Louis Armstrong -- whoever that is?!?!

I don't drive much so seldom listen to the radio, but today I spent about 3 hours in the car driving for work. I thought others might be similarly amazed and disturbed by what I heard today:

I kept scanning for stations playing something decent. At one point, I heard what was unmistakably Louis Armstrong's trumpet so I stopped the scanning to listen to the rest of the track. Turned out to be Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong doing "They Can't Take That Away From Me." At the end of the track, two men started talking, one of them asking the other his impressions of the track. In a nutshell, they were:

1. Sounds "old," like something from the '40s. (Well, the song was written in the thirties, but this recording is from the mid '50s.)

2. The song was performed by Ella Fitzgerald and "some guy." What did the man speaking of "some guy's" voice? It's distinctive. You don't hear a voice like that any more.

3. After some more babbling, they repeated that the recording was by Ella Fitzgerald and "some guy" and then went to commercial.

I thought I had happened onto a jazz radio station (does such a thing even exist any more), but I'm not sure what kind of lame station this was. The next song they played was modern pop, so I guess these guys' morning show involves playing some "old record" they know nothing about and then discussing it without actually attempting to know anything about it other than what they heard.

 

hey it sounds like the played it live, that's something

 

A few years ago, I heard Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" directly followed by Kelly Clarkson's original "Already Gone" on some lite rock station, and there was no drop in quality; and I remember thinking, "Hey! Kelly's holding her own with Satchmo! Very cool." Perhaps having a great singing voice doesn't hurt either.

 

Is there a chance they were trying to be “funny” by referring to what was obvious to all as Armstrong, as “some guy”.

If it wasn’t a joke....oh my!

 

Yeah, would have been cooler if they had just played the song and shut up.

 

That sounds like some type of half baked comedy schtick - a modified Beavis and Butthead comedic routine, that’s humorless.

 

I haven't heard these guys before, but it didn't come across as an attempt to be funny. I think they just didn't know about Louis Armstrong and so reduced him to some interesting but insignificant singer on the record they just played.

 

Hmmm...
In that case, i hope a listener called in, and explained there’s this thing called “Google”...

...as a radio announcer, I’d say it’s kinda embarrassing if you can’t spend 5 seconds with some simple research.

 

Satchmo. An American treasure & icon.

 

Not that this excuses the DJ in any way, but there are very large numbers of people who grew up in the 50s and 60s that to this day think "Oh, Louis Armstrong — that guy with the gravely voice and the handkerchief who sang 'Hello Dolly'" and that's about it.

They truly have no idea about his incalculable importance to jazz and the music of the 20th Century.

 

They looked at the screen displaying the digital files and it said "ARTIST: Ella Fitzgerald & Loui..."

 

If it weren't for half-baked comedy shtick, I'd be stuck with a raw piece of schmaltz.

 

Says you!

 

Mike this would be me until maybe the 80s. I remember seeing Louis on tv (probably Ed Sullivan) when I was a child in the 50s/60s. As far as I knew back then he was just some kind of novelty act. As my interest in music developed I later learned of the importance of Armstrong as a pillar of Jazz. I'm mostly a rock guy, but I have maximum respect for someone who brought to the table what Louis Armstrong did. Hell, he may have built the table.

As for the radio bit, it's odd to say the least. San Francisco is a very competitive market, I suspect what @lv70smusic heard might have been a non-commercial station, or perhaps an AM station providing off-beat material to attract a niche audience.

 

Ok attempt at humor maybe but they need to follow up and give credit where it's due after the routine. Otherwise the way I'm reading this it comes across as an insult by a couple of amateurs who wouldn't have been fit to carry Louis' trumpet case.

 

Yes…I could have written this paragraph myself. It took me a few decades before I got the full picture of Louis Armstrong as well. And I too am mostly a rock/country guy, but hearing the Hot Fives/Hot Sevens was a revelation, and as I learned of his life and was exposed to more of his music I came to know just how revolutionary and important he was to a native American art form.

 

Nothing gets past Boswell.

 

That’s exactly how I thought of Louis Armstrong when I was young. It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s before I learned of his contributions to American music.
Same thing with Orson Welles. I thought he was just a fat guy in a cape that hawked wine and went on talk shows preforming corny magic tricks. I had no idea of his importance to film. It’s kind of sad that the true genius’s get forgotten.