Louis Armstrong's Early Recordings

Louis Armstrong had a significant impact on the course of American musical history not only because of his trumpet playing but also because of his singing. Bauer argues that one cannot discuss Armstrong's singing or his trumpet playing separately without omitting a huge element of his style. This exploration of Armstrong's singing during the first decade of his career as a bandleader features 16 transcriptions of his vocal and instrumental performances in standard notation, all of which serve as the basis for in-depth analyses of Armstrong's performance practice and approach to improvisation. While focused on Armstrong's singing, Louis Armstrong's Early Recordings: Codifying Jazz Vocal Performance ranges over related topics, including switching and crossing over; blues idiom and form in Armstrong's style development; oral-formulaic compositional techniques; ragtime as a set of performance practices; scat singing and cross-idiomatic expression; and applications of blues and ragtime techniques to popular songs.