Apr 8, 2019 4 min read

Even among supposed scholars, the impact of a certain New Orleans native on American popular music tends to be lost in the shuffle.

“The reason I started doing this,” pianist and historian Tom Roberts said about his upcoming program at Citizens Library in Washington, “was simply because with most people I encountered here, you would try to talk to them about Louis Armstrong, and they’d just say, ‘What a Wonderful World.’ And they were so dismissive of it all.”

Armstrong’s gruff-voiced cover of the rose-colored-glasses composition by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss has been a staple of joyous occasions since it topped the British charts in 1968. But that was toward the end of his life, after the vocalist and brass player already had established himself as a premier performer for nearly half a century.

He also influenced other musicians immensely during the course of his career.

“He changes everything that encounters him. So no Louis Armstrong, no Benny Goodman,” Roberts said. “Duke Ellington would sound very different. Charlie Parker would be alive, but his music would not be the same way. He would never had heard those things and be able to create what he did had Louis Armstrong been killed as a little kid.”

Roberts’ presentation, scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the library, covers Armstrong’s childhood spent basically on the streets of New Orleans, until a family of Jewish immigrants hired him as a laborer and lent him the money to buy his first cornet.

The Karnofskys also liked to sing, exposing Armstrong to the sounds of their homeland.

“Louis incorporated things that are inherent in Eastern European, Yiddish-speaking Jewish music that we call klezmer music,” Roberts explained, “and put it to the ragtime music that they were playing in New Orleans.”

The synthesis was nothing short of revolutionary as other musicians began to pick up on what Armstrong started, Roberts said.

“If you listen to what Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra sounds like before the arrival of Louis Armstrong, it is incredibly different,” he said. “If you listen to Coleman Hawkins and all of these latter-day jazz stars, and you hear them before they’ve experienced Louis Armstrong, they just have this very old-fashioned rhythmic idea of how to play things.”

“Jelly Roll Morton kind of stomped,” he added, “as did James P. Johnson, but everybody was changed rhythmically by what Louis created.”

That goes for melody, too, as Armstrong’s music incorporated a variety of styles.

“Louis listened to everything. Louis’ hero was Enrico Caruso,” Roberts said about the legendary tenor, also citing influences such as John McCormack, who had an early hit called “The Trumpeter,” and Herbert L. Clarke of John Philip Sousa’s band.

Those who attend Roberts’ presentation, provided by Washington Jazz Society, will have the treat of listening to Armstrong’s music in a way they never could before: state-of-the-art remasterings of 78-rpm records developed by Library of Congress archivist David Sager.

“He and his partner created needles that were specific to an individual record. Roberts said, referencing Maryland sound engineer Doug Benson.

“They would use a microscope and analyze the groove, and they would create a stylus that would fit the specific record perfectly, so you hear all of the information that is in it,” he said. “You can actually hear all of the subtleties and all of the nuance, and it becomes a very three-dimensional experience hearing those old recordings.”

In addition to the Armstrong program, Roberts has other music-related ventures scheduled around the Pittsburgh area, including “The Charlie Chaplin Silent Picture Show,” featuring his piano and Mary Beth Malik’s clarinet on his original compositions.

“For every 30 seconds of film you see, I spent at least 17 hours imagining what would be the right thing,” he said. “There’s an intellectual process to it of trying to connect themes, creating themes that are very evocative of whatever the audience is seeing on the screen.”

Chaplin performances are scheduled for April 14 at the Tull Family Theater in Sewickley and April 23 at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh’s North Side.

As for the program at Citizens Library, Roberts hopes to enlighten all who attend about the story beyond “What a Wonderful World”:

“I cannot even begin to imagine what music would sound like without Louis Armstrong.”

The April 11 program is free. Registration is required by calling Citizens Library at 724-222-2400. For more information about Tom Roberts, visit www.tomrobertspiano.com.