What exactly does Teachout hear? As if Armstrong’s performance with a symphony orchestra were the high point of his career, Teachout devotes his prologue to an account of a concert at New York City’s Lewisohn Stadium in July 1956 conducted by Leonard Bernstein, still in his 20s. Armstrong performed one number: W.C. Handy’s "St. Louis Blues." Compelled, as was already his habit, to educate the audience, Bernstein pontificated that Armstrong’s music was "honest and simple, even noble." Would Bernstein have been as condescending to any white soloist, whether it was Rubinstein or Dave Brubeck? Bernstein had certainly demonstrated a flair for jazz with compositions such as Fancy Free and the score for On the Waterfront, but it was jazz filtered through the symphonic elaborations of George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, and far from the undiluted idiom of Armstrong or even Duke Ellington. (Armstrong had changed the sound of the twentieth century while Bernstein was still in knee pants.) And who was Bernstein’s audience? Teachout says that concertgoers of a certain age remember taking the subway uptown to the stadium on the City College campus–that is to say, to Harlem. This was not a concert for the neighborhood. Armstrong was the only African-American onstage (the elderly Handy was in the audience, where he listened tearfully to Armstrong perform his song), and yet the concert sold out in a season when interest in the classics, even for the ticket holders taking the A train from downtown, was dwindling. The stadium and Bernstein, like American music in general, were in Armstrong’s debt....
The bombshell comes near the end of the prologue, when Teachout quotes from the essay "Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family, in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907," published posthumously in In His Own Words. In this essay, written in 1969 when he was recovering from a life-threatening illness, and dedicated to his manager Joe Glaser, Armstrong recalled how the Karnofsky family helped him in his boyhood. But Teachout quotes instead an outpouring of rage from Armstrong against the black community, beginning with "Negroes never did stick together and they never will" and ending with "Believe it–the White Folks did everything that’s decent for me." That’s our Louis. Claiming that the meaning of the passage is "as clear as a high C," Teachout does not contextualize it, let alone test its validity. Neither does he square it with ac-cen-tu-at-ing the positive. Just in case there was any doubt, in the November 2009 issue of Commentary Teachout prepared readers of his book, which was published the following month, for his pinched reading of the essay: "The bluntness with which Armstrong expressed himself in this 1969 memoir was more than just the remembered resentment of an old man. On numerous other occasions, he made it clear that he believed poor people, regardless of their color, to be largely responsible for their own fate." Armstrong’s jeremiad reminds me of the dyspeptic letter that Arnold Schoenberg, exiled to Brentwood, California, wrote in 1938 complaining, perversely, that his fellow Jews had never shown any interest in his music. Show business is tough; everyone has bad days.
Although Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan lost the presidential elections of 1896, 1900, and 1908, he was the most influential political figure of his era. In this astutely argued book, Gerard N. Magliocca explores how Bryan's effort to reach the White House energized conservatives across the nation and caused a transformation in constitutional law.
Responding negatively to the Populist agenda, the Supreme Court established a host of new constitutional principles during the 1890s. Many of them proved long-lasting and highly consequential, including the "separate but equal" doctrine supporting racial segregation, the authorization of the use of force against striking workers, and the creation of the liberty of contract. The judicial backlash of the 1890s—the most powerful the United States has ever experienced—illustrates vividly the risks of seeking fundamental social change. Magliocca concludes by examining the lessons of the Populist experience for advocates of change in our own divisive times.
Teachout is worse than David Brooks, but just as weak, and just as dishonest.
A review of Teachout's biography of Louis Armstrong
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/not-even-bings-louis-armstrong/
What exactly does Teachout hear? As if Armstrong’s performance with a symphony orchestra were the high point of his career, Teachout devotes his prologue to an account of a concert at New York City’s Lewisohn Stadium in July 1956 conducted by Leonard Bernstein, still in his 20s. Armstrong performed one number: W.C. Handy’s "St. Louis Blues." Compelled, as was already his habit, to educate the audience, Bernstein pontificated that Armstrong’s music was "honest and simple, even noble." Would Bernstein have been as condescending to any white soloist, whether it was Rubinstein or Dave Brubeck? Bernstein had certainly demonstrated a flair for jazz with compositions such as Fancy Free and the score for On the Waterfront, but it was jazz filtered through the symphonic elaborations of George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, and far from the undiluted idiom of Armstrong or even Duke Ellington. (Armstrong had changed the sound of the twentieth century while Bernstein was still in knee pants.) And who was Bernstein’s audience? Teachout says that concertgoers of a certain age remember taking the subway uptown to the stadium on the City College campus–that is to say, to Harlem. This was not a concert for the neighborhood. Armstrong was the only African-American onstage (the elderly Handy was in the audience, where he listened tearfully to Armstrong perform his song), and yet the concert sold out in a season when interest in the classics, even for the ticket holders taking the A train from downtown, was dwindling. The stadium and Bernstein, like American music in general, were in Armstrong’s debt....
The bombshell comes near the end of the prologue, when Teachout quotes from the essay "Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family, in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907," published posthumously in In His Own Words. In this essay, written in 1969 when he was recovering from a life-threatening illness, and dedicated to his manager Joe Glaser, Armstrong recalled how the Karnofsky family helped him in his boyhood. But Teachout quotes instead an outpouring of rage from Armstrong against the black community, beginning with "Negroes never did stick together and they never will" and ending with "Believe it–the White Folks did everything that’s decent for me." That’s our Louis. Claiming that the meaning of the passage is "as clear as a high C," Teachout does not contextualize it, let alone test its validity. Neither does he square it with ac-cen-tu-at-ing the positive. Just in case there was any doubt, in the November 2009 issue of Commentary Teachout prepared readers of his book, which was published the following month, for his pinched reading of the essay: "The bluntness with which Armstrong expressed himself in this 1969 memoir was more than just the remembered resentment of an old man. On numerous other occasions, he made it clear that he believed poor people, regardless of their color, to be largely responsible for their own fate." Armstrong’s jeremiad reminds me of the dyspeptic letter that Arnold Schoenberg, exiled to Brentwood, California, wrote in 1938 complaining, perversely, that his fellow Jews had never shown any interest in his music. Show business is tough; everyone has bad days.
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300205824/tragedy-william-jennings-bryan
Although Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan lost the presidential elections of 1896, 1900, and 1908, he was the most influential political figure of his era. In this astutely argued book, Gerard N. Magliocca explores how Bryan's effort to reach the White House energized conservatives across the nation and caused a transformation in constitutional law.
Responding negatively to the Populist agenda, the Supreme Court established a host of new constitutional principles during the 1890s. Many of them proved long-lasting and highly consequential, including the "separate but equal" doctrine supporting racial segregation, the authorization of the use of force against striking workers, and the creation of the liberty of contract. The judicial backlash of the 1890s—the most powerful the United States has ever experienced—illustrates vividly the risks of seeking fundamental social change. Magliocca concludes by examining the lessons of the Populist experience for advocates of change in our own divisive times.