David Stricklin
Louis Armstrong: The Soundtrack of the American Experience (Ivan R. Dee)

Scott Allen Nollen Louis Armstrong: The Life, Music, and Screen Career (McFarland and Company)

Louis Daniel Armstrong lies buried in Flushing, Queens, but his heart belongs to the Crescent City. Practically and spiritually, he belongs to the planet, and measuring the full extent of his influence, a well-nigh impossible task in itself, proves easier than measuring the extent of his value.

These two new books, both short, shy wisely from the big picture and genuflect generously to previous Satchmo scholars. Nollen’s tome, “Life” and “Music” notwithstanding, goes for a summation of Louis on film. Scaling a formidable task into a finite number of moves and movies, Nollen produces the definitive work on that subject, and not incidentally tells the post-fame story of its subject along the way. Bing Crosby adored him, Dorothy Dandridge cooed over him, Billie Holiday cooed along with him in an otherwise regrettable picture actually called New Orleans.

Actually, many pictures were equally unfortunate, to be kind. A Betty Boop cartoon cast him as a cannibal; “A Rhapsody in Black and Blue” stuck him in leopard skins. Pops blew himself clear of it all.

Armstrong’s endless capacity to catch society’s dung and grow (blow?) roses forms the backbone of his success, David Stricklin argues over his own 182 pages. Asking the question why we don’t see more Satchmos, the University of Arkansas professor argues, sensibly enough, that many such talents find themselves smothered and strangled professionally.

“Armstrong’s approach to racism,” he writes of Satch in the mid-1920’s, “was simply to work harder, play better music, and exude more goodwill than anybody black or white, racist or otherwise.” Later on, the trumpeter would speak up—not early and often enough to satisfy some critics, but except for very early on, he never satisfied all of his critics, socially or musically. His refusal to prize jazz above other musics, and his disinclination to categorize jazz as “black music” also lost him brownie points.

When in doubt, he went back to the horn—and/or, as his lip began to disintegrate, his vocal cords. Plenty of Pops-watchers scolded his singing, too. In private he judged his own voice “nothing to write home about…But,” he concluded, “It is Different [sic].” More than true enough.

Ossie Davis, who worked with Armstrong on a forgettable Sammy Davis, Jr. picture, summarized Satchmo as “a smile, a handkerchief, and sweat, and the capacity to move me beyond tears.” He added, “In that horn of his, you know, he had the power to kill. That horn could kill a man.”

Remember both of those, then you won’t go wrong.