Louis Armstrong in the Jazz Age
In 1924, a promising young horn musician from New Orleans named Louis Armstrong moved to New York, where dance-orchestra leader Fletcher Henderson had offered him a job for $55 a week. As Terry Teachout, the Journal's drama critic and Sightings columnist, writes in "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong," the musician was shocked by "the undisciplined behavior" of his new bandmates, who sometimes played while intoxicated ... Armstrong was also puzzled by his bandmates' lack of musical curiosity.
