Ricky Riccardi
speaker
185 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Ricky Riccardi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And at first, Davis did not give Armstrong the time of day because he knew kids from Armstrong's neighborhood were nothing but trouble. But he saw that Lewis was always hanging around the band room and eventually started him on the tambourine and the drum and the horn, the bugle, and finally the cornet.
And so on New Year's Eve, when Armstrong was arrested, the newspapers, you know, they referred to him as, As Louis Armstrong, old offender. That was his reputation at the age of 12. But then on Decoration Day, the Waves Home Band did a parade through Armstrong's neighborhood and the newspapers covered that. And all of a sudden it was Louis Armstrong, old offender. leader.
And so the Waves Home made him into a musician. It really showed him this is your way out if you take this seriously. And he did. And even though they had this incredible music program, I followed the stories of some of the other kids there and who ended up, you know, shot in the head at the age of 17, who ended up in Sing Sing, who ended up, you know, a well-known pickpocket.
And so he could have made any wrong choice at any time. And have been one of those kids. He could have been gunned down. He could have been arrested. He could, you know, the whole sound of the 20th century could have changed. And we're just lucky that he had some angel on his shoulder or something that kind of helped him through. And we're all the beneficiaries.
Well, the amazing thing for me is Cornette Chop Suey was the next song recorded after heebie-jeebies. So I always like to make the point that You know, you can name a million great vocalists and a million great instrumentalists and Armstrong's the only person who totally changed the way people sang and he totally changed the way people soloed and played music on their instruments.
And he really does it. on one day, February 26, 1926. But Cornet Chop Suey was kind of his coming out party to show all the tools in his toolbox of what he could do with his cornet. And so it opens with his dazzling, unaccompanied introduction, just letting everybody know, I'm here, I'm the leader. And then the melody, I was just talking to the great multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson.
We were saying, you can play that melody tonight in the 21st century, and it sounds fresh, it sounds modern. And so that was a melody that he had written two years earlier, But the main part was this stop time solo. And I think trumpet players and trombonists and guitarists and piano players, they all heard that. And they said, wow, that's how you tell a story.
You know, that's how you really solo. And it's not just arpeggios. It's not just, you know, just playing quick or whatever. It's technical stuff. It's actually got a beginning, middle and an end. And so Cornet Chop Suey was analyzed as this masterpiece of improvisation.
Until the 1990s, when it was discovered that Armstrong had copyrighted the song two years earlier and he had written down the whole solo note for note. And then in the 1950s, when that record was played for some of his old New Orleans contemporaries, they all said, oh, my goodness, that's Buddy Petit. And Buddy Petit was a cornet player that Armstrong heard and admired when he was a kid.
But Buddy Petit never recorded. He died in 1931, left behind no record. And so to me, Cornet Chop Suey is on surface level. You'll hear it. You know, it's still it sounds modern and fresh and we can still learn a lot from it. But to me, it's also Armstrong serious about his craft, writing down the melody, writing down the solo, showing off the influence of a musician who never got to record.
And, you know, simultaneously forecasting the shape of jazz to come, but also really leaning into his New Orleans roots.
Sure. So stop time, you know, usually you get the rhythm section is hitting him. The beats on every beat, every quarter note. Well, stop time, they all just focus on the first beat. So it's like one, two, three, four. They hit one note, one accent, and that just lets Lewis, he's out there, you know, without a parachute. He just has to play without that chugging, swinging rhythm section behind him.
They're just accenting the first beat of every measure. And it's hard to do that because, you know, you could lose your time. You could lose your equilibrium. The band, they also have to hit that first beat all together on the nose. And it's become a kind of a lost art form in certain circles. But few did it better than the Hot Five.
Oh, my pleasure, Terry. This has been an honor. And, you know, I always have to leave my closing phrase, Pops is tops.
I mean, for me, this is kind of everything you need to know about Louis Armstrong in three minutes. Actually, it's probably everything you need to know about him in the first 13 seconds, because that unaccompanied opening trumpet cadenza, people are still learning it.
I mean, during the height of the pandemic, there was a hashtag Louis Armstrong West End Blues Challenge, and they had musicians around the world trying to nail that cadenza. But then the rest of the recording... The way he plays the melody, the way he scat sings, the operatic trumpet playing at the ending.
It was really his announcement to the world that he is here, he has arrived, and nothing will ever be the same.
So the records he makes in the 1920s, which are at the heart of Stomp Off, Let's Go, they were known at the time as race records, records aimed at cities and urban areas and the black community in general. And, you know, a lot of blues and a lot of instrumental jazz. But West End blues wasn't a runaway pop hit.
You know, that that was still the terrain of Paul Whiteman and Guy Lombardo and band leaders like that. But it did move the needle a little bit. People were buying it. They were listening. They were influenced. And OK Records, Armstrong's label at the time, their head A&R man, his name was Tommy Rockwell,
He was the one who kind of had the brainchild, like, man, this Armstrong guy has got something different. If we could just get him to connect with the larger public, you know, he really has a chance to be a star. And so beginning in late 1928, Rockwell starts expanding the sound of Armstrong's band, and he starts simultaneously releasing his recordings as race records and as pop records.
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