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 lo and behold, the pop records were selling. So in 1929... Armstrong comes to New York and begins his reign as a full-blown pop artist for OK, recording things like I Can't Give You Anything But Love and Ain't Misbehavin' and When You're Smiling. And by 1932, he's the biggest selling recording artist in the entire industry.
And so at that point, you know, the race record experiment is over and Louis Armstrong is the first black pop star.
So to my ears, and also to Johnny St. Cyr, the banjo player, he did corroborate the dropping of the sheet music thing. People have always said that that story was too good to be true. But if you listen carefully, there is a little bit... I don't want to call it panic, but in the first vocal chorus towards the end, Armstrong sings something. It almost sounds like you don't Debo, right?
It's kind of gibberish, but in my mind at that point, he might've dropped the lyrics and he didn't quite know what to do next. But this whole concept of using his voice like an instrument is, People remember that he was doing that in his vocal quartet when he was 11, 12 years old. One musician, Norman Mason, remembered him doing that on the riverboats with Fate Marable in 1920.
Another musician remembered him doing that In New York with Fletcher Henderson in 1924. So this whole concept of wordless vocalizing was something he had done. And Armstrong himself said, you know, these things just come to you in a flash. So he did not spend much time planning. Like, I am going to do this on heebie-jeebies. But in the moment with the sheet of paper on the ground.
He just launches into this entire chorus completely wordless. And by the end, you know, he's throwing Sweet Mama and things you normally don't hear in 1920s pop music. But if you continue listening to the end of the track, there's a moment where they had worked out a thing where they would play a Charleston beat and everybody would say a line. What you doing with the Hebe's?
And Kid Ori, the trombone player, he comes in at the wrong time. And even Armstrong himself, he admitted that he thought that they would try it again. But E.A. Fern, who was the producer for OK of this particular recording, He came in and said, we're going to take a chance on this one. And so even with the imperfections and all this stuff, they knew that that vocal had something different.
And Fern was the man that Armstrong gave credit for using the word scat. And in the book, I have a cover of the sheet music from later 1926. It's spelled S-K-A-T. But even though you can find other instances of wordless vocalizing on record before heebie-jeebies, for all intents and purposes, this is the record that really put scat singing on the map.
Well, to Armstrong, he said that the concept of a trumpet player or any instrumentalist also singing was just – it was a foreign concept at that time. People just didn't do it.
Either one or the other, exactly. But there was also something about Armstrong where I just think his natural personality, his showmanship, his mugging, his way of putting over a song, especially when he got to New York. I think the Henderson and the men in his band, which kind of fancy themselves as –
You know, Harlem Renaissance intellectuals, they kind of look down at that kind of Southern fried performing style. And so Armstrong, he for the rest of his life, he always said Henderson had a million dollar talent in his band, but he missed the boat. And I even called one of the chapters in the book Blessed Assurance, because I think before anybody else, Armstrong was confident.
in his abilities as a vocalist. He knew it was different and he knew if he only got the chance, you know, people would respond. And here we are, you know, 2025, what a wonderful world just went, you know, certified double platinum in 2024 of a record where he doesn't even play a note of trumpet. So once again, you know, Armstrong kind of has the last laugh.
He just needed that opportunity to let people hear that distinctive voice of his.
Another point that he always wanted to stress, you know, because people would say, oh, you know, the trumpet player, that's the genius. You know, the guy singing and that's kind of he's just doing that, you know, just to commercialize himself. And we put these songs over. But no, I have a quote from Arvel Shaw. I said that if Armstrong never picked up the trumpet, he would have been a singer.
You know, singing was in his blood more than the trumpet. And it was his real first musical foray in New Orleans before he ever picked up a cornet.
Yeah, this track literally just turned 100 years old. It was recorded in January 1925. And this was Armstrong, the sideman. He goes to New York to join Fletcher Henderson in October 1924. And OK Records and other labels, Columbia, they start using him as just a studio musician. His name is never on the labels, but people respond to the sound of his trumpet.
And this is something he had never really done in New Orleans before, backing up a vocalist. And on some of his early albums,
forays into this he would be a little too busy he might play too many notes or you know kind of step on the singer but by the time he got in the studio in January 25 to back the Empress of the Blues he had kind of perfected his approach and even though she's technically the lead artist singing the vocal and he's supposed to be you know the background figure just playing in and around her I consider a duet every one of his statements is so sensitive he is listening to her he is maintaining the mood and
And, you know, she only gets through W.C. Handy's chorus one time in three minutes, but it is all soul.
So Armstrong was born in 1901. I won't get into the whole birthday debate. You know, I believe he was born July 4th, 1901, but for reasons that are explained in the book. But either way, he's born 1901, spends his first few years living with his grandmother. But then around the age of five, he moves to the third ward. Liberty and Perdido streets.
Showing 101–120 of 185 · page 6 of 10
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