Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor. Ansermet was born in Switzerland, he was a mathematics professor, teaching at the University of Lausanne. He began conducting at the Casino in Montreux in 1912, from 1915 to 1923 was the conductor for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Travelling in France for this, he met both Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, consulted them on the performance of their works. During World War I, he met Igor Stravinsky, exiled in Switzerland and from this meeting began the conductor's lifelong association with Russian music. In 1918 Ansermet founded his own orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, he toured in Europe and America and became famous for accurate performances of difficult modern music, making first recordings of works such as Stravinsky's Capriccio with the composer as soloist. Ansermet was one of the first in the field of classical music to take jazz and in 1919 he wrote an article praising Sidney Bechet. After World War II, Ansermet and his orchestra rose to international prominence through a long-term contract with Decca Records.
From that time until his death, he recorded most of his repertoire two or three times. His interpretations were regarded as admirably clear and authoritative, though the orchestral playing did not always reach the highest international standards, they differed notably from those of other famous 20th-century specialists, notably Pierre Monteux and Stravinsky himself. Ansermet disapproved of Stravinsky's practice of revising his works, always played the original versions. Although famous for performing much modern music by other composers such as Arthur Honegger and Frank Martin, he avoided altogether the music of Arnold Schoenberg and his associates criticizing Stravinsky when he began to use twelve-tone techniques in his compositions. In Ansermet's book, Les fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine, he sought to prove, using Husserlian phenomenology and his own mathematical studies, that Schoenberg's idiom was false and irrational, he labeled it a "Jewish idea" and went on to say that "the Jew is a me who speaks as though he were an I," that the Jew "suffers from thoughts doubly misformed", thus making him "suitable for the handling of money", sums up with the statement that "historic creation of Western music" would have developed just as well "without the Jew".
Ansermet's reputation suffered after the war because of his collaboration with the Nazis and he was boycotted in the new state of Israel. In May 1954 Decca recorded Ansermet and the orchestra in Europe's first commercial stereophonic recordings, they went on to record the first stereo performance of the complete The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky on LP. Ansermet conducted early stereo recordings of Debussy's Nocturnes and the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Part of his recording of The Rite of Spring, augmented by a rehearsal recording unobtainable elsewhere, was used by Decca on the company's 1957 stereo demonstration LP, A Journey into Stereo Sound; the conductor's clear and methodical counting of beats is a distinct feature of this rehearsal sequence. In his last years he and his ensemble recorded works by Haydn and Brahms, his last recording, of Stravinsky's The Firebird, was made in London with the New Philharmonia Orchestra in 1968, which included a recording of the rehearsal sessions issued as a memorial to him.
Another late recording for Decca issued as a memorial album, was with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, was devoted to Albéric Magnard's Symphony No. 3 and Édouard Lalo's Scherzo for Orchestra. Ansermet composed some piano pieces and compositions for orchestra, among them a symphonic poem entitled Feuilles de Printemps, he orchestrated Debussy's Six épigraphes antiques in 1939. He died on 20 February 1969 in Geneva at the age of 85. Stravinsky, Histoire du soldat, Lausanne, 28 September 1918 Stravinsky, Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, composer as soloist, 6 December 1929 Stravinsky, Mass, 27 October 1948 Manuel de Falla, The Three-Cornered Hat, Ballets Russes, Paris, 1919, a ballet for which Léonide Massine created the choreography and Pablo Picasso designed the sets and costumes. Stravinsky, Ballets Russes, Paris, 15 May 1920 Prokofiev, Ballets Russes, Paris, 1921 Stravinsky, Ballets Russes, Paris, 18 May 1922 Stravinsky, Les noces, Ballets Russes, Paris, 13 June 1923 Benjamin Britten, The Rape of Lucretia, Glyndebourne, 12 July 1946 Stravinsky, Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, composer as soloist, May 1930 Ansermet, Ernest.
1961. Les fondements. 2 v. Neuchâtel: La Baconnière. New edition, edited by J.-Claude Piguet, Rose-Marie Faller-Fauconnet, et al. Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1987. ISBN 2-8252-0211-8 Ansermet, Ernest. 1973. "L'apport de Paul Hindemith à la musique du XXe siècle." In Hommage à Paul Hindemith: 1895–1963: l'homme et l'œuvre. Yverdon: Éditions de la Revue musicale de suisse romande. Ansermet, Ernest. 1983. Ecrits sur la musique. Edited by Jean-Claude Piguet. New rev. ed. Neuchâtel: La Baconnière. ISBN 2-8252-0207-X Piguet, Jean-Claude 1976. Ernest Ansermet, Frank Martin: Correspondance, 1934–1968. Edited by Jean-Claude Piguet, with notes by Jacques Burdet. Neuchâtel: La Baconnière. Tappolet, Claude. 2006. Ernest Ansermet, correspondances avec des compositeurs américains: d'Aaron Copland à Virgil Thomson, les grands maîtres du nouveau monde. Geneva: Georg. Tappolet, Claude. 1999. Ernest Ansermet: Correspondances avec de
Clarence Williams (musician)
Clarence Williams was an American jazz pianist, promoter, theatrical producer, publisher. Williams was born in Plaquemine, ran away from home at age 12 to join Billy Kersands' Traveling Minstrel Show moved to New Orleans. At first, Williams worked shining shoes and doing odd jobs, but soon became known as a singer and master of ceremonies. By the early 1910s, he was a well-regarded local entertainer playing piano, was composing new tunes by 1913. Williams was a good businessman and worked arranging and managing entertainment at the local African-American vaudeville theater as well as at various saloons and dance halls around Rampart Street, at clubs and houses in Storyville. Williams started a music publishing business with violinist/bandleader Armand J. Piron in 1915, which by the 1920s was the leading African-American owned music publisher in the country, he toured with W. C. Handy, set up a publishing office in Chicago settled in New York in the early 1920s. In 1921, he married blues singer and stage actress Eva Taylor, with whom he would perform.
He was one of the primary pianists on scores of blues records recorded in New York during the 1920s. He supervised African-American recordings for the New York offices of Okeh phonograph company in the 1920s in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square, he recruited many of the artists. He recorded extensively, leading studio bands for OKeh and other record labels, he used "Clarence Williams' Jazz Kings" for his hot band sides and "Clarence Williams' Washboard Five" for his washboard sides. He produced and participated in early recordings by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith, Virginia Liston, Irene Scruggs, his niece Katherine Henderson, many others. Two of his 1924 recording bands, "The Red Onion Jazz Babies" and "Clarence Williams' Blue Five" featured cornetist Armstrong and soprano saxophonist Bechet, two of the most important early jazz soloists, in their only recordings together before the 1940s; the rivalry between Armstrong and Bechet, who tried to outdo each other with successive solo breaks, is exemplified in "Cake Walkin' Babies from Home", the most celebrated of these performances, which survives in versions recorded by both bands.
King Oliver played cornet on a number of Williams's late 1920s recordings. He was the recording director for the short-lived QRS Records label in 1928. Most of his recordings were songs from his publishing house, which explains why he recorded tunes like "Baby Won't You Please Come Home", "Close Fit Blues" and "Papa De-Da-Da" numerous times. Among his own compositions was "Shout, Shout", recorded by him, covered by the Boswell Sisters, in 1931. In 1933, he signed to the Vocalion label and recorded quite a number of popular recordings featuring washboard percussion, through 1935, he recorded for Bluebird in 1937, again in 1941. In 1943, Williams sold his extensive back-catalogue of tunes to Decca Records for $50,000 and retired, but bought a bargain used-goods store. Williams died in Queens, New York City, in 1965, was interred in Saint Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale on Long Island. On her death in 1977, his wife, Eva Taylor, was interred next to him. Clarence Williams is the grandfather of actor Clarence Williams III.
Clarence Williams' name appears as composer or co-composer on numerous tunes, including a number which by Williams' own admission were written by others but which Williams bought all rights to outright, as was a common practice in the music publishing business at the time. Clarence Williams was credited as the author of Hank Williams' 1949 hit "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It", a song, recorded by Louis Armstrong. In 1970, Williams was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" "I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None o' this Jelly-Roll" "Sugar Blues" "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" "Royal Garden Blues" "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do" "Shout, Shout" "You Missed A Good Woman" "That Ought To Do It" "Look What A Fool I've Been" "Got To Cool My Doggies Now" "I Can Beat You Doing What You're Doing Me" "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" Big band List of American big band bandleaders List of big bands Clarence Williams on RedHotJazz.com.
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was an American-born French entertainer and French Resistance agent. Her career was centered in Europe in her adopted France. During her early career she was renowned as a dancer, was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris, her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927 caused a sensation in Paris. Her costume, consisting of only a girdle of artificial bananas, became her most iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age and the 1920s. Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the “Black Venus”, the "Black Pearl", the "Bronze Venus", the "Creole Goddess". Born in St. Louis, she renounced her U. S. citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. She raised her children in France. "I have two loves, my country and Paris." The artist once said, sang: «J'ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris». Baker was the first African-American to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant.
Baker refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States and is noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. In 1968 she was offered unofficial leadership in the movement in the United States by Coretta Scott King, following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. After thinking it over, Baker declined the offer out of concern for the welfare of her children, she was known for aiding the French Resistance during World War II. After the war, she was awarded the Croix de guerre by the French military, was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle. Baker was born as Freda Josephine McDonald in Missouri, her mother, was adopted in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1886 by Richard and Elvira McDonald, both of whom were former slaves of African and Native American descent. Josephine Baker's estate identifies vaudeville drummer Eddie Carson as her natural father despite evidence to the contrary. Baker's foster son Jean-Claude Baker wrote a biography, published in 1993, titled Josephine: The Hungry Heart.
Jean-Claude Baker did an exhaustive amount of research into the life of Josephine Baker, including the identity of her biological father. In the book, he discusses at length the circumstances surrounding Josephine Baker's birth: The records of the city of St. Louis tell an unbelievable story, they show that Carrie McDonald... was admitted to the Female Hospital on May 3, 1906, diagnosed as pregnant. She was discharged on her baby, Freda J. McDonald having been born two weeks earlier. Why six weeks in the hospital? For a black woman who would customarily have had her baby at home with the help of a midwife? There had been complications with the pregnancy, but Carrie's chart reveals no details; the father was identified as "Edw"... I think Josephine's father was white – so did Josephine, so did her family... people in St. Louis say that had worked for a German family. He's the one who must have paid to keep her there all those weeks, her baby's birth was registered by the head of the hospital at a time when most black births were not.
I have unraveled many mysteries associated with Josephine Baker, but the most painful mystery of her life, the mystery of her father's identity, I could not solve. The secret died with Carrie, she let people think Eddie Carson was the father, Carson played along, Josephine knew better. Carrie McDonald and Eddie Carson had a song-and-dance act; when Josephine was about a year old they began to carry her onstage during their finale. She was further exposed to show business at an early age because her childhood neighborhood was home to many vaudeville theaters that doubled as movie houses; these venues included the Jazzland, Booker T. Washington, Comet Theatres. Josephine lived her early life at 212 Targee Street in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood of St. Louis, a racially mixed low-income neighborhood near Union Station, consisting of rooming houses and apartments with no indoor plumbing. Josephine was always poorly dressed and hungry as a child, developed street smarts playing in the railroad yards of Union Station.
She had little formal education, attended Lincoln Elementary School only through the fifth grade. Josephine's mother married a kind but perpetually unemployed man, Arthur Martin, with whom she had a son and two more daughters and Willie, she took in laundry to wash to make ends meet, at eight years old, Josephine began working as a live-in domestic for white families in St. Louis. One woman abused her, burning Josephine's hands when the young girl put too much soap in the laundry. By age 12, she had dropped out of school. At 13, she worked as a waitress at the Old Chauffeur's Club at 3133 Pine Street, she lived as a street child in the slums of St. Louis, sleeping in cardboard shelters, scavenging for food in garbage cans, making a living with street-corner dancing, it was at the Old Chauffeur's Club where Josephine married him the same year. However, the marriage lasted less than a year. Following her divorce from Wells, she found work with a street performance group called the Jones Family Band.
In Baker's teen years she struggled to have a healthy relationship with her mother, Car
Dixieland
Dixieland, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or traditional jazz, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. One of the first uses of the term "Dixieland" with reference to music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jass Band, their 1917 recordings fostered popular awareness of this new style of music. A revival movement for traditional jazz, formed in reaction to the orchestrated sounds of the swing era and the perceived chaos of the new bebop sounds of the 1940s, pulled "Dixieland" out from the somewhat forgotten band's name for the music they championed; the revival movement included elements of the Chicago style that developed during the 1920s, such as the use of a string bass instead of a tuba, chordal instruments, in addition to the original format of the New Orleans style. That reflected the fact that all of the recorded repertoire of New Orleans musicians was from the period when the format was evolving beyond the traditional New Orleans format.
"Dixieland" may in that sense be regarded as denoting the jazz revival movement of the late 1930s to the 1950s as much as any particular subgenre of jazz. The essential elements that were accepted as within the style were the traditional front lines consisting of trumpets and clarinets, ensemble improvisation over a 2-beat rhythm; the Original Dixieland Jass Band, recording its first disc in 1917, was the first instance of jazz music being called "Dixieland", though at the time, the term referred to the band, not the genre. The band's sound was a combination of African American/New Orleans Sicilian music; the music of Sicily was one of the many genres in the New Orleans music scene during the 1910s, alongside sanctified church music, brass band music and blues. Much the term "Dixieland" was applied to early jazz by traditional jazz revivalists, starting in the 1940s and 1950s; the name is a reference to the "Old South" anything south of the Mason-Dixon line. The term encompasses earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles, biguine and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation.
While instrumentation and size of bands can be flexible, the "standard" band consists of a "front line" of trumpet and clarinet, with a "rhythm section" of at least two of the following instruments: guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba and drums. Louis Armstrong's All-Stars was the band most popularly identified with Dixieland during the 1940s, although Armstrong's own influence during the 1920s was to move the music beyond the traditional New Orleans style; the definitive Dixieland sound is created when one instrument plays the melody or a recognizable paraphrase or variation on it, the other instruments of the "front line" improvise around that melody. This creates a more polyphonic sound than the arranged ensemble playing of the big band sound or the straight "head" melodies of bebop. During the 1930s and 1940s, the earlier group-improvisation style fell out of favor with the majority of younger black players, while some older players of both races continued on in the older style. Though younger musicians developed new forms, many beboppers revered Armstrong and quoted fragments of his recorded music in their own improvisations.
The Dixieland revival in the late 1940s and 1950s brought many semi-retired musicians a measure of fame late in their lives as well as bringing retired musicians back onto the jazz circuit after years of not playing. Many Dixieland groups of the revival era consciously imitated the recordings and bands of decades earlier. Other musicians continued to create new tunes. For example, in the 1950s a style called "Progressive Dixieland" sought to blend polyphonic improvisation with bebop-style rhythm. Spike Jones & His New Band and Steve Lacy played with such bands; this style is sometimes called "Dixie-bop". Lacy went on to apply that approach to the music of Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Herbie Nichols. While the term Dixieland is still in wide use, the term's appropriateness is a hotly debated topic in some circles. For some it is the preferred label, while others would rather use terms like Classic jazz or Traditional jazz; some of the latter consider Dixieland a derogatory term implying superficial hokum played without passion or deep understanding of the music and because "Dixie" is a reference to pre-Civil War Southern States.
Many black musicians have traditionally rejected the term as a style distinctive from traditional jazz, characterized by the staccatic playing in all-white groups such as The Original Dixieland Jazz Band in contrast to the slower, syncopated back-beat style of playing characterized by musicians like King Oliver or Kid Ory. Dixieland is today applied to bands playing in a traditional style. Bands such as those of Eddie Condon and Muggsy Spanier were tagged with the Dixieland label, reflecting the grouping of the Chicago and New Orleans styles of traditional jazz under the same label. "Chicago style" is applied to the sound of Chicagoans such as Jimmy McPartland, Eddie Condon, Muggsy Spanier, Bud Freeman. The rhythm sections of these bands substitute the string bass for the tuba and the guitar for the banjo. Musically, the Chicagoans play in more of a swing-style 4-to-the-bar manner; the New Orleanian preference for an ensemble sound is deemphasized in favor of solos. Chicago-style dixieland differs from its southern origin by being faster paced, resembling the hustle-bu
Bunk Johnson
Willie Gary "Bunk" Johnson was a prominent jazz trumpeter in New Orleans. Johnson gave the year of his birth as 1879, although there is speculation that he may have been younger by as much as a decade. Johnson began playing professionally in Olivier's orchestra. Johnson played a few adolescent jobs with Buddy Bolden, but was not a regular member of Bolden's Band. Johnson was regarded as one of the top trumpeters in New Orleans in the years 1905–1915, in between leaving the city to tour with minstrel shows and circus bands. After he failed to appear for a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade job in 1915, he learned that krewe members intended to do him bodily harm. So he left town, touring with shows and by the early 1920s settling in New Iberia, Louisiana. In 1931 he lost his trumpet and front teeth when a fight broke out at a dance in Rayne, putting an end to his playing, he thereafter worked in manual labor giving music lessons. In 1938 and 1939 the writers of an early book of jazz history, interviewed several prominent musicians of the time, including Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Clarence Williams, who spoke of Johnson in the old days in New Orleans.
The writers tracked down Johnson's address, traded several letters with him, where he recalled his early career. Johnson stated that he could play again if he only had a new trumpet. A collection was taken up by writers and musicians, he was fitted with a set of dentures by Bechet's dentist brother and given a new trumpet, he made his first recordings for Jazz Man Records. These first recordings propelled Johnson into public attention. Johnson and his band played in New Orleans, San Francisco and New York City and made many more recordings. Johnson's work in the 1940s shows why he was well regarded by his fellow musicians—on his best days playing with great imagination and beauty—as well as suggesting why he had not achieved fame earlier, for he was unpredictable, with a passive-aggressive streak and a fondness for drinking alcohol to the point of impairment. Johnson died in New Iberia the following year. Jazz fans and historians still debate Johnson's legacy, the extent to which his colorful reminiscences of his early career were accurate, exaggerated, or untrue.
The majority of his recordings remain in print on CD reissues, his playing is an important influence on many contemporary traditional jazz musicians. Johnson plays a significant, role in Alan Schroeder's picture book Satchmo's Blues. In that book, Johnson serves as a source of musical inspiration to the young Louis Armstrong; the following records were recorded June, 1942, released on Jazz Man Records. "Down By The River / Panama": Jazz Man 8. Recorded in New Orleans, 1942. "Weary Blues / Moose March": Jazz Man 9. Recorded in New Orleans, 1942. "Storyville Blues / Bunk's Blues": Jazz Man 10. Recorded in New Orleans, 1942; the following records were recorded October, 1942, released on Milt Gabler's Jazz Information label, distributed by Commodore Records. "Franklin Street Blues / Weary Blues": Jazz Information 12. Recorded in New Orleans, 1942. "Shine / Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula": Jazz Information 15. Recorded in New Orleans, 1942. "Sobbin' Blues No. 2 / Sometimes My Burden Is So Hard To Bear": Jazz Information 16.
Recorded in New Orleans, 1942. The following records include recordings made for Bill Russell's American Music label between 1943 and 1946. Bunk Plays The Blues And Spirituals: American Music 638. 10" LP, recorded in New Orleans. Includes recordings by Johnson's working band and a brass band. 1944-1946: American Music 644. 10" LP, recorded in New Orleans, May 1945, New York, June 1946. Includes recordings by Johnson's working band and a trio featuring Don Ewell. New Orleans 1944: American Music 647. 10" LP, recorded in New Orleans, August 1944. Rare And Unissued Masters, Volume 1: American Music AMCD-139. CD. Includes further recordings by Johnson's working band and Johnson's brass band. Bunk Johnson recorded for Good Time Jazz with the Yerba Buena Jazz Band in early 1944. Bunk Johnson and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band: Spirituals & Jazz: Good Time Jazz L-17. Recorded in San Francisco, January–February 1944. Bunk Johnson recorded for Blue Note in March, 1945, for Decca and RCA Victor in late 1945. Sidney Bechet and Bunk Johnson: Days Beyond Recall: Blue Note BLP 7008.
Recorded in New York, March 1945. Hot Jazz: RCA Victor HJ-7. Album of four 78 RPM shellac records. New Orleans Memories: Ace of Hearts AH 140. 12" LP, includes four recordings from a Decca session in New York, November 1945. Includes recordings by Kid Ory and George Lewis. Bunk Johnson's final recordings were made for Columbia in December, 1947; the Last Testament Of A Great New Orleans Jazzman: Columbia CL 829. 12" LP, recorded at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York City, December 1947. Detailed discussion of research on Bunk's early life and possible birthdates The Swedish Bunk Johnson Society Willie Johnson's WWI Draft Registration Card and essay
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo and Pops, was an American trumpeter, composer and occasional actor, one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, different eras in the history of jazz. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. Armstrong was raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in the Creole Jazz Band. In the Windy City, he networked with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend, Bix Beiderbecke, made new contacts, which included Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin, he earned a reputation at "cutting contests", relocated to New York in order to join Fletcher Henderson's band. With his recognizable rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes.
He was very skilled at scat singing. Armstrong is renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice as much as for his trumpet playing. Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz, by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to "cross over", that is, whose skin color became secondary to his music in an America, racially divided at the time, he publicly politicized his race to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. His artistry and personality allowed him access to the upper echelons of American society highly restricted for black men. Armstrong stated that he was born on July 4, 1900. Although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date, August 4, 1901, was discovered by Tad Jones by researching baptismal records. At least three other biographies treat the July 4th birth date as a myth.
Armstrong was born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901 to William Armstrong. Albert was from Boutte and gave birth at home when she was about sixteen. William Armstrong abandoned the family shortly after. About two years he had a daughter, Beatrice "Mama Lucy" Armstrong, raised by Albert. Louis Armstrong was raised by his grandmother until the age of five when he was returned to his mother, he spent his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood known as The Battlefield. At six he attended the Fisk School for Boys, a school that accepted black children in the racially segregated system of New Orleans, he did odd jobs for a family of Lithuanian Jews. While selling coal in Storyville, he heard spasm bands, groups that played music out of household objects, he heard the early sounds of jazz from bands that played in brothels and dance halls such as Pete Lala's, where King Oliver performed. The Karnoffskys treated him like family. Knowing he lived without a father, they nurtured him. In his memoir Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La. the Year of 1907, he described his discovery that this family was subject to discrimination by "other white folks" who felt that they were better than Jews: "I was only seven years old but I could see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for."
He wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them: "how to live—real life and determination." His first musical performance may have been at the side of the Karnoffsky's junk wagon. To distinguish them from other hawkers, he tried playing a tin horn to attract customers. Morris Karnoffsky gave Armstrong an advance toward the purchase of a cornet from a pawn shop; when Armstrong was eleven, he dropped out of school. His mother moved into a one-room house on Perdido Street with him and her common-law husband, Tom Lee, next door to her brother Ike and his two sons. Armstrong joined a quartet of boys, he got into trouble. Cornetist Bunk Johnson said. In his years Armstrong credited King Oliver, he said about his youth, "Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans... It has given me something to live for." Borrowing his stepfather's gun without permission, he fired a blank into the air and was arrested on December 31, 1912.
He spent the night at New Orleans Juvenile Court was sentenced the next day to detention at the Colored Waif's Home. Life at the home was spartan. Mattresses were absent. Meals were little more than bread and molasses. Captain Joseph Jones used corporal punishment. Armstrong developed his cornet skills by playing in the band. Peter Davis, who appeared at the home at the request of Captain Jones, became Armstrong's first teacher and chose him as bandleader. With this band, the thirteen year-old. On June 14, 1914, Armstrong was released into the custody of his father and his new stepmother, Gertrude, he lived in this household with two stepbrothers for several months. After Gertrude gave birth to a daughter, Armstrong's father never welcomed him, so he returned to his mother, Mary Albert. In her small home, he had to share a bed with his sister, his mother still lived in The Battlefield
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
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