l p Posted June 6, 2015 Report Share Posted June 6, 2015 good research, and an interesting read. http://dippermouth.blogspot.com/2015/06/louis-armstrong-joe-glaser-and-satchmo.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjzee Posted June 6, 2015 Report Share Posted June 6, 2015 Thanks for posting that; it was a great read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Nessa Posted June 6, 2015 Report Share Posted June 6, 2015 Only about half way through but interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medjuck Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Nice to see some rigorous scholarship. I liked Teachout's Pops book but his bio of Ellington was so fucking awful that it's hard for me to take anything he says seriously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnblitweiler Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Did anyone ever write a biography or college degree thesis about Joe Glaser? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Teachout has no credibility as far as I am concerned and Wein had an enormous axe to grind. Since I take it his presumed witnesses to what Louis allegedly said never publicly affirmed Wein's claim nor are they alive to do so today, this is pretty definitive as to where the truth lies. Not with Teachout or Wein. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 I haven't seen the play, but trusting Riccardi's research/account as I do, I'll add that, accepting Teachout's fiction-is-fiction point of view for the sake of argument, the fairly complex reality of the Armstrong-Glaser relationship as Riccardi describes it strikes me as potentially far more interesting dramatically than the resolution, as described, of Teachout's play. Also, in the fiction-is-fiction vein -- yes, but when fiction that has a semi-documentary, rooted in historical reality, real people with real names framework is used to make a tendentious point about those people? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesoul Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Teachout's rebuttal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 That would be Teachout's would-be rebuttal IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnblitweiler Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Teachout's defense is pathetic. One of his most annoying sentences is, "Many other people who knew both Armstrong and Glaser have told me the same thing." I don't trust that "many other people" from Teachout or anybody else I don't know. Exactly who else told him the same thing? Let's not be surprised if Louis contradicted himself in conversation once in awhile. Who among us has not been momentarily bugged now and then and said something harsh about a person he/she loves very much? Maybe I said it when I didn't know all the facts, or when I was sick, or... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtSalt Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Nice to see some rigorous scholarship. I liked Teachout's Pops book but his bio of Ellington was so fucking awful that it's hard for me to take anything he says seriously. I agree that Teachout's Pops was magnificent, scholarly and well researched. But the Ellington biography, now there is the rub! Actually, I find Teachout's rebuttal convincing, it is drama and you have to take artistic license with the facts to get to the essence. It is a play, not a lecture on history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Nice to see some rigorous scholarship. I liked Teachout's Pops book but his bio of Ellington was so fucking awful that it's hard for me to take anything he says seriously. I agree that Teachout's Pops was magnificent, scholarly and well researched. But the Ellington biography, now there is the rub! Actually, I find Teachout's rebuttal convincing, it is drama and you have to take artistic license with the facts to get to the essence. It is a play, not a lecture on history. But what essence in this case? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 (edited) But Teachout hides behind his “a work of fiction, freely based on fact.” canard and absolutely believes that his (Wein's) version is correct. What is really striking to me is the contrast between Wein's "He said it like I said, and it has to be true because no black man with a white manager could possibly have felt otherwise" vs the categorical dismissal of Louis' "white son". Edited June 7, 2015 by Dan Gould Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtSalt Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Nice to see some rigorous scholarship. I liked Teachout's Pops book but his bio of Ellington was so fucking awful that it's hard for me to take anything he says seriously. I agree that Teachout's Pops was magnificent, scholarly and well researched. But the Ellington biography, now there is the rub! Actually, I find Teachout's rebuttal convincing, it is drama and you have to take artistic license with the facts to get to the essence. It is a play, not a lecture on history. But what essence in this case? The dynamic of the relationship. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
l p Posted June 7, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 the fairly complex reality of the Armstrong-Glaser relationship as Riccardi describes it strikes me as potentially far more interesting dramatically than the resolution, as described, of Teachout's play. good point. the play (which i haven't seen) would certainly have been more interesting this way, rather than what it is - taking the stereotypical way out. and it would have been harder to write. probably more than Teachout could handle as a writer, even if he had wanted to tell it that way. i'm sure that he knew both versions of the story, because ricardi seems to have been in touch with him for a long time. and his rebuttal is just silly, and sorely lacking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 But Teachout hides behind his “a work of fiction, freely based on fact.” canard and absolutely believes that his (Wein's) version is correct. What is really striking to me is the contrast between Wein's "He said it like I said, and it has to be true because no black man with a white manager could possibly have felt otherwise" vs the categorical dismissal of Louis' "white son". As a white manager-promoter himself, Wein would know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtSalt Posted June 7, 2015 Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Has anybody actually seen the play? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
l p Posted June 7, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 7, 2015 Has anybody actually seen the play? to see if ricardi's description of it is correct? the only thing that Teachout disputes about the description is that Teachout says that he did insert this line into the play: “It ain’t about the money, got me plenty of that,” . but i suspect that this line was spoken by the actor during the intermission, when the audience was getting coffee. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtSalt Posted June 8, 2015 Report Share Posted June 8, 2015 Has anybody actually seen the play? to see if ricardi's description of it is correct? the only thing that Teachout disputes about the description is that Teachout says that he did insert this line into the play: “It ain’t about the money, got me plenty of that,” . but i suspect that this line was spoken by the actor during the intermission, when the audience was getting coffee. Again, I feel that we are getting lost in historic fact, when the reality it is a play that has to be built on drama to hold the audience’s attention. Ricardi states that the performance is convincing. If it gets a few more people turned-on to Armstrong's music and interested in jazz, then it has served it's purpose. The relationship between Armstrong and Glaser was complex and multi-faceted, Teachout with his playwright hat-on, has to focus on drama. As Spike Milligan once said, “I've just jazzed mine up a little.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted June 8, 2015 Report Share Posted June 8, 2015 Has anybody actually seen the play? to see if ricardi's description of it is correct? the only thing that Teachout disputes about the description is that Teachout says that he did insert this line into the play: “It ain’t about the money, got me plenty of that,” . but i suspect that this line was spoken by the actor during the intermission, when the audience was getting coffee. Again, I feel that we are getting lost in historic fact, when the reality it is a play that has to be built on drama to hold the audience’s attention. Ricardi states that the performance is convincing. If it gets a few more people turned-on to Armstrong's music and interested in jazz, then it has served it's purpose. The relationship between Armstrong and Glaser was complex and multi-faceted, Teachout with his playwright hat-on, has to focus on drama. As Spike Milligan once said, “I've just jazzed mine up a little.” Yes, what Teachout focused on (choosing to believe George Wein's account of Armstrong's state of mind re: Glaser) was dramatic, but as I said above, what the actual complexities of the Armstrong-Glaser relationship were (as Riccardi convincingly IMO details them) seem to me to be no less open to effective dramatization. But then one wouldn't have the play's seemingly pat "noble victim finally angrily realizing that he's long been been victimized by a semi-villiain"resolution, which is why I'm suspicious that that resolution was chosen not only for dramatic reasons. We do recall Edward Albee's "The Death of Bessie Smith," in which the myth that Smith's death was the result of her not being admitted to a nearby whites-only Mississippi hospital after a car wreck was put to use by Albee to in part dramatize the ugliness of racism in the South. For the facts about Smith's death, see Chris Albertson's "Bessie." Main detail is that Smith was not refused admission at a whites-only hospital and then bled to death before she could be treated elsewhere, as John Hammond wrote at the time, which account Albee based his play on. Smith was taken directly and ASAP to a blacks-only hospital, but her injuries were too traumatic for her to survive. Of course, the fact of there being whites-only and blacks-only hospitals in the South was ugly to say the least, but that is not why Smith died. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
l p Posted June 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 8, 2015 I'm told by a not very reliable source that this was Teachout's original ending to the play. I think that he made a good decision in going with the current ending instead. it's much more subtle. … Armstrong comes back from yet another lengthy european tour, only to find glaser in bed with lucille. Armstrong: "so that's why you keep sending me out on tour, you son of a bitch!". Armstrong grabs a gun, and kills them both. With blood all over the room, armstrong is on his knees, wailing "oh lord, I killed my best friend, and that bitch!. I can't live in this world no more". he slowly brings the gun up to his temple. Lights fade. A gunshot is heard. End of play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoppy T. Frog Posted June 13, 2015 Report Share Posted June 13, 2015 I'm told by a not very reliable source that this was Teachout's original ending to the play. I think that he made a good decision in going with the current ending instead. it's much more subtle. … Armstrong comes back from yet another lengthy european tour, only to find glaser in bed with lucille. Armstrong: "so that's why you keep sending me out on tour, you son of a bitch!". Armstrong grabs a gun, and kills them both. With blood all over the room, armstrong is on his knees, wailing "oh lord, I killed my best friend, and that bitch!. I can't live in this world no more". he slowly brings the gun up to his temple. Lights fade. A gunshot is heard. End of play. Are you pulling our legs? Sounds like Teachout was influenced by Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch1ti1VMzXU Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjzee Posted June 13, 2015 Report Share Posted June 13, 2015 He is pulling our collective leg. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
l p Posted June 14, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 14, 2015 Are you pulling our legs? Sounds like Teachout was influenced by Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" oh, that's nice. i'm going to demand a refund for that online creative writing course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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