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Music Is My Life: Louis Armstrong, Autobiography, and American Jazz
Daniel Stein
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Music Is My Life is the first comprehensive analysis of Louis Armstrong's autobiographical writings (including his books, essays, and letters) and their relation to his musical and visual performances. Combining approaches from autobiography theory, literary criticism, intermedia studies, cultural history, and musicology, Daniel Stein reconstructs Armstrong's performances of his life story across various media and for different audiences, complicating the monolithic and hagiographic views of the musician.
The book will appeal to academic readers with an interest in African American studies, jazz studies, musicology, and popular culture, as well as general readers interested in Armstrong's life and music, jazz, and twentieth-century entertainment. While not a biography, it provides a key to understanding Armstrong's oeuvre as well as his complicated place in American history and twentieth-century media culture.
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Cover
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Title
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Copyright
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Acknowledgments
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Contents
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INTRODUCTION “Music is my life, and I live to play” Louis Armstrong's Jazz Autobiographics
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CHAPTER 1 “I have always been a great observer” New Orleans Musicking
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CHAPTER 2 “I done forgot the words” Versioning Autobiography
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CHAPTER 3 “Diddat Come Outa Mee?” Writing Scat and Typing Swing
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CHAPTER 4 “A happy go lucky sort of type of fellow” The Productive Ambiguities of Minstrel Sounding
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CHAPTER 5 “He didn't need black face—to be funny” The Double Resonance of Postcolonial Performance
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CHAPTER 6 “My mission is music” Armstrong's Cultural Politics
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CONCLUSION “What do you know about that?” Final Thoughts on “Laughin’ Louie”
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NOTES
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SUGGESTED LISTENING
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SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
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INDEX
Citable Link
Published: 2012
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
- 978-0-472-05180-9 (paper)
- 978-0-472-07180-7 (hardcover)
- 978-0-472-02850-4 (ebook)