It’s difficult to identify many other people who have had the impact on jazz – not to mention a broad range of American popular music – that trumpet legend Louis Armstrong had. This 90-minute film, originally aired as an episode of the PBS television series American Masters, provides a comprehensive look at the life and influential career of an artist who truly earned the “master” accolade.
The film was written and co-directed (with Kendrick Simmons, who edited it) by Gary Giddins, something of a national treasure himself for his years of insightful criticism and writing on jazz, including “Visions of Jazz: The First Century,” winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The documentary begins with a recording of Armstrong playing the standard “All of Me” as musicians Wynton Marsalis and Lester Bowie talk about the unique musical skills and personality that made Armstrong a household name across the world over a long career that began in the early 20th century and lasted until his death of a heart attack in 1971, just short of 70 years old.
Giddins and Simmons include archived interviews with Armstrong and clips from his performances and motion picture appearances, including High Society (1956), the musical version of The Philadelphia Story (1940), and a Betty Boop cartoon, “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You,” in which he and his orchestra perform the title tune. The documentary also features a wealth of commentary by his friends and such noted musicians as Dexter Gordon and Tony Bennett, who declares Armstrong the creator of “America’s classical music.”
The film covers every aspect of Armstrong’s life and career, from his birth in New Orleans and rise to prominence in the 1920s to his global success in the decades that followed. Giddins and Simmons don’t shy away from some of the darker details of his life, including his troubled adolescence, running afoul of Chicago gangsters early in his career, his 1930 arrest on a marijuana charge and being investigated as a Communist threat while also criticized by civil rights advocates as an “Uncle Tom.” Through it all, however, the focus is on the monumental contributions to music, influencing the likes of Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday and scores of other performers and innovators.
Armstrong’s written words are read by director and actor Melvin Van Peebles. Giddins also directed another American Masters episode, “Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker” (1989), and was a major contributor to and on-camera presence in Ken Burns’ series Jazz (2001).
