Satchmo SummerFest – Celebrating Louis!

By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer

It’s natural that when many people consider Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong’s contributions to jazz they think of the scores of trumpet players that he influenced around the world. Armstrong is also deeply associated both as a player and a composer with New Orleans traditional jazz. Of course, there will be a lot of both trumpets and classic jazz at the Satchmo SummerFest presented beneath tents on each side the Old U.S. Mint from Friday, August 3 to Sunday, August 5, 2018. Yet Armstrong’s musical scope touched artists outside of those realms like Ellis Marsalis who’s renowned as a modern jazz pianist. He too is quick to give props to Pops for the profound effect he had on music.

“Louis Armstrong was like the pied piper of jazz and he was the first great improviser,” declares Ellis Marsalis of the king of traditional jazz trumpeters. ‘From a cultural point of view, Louis Armstrong laid the groundwork for all of the music that we play. So consequentially, even if one doesn’t know Louis’ solos and music on a personal level, you {as a jazz musician} are the inheritor of what he laid out.”

Performing at the Satchmo SummerFest at 4:30 pm on Friday, Marsalis and his quintet will take a slight detour from its swinging, hard-hitting repertoire of jazz standards and original material. For the occasion, the solid ensemble will present one of Armstrong’s big hits, “Big Butter and Egg Man.” There is a very good reason that Marsalis selected this particular number from the trumpeter and vocalists’ many, many popular numbers. He explains.

ELLIS MARSALIS

“When it comes down to it, I never got to know Pops,” Marsalis allows. “I saw Pops in Detroit in 1953 when he was at a state fair and a friend of mine and I – two broke college students — were able to see him through a flap in the tent that he was playing in. We didn’t have money for tickets. Velma Middleton was in that band and sang that song. As a result, that’s about the only thing that we play of Armstrong’s. Every now and then, there are little licks that Pops played that I inject into the music.”

“Really, what Louis Armstrong means to me is more than how much his music influenced my music,” Marsalis continues. “Louis’ influence was so strongly based on improvisation. The forms that he used are what we use. Without Louis Armstrong, I don’t know where we would be musically. Jazz musicians generally have mentors, which I’ve most certainly had, though they very seldom go back to predecessors and link the contributions of the earlier people to what they do. I remember hearing {drummer/composer} James Black say one time, ‘I feel like I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.’ You can only really arrive at that concept by examining the music that the person played and how what was being played ultimately affected you.”

Marsalis, along with the trumpeter from his quintet Ashlin Parker, who will also lead the always exuberant Trumpet Mafia (Sunday, 6:40 p.m.) and the festival’s concluding Tricentennial Trumpet Tribute to Louis Armstrong (Sunday, 7:30 p.m.), are two of this year’s recipients of the Spirit of Satchmo Award. The New Orleans Musicians Clinic founder, Bethany Bultman, will also be honored with a Spirit Award at the festival’s kick-off party.

Trumpets and traditional jazz will naturally reign at Satchmo Fest including as performed by musicians like Wendell Brunious (Sunday, 4 p.m.) and his nephew Mark Braud (Sunday, 1:40 p.m.) who have devoted their lives to the instrument and style. They stand as a fourth generation of musicians in the Brunious family dating back to guitarist Willie Santiago who played with the legendary Buddy Bolden.

“He was just the ultimate melodic player,” declares Brunious of Armstrong. “Every solo he played was a new song. Louis Armstrong coming up in the time he came up to become the most recognizable face on the earth, just speaks volumes about the man, his personality, his music and the way he could touch people. There was a quote from him about when he was playing a song before the King of England and he just pointed at him and said, ‘This one’s for you Rex!’ It’s like who could get away with that?”

“There are so many things about Louis Armstrong that are fascinating to me,” says Braud who, at the festival, will also be celebrating his new release, Living the Legend on which he shares the front line with clarinetist Tim Laughlin and trombonist Lucien Barbarin. “First of all, his sound. I can’t imagine hearing that sound live. Just on records it’s just so huge. He was a larger than life figure but at the same time he was so humble. Not only is his music an influence but just the person that he was.”

The trombone, that could be considered a brassy kissin’ cousin to the trumpet (some, like Trombone Shorty play both) has really come into its own especially in New Orleans. More trombonists like Corey Henry who heads his well-named Treme Funktet (Saturday, 7:30 p.m.) are taking on leadership roles especially on the brass band scene. TBC (Saturday, 7:30 p.m.), a trombone-heavy outfit, is known to make a powerful roar as it rolls down a street. Then, of course, there’s Bonerama (Friday, 7:30 p.m.) that was formed by two, very funky slide men, Mark Mullins and Craig Klein.

There’s more and more including saxophone great Donald Harrison Jr. (Sunday, 7 p.m.) and the always in the pocket drummer and vocalist Shannon Powell (Friday, 6:20 p.m.). There are kids activities available inside the Mint and as is the tradition, an 11 a.m. Jazz Mass at St. Augustine Catholic Church on the corner of Henriette Delille St. and Gov. Nicholls St. Following the service, around noon, a second line will be led by the mighty Treme Brass Band along with its grand marshal Bo Monkey and includes the Zulu and Sudan Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, the Million Dollar Baby Dolls, Fi Yi Yi & the Mandingo Warriors and everybody’s fav, Al “Carnival Time” Johnson.” The parade ends at the festival site at the Mint.

Panel discussions, lectures, slides and film on Armstrong kick things off at 11:30 a.m. on the third floor of the Old U.S. Mint each day with music jumpin’ under the tents until about 8:30 p.m.

This article originally published in the July 30, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.