Best Of: Louis Armstrong's Early Years / Our Anti-Social Century
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Who was the first Black pop star according to experts?
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Tanya Mosley with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, how Louis Armstrong became the first Black pop star and provided the foundation of improvisation for other musicians.
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.
We talk with Ricky Riccardi, author of Stomp Off, Let's Go, The Early Years of Louis Armstrong. And we also hear from writer Derek Thompson. He's done a deep dive into our nation's loneliness epidemic and how our phones have become a barrier to real human connection. His recent article in The Atlantic is called The Antisocial Century. Also, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the Brazilian film I'm Still Here. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
This message comes from Wondery. At 24 years old, Monica Lewinsky was in a scandal that defined who she was for the entire world. And now she's ready to draw from her own experience on what it means to redefine yourself on her new podcast, Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a super fan of Fresh Air with Terry Gross, we have exciting news. WHYY has launched a Fresh Air Society, a leadership group dedicated to ensuring Fresh Air's legacy. For over 50 years, this program has brought you fascinating interviews with favorite authors, artists, actors, and more. As a member of the Fresh Air Society, you'll receive special benefits and recognition. Learn more at whyy.org slash Fresh Air Society.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has our first interview. I'll let her introduce it. Here's a question for you.
Who do you think was the first Black pop star? The answer is Louis Armstrong, according to one of the leading experts on Armstrong's life and music, my guest, Ricky Riccardi. He's just published his third book about Armstrong. This one is about Armstrong's early years, his rough childhood, his first recordings with other bands, and his famous first recordings with his own group, the Hot Five and Hot Seven. As Riccardi points out, those two early groups that Armstrong led, recorded between 1926 and 1928, over the course of 25 months, those recordings have been studied by up-and-coming musicians around the world because they provide the foundational language necessary to master the art of improvisation.
For instrumental soloists and vocalists, Riccardi says Armstrong's innovations as both a trumpeter and vocalist set the entire soundtrack of the 20th century in motion. Riccardi has been the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2009. It's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician. It gave Riccardi access to previously inaccessible documents, including 700 hours of Armstrong recordings of his thoughts and his music, the unedited and unsweetened version of his autobiography, and several chapters of an unpublished autobiography by his second wife, Lil Hardin, who was also the pianist in the Hot Five. She wrote or co-wrote several songs Armstrong recorded and was instrumental in landing his first recording date. Through writing about Armstrong, Riccardi's new book has a lot to say about segregation in New Orleans in the first part of the 20th century. The new book is called Stomp Off, Let's Go, which is the title of a song he recorded with another band led by Erskine Tate.
Ricky Riccardi, welcome to Fresh Air. What a joy it was to do the research for this, you know, being forced to listen again to Hot 5 and Hot 7 recordings. I love Armstrong's recordings, particularly like the ones through the 1940s. But you've written about all of them, like his whole life of recordings. So let's start with one of his great recordings. And this is West End Blues. And it's what you describe as one of the most iconic recordings of the 20th century. Tell us why.
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.
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