The Best of Americana: A New Louis Armstrong Biography, “Stomp off and Let’s Go” by Ricky Riccardi, Oxford University Press.
Fred N. Holabird, ©2025
Overview
The new Louis Armstrong biography is a symphony of words and stories. Carefully woven together like an opera, the author becomes a maestro at the helm, wielding his conductor’s baton smoothly through Louis’ early years into his breakthrough tutelage under King Oliver, where he learns the intricacies of adding sequenced notes between chords, a process now known as “skip steps.” This led to the very beginning of the formation of innovative and improvisational jazz as we know it today. Under Oliver, Armstrong needed to learn how to read compositional sheet music so he could be more fully cognizant of the technical intricacies involved in musical composition and therefore performance. With baton in the right hand making mild fluid waving motions, matched by soft waving in the left hand, and holding both low at even tempo and projection, our conductor Riccardi takes us through the early stages of jazz life, with Armstrong playing ragtime, marches, classical, and a few contemporary tunes.
As Armstrong finds and experiments with various other artists, he discovers each musician’s innovations, and begins to weave them into his own orchestrations with an inventiveness that grabs the soul. Similarly, the author/conductor Riccardi instantly becomes an artist, painting scene after scene, while his baton rises and reacts with the tempo of the music and the stories.
As the baton rises, the hands are seen making sharp movements, pointing to various sectors of the orchestra – to parts of Armstrong’s life – that become developmental explanation points in his musical career. Armstrong experiments with differing tempos, differing styles, muffling effects, trills, valve fluttering and elongated notes that occupy his every thought while practicing and performing, often leading to the creation of his own compositions. Whether explosive, fast pace jazz, or slower rhythmic tunes, Armstrong then experiments with syncopation, the telling of two musical stories at once, blended together from two distinctly different instruments, whether clarinet, piano, trombone, or another instrument.
The Stories
After the introductory family biographies, the symphony starts, the author/conductor Riccardi raises his baton and the book’s symphony of words and history begins.
It all started when Louis was a young boy, listening to the music of the streets of New Orleans. Pianos and horns grabbed his imagination at every turn. Working at odd jobs, Louis finds a kind family that invites him into their fold. Armstrong feels safe and at home for the very first time in his life at a foster home, where a family enamored by the young boy’s growing ability encouraged his music, until he is pulled away yet again by unsteady relatives. With a rough life for a kid of going from one broken family home to another, Armstrong gets in trouble, and the Judge sent him to the Colored Waif’s Home, an orphanage similar to what we know today as a form of “Juvenile Hall.” Here he blossoms and begins to learn to play music with others.
As a teenager, and later a young man, Armstrong listened to and played with a variety of musicians and developed a wide repertoire of styles. In some cases, he heard music he felt was so perfect, he would never perform the number, stating “It just can’t get any better.” From there on, the improvisational and syncopative Armstrong knew no limits.
The Riccardi Symphony Grows in Intensity
As Armstrong’s well practiced musical sessions with multitudes of musical artists grew, so too did his ability to experiment, move out of the “fold’ into a new world of jazz improvisation, one that he heard in his head, and found a way to “let it rip” while performing live.
The book’s conductor, author and maestro Riccardi uses musical terms and tomes as conductor of this written symphony, eloquently describing the master, Armstrong. As our conductor slowly lifts his verbal baton, he extends it outward slowly as if pointing to the magical trumpet player, and Armstrong responds, stretching all known musical intonations to a now-storied full four bars at Bb (B flat) at about twelve seconds or a reported incredible eight bars of that fabulous high C note, in a crescendo that defies logical musical abilities, taking jazz to a whole new place, a place now enshrined by Armstrong, and championed by Riccardi’s symphonic words.
It becomes no secret that the wordsmith is himself a musician. His knowledge runs deeply throughout the masterpiece with musical descriptions and terms finely known by musicians, though familiar enough for others to understand. This comes across in the Epilogue, when Riccardi describes the honor he felt when invited into a modern-day jazz session, something all of us musicians dream of and fully grasp. To join the best is a player’s goal. Armstong represents that goal. Riccardi aimed to write the best biography about the best jazz master. He reaches those heights with “Stomp Off, Lets Go!” using his years of experience as curator of the Louis Armstrong Museum in New York to create a true biographical masterpiece.
Go buy the book. This is Americana at it’s best.
