All language subtitles for JAZZ - 02 - The Gift (1917-1924)

[applause]

Now, good evening,
ladies and gentlemen.

I'm Mr. Armstrong,

and we're gonna swing
one of the good ol'
good ones for you.

Beautiful number--
I cover the waterfront,
I cover the waterfront.

w. Marsalis: You talk about
Louis Armstrong, well...

You're talking about

the deepest human feeling,

and the highest level of

musical sophistication.

So that's a rare occurrence
in the history of music.

He was chosen to bring
the feeling and the message

and the identity of jazz
to everybody.

He brought it to
all the musicians.

He brought it
all over the world.

He's the embodiment
of jazz music.

[Pianoflagplaying]

Narrator: The 20th century
was not even two decades old

when the first jazz record
reached the public in 1917.

But the world had
already changed

in ways no one
could have predicted.

And the unspeakable
carnage of world war I

was only part
of that change.

In the new, modern world,
human beings could fly.

X-ray photographs could
see through skin to bones.

Sigmund Freud,
listening to his patients
as they spoke to him

from a couch in his office,

found new ways to
understand the human mind.

Pablo Picasso
painted his subjects
from every viewpoint--

all at once.

And Albert Einstein described
a continuum of space and time.

Jazz music became the soundtrack
to that modern world,

and in america,
it became a national craze.

Thanks to the phonograph
record, it was everywhere.

Black and white bands
delighted dancers--

and outraged their elders--

in every American city.

The music was still
closely linked to ragtime--

brassy and hard-driving.

Solos were virtually
unknown.

But when the first
world war came to an end

and the "jazz age"
started in earnest,

the music began to change.

The story of jazz
became the story of two
great American cities:

Chicago, where black
New Orleans musicians
found fame

and a new white audience,

and New York, where two very
different neighborhoods--

Times Square and Harlem--

played host to a group
of dedicated musicians,

each struggling to find
his own distinctive voice.

Meanwhile,
in Washington, D.C.,

the privileged son of
middle-class parents,

a debonair piano-playing
high school dropout

named Edward
Kennedy Ellington,

was beginning to
write his own music,

and wondered whether
he could succeed
as a musician

in the wider world.

And in New Orleans,
where it had all begun,

a teenage boy was playing
cornet in honky Tonks,
pulling in crowds,

beginning to make art
out of the turbulent, often
violent world around him.

His name was
Louis Armstrong,

and to many, his
extraordinary genius

would seem like
a gift from god.

Jacobs: I don't believe
Louis Armstrong was
a real human being.

I believe, I still believe,
that god sent him
to this earth

to be a special messenger,
to make people happy.

You see, I think that

music is therapy.

For me, music has always
been as intoxicating

as alcohol, or a reefer,

or any kind of drugs.

The sound of music
could stimulate in me

love, happiness, creativity,

and I think Louis Armstrong
was sent here as a messenger
of the good lord

to make people happy.

And that's what he
dedicated his life to doing.

Giddins:
Armstrong is, in a way,

American music's bach,
American music's Dante,

American music's
Shakespeare.

Why? Because he comes at a point

in the music's history.

It's not the birth of the music;

it's been around for 30 years.

But it's the moment when
it becomes an art form.

He is the figure who codifies,
who assimilates everything
that's happened before,

and he shows where
the future is going to be.

[Basin street bluesPlaying]

The trumpet is
a sacrificial instrument.

It's the most difficult of

the wind instruments to play,

it's the most demanding,

and he played it with a power

that it never had before,
and has not had since.

I don't mean people don't
play higher than he played.

But the sheer force
and power that he played with,

nobody--i mean, he was
like the--he was it.

Narrator: Although he always
believed that his birthday
was July 4, 1900,

Louis Armstrong was actually
born on August 4, 1901,

in a section of New Orleans
so violent

it was called
"the battlefield."

His father, a day laborer
named William Armstrong,

had left the family,
and his children
rarely saw him.

His mother mayann was
only 16 when he was born,

and she sometimes worked
as a prostitute

to support herself
and her children.

W. Marsalis: Louis Armstrong
talks about how sometimes

he didn't know what
he was going to eat,

and that sometimes they
were on a level of poverty

where he didn't know
what was going to come next.

He was used to his
stomach growling.

Knife fights, gun fights,
razor fights--

this is the environment that
Louis Armstrong grew up in.

He saw a certain
side of life.

But he saw everything
in that side of life.

He didn't see the cliche
like what we'd write about.

He didn't see
that side of life

from the standpoint
of an outsider

who's, "oh, this is
such a terrible thing."

He saw the whole
thing of it.

He saw the humor in it,

the beauty in it,
the ugliness of it.

He saw it all,
and he understood it all.

[Texas moaner bluesPlaying]

Narrator: At the age of 7,
he went to work for
the karnoffskys,

a Russian Jewish
immigrant family,

who delivered coal to
the prostitutes of storyville.

Louis rode in their wagon,

and blew a long tin horn

to let the karnoffsky's clients
know they were coming.

W. Marsalis: You have to
think about a little kid

that realizes
something is wrong.

And they don't know
what it is,

but soon they realize
that what's wrong is
the color of their skin--

being called "nigger,"

seeing grown men called
"boy" and addressed in
a disrespectful fashion.

And then, into this
environment comes somebody

who's like the people
that you have seen degrade
all the other people you know.

But all of a sudden,
they're nice to you.

They invite you
into their home.

They try to look out
for you, and "have you
had something to eat?"

It's then, with
the karnoffskys as a boy,

he understands, well,
we're all human beings.

Narrator: Mrs. Karnoffsky
insisted he eat a good dinner

every evening before going home,

and Armstrong never forgot
the family's kindness to him.

All his life, he would
wear a star of David,

and Cherish
Mrs. Karnoffsky's lullabies.

One day, Louis spotted
a battered cornet
in a pawnshop window

and asked the karnoffskys
to advance him the $5.00
to buy it.

[Home sweet homPlaying]

"After blowing into it
a little while,"
Armstrong remembered,

"I realized I could play
Home sweet home...

then, here come the blues."

The first time
he touched the trumpet
he sounded great.

I'm sure of that.

He just was one of those
people who had the spirit--

the spirit was in him.

And that understanding
that comes from the creator
of humanity--he had that.

He knew he was good, you know.

He did know that.

He said, "what I have is

god-given." that's what he said.

And he'd always say,
"can you imagine me
and Gabriel up there?

I'm gonna blow him
out of the clouds."

He'd say that
all the time, too.

[Make me a palle Playing]

Giddins: It's a general rule
that children look for heroes.

They look for people
to emulate.

And in that community,
at that time,

you were going to
either emulate the guy
with the pistol

who, you know, whipped
his whores in the bar
in front of everybody

to show what a man he was,

or the musicians,

because the musicians were
very highly respected.

They were an essential
part of the community.

Every family function from
a birth, to a Sunday picnic,
to a funeral,

was a musical event.

Musicians were important.

They dressed well,
they were treated well.

Narrator: At age 11, Armstrong
dropped out of school for good,

formed a vocal quartet
that sang and danced

on the street corners
of black storyville,

and listened to the new
jazz music that was
everywhere around him.

But Armstrong also
got into trouble.

"I remember running around
with a lot of bad boys

which did a lot of
crazy things," he said,

and in 1913 he was arrested

for firing his stepfather's
pistol on new year's Eve.

Man: January 2, 1913.

6 white boys were
arrested in canal street
for disturbing the peace.

The most serious case
last night was that of
Louis Armstrong,

an 11-year-old negro,

who discharged a revolver at
rampart and perdido streets.

Being an old offender,
he was sent to
the colored waif's home.

New Orleans
Times picayune.

[my marylanPlaying]

Narrator: Within a few
months of his arrival at
the colored waif's home,

Armstrong was the best
cornet player in its
marching band,

even though its manager
was convinced that no boy
from "the battlefield"

would ever amount
to anything.

Soon, he was the leader.

When Armstrong led the band
through his old neighborhood
for the first time,

"all the whores, gamblers,
thieves, and beggars
were waiting for the band

"because they knew that
mayann's son would be in it.

They ran to wake up mama,
so she could see me go by,"
he remembered.

"They never dreamed that I
would be playing the cornet,

blowing it as
good as I could."

Man: He was marching
along with the band,

so we got up
real close to him

to see if he was actually
playing those notes.

We didn't believe
he could learn to play
in that short time.

I can still remember
he was playing
Maryland, my Maryland.

and he sure was
swingin' out that melody.

Zutty singleton.

Narrator: The onlookers
were so proud to see
that "little Louis"--

someone from
their neighborhood--
had done so well,

that they dropped enough
coins in the boys' hats

to pay for brand-new
instruments and uniforms

for the whole band.

The only way to
sum up music--

it ain't but two
things in music:
Good and bad.

Now if it sounds
good, you don't
worry what it is.

Just go on and enjoy
it, see what I mean.

Anything you can
pat your foot to
is good music.

Narrator: In 1914,
the year the first world war
started in Europe,

Louis Armstrong was released
from the waif's home.

[Krooked blu Playing]

He began playing in
parades and dance halls

and in seedy bars
frequented by a rough and
often notorious clientele.

There was funky Stella,
and cross-eyed Louise,

roughhouse camel,
cocaine buddy,

and black Benny Williams,
a 6-foot-6 sometime
parade drummer

who acted as young
Armstrong's protector
for a time.

His new "friends" showered
him with new nicknames--

"rhythm jaws,"
"gatemouth,"

"dippermouth,"
and "satchelmouth."

He played his cornet
whenever he got the chance,

and astonished older
musicians with his tone,
his power,

and his musical ideas.

W. Marsalis: The thing that
made him so great as a musician

is that he heard
what everybody was playing.

And not only did he hear
what they were playing,

well, he heard what they
were Try Ingto play.

And all of that he played.

And people loved him because,
you know, they could feel that
coming out of him.

So he might be with black Benny,
or old stinky rag,

or some of all these different
characters that he was around,

and they would call him
"little Louis"--they loved him.

Narrator: Armstrong loved
listening to jazz:

The kid ory band,

mutt Carey,

bunk Johnson,

Freddie keppard,

and Sidney bechet.

But of all the bands
Armstrong heard,

it was the one led by
the cornetist "king" Oliver

that meant the most to him.

Joe Oliver was
a tough band leader--

"rough as pig iron,"
one musician said.

He had begun his career
as a trombonist,

then switched to the cornet

and became a perennial
favorite at one of the
city's toughest clubs,

Pete lala's, in storyville.

Armstrong remembered
delivering coal

to one prostitute
who lived next door,

and lingering
as long as he could

just to hear Oliver,
his idol, play.

[Dippermouth blu Eplaying]

So king Oliver would create
vocal effects like this one.

Giddins: Oliver was a big,
impressive-looking man.

He had a gorgeous sound.

He had a lot of authority,
and he knew how to
put together a band.

And Oliver
obviously liked him.

Armstrong was allowed
to carry his trumpet,
which was an honor,

and I think he took him
kind of under his wing.

Narrator: "I loved Joe Oliver,"
Louis Armstrong said.

"He did more for young musicians
than anyone I know of."

Between engagements,
Oliver would sometimes
stop on the street

and offer Armstrong
advice on how to play.

Armstrong:
We'd be walking up
rampart street

and run into
Joe Oliver.

We might have
a lesson or
a piece of music

that was buggin' us.

And I'd say,
"papa Joe, how do
you divide that?"

He'd stop, no matter
where he was going,
and show it to us,

while the rest
of the musicians
would say,

"boy, I ain't
got no time!

Breaking my neck
to get to the eagle
saloon," see?

That's why we all
love Joe Oliver.

Narrator: In 1918, the year
American troops went to war,

king Oliver left New Orleans
for the big city of Chicago,

and Armstrong took over as
cornetist in his old band.

His reputation grew,

and soon he, too, had offers
of work from out of town.

But Armstrong had no thought
of ever leaving New Orleans.

He was married now to
an ex-prostitute named Daisy,

and besides, he had seen
too many other musicians fail.

"Wasn't nobody going to get Me
To leave New Orleans," he said,

"but papa Joe."

[Potato head blu Eplaying]

Armstrong spent
the next 3 summers
playing aboard steamboats

plowing up and down
the Mississippi,

from New Orleans
all the way north
to St. Paul, Minnesota,

but always back home again.

Armstrong remembered that
"we were the first colored band

to play most of the towns
at which we stopped."

The white people,
"the ofays," he said,

"were not used to seeing
colored boys blowing horns

"and making fine music
for them to dance by,

but before the evening
was over, they loved us."

When his boat tied up
at Davenport, Iowa,

a 17-year-old
high school student
named bix beiderbecke

heard him play--
and never forgot it.

Neither did a young
Texas trombonist named
Jack teagarden,

who happened to be standing
on the New Orleans levee
one moonlit evening

when he heard the distant
sound of a cornet

from somewhere
across the water.

[Cornet continues playing]

He couldn't see
anything at first,

just the vague form
of an excursion boat

gliding toward him
through the mist.

But the sound,
growing louder as
the boat neared shore,

was unlike anything
he had ever heard before.

[Cornet continues playing]

It was Louis Armstrong,
he remembered,

"descending from the sky
like a god."

Early: Jazz seemed to
so much capture the absurdity
of the modern world,

because of course the modern

world had become absolutely

absurd because of world war I.

Narrator: As Americans
prepared for war with Germany,

African-Americans
living in Harlem

persuaded the governor
of New York

to Grant them
their own unit:

The 15th infantry regiment.

They would also need
their own regimental band.

The man who was
asked to lead it was
James Reese Europe,

the best-known orchestra
leader in New York,

who had begun to incorporate
elements of jazz

into his infectious,
syncopated ragtime music.

[My chocolate soldier
Sammy bo Yplaying]

[La marseillaisPlaying]

The regiment arrived in France
on new year's day, 1918.

Europe and his men played
The marseillaise With
such drive and excitement

that the waiting French crowd
took a while to recognize it.

American officers
were so impressed with
Europe's unique sound

that they sent the band
on a tour of army camps
and French villages.

They played French
and American marches,

"plantation melodies,"

and the song Europe
had made famous--

the Memphis blues.

[Memphis blu Playing]

Man: With a soul-rousing
crash of cymbals,

cornet and clarinet players
began to manipulate notes

in that typical rhythm
which no artist has ever
put down on paper.

Then, as the drummers
struck their stride, their
shoulders shaking in time,

the audience could
stand it no longer.

The "jazz germ" hit them

and it seemed to
find the vital spot,

loosening all muscles
and causing what is
known in American

as an "eagle rocking it."

And I am satisfied
that American music

will one day be
the world's music.

Private noble sissle.

Narrator: French and British
band leaders were convinced

that Europe's men were
using trick instruments.

Otherwise, they said,
such sounds were not possible.

[Explosions]

On April 20, 1918,

lieutenant James Reese
Europe accompanied
a French night patrol

across no-man's land
under heavy enemy fire,

and became the first
African-American officer to
face combat during the war.

The men of the 15th regiment
would survive 191 days
of fierce combat,

receive the Croix de guerre,

and be chosen by
the French high command

to lead the allied forces
to the rhine.

By the end of the war,
171 men of the 15th infantry

were decorated for bravery,

more than from any other
American regiment.

The men took special pride
in the name the French
gave them:

The hellfighters.

[That moaning trombo Nplaying]

And when they came home
at last in February 1919,

for a victory parade
up fifth Avenue to Harlem,

new yorkers,
black and white,

poured into the streets
to cheer them.

That spring, Europe
and his hellfighters band
cut 24 records,

and made a triumphant
tour of the country,

spreading their
hot new music

and drawing big, cheering,
integrated crowds

everywhere they went.

W. Marsalis: Well,
James Reese Europe is similar

to many of the great figures
in American music

in that he's always trying to
synthesize elements around him

that seem to disagree.

And when people start to hear
this band, the concert band,

which is usually playing in that
kind of strict, stiff way,

playing this loose, kind of
grooving, lilting fashion,

they can't believe
what they're hearing.

Man, everybody
is going crazy,

and James Reese Europe
is looking at the response
of the people,

and he's saying to himself,
"let's do this some more."

Narrator: James Reese Europe
had big plans for peacetime:

To merge jazz and ragtime

into a wholly new kind of
African-American music.

"We won France by playing
music which was ours,

and not a pale imitation
of others," he said,

"and if we are to
develop in america,

we must develop
along our own lines."

[Memphis blu Playing]

Narrator: On the morning
of may 9, 1919,

Europe was in Boston,
scheduled to lay a wreath

at the base of the memorial
to the 54th Massachusetts
volunteers,

the first black regiment
to fight in the civil war.

But the evening
before the ceremony,

Europe was confronted
by one of his drummers,

a high-strung man
named Herbert Wright.

The two men had words.

Wright accused his boss
of treating him unfairly,

then suddenly stabbed
Europe in the neck
with a pen knife.

That night, James Reese Europe
bled to death.

The loss was incalculable,
said the new york Times.

"ragtime may be negro music,
but it is Americ Annegro music,

"more alive than much
other American music;

"and Europe was
one of the Americans

who was contributing most
to its development."

The city of New York gave
him an official funeral--

the first ever granted
to a black citizen.

Thousands of mourners,
black and white,

turned out to see the
procession pass from Harlem

down the West Side to
St. Mark's episcopal church.

"He took the colored of this
city from their Porter's
places," said the priest,

"and raised them to
positions of importance
as real musicians."

[Military drums playing]

The cheers that had
greeted the "hellfighters"
did not echo long.

The ku klux klan
was on the march now,

in New York state,
and new england,
and Washington, D.C.,

as well as in
the old confederacy,

determined to crush
the aspirations of
every minority.

During the summer of 1919,

African-Americans were
their most frequent targets.

More than 70 blacks
were killed by white mobs

during the last 9 months
of the year--

10 of them returning
soldiers, still in uniform.

Man: We return from
the slavery of uniform,

which the world's madness
demanded of us,

to Don the freedom
of civil garb.

We stand again to look america
squarely in the face.

This country of ours,
despite all its better souls
have done and dreamed,

is yet a shameful land.

It lynches.

It disenfranchises
its own citizens.

It encourages ignorance.

It steals from us.

It insults us.

We return from fighting.

We return fighting.

Make way for democracy!

We saved it in France,

and by the great jehovah,

we will save it
in the u.S.A.

Or know the reason why.

W.e.b. Du bois.

[Salty d Playing]

Narrator: Out of
the continuing violence
against African-Americans,

a new assertiveness grew.

Man: The Old Negro goes.

His abject crawling and pleading
have availed the cause nothing.

Harlem Crusader.

woman: The new negro, unlike
the old time negro,

does not fear the face of day.

The time for cringing is over.

The Kansas city Call.

narrator:
The national association for the
advancement of colored people

launched a nationwide crusade
against lynching.

Marcus garvey, the black
nationalist leader,

called upon his people to
abandon any hope of help
from white america

and look to themselves.

"No more fear," he said,

"no more begging
and pleading."

Everywhere, African-Americans
began to build their own
institutions--

banks, businesses,
baseball teams.

And black writers
and artists and musicians

now began to talk of
a cultural rebirth.

Early: You had people
who created a music
that's really celebrating,

in its own way,
Democratic possibilities--

liberation,
freedom of the spirit--

who really hadn't
experienced everything

that Democratic society
had to offer,

but who could look around
and see the promise
embedded in the society.

Jazz is a kind of lyricism
about the great American
promise...

And our inability to
live up to it, in some ways.

[South Carolina charleston
Playing]

Man: Jazz is the product
of a restless age:

An age in which
the fever of war

is only now beginning
to abate its fury;

when men and women,
after their efforts
in the great struggle,

are still too much
disturbed to be content
with a tranquil existence;

when freaks and stunts
and sensations

are the order--or disorder--
of the day;

when painters
delight in portraying
that which is not,

and sculptors in twisting
the human limbs into
strange, fantastic shapes;

when america is
turning out her merchandise
at an unprecedented speed;

when aeroplanes are beating
successive records,

and ladies are in
so great a hurry

that they wear short
skirts which enable
them to move fast

and cut off their hair
to save a few precious
moments of the day;

when the extremes of
bolshevism and fascism

are pursuing their
own ways simultaneously,

and the whole world is
rushing helter-skelter
in unknown directions.

Giddins: Then in 1920,
the best thing that could
have happened for jazz,

they passed the most
idiotic law in the history
of the United States:

Prohibition.

Well, from a handful of
saloons around the country,

you now have thousands and
thousands of speakeasies,

especially in all
the major cities.

I mean, at one point
in New York City alone,

Manhattan had
5,000 speakeasies.

And in the competition,
you want to bring in people,
you have music.

So suddenly, there's work--

there's tons of work
for jazz musicians.

Also, prohibition is
loosening up morals.

It's doing exactly the opposite
of what it was supposed to do.

Women, for example,
did not drink in saloons.

They sure drank
in speakeasies.

So the jazz age became
a kind of umbrella term

for this whole loosening up,

this whole lubrication
thanks to prohibition,

when everybody was drinking
more than they should

just to defy an absolutely
unenforceable law.

Man: Amid this seething,
bubbling turmoil,

jazz hurried
along its course,

riding exultantly
on the eddying stream.

Nevertheless, the end of
civilization is not yet,

and jazz will either
be trained and turned
to artistic success

or else vanish
utterly from our midst
as a living force.

But even if it
disappears altogether,

it will not have
existed in vain.

For its record will remain
as an interesting
human document--

the spirit of the age
written in the music
of the people.

R. W. S. Mendl,
The appeal of jazz.

narrator: America
was jazz crazy now.

But the jazz most
Americans were crazy About

was still primarily
a novelty music:

Frenetic...funny...

The perfect accompaniment
for fast dancing
and high times.

It would take the soaring
genius of musicians
like Louis Armstrong

to broaden its message,
deepen its emotions,

turn it into art.

[Piano playing Black beauty]

Duke Ellington: My story
is a very simple story.

You know, it's like
once upon a time,

a very pretty lady and
a very handsome gentleman

met and fell in love
and got married.

And god blessed them with
this wonderful baby boy.

And they held him
in the palm of the hand,

and nurtured him
and spoiled him

until he was about
7, 8 years old.

And then he put, they put
his feet on the ground,

and the minute they put
his feet on the ground,
he ran out the front door,

out across the front lawn,
out across the street.

Anyway, the minute he
got on the other side
of the street,

somebody says, "hey,
Edward, up this way."

And the boy was me,
incidentally.

[Audience laughter]

And the guy from
the next corner says,

"hey, Edward--right.

"Go up there
and turn left.
You can't miss it."

And it's been going on
ever since.

That's the story,
that's my biography.

[Laughter]

Narrator: On April 29, 1899,

at 1212 t street

in a comfortable,
middle-class,
black neighborhood

in northwest
Washington D.C.,

Edward Kennedy Ellington
was born.

He would one day be hailed
as the greatest of all
American composers,

jazz music's most prolific--
and least knowable--genius.

His father,
James Edward Ellington,

was a Butler who sometimes
catered at the white house.

He was a man of
modest means,

but raised his family,
his son said,

"as if he was
a millionaire."

His mother, Daisy, was
utterly devoted to her son,

and she would always remain
the most important person
in his life.

"As though I were some
very, very special child,"
he remembered,

"my mother would say,
Edward, you are blessed!"

and when I asked him how his

a bad boy, if he ever did

anything, you know, if he was

reprimanded, what kind of kid

were you, you know. And he said,

"joya, I was raised
in the palm of the hand."

He said, "my mother never
let my feet touch the ground."

Narrator: Daisy hovered
at his bedside whenever
he fell ill,

took him twice each Sunday
to the 19th street
baptist church,

and saw to it that he took
regular piano lessons.

M. Ellington: My grandfather
must have exhibited

some abnormal quality
from the very beginning

to his mother and his father,

and I think his mother was

really listening, and she

recognized that there was

something different about him.

And she was going to
give him every opportunity

to use this difference

and to take
advantage of it.

My mother used to
buy sheet music

and play it
on the piano,

and I'll always remember her
playing Meditations.

it used to make me cry.

That's a picture of
my mother over there
on that wall.

This was taken after
she moved to New York.

Narrator: Daisy told
her son he must allow
nothing to stop him.

Unpleasant facts
and potential barriers

were simply to be ignored.

He could do anything
anyone else could do.

And because
shebelieved that,

Ellington would always
believe it, too.

His 8th-grade teacher
at William Lloyd Garrison
junior high school

emphasized proper speech
and good manners.

"As representatives
of the negro race,

we were to command
respect for our people,"
Ellington remembered.

"They had race pride there,
the greatest race pride."

It really had a great deal to do
with racial prejudice,

these manners you were taught.

You would be taught--you...

Your manners, your sense of

what you are capable of

will carry you past
these slights and insults.

Always carry yourself
as if you're above them,

because, in fact, you are.

He had that sense of himself
right from the beginning,

and if he hadn't had that sense,

he would never have been able

to accomplish what he did,

because he had to push through

so many obstacles,

and he had to learn
so much himself

in order to do what he did.

And in the end, he left us
with this enormous body

of absolutely superb music.

[Gladysplaying]

Narrator: Ellington was
getting another kind
of education as well.

He may have been
brought up in a respectable
middle-class family,

but at 14, he secretly
began visiting

frank holiday's pool room
at 7th and t streets--

and slipping into the
gayety burlesque theater
after school.

Ragtime piano players
became his heroes.

Ellington spent hours
leaning over the piano

with "both my ears
20 feet high," he said.

He loved playing the piano

because girls seemed to be
attracted to piano players

and Hewas attracted
to girls.

Ellington began
to dress with such
precocious elegance

that friends
and family alike

started to call him
"the Duke."

And he also began to
compose his own music.

His first piece was called
Soda fountain rag.

the soda fountain rag?

sure.

I can't play it anymore,
it's too hard.

[Soda fountain r Aplaying]

Narrator: Soon,
he dropped out of school

and formed his own group,
the Duke's serenaders.

Whenever he was scheduled
to appear in a club
or dance hall,

he sent a friend ahead to
open the door and announce,

"get out of the way,
'cause here comes the Duke!"

His elegance--
and eager salesmanship--

got him jobs playing ragtime
and sweet dance music

at country clubs,
embassy dances,

and white Washington's
most elegant parties.

From the first,
Duke Ellington seemed able
to move effortlessly

among the city's
many worlds--

rich and poor,
black and white,

and all shades in between.

M. Ellington: Age, nationality,
race, types of music--

anything that had a label,

he did not want to have
anything to do with.

If he were to
compliment someone,

the best thing he could
say about them was that
they were beyond category.

Categories to him were
something to be ignored,

completely ignored.

[I'm coming virginiaPlaying]

Narrator: In January 1923,
Duke Ellington,

married now and
with an infant son,

paid his way into
the segregated section
of the Howard theater

to hear the New Orleans
master Sidney bechet.

Ellington never forgot
what he heard that night.

It was "all soul," he said.

"All from the inside."

Bechet seemed to be
"calling somebody,"
whatever he played.

"It was my first encounter
with the New Orleans idiom,"
Ellington remembered.

"It was a completely new
sound and conception to me."

As the fervor of the
"jazz age" accelerated,

Ellington's own career
was beginning to take off.

But he was frustrated
playing the kind of music

Washington society
wanted to hear.

He yearned
for something more,

knehe hadad
something to say,

began to look for
new worlds to conquer.

[Faint train whistle]

Bowie: Louis Armstrong
was one of my first idols,

and I really idolized Louis,

and I wanted to be like Louis.

And I read this story of how

king Oliver had called him up

to come up to Chicago
to play with him.

So whenever
I would practice,

I would practice with my horn
aimed out the window,

in hopes that Louis would
drive by and hear me,

and hire me to come play
with his band.

And Louis never came by.

[Jazzin' babies blue Playing]

Narrator:
On August 8, 1922,

Louis Armstrong boarded
the Illinois central
at New Orleans,

bound for Chicago.

He was 21 years old,
separated from his wife,

and finally going to join
his idol, king Oliver.

Giddins: The only person
who could have brought him
out of New Orleans

was king Oliver.

So when he got
the telegram from Oliver:

"Join me at the Lincoln
gardens in Chicago,"

his mom packed him
a trout sandwich,

he got on the train,
and he was gone.

Narrator: He carried
only his cornet case

and an old valise
that held his patched,
threadbare tuxedo.

His mother, mayann,
made sure that he was
wearing long underwear.

She had heard that
where He Was going,

even in midsummer,
it was cold.

Armstrong was joining an exodus
of African-Americans

in flight from
the suffocating poverty

and repressive Jim crow laws

that continued to grip
the deep south.

Since the beginning
of world war I,

hundreds of thousands
of men and women

had boarded trains
and headed north

in search of
jobs and freedom.

It was called
"the great migration,"

and most rail lines
led to Chicago.

Terkel: Chicago,
to many black people,

especially following
world war I, early twenties,

it was the place to go.

People in the fields
would hear the whistle

of that Illinois central, going

from New Orleans to Chicago.

Chicago! That where it is!

Chicago, where the work is--
the stockyards, the steel mills,

the farm equipment,
the heavy industry.

Sandburg's poem may have
been corny, but true.

Chicago--"hog butcher
for the world"--

there was jobs
at the stockyards.

"Stacker of wheat,"
"center of nation's railroads,"

a thousand passenger trains
each day passing through
Chicago.

Pullman car porters,
of course, and chefs,

and working the tracks,

and of course, the steel mills.

Chicago was the place where
you could get a job possibly,

but life would be Different.

narrator: It seemed to
an anxious Louis Armstrong

that he had never been
so far from home before,

and when he stepped down
at 12th street station,

and no one was
there to meet him,

he asked himself
if he had made a mistake
leaving New Orleans.

The tall buildings
intimidated him;

he remembered wondering
if they were all "universities."

Giddins: Now he gets to Chicago,

and he gets off the train,

and everybody's like
giggling when they see him

because he looks
like an undertaker.

He's wearing a box-back
black coat, a suit,

and his hair is kind of
combed in the front

and he really doesn't
understand city ways yet.

It took him about two minutes
to become the king of the city,

but that's another story.

[Just go Playing]

Narrator: He asked a redcap
how he might find Joe Oliver.

The man, who had
been told by Oliver to
look out for Armstrong,

put him in a taxi
and sent him along
to the Lincoln gardens,

an ornate dance hall
at 31st and cottage grove,

in the heart
of the south side--

the lively, sprawling
neighborhood

where thousands
of black newcomers
from the south had settled.

When he got to
the Lincoln gardens

and heard the music drifting
out onto the street,

he went in
and said to himself,

"no, I ain't supposed
to be in this band.

They're too good."

But then,
Oliver spotted him.

"You little fool," he said.
"Come on in here."

"I was home,"
Armstrong remembered.

Joe Oliver's band would
remain Armstrong's home--

his training ground
and His"university"--

for two years.

With Armstrong in the group,
king Oliver's creole jazz
band never sounded better.

The two men
perfected a duet style

by which Armstrong seemed
instinctively to know

just what his boss
was about to play,

and was always ready
with the perfect
complement to it.

Nothing like it
had ever been heard
in Chicago before.

Armstrong: The word
had spread around:

Joe Oliver got a little
second cornet player,

and they making breaks together

and doing a lot of things
together--you got to hear him.

I listened to Joe Oliver,
and I learned the way he played,

and I practically know
everything he played,

so I put notes to it.

Surprised him, how I could
make duets to whatever...

[Scats]

I'll make a duet to that!

And all the musicians
thought that was great,

and they tried it
and everything,

but they didn't
concentrate like we did.

They couldn't do it
unless they wrote it down.

But we didn't write anything,
never did write it down.

Narrator: News of what
Oliver and Armstrong were
doing at the Lincoln gardens

spread all across the city,

and soon, a few white listeners
came to hear them, as well.

[Snake r Playing]

Man: As the door
opened, the trumpets--

king and Louis,
one or both--

soared above
everything else.

The whole joint
was rocking.

Tables, chairs,
walls, people moved
with the rhythm.

It was hypnosis
at first hearing.

Armstrong seemed able
to hear what Oliver
was improvising

and reproduce it himself
at the same time.

Then the two wove
around each other,

like suspicious women
talking about the same man.

Eddie condon.

Narrator: One dazzled
young musician remembered

there was so much
music in the air

that if you held up a horn,
it would play by itself.

[Snake r Continues]

On April 5, 1923,

king Oliver,
Louis Armstrong,
and the creole jazz band

took the train from Chicago
to Richmond, Indiana,

home of gennett records.

Richmond was not
especially friendly
territory for jazz--

or black Americans.

Much of Indiana
was controlled by
the ku klux klan.

But now, Louis Armstrong
was about to be recorded
for the first time.

Giddins: So they go
into the recording studio,

and the first thing
that they notice--

this is one of
the great mythological
tales of early jazz--

is that--the band is used
to record around a horn,

and then you would cut
the sound into a wax disk.

They couldn't work
with Armstrong standing
around the horn

because he overpowered
everybody else in the band,

so he had to stand
10, 15 feet behind the rest--

they had to open the door
and have him in the hallway

so that his sound
would be balanced against
the other musicians.

They make a record--and
I think this is unquestionably

a landmark moment
in the history of jazz--

called Chimes blues.

[chimes bluePlaying]

Armstrong is assigned,
as his first solo,
the trio strain.

He's not required, or asked,

nor do they desire him to
improvise a single note.

But he plays this trio strain
with such bravura,

and such rhythmic intensity,

that when you listen to it,
you hear the future.

It's more intense and exciting
than all the improvisation

that the entire ensemble
is doing around him.

And that Might,
That holy sound that he has,

at that moment, you know
that something is in the works,

and it's never going
to be contained.

And it's only two years later
that he finally goes into
the studio under his own steam

and virtually codifies
what jazz is going to be
for the next half-century.

[Chimes belPlaying,ng,
Armstrong trumpet solo]

[Trumpet solo continues]

Collier: And I think what
you finally have out of this

is what musicians call
"telling your story."

You're supposed to tell a story.

You're supposed to be saying
something personal,

and this is what
you have with Louis,

this quality of...A human being
standing there talking to you

and telling you a really
coherent and fascinating story.

That, I think, is the essence
of Armstrong's genius.

When the word first traveled
about Louis Armstrong--

man, there's this trumpet player
you have to hear,

he's from New Orleans
and nobody can believe it,

I heard him
on the riverboat.

You heard
him on the riverboat?

Oh, it's unbelievable,
the sound and such and such.

Now he's in Chicago.

But now when those records
started to come out,

well, then the rest
of it is history.

You could hear it--
everybody heard it.

[Keep off the grassPlaying]

Woman: Chicago, January 21:

Moral disaster is coming
to hundreds of young
American girls

through the pathological,
nerve-irritating,
sex-exciting music

of jazz orchestras,

according to the Illinois
vigilance association.

In Chicago alone,
the association's
representatives

have traced the fall
of 1,000 girls
in the last two years

to jazz music.

New york American.

not that the early recordings
captured jazz real well,

but it spread jazz.

And people learned from the

recordings, more people were

able to hear this music.

You weren't just--

and this made jazz
seem that much more

like a virus or a disease,

which is what the people
who hated jazz said.

You know, "this is a disease,
it's coming at us,
infecting the country."

[The one I love belongs
To someone elsPlaying]G

man: If you ride northward
the length of Manhattan island,

going through central park
and coming out on seventh Avenue

or lenox Avenue at 110th street,

you cannot escape being struck
by the sudden change

in the character
of the pple you see.

In the middle and lower
parts of the city,
you have, perhaps,

noted negro faces
here and there.

But when you emerge
from the park,

you see them everywhere.

And as you go up either
of these two great arteries
leading out from the north,

you see more
and more negroes,

walking in the streets,
looking from the windows,

trading in the shops,
eating in the restaurants,

going in and coming out
of the theaters,

until, nearing 135th street,

90% of the people you see,

including the traffic
officers, are negroes.

You have been having
a glimpse of Harlem,

the negro Metropolis.

James weldon Johnson.

Narrator: The real migration
for African Americans continued,

and by 1920, New York
was home to more blacks

than any other northern city,
including Chicago.

Most of them lived uptown,

in a particularly beautiful old
neighborhood called Harlem.

It was the home of the national
association for the advancement
of colored people.

The urban league had its
headquarters in Harlem.

So did Marcus garvey's universal
negro improvement association.

The writer James weldon Johnson,

the poet Langston Hughes,

the writer zora neale hurston,

and the scholar and civil rights
activist w.E.B. Dubois

all lived in Harlem,
as did many other artists

eagerly examining what it meant
to be black and American,

Jazz musicians were
drawn to Harlem, too.

There were plenty of theater and
nightclub and dance hall jobs--

and Broadway
and the record companies were
only a subway ride away.

But to many middle class blacks,
jazz was an embarrassment--

a vulgar, low-life music,

unworthy of a race now committed
to uplifting itself.

But jazz could not be stopped.

[Carolina shouPlaying]

Man: Let the blare of
negro jazz bands...

Penetrate the closed ears of
the colored, near-intellectuals

until they listen
and perhaps understand.

Let them cause the smug
negro middle class

to turn from
their white, respectable,
ordinary books and papers,

and catch a glimmer
of their own beauty.

We younger artists who create

now intend to express our
individual, dark-skinned selves
without fear or shame.

If white people are
pleased, we are glad.

If they are not,
it doesn't matter.

We know we are beautiful

and ugly, too.

The Tom-Tom cries
and the Tom-Tom laughs.

Langston Hughes.

Narrator: The musical
heroes of Harlem

were the masters of a dazzling
virtuoso piano style--stride.

"It was Orchestr Al piano,"
one of its stars remembered,

full, round, big,
widespread chords moving
against the right hand."

Its practitioners called
themselves "ticklers,"

but the nicknames
they awarded one another--

"the bear," "the beetle,"
"the beast," "the brute"--

were warlike, befitting
the perennial piano wars called
"cutting contests"

they waged among themselves.

[The charlestoPlaying]

James p. Johnson was
the elder statesman,

a composer and conductor
as well as a pianist,

who had made something
altogether new out of ragtime.

He had, in fact,
written the tune that
would define the jazz age,

and his playing had
helped inspire

a young Duke Ellington
to become a musician.

Johnson was shy and soft-spoken
most of the time,

but he loved combat with
other piano players so much,
one of them remembered,

that his wife would
sometimes have to come
to Harlem from queens

"and go from street to street
until she heard the piano,

"recognized his style,
and then go up to the apartment

to get him out of there
and take him home."

[Finger bust Er

playing]

Johnson's greatest rival
was his good friend

William Henry Joseph Bonaparte
bertholoff Smith--

Willie "the lion" Smith--

who sometimes said
he had earned his nickname

for bravery in battle
during world war I,

and at other times claimed he'd
been named "the lion of judea"

because of his devotion
to judaism.

Smith and Johnson customarily
battled to a draw.

"It was never to the blood,"
a young piano player remembered.

"With those two giants,
it was always a sporting event.

"Neither cut the other.

They had too much
respect for that."

[Mule walk stomPlaying]

The two men were regulars
at Harlem rent parties--

all night dances held
in crowded apartments,

where the cost of admission
helped hold off the landlord.

Hughes: The Saturday night rent
parties that I attended

were often more amusing
than any nightclub,

in small apartments,
where god knows who lived--

because the guests seldom did--

but where the piano would often
be augmented by a guitar,

or an odd cornet, or somebody
with a pair of drums walking
in off the street.

And the dancing and singing
and impromptu entertaining

went on until dawn came
in at the windows.

Langston Hughes.

[Gut sto Playing]

Narrator: In early 1923,
Duke Ellington, together
with two old friends,

the drummer Sonny greer and
the saxophonist Otto hardwicke,

moved to Harlem, anxious to see
if they had what it took

to make it in the city
jazz musicians would soon
call the "big apple."

"Harlem, in our minds,"
Ellington remembered,

"had the world's most
glamorous atmosphere.

We had to go there."

His first job in New York

was to accompany a vaudeville
musician named wilbur sweatman,

who insisted that members of
his band use powder to lighten
their complexions.

When sweatman left town,
Ellington and his friends
scuffled for work,

sometimes hustling pool
to feed themselves,

but always listening to
the stride piano masters.

Willie "the lion" Smith
took a shine to Ellington
and his friends.

He steered Ellington
toward pick-up jobs,

encouraged him to try his hand
at cutting contests.

[Choo ch Playing]

In the fall of 1923,
Duke Ellington, Sonny greer,
and Otto hardwicke

moved downtown to play
the Hollywood inn,

a cellar club just off
Times Square.

They were now part of a 6-piece
band called the washingtonians

that specialized in
"sweet" dance music.

It was led by a banjo player
and small-time impresario
named Elmer snowden.

When the men discovered
that snowden

was pocketing more than
his share of the band's pay,

they forced him out and made
Duke Ellington the new leader.

It was at the Hollywood inn,
Ellington said,

"that our music acquired
new colors and characteristics."

He was absorbing everything:
The ragtime he'd heard as
a boy in Washington,

the more sophisticated style
of the Harlem stride masters,

and the looser, blues-drenched
New Orleans sounds

of Sidney bechet
and Louis Armstrong.

All of it would soon be
reflected in his music.

W. Marsalis: In the beginning,
he played society music.

Like he would say...

So, you know, he'd be playing
along with that kind of vibrato,

and then he heard
king Oliver's band,

and they were talking about...

So he said, "oh, ok,
I want to do that.

"I want to hear that clarinet,
I want to hear that trombone

"I want that rhythm
and that beat, the big four,

bum, be bum bum,
be bum bum bum."

So, he started looking
around for musicians
who had that sound.

Narrator: The most important
addition to the band

was a young trumpeter
from south Carolina,
a disciple of king Oliver,

who carried Oliver's
muted effects to new
and startling heights.

His name was
James "bubber" Miley.

[Red hot banPlaying]

"He used to growl
all night long,

"playing gutbucket on his horn,"
Ellington said.

"That was when we decided
to forget all about
the sweet music."

And Duke said we just threw

all that polite music

out the window,

and we went for the hot stuff,

and the whole band changed
when bubber came in.

Narrator: The band
would stay at the Hollywood inn
for 4 years.

Collier: The Hollywood inn was
a terrible place to play.

One of the things that you have
to remember of course,

there was no air conditioning
in those days.

So a place like that
in the summer would be
absolutely unbearable,

and they had to close
it in the summer

because there was no way
anybody could stand it.

Well, what they would do was
sort of every Memorial Day,

the gangsters who owned
the place would torch it,

shut it down,
collect the insurance,

and open it up again
in the fall.

And they got to the point
where they would tell
the guys in the band,

they'd say, "say, Sonny,"
to Sonny greer, the drummer,

"think you'd better take
your drums home tonight."

And the guys would clear out
their instruments,

and the next day the thing
would be in flames,

and that was the kind of joint.

It was a rough club,
it was a very rough club,

even though it was right
in the heart of glamorous
Times Square.

Narrator: After one of its
strategically timed fires,

the Hollywood inn
closed briefly,

then reopened as
the club Kentucky,

featuring the new, hot
sound of Duke Ellington.

Billboar Dif anybody can tell
us where a hotter aggregation

than Duke Ellington
and his club Kentucky
serenaders can be found,

we'll buy for the mob.

Possessing a sense of rhythm
that is almost uncanny,

the boys in this dusky
organization dispense
a type of melody

that stamps the outfit as
the most torrid in town.

Crouch: He drew from everything
that was happening.

From the movies, from Broadway,

from religious music,

from the blues,

from Louis Armstrong,
from king Oliver,

from jelly roll Morton,
from the competition with
other bands.

You know, like somebody coming
with a little something,

he'd hear over and he'd say,
"oh, that'll be good.

I'll take that, put it over here
and turn it into this."

And then, somebody would hear
his version and they'd say,

"hah! Well, I'll take that back,
and I'll turn into this!"

Then he'd say, "oh. Well,
that's not a bad idea,
and I'll take that."

And so that was going on, too.

Narrator: By 1924,
Duke Ellington was making
a name for himself in New York.

He had begun to record
and managed to sell
some of his tunes

to the song publishers
of tin pan alley.

But he was still not satisfied.

And he confessed his unhappiness
to his friend will Marion cook,

a classically-trained conductor
and Broadway composer.

[The moo Playing]

During long taxi rides
through central park,

the two men talked about music.

Cook urged Ellington
to get formal training
at a conservatory.

Ellington didn't feel
he had time for that:

"They're not teaching what
I want to learn," he said.

In that case, cook told him,
"first, find the logical way,

"and when you find it, avoid it,

"and let your inner self break
through and guide you.

Don't try to be
anybody but yourself."

It was advice Duke Ellington
would follow all his life.

W. Marsalis: Duke Ellington
knew how to take what could be
and make it what is.

He understood
what it took to make something
invisible visible.

The greatest practitioners
of this music

have been African-American.

It comes from a particular kind

of African-American experience
with democracy,

with america,
with capitalist society,

with a whole bunch
of other stuff.

But, it captured something about

this culture and this society
and this life

that as soon as other
people heard it, said,

"yeah!, that's me."

Man: Austin, Illinois, was
a well-to-do suburb where
all the days were sabbaths,

a sleepy-time neighborhood
big as a yawn and just
about as lively,

loaded with shade trees,
clipped lawns,

and a groggy-eyed population

that never came out of
its coma except to turn over.

Mezz mezzrow.

[Farewell bluePlaying]

Narrator: Far from
the Lincoln gardens,

where Louis Armstrong and
Joe Oliver were holding forth,

a group of high school boys
in the prosperous Chicago
neighborhood of Austin

got together every day after
school in the spring of 1923

to listen to jazz in
an ice cream parlor called
the spoon and straw.

Man: It was just
an ice cream parlor.

But they had a victrola there,

and we used to sit around
listening to records.

One day, we put on some
new records

by the New Orleans rhythm kings.

Boy, when we heard
that, I'll tell you,

we were out of our minds.
It was wonderful.

We stayed there from
about 3:00 in the afternoon
until 8:00 at night,

just listening
to those records.

And we decided we would
get a band and try to play
like these guys.

Jimmy mcpartland.

Narrator: The aspiring
young musicians included

Jimmy mcpartland, struggling
to master the cornet,

pianist Joe Sullivan,

clarinetist frank teschmacher,

tenor saxophonist bud Freeman,

and a would-be drummer from

the still more prosperous suburb
of oak park named Dave tough.

They would come to be called
the Austin high gang.

Terkel: Those boys,
those high school kids,

heard something they never
heard in their lives.

They may have been

in a school band,

possibly playing marches and

and stuff.

But when they heard
that, to them,

it represent a vitality
they'd never experienced before,

and they soared with it.

Jimmy would say, "we just flew."

Narrator: The Austin high
gang's first heroes

were the New Orleans
rhythm kings.

They were white musicians
who modeled their own
distinctive style in part

on the music king Oliver was
playing on the south side.

Soon, the members of
the Austin high gang

and dozens of other
young white kids

decided to find out
for themselves

the source of the new music
they found irresistible.

[Froggie moo Playing]

They risked the ridicule
of their friends

and the disapproval
of their parents

to travel to the Lincoln gardens

to hear Joe Oliver
and Louis Armstrong play.

W. Marsalis: When these
white kids come down to hear

king Oliver and Louis Armstrong
playing this music,

we have to realize that this
is some of the most abstract
and sophisticated music

that anybody has ever heard,
short of bach.

But they've been taught
their entire lives

that nothing of any good can
come out of some niggers.

So, here are these kids,

and here is this new music

that is not legitimate

in any way.

Well, maybe when they
first went to hear it,

it was just part of
something, you know,

the sort of excitement,
rebellion, you know.

Then they hear it,
and they realize,

oh, they want
to join this world.

They want to be jazz musicians.

They want to become part of
something that's new and great.

They have to sense that
and that these black people
have to teach them.

W. Marsalis: That's how
it always is in myth.

Cinderella. The one
who you keep out and you push
down and you kick,

that's the one
with the moral authority,
with the gift.

That's as old as night and day.
That's as old as dust.

And it's not about
black or white.

But here it is now, that same
myth, in black and white.

If you a trumpet player
and you hear Louis Armstrong,
you want to play like him.

Not because he's black.

Because that's the greatest
trumpet you've ever heard.

That's what you want
to play like.

Man: It was by and for negroes,

and the white kids in short
pants who went there,

some of them on bicycles,

to hear the music had good
reason to feel slightly
uncomfortable

until they had pushed their
way close to the bandstand

and had been recognized
by Oliver.

A nod or a wave of his hand was
all that was necessary.

Then the customers knew
that the kids were all right.

Night after night
we made the trip.

We sat there, stiff
with education, joy,

and a licorice-tasting gin
purchased from the waiters
for $2 a pint.

Oliver and Louis would roll
on and on, piling up choruses,

with the rhythm section building
the beat until the whole thing

got inside your head
and blew your brains out.

Eddie condon.

[I've found a new ba Bplaying]

Narrator: The young, white
musicians who had ventured
to the south side

now started to develop
their own brand of jazz--

a blend of New Orleans
music with a more agitated,
aggressive northern sound.

It would soon be called
"Chicago style."

Giddins: And as they began
to develop, they did develop
a style of their own,

their own idiosyncrasies,
their own stylistic gambits.

And they had a lot of feeling

and energy,

and they were wild men.

You know, Eddie condon said

when we came to town

the Republicans,
you know, ran for cover.

But when they were young,
they were among the first
to go out into this,

explore this black music and
try to claim it for themselves.

Narrator: Chicago had become,
one musician proudly remembered,

"the jazz capital of
the United States."

But while whites were able
to go to the south side

and hear the music of
king Oliver and Louis Armstrong,

blacks were not welcome
in any club downtown.

There was, in fact,
no jazz band in america

in which blacks and whites
played side by side.

Well, the rules said that
we could not play together,

black and whites together,

but it had nothing to do with

our respect for each other as

musicians, individual musicians.

So, after hours when
the clubs were closed,

the musicians black and white
would get together.

White musicians could
come to the south side,

and after hours when they got
off from their jobs,

they would come, and we would
trade choruses.

And we would get some
of the academics from
the white musicians,

and they'd get some
of the creativity from
the black musicians.

And we had what we called,
"breakfast dances,"

went on 5:00 in the morning,
after everything was closed,

and we had this great
jam session going.

And, this is why Chicago
is the basis of really
putting this together,

because we found out the music
is an auditory art.

We didn't care what color
you were or where you came from,

it's how you sound.

[Scissor grinder joePlaying]

Man: We first met, jazz and I,

at a dance hall dive
at the barbary coast.

It screeched and bellowed
at me from a trick platform

in the middle of
a smoke-hazed, beer-fumed room.

And it hit me hard.

Raucous?

Yes.

Crude?

Undoubtedly.

Musical?

As sure as you live.

Paul whiteman.

Narrator: Paul whiteman was
a formally trained violinist
from Colorado,

who abandoned a symphonic
career after hearing

a jazz band one night
in San Francisco.

Maher: Absolutely
knocked him out.

It was so driving,
it was so much fun.

He got up that morning
with the blues.

He went home that night
feeling floating, you know,

and had a great time.

Now, his way of thinking

because of his training,

his background,

his father is a music educator

playing viola in
a symphony orchestra.

Immediately, he is thinking
not about playing itthatway

but about converting it Hisway.

Narrator: Whiteman was convinced
that he could find a way
to orchestrate jazz,

to make it even more
commercially viable,

to retain its rhythm and
Harmony while rendering it

as precise and predictable
as classical music.

His arrangements were
intended, he said,

"to make a lady out of jazz."

His concern all the time was

that this is an amazingly
important art form.

We just need to be
able to score it,

we need to be able to get teams
of musicians who can play it.

We just need to be able to take
it from its primitive state.

[Whisperinplaying]

Narrator: His first big hit had
come in 1920 with Whispering.

soothing, heavily orchestrated,
it sold 2.5 million copies--

more than 250 times what
Armstrong and Oliver's
Chimes blues Would sell.

Paul whiteman's
orchestra soon became

the most celebrated and
most imitated in america,

launching a whole new trend
in society dance music.

On February 12, 1924, a big
crowd turned out to hear

the Paul whiteman orchestra
play what was billed as

"an experiment in modern music"

at aeolian hall
in New York City.

The concert included a brand-new
specially commissioned work

by a young New York songwriter,
the son of Jewish immigrants,

named George gershwin,
who, like Duke Ellington,

had spent hours listening to
black piano-players in Harlem.

Gershwin's composition was
something altogether new--

a classical piece suffused
with jazz feeling,

and it would become one of
the best-loved compositions

in all of American music--

rhapsody in blue.

[rhapsody in blu Playing]

The concert was a huge success.

4 hours of elegant
and orchestral music without
a hint of improvisation.

But almost immediately,
Paul whiteman was billed
as "the king of jazz."

Jefferson: And of course, it's
driving many blacks at the time
and since crazy

because, you know
it's all too obvious--

Paul "white-man," you know,
equals king of jazz.

Whiteman himself actually
never seems to have pretended
to be any such thing.

[Lonely melo Playing]

Narrator: Critics would
one day accuse whiteman
of diluting jazz,

of stealing from
black Americans.

But whiteman himself always
acknowledged the debt he owed.

Early: White people went
into jazz not with the idea

that they were going to make
fun of black people

or that it was going to be
degrading to black people,

but that here was an art form
that they were willing to take
on its own terms

and wanted to express
and actually wanted
to respect and elevate.

This is what makes
Paul whiteman important.

He wanted to take the music
on something like its own terms.

This was going to redound
on everyone associated
with this music,

whether you're white or black.

Narrator: Whiteman gave
behind-the-scenes work
to black arrangers

and wanted to hire black
musicians for his orchestra.

But even in the jazz age,
that was impossible.

[Teapot dome blu Eplaying]

Narrator: The same year
as whiteman's triumph
at aeolian hall,

a young black bandleader
named Fletcher Henderson

opened at New York's
premier ballroom,

roseland in Times Square,
playing for white dancers only.

Henderson was the soft-spoken
son of a piano teacher and
a school principal,

and he had come north
to New York to pursue

a graduate degree in
chemistry at Columbia.

But when his savings ran out,

he turned to music and was
swept up in the jazz craze.

At roseland, he made himself
famous for playing dance music

with a Polish unmatched by
any other black bandleader
since James Reese Europe.

There were two kings of
the band scene in New York.

There was "white king,"
Paul whiteman,

who had the best white
musicians in the country,

and there was Fletcher
Henderson, the king of
the black musicians,

who had the best black
musicians in the country.

And they were friends.

And they helped each other
and traded arrangements
and so forth.

Narrator: One evening,
whiteman took his band
to hear Henderson's,

then told his men,
"if Fletcher was a white man,
he would be a millionaire."

But like Duke Ellington,
Henderson grew restless

with the polite dance music
he was playing.

He was determined to create
a style all his own,

wanted to combine the elegance
of his formal arrangements

with something more exciting,
more driving, more spontaneous.

Fletcher Henderson began
to look for a soloist--

"a jazz specialist,"
he called it--

who could help him out.

He knew of a trumpet player in
king Oliver's band in Chicago

whose genius other musicians
were beginning to talk about.

It would take him a while,

but when he persuaded
that "specialist" to come
to New York,

it would change jazz forever.

[Muggleplaying]

Glaser: Jazz is the ultimate
temporal art form.

It's about the human
experience of time--
how is time embodied.

So, you listen to Louis
playing a quarter note,

and, suddenly,
your whole experience
of that day has changed.

You hear him playing
this one quarter note,

and time is not moving
along in the way that
it normally moves along.

He was the first person to
embody abstraction musically.

Other people used abstraction

in music, but over time.

Composers would sit down
and take an idea and toy
with it over time.

But Louis could spontaneously
take a melody and abstract it,

that is, remove all
the unessentials
from this melody

and be left with just
this pure vision of what
the melody could be.

W. Marsalis: His sound,
more than anything,

his sound had a light in it.

That's the only way
I can describe it,

you can't practice to get that.

It's like,
it's a spiritual presence.

And when that light
is in your sound,

it just, when you hear it,
it draws--it attracts you.

[Tea Playing]

Narrator: For nearly two years,

Louis Armstrong stayed in
king Oliver's creole jazz band.

The band also included a piano
player named lil hardin.

She was unlike any woman
Louis Armstrong had ever met.

Hardin: All along I been
hearing from all the musicians
about little Louis,

and he's--what a good
trumpet player he was going
to be, little Louis.

So when he brought
little Louie over to
the dreamland to meet me,

little Louis was 226 pounds.

So I said, "little Louis,
how come you call him little
Louis, big as he is?"

I wasn't impressed at all.

I didn't like
anything about him.

I didn't like the way
he's dressed, I didn't
like the way he talked.

Anyway, he came up
on the bandstand.

I used to play--well you know,
girls wore garters, you know,
on their stockings,

so when I'd sit down to play
I would roll my stocking down

so the garter's below my knee.

And first thing Louis spied was,
was my knee, and he was looking.

And I said, "this guy's
got ideas he'd better not
put in words."

[Laughs]

Narrator: Lil hardin was
ambitious, articulate

and, like Armstrong,
unhappily married.

Despite her first impression,
she fell in love with him.

On February 5, 1924,
Louis Armstrong,

just divorced from
his first wife,

married lil hardin in Chicago.

Once married, lil went
to work on her new husband.

Lil decided she was going
to make Louis over,

and she tried to get him
to lose a little weight,

she took him out and bought
him some proper clothes,

so he looked more like a Chicago
slick than a New Orleans hick.

And then she decided,
you know, that he ought
to be out on his own,

he ought to be out
from underneath the wing
of Joe Oliver.

Hardin: I probably would have
never paid any attention
to Louis's playing

if king Oliver hadn't said
to me one night that Louis could
play better than he could.

He says, "but as long
as I keep him with me,

"he won't be able
to get ahead of me,

and I'll still be the king."

Narrator: Lil urged Armstrong
to strike out on his own,

but he was reluctant
to leave the man he still
called "Mr. Joe."

He owed him a lot,
he said, and wasn't sure
he could make it on his own.

But lil persisted.

"I don't want to be married
to a second trumpet-player,"
she told him.

I want you to play first."

Then, in the spring of 1924,

Armstrong got an offer
he could not ignore.

Fletcher Henderson wanted
him to come to New York.

Like his arrival in Chicago
two years earlier,

Armstrong's debut in New York
was not auspicious.

Man: The drummer,
kaiser Marshall, had a car

and brought us downtown
to meet Louis.

He was big and fat
and wore high top shoes
with hooks in them.

When I got a load of that,
I said to myself,

who in the hell is this guy?

It can't be Louis Armstrong.

Don redman.

[Go 'long mu Playing]

Narrator: Louis Armstrong,
raised poor on the streets
of New Orleans,

could not have been more
different from his sophisticated
new employer.

But almost from the start,

Armstrong was influencing every
other jazz musician in town.

Waters: I came to
New York in 1924.

That was the first time
that I heard Louis in person.

So, Fletcher didn't have

no music for him at that period.

So, he was just sitting up there

like this, with his trumpet

in his hand,

and waiting for his choruses.

So when they got his choruses,

he would stand up
and play like hell.

And the people
would just rave.

[Shanghai shuffl Playing]

Narrator: Armstrong's choruses
transformed the band.

Henderson's arranger,
Don redman, now began
writing new pieces

that showcased Armstrong's
soaring horn--

and his unprecedented
sense of rhythm,

what Henderson himself
called Armstrong's New Orleans
"punch and bounce."

Man: One night at roseland,

Armstrong began
Shanghai shuffle.

I think they made him
play 10 choruses.

And I stood silent,
feeling almost bashful,

asking myself if I would
ever be able to attain

a small part of
Armstrong's greatness.

Coleman Hawkins.

Giddins: Armstrong transformed
the orchestra, transformed all
the musicians in it,

and ultimately transformed
all the musicians in New York

who were playing jazz,
and even popular musicians.

He brought, first of all,
a tremendous, rhythmic
excitement.

Armstrong was an economist, you
know, he played very few notes,

but every note counted,
and it stood for something.

Then, equally important,
he brought the blues.

Armstrong demonstrated
that the blues

might be the greatest
musical gift ever to come out
of america.

And he played it with
such conviction and such
feeling and force

that everybody wanted that.

I mean, Duke Ellington was
already in New York, he was
accompanying singers,

he had small band of his own,
but he was missing something,

he didn't know what
he was missing until
he heard Armstrong.

Narrator: Armstrong's
great contribution is
impossible to notate,

but it is the characteristic
that most clearly defines jazz--

swing.

Shaw: Swing is getting the right
note at the right time,

not before or not after.

So in jazz, which is
a rhythmic music,

you've got to have the time, and
you've got to have the pulse.

You going to be playing,
you say...

(Imitates bass)

You can't say...

(Imitates bass)

You got to say...

(Imitates bass,
clicking fingers)

You got to just keep that going.
Don't move, that's the way.

And believe me when I tell you,
that's like a heartbeat.

And you look at the audience,
they all get it.

And you see them first start
tapping their foot.

And they going to start
swinging around.

That's what makes
jazz so unique.

Unique and so great.

Narrator: "No one,"
one musician said,

"knew what swinging was
till Louis came along."

Schaap: Louis Armstrong's
arrival in September of '24

is pivotal because he's
the most important jazz musician
on the face of the earth

and he's coming to the country's

biggest city, playing with its

most important band

and teaching them how to swing.

Uptown, he plays dances for
the young black adolescents

and turns careers around like
Rex Stewart's, gene Rogers',

and the men who play in
the saxophone section for
Duke Ellington.

Russell procope, he was
a violinist when he heard
fat Armstrong.

And he said, "unh-unh,
man, I'm going with a horn

that you can make
this music with."

And he switched
to alto saxophone.

Plus, New York was the hotbed
of recording activity,

and the great Louis Armstrong
gets to make

freelance record dates.

He records with bessie Smith
and ma rainey,

and Clarence Williams's
blue five, with Sidney bechet.

And those records get to
audiences who can't even make it
to roseland or go uptown.

Jazz arrives because Louis
came to New York and taught
the world to swing.

[Applause]
Now, ladies and gentlemen,

we're going to take
a little trip through
the jungle at this time,

and we want you all
to travel with us.

The tiger is running so fast,

it's going to take a few
choruses to catch him,

so I want you to count with me.

Yes, sir. See if this
little selmer trumpet

is going to get away
from you this time.

Look out there, boys, I'm ready.

[Plays Tiger rag]

W. Marsalis: Louis Armstrong
invented a new style of playing.

Louis Armstrong created
the coherent solo.

Louis Armstrong fused
the sound of the blues with
the American popular song.

Louis Armstrong extended
the range of the trumpet.

Louis Armstrong created
the melodic and rhythmic
vocabulary

that all of the big bands
wrote music out of.

Giddins: I think
Armstrong boils down to
how do you define genius.

And I guess it's partly
that you hear something
that no one else has heard.

He heard rhythms
and melodies and a sound,

a way of extending his voice
into the trumpet,

all of which was
original with him.

And the result is so
overpowering and so spiritual,

it's enough to make
the angels weep.

[Red hot banPlaying]