TO ORDER All titles may not be immediately available. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT REVIEWS: 7/18/97: The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution Of Language And The Brain Terrence W. Deacon Nonfiction 7/17/97: Eat Me Linda Jaivin Fiction 7/16/97: Miss Manners' Basic Training: Eating By Judith Martin Nonfiction 7/15/97: The History of The Siege of Lisbon By José Saramago Translated by Giovanni Pontiero Fiction 7/14/97: Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood By Todd McCarthy Nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: title of book author publisher reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . ALSO IN SALON: The enduring power of America's favorite icon BY JONATHAN LETHEM . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT BOOK FEATURES

_____Louis Armstrong ____________an EXTRAVAGANT life BY LAURENCE BERGREEN BROADWAY BOOKS 576 PAGES NONFICTION BY SARAH VOWELL one of the most symbolic, beguiling moments in Laurence Bergreen's elegant new biography of Louis Armstrong catches the trumpeter on his first day with Harlem's Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. Fresh from wild Chicago, raised in wilder New Orleans, Armstrong's brand of jazz was a fierce, chartless impulse; Henderson's high-tone players, on the other hand, worked from sheet music that was detailed down to dynamic markings. And when Armstrong took off blaring, instead of playing pianissimo as demanded by the chart in front of him, Henderson stopped the band to ask, "Louis, how about that pp?" The great Satchmo joked, "Oh, I thought that meant 'pound plenty.'" Bergreen's book reads like that set-up must have sounded -- a loud, hilarious Armstrong solo thrusting out of a suave Henderson narrative structure. Bergreen is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and it shows. The entire biography feels like a particularly long, particularly good Times article, so much so that you almost wish the subject were referred to as "Mr. Armstrong," in that paper's quaint manner, instead of just plain "Louis." Bergreen is genteel, but he's no prude. He rather relishes the story of Armstrong's romantic childhood among the prostitutes of New Orleans' red-light district, Storyville. Bergreen rails against the way "historians and scholars have made a determined effort to place a fig leaf over the origins of jazz" and traces the form's -- and Armstrong's -- development in local whorehouses staffed by tough women with names like "Mary Jack the Bear." While ponying up Armstrong's debts to his mentors like Joe "King" Oliver, Bergreen is particularly sharp in getting at what was new about Louis Armstrong: his place as the first great jazz soloist, his early recognition of the importance of recordings, his veritable invention of swing, his introduction of scat into jazz, and his jive-talking linguistic contributions to pop culture with slang like "cats" (which has informed bad Beat parodies ever since). He reinvented himself several times, moving from big bands to the small combo the Hot Five to his final stop as "traditional" grand old man. "Every note he blew was amplified by history," Bergreen writes of a legendary Armstrong performance at Town Hall in 1947. Establishing Armstrong's musical legacy -- "the voice that sounded like an instrument and the instrument that sounded like a voice" -- isn't a hard job. What might be Bergreen's noblest task is setting the record straight about Armstrong as a black man in America. His clownish side, his affability, his downright gaiety, not to mention his insistence on singing the dopey "When It's Sleepy Time Down South," might have made Armstrong appear deferential and apolitical to some. But Bergreen points out crucial Armstrong stands, most notably his public statement, while the National Guard was preventing Little Rock school desegregation in 1957, that "the way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell." With outbursts like that (he also accused President Eisenhower of having "no guts"), Armstrong rated an FBI file. Oddly, it's J. Edgar Hoover himself who gave the musician one of his most acute reviews: "Armstrong's life is a good argument against the theory that Negroes are inferior." July 22, 1997 BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html