We talk with author Ricky Riccardi about how Louis Armstrong became the first Black pop star and provided the foundation of improvisation for other musicians. Riccardi's book is Stomp Off, Let's Go. Also, we hear from Atlantic 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.Critic-at-large John Powers reviews the Brazilian film I'm Still Here. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: 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.
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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.
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Chapter 2: How did Louis Armstrong revolutionize music with improvisation?
There's other versions of the story of how he started scatting. Which do you think is the most authentic story?
So to my ears, and also to Johnny St. Cyr, the banjo player, he did corroborate the dropping of the sheet music things. 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.
It's kind of gibberish. But in my mind, at that point, he might have dropped the lyrics and he didn't quite know what to do next. But this whole concept of using his voice like an instrument, 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'm 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.
Okay, so let's listen to this 1926 recording of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, his first scatting on record, and this is Hebe Jebe.
They call it the heebie-jeebies dance.
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