Influential Musicians
Atlantic, The, December, 2006 by Terry Teachout Terry Teachout
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LOUIS ARMSTRONG (1901–1971) “Satchmo” (as he loved to be called) didn’t invent jazz, but it might have sounded unimaginably different without him. The bastard son of a sometime prostitute, Armstrong learned to play cornet in a New Orleans home for “colored waifs.” Having mastered the ensemble style of early jazz, he reshaped it in his own expansive image, shifting the emphasis from group improvisation to the virtuoso solo.
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No less significant were his genial, gravel-voiced vocals, which laid the foundation for all subsequent pop singing. Bing Crosby called him “the beginning and end of music in America.” GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898–1937) Of all the inspired artists who created what is now called the Great American Songbook, it was Gershwin who did the most to infuse it with the quintessentially American sounds of ragtime and jazz. Working in tandem with his brother and lyricist Ira, he galvanized Broadway (and, later, Hollywood) with ...
