"West End Blues," Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (1928)

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Donald Deskey’s silver leaf, lacquered wood, and cast metal–hinged screen, with the ascending jagged lines, seemed to be reminiscent of Louis Armstrong’s infamous trumpet cadenza at the start of “West End Blues” recorded in 1928. With his rise in register and intensity, alone from the beginning of the recording, Armstrong makes a bold statement. He is, without question, the soloist at that moment. Text by James Saltzman, Faculty, Manhattan School of Music

http://www.folkways.si.edu/louis-armstrong-and-his-hot-five/west-end-blues/jazz-ragtime/music/track/smithsonian