New Books In Music

“The public don’t understand jazz music as we musicians do. A diminished seventh don’t mean a thing to them, but they go for high notes. After all, the public is paying. If musicians depended on musicians at the box office they would starve to death.”–Louis Armstrong Brian Harker’s Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (Oxford University Press, 2011) is an artful jambalaya of rigorous musical analysis, thoughtful cultural contexts, and some provocative informed speculation as to how Armstrong absorbed, innovated, and consolidated the music we call jazz. Harker focuses his analysis and discussion on seven of Louis Armstrong’s “Hot Five” recordings, made during the period between 1925 and 1928. Harker’s recording-as-“snap-shot” approach illuminates how Armstrong used novelty, musical narrative, rhythmic variation, harmonic changes, “sweet” and “hot” elements,  and technical virtuosity in his vast