining how he struggled in a society seething with brutally racist ideologies, laws, and practices.
Thomas Brothers picks up where he left off with the acclaimed Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, following the story of the great jazz musician into his most creatively fertile years in the 1920s and early 1930s, when Armstrong created not one but two modern musical styles. Brothers wields his own tremendous skill in making the connections between history and music accessible to everyone as Armstrong shucks and jives across the page. Through Brothers's expert ears and eyes we meet an Armstrong whose quickness and sureness, so evident in his performances, served him well in his encounters with racism while his music soared across the airwaves into homes all over America.
Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism blends cultural history, musical scholarship, and personal accounts from Armstrong's contemporaries to reveal his enduring contributions to jazz and popular music at a time when he and his bandmates couldn’t count on food or even a friendly face on their travels across the country. Thomas Brothers combines an intimate knowledge of Armstrong's life with the boldness to examine his place in such a racially charged landscape. In vivid prose and with vibrant photographs, Brothers illuminates the life and work of the man many consider to be the greatest American musician of the twentieth century.
Review
"Thomas Brothers has brought together startling new discoveries and insights, a fresh look at hallowed recordings, and an understanding of the multifold influences that helped shape Louis Armstrong. In so doing, he has written by far the most complete and original look at an American icon whose influence continues into its second century." Loren Schoenberg, artistic director, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem
Review
"Thomas Brothers remains Armstrong's finest interpreter and chronicler." Gerald Early, editor of Miles Davis and American Culture
Review
"Honest, uncompromising, and wholly sympathetic to its subject, is the ideal for jazz biography and criticism." Scott DeVeaux, author of The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History
Review
"Astonishingly, this is the first close historical examination of Armstrong's formative years in the 1920s. Where other biographers have surveyed this terrain from 30,000 feet, Thomas Brothers takes his reader on an intimate walking tour, filled with knowledgeable and insightful commentary. A rich and rewarding read." Brian Harker, author of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings
Review
"I was so engaged in Tom Brothers's great storytelling that I did not always notice what a monumental achievement his book is.
Review
"Brothers proves his thesis and then some...an encyclopedic authority." C.W. Mahoney
Synopsis
The definitive account of Louis Armstrong--his life and legacy--during the most creative period of his career.
Synopsis
Nearly 100 years after bursting onto Chicago's music scene under the tutelage of Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong is recognized as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. A trumpet virtuoso, seductive crooner, and consummate entertainer, Armstrong laid the foundation for the future of jazz with his stylistic innovations, but his story would be incomplete without examining how he struggled in a society seething with brutally racist ideologies, laws, and practices.
Synopsis
This book is at once a biography of Louis Armstrong’s prolific years in the 1920s and early 1930s and an examination of the cultural forces that shaped his life and, ultimately, jazz itself. Thomas Brothers picks up where he left off with Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, blending numerous personal accounts to tell the story of how Armstrong navigated the legacies of racial inequality to forge two new musical styles—one vocal and one instrumental—that permanently altered the course of popular music in the United States. No other author combines intimate knowledge of Armstrong’s life with the boldness to examine his subject’s place in a racially
charged America. Combining biography, cultural history, and musical scholarship, Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism illuminates the life and work of the man many consider to be the greatest American artist of the twentieth century.
About the Author
Thomas Brothers is the author of Louis Armstrong's New Orleans and Louis Armstrong: In His Own Words. A professor of music at Duke University, he lives with his family in Durham, North Carolina.