Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong is dead, and this is regrettable for he was a great American who bridged a lot gaps with his music.

He was an ambassador abroad for America and a moderator at home between the races.  Though his nickname was a contraction of "satchel mouth," it was large only to better play the trumpet.  In speech he was modest.

The additional tragedy of Armstrong's death is that he was the last of the great Dixieland players.  Dixie was the first -and some say, the only - all-American music.  From it has grown all the forms of free musical expression we call jazz.

As I reflect on the life of Satchmo and his horn, my mind turns to a jazz concert in which I took part as a commentator.  Inasmuch as it sums up the significance of jazz and the musicians like Armstrong who made it vital, I present it here without editing:

THE BIRTH OF JAZZ

Featuring Sam Finger and the Dixiecrats

OVERTURE - (Starting from behind closed curtain)

"That's A-Plenty"

INTRODUCTION - (piano background)

Where did this all start?

You can begin any place.

The time they were dragging the black people out of the village clearings and moving them down to the coast, chained in long lines.  You can begin when the stinking ships of the black-birders crossed the mud bars below the delta and came upriver in flood where New Orleans idles in the sun behind its levees and old church spires.

The Jazz Historian, Stephen Longstreet, says it's hest to begin here, in New Orleans, where the black man became in time a little lighter, and the white man often a little darker.

The French and the Spanish, the African tribesmen with royal chief's blood under their heavy muscles - and even the Indian peering in,  - the long boats from Kentucky, and the Yankee mountain men in buckskin fringes - in for a big bust and swallowing of untaxed whiskey - all wanted music, and helped make it, said Longstreet

New Orleans mixed it all up, and churned it around, and made it a part of a south that was part of a new nation - that was part of a new world where anything could happen.

Today we call it history.  But then it was simple people, wild people, pioneers and men on their way up in a hurry.  All sang a lot and stomped around to music.

It came from the hills and from the polite music master' minuets, from the little churches and from the streets.  But it came first from the Negroes who had lost their birthright in that place and had not yet earned another.

Though there are many PLACES to begin, there is only one WAY to begin.  Whether it was in the Congo jungle or in the tromped-down grass of Congo Square in Now Orleans, it was rhythm that started it all.

Music and dancing, said the white slave masters, made the Negro too tired to work hard, so the wild people from Africa just clapped their hands.

(Band begins slow, rhythmic clapping)

Then they made a drum on the sly and brought it out when the Master was off somewhere else subduing the passions of his own wild country to remind them of their native jungles.  

(Drummer joins in)

An old horn was snitched from some white man's junk heap, or maybe a rusty old banjo was given them by a keel boatman from Ohio who didn't give a damn about plantations and cotton anyway.

(Horns join in)

"Easy Rider Blues"

At last the Negro had become part of musical America.  He was ready to add a sense of freedom and lusty beat that created a new musical art form peculiar to America.

At last the Negro had become part of musical America.  He was ready to add a sense of freedom and lusty beat that created a new musical art form peculiar to America.

Our overture was a good example of the new music that the New Orleans Negro created - with the assistance of enthusiastic whites.  It is recognized today all over the world as unique to this nation.

What makes it so different?

Why is it so easily recognized as Dixie?  Let's let Sam Finger tell us, and show us.

DEMONSTRATION - Sam Finger

Chord structure

Tone Registers

"Tin Roof Blues"

SPIRITUALS -- The Negro might have been a lot longer acquiring musical instruments if their advantages hadn't been apparent to the white folks as a means of impressing Christianity on the superstitious blacks.

It was OK to play and sing hymns, and maybe even jump a little in the aisles, if it was only on Sunday.

So they put a big beat in the sanctuary and after a while it became sincere and reverent.

One of the most beautiful spirituals is: "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."

The beat got stronger with

"Down By The Riverside"

MARCHES - Once converted, the black man had a strong, even if literal, belief in God, and Jesus and the Great Hereafter.  The present life was hard and full of trouble, while Heaven was all music and joy; and the streets were paved with gold.

Death to the slave, therefore, was a passport to eternal bliss - escape from the toils of an uncertain life here below.

The trip to the graveyard was mournful because friends were parting.  But once "God's chillun" were safely tucked into Mother Earth's bosom, those left behind were happy that their recent companion was wafting to his reward.

The dirge became a triumphant march.  And these marches drew onlookers to the curbs.

Before you knew it, everybody was prancing and high-stepping to a fare-thee-well.

They called it a cakewalk, and pretty soon they were writing music just for that.  Numbers like the

"Georgia Cakewalk"

A famous old street march was

"High Society"

RAGTIME - This was an exciting new music for New Orleans.  The fun-loving French who set the pace for river-town life didn't waste much time ordering Buddy Bolden and other good musicians in off the fields and into the dance halls and racetrack club houses, and bawdy houses, where a little "raggy" music got you into a fun mood faster and kept you there longer.

Here is where the Negro got acquainted with the piano, for it was there waiting for him when he found a place in which he was allowed to stay put while he played.

They called it rag time, a "jazzy" type of music.  Like the:

"Twelfth Street Rag"

When Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong hit the scene, rag time hadn't turned the corner into Jazz, as such, but they gave it the greatest push with such numbers as

"I Don't Want To Give You Any More Of My Jelly Roll."

INTERMISSION

OVERTURE - Appropriate Blues number.  Preferably:

"Jazz Band Ball"

BLUES - With this music, jazz moved into its classic age.  From the music of the churches and fields, the American Negro developed the blues which became a kind of secular commentary on life - as contrasted with the spiritual message of faith or the commercial pursuits of the dance halls.

It was Bessie Smith who discovered the power of a blue note in a minor key.  But the note itself had been given to her in her childhood only dimly remembered.

Apart from the old work songs - some of them still completely African in melody - the blues is perhaps the most typical example of original American Negro music.  It all started with the "field holler," the cry of a Negro, possibly a slave, in a deserted landscape, cutting a tree or looking for a lost cow.

A lonely human being frightened by the awe-inspiring silence enveloping him - shouting to dispel the silence and his tears like a child afraid of the dark.

This shouting, or hollering, gradually developed into a primitive song - the "Holler Song" - which served as a work song later on and in which the original cry is still clearly audible.

It is believed to have come into existence as a musical form at about the same time slavery was abolished.

In the forty years or so from its inception to the turn of the century, the holler song developed into a song about life in general.  It was folk music pure and simple, sung by levee-camp workers along the Mississippi, the men of the chain gangs, the roustabouts on the boats and the poor people tilling the southern fields.

It was only natural that the misgivings of these insecure folks should be reflected in their songs - which invariably relate a sorry tale of disastrous floods, ragged clothes, hard work and unfaithful lovers.

It was during this period that these songs began to assume a certain standardized form which turned out to be a quite unique once the first line was repeated followed by a different third line.

It went something like this:

"My baby is a Texas tornado and she howls just like the wind.
"My baby is a Texas Tornado, Lord, and she howls just like the wind.
"She'll blow the house down if you ask her where she's been."

The basic foundation is twelve 4-4 bars following a fixed chord pattern which was mainly established by the singers.

A good example of this new music is the: "Wolverine Blues."

Here's a famous old blues number:

"Basin Street Blues" (with vocal).

W.C.  Handy was probably the best known Blues composer, writing many jazz pieces considered immortal, among them is the

"St.  Louis Blues"

and

"St.  James Infirmary"

We take our farewell of Jazz' classic era with the

"Farewell Blues".

JAZZ - When they closed-down Storyville, New Orleans' extensive night club, dance hall and sporting house district - the free and easy spirit left for good.  The musicians - cut off from their only source of employment - drifted up the Mississippi on the great packet boats.  A few found jobs in Memphis and St.  Louis but most landed at the end of the line, in Chicago.

The rising generation of Chicagoans who heard the music of the veteran Dixie jazzmen created a style of their own.  Here was the final polishing of all that went before.

From the turn of the century to World War I, the New Orleans primitive style was being tightened up into a popular pattern appealing to all music lovers - serious as well as fun seeking.

The music was becoming sophisticated deliberately, designed to sell to a mass audience.

At first they built on the New Orleans tradition, such as in:

"Miss New Orleans"

And still discernible as Dixie jazz was:

"Muskrat Ramble"

The merged style of New Orleans and Chicago jazz was expressed ably by the number:

"How Come You Do Me Like You Do?"  

The Windy City also produced:

"Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home?" (with vocal)

As the era of prohibition, the speakeasy, agitation for women's suffrage, bloomers, racketeers and booming stocks drew to a close -- Jazz had become big time – here to stay with such pieces as

"I can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby"

CLOSING - (with soft piano background)

Well, that's how it started, and its still growing.  Jazz is all-American and a yard wide.  It's copied and admired all over the world.  It's reverent and it's naughty, it's happy and it's sad, it's life in music.  Fashions in jazz change from time to time -- who hasn't enjoyed swing, bop, progressive, rock 'n roll, bosanova, big-beat.  But all of it is only a variation of the one, big kettle of Jazz.

No matter how you twist it and turn it, it still has the vitality and compelling qualities of that all time Dixie jazz number:

"When The Saints Come Marching In."

BOWS AND ENCORES

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