Books with author Louise Armstrong

"In all my whole career the Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played in. It was the honky-tonk where levee workers would congregate every Saturday night and trade with the gals who'd stroll up and down the floor and the bar. Those guys would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles would come flying over the bandstand like crazy, and there was lots of just plain common shooting and cutting. But somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all, I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn." So says Louis Armstrong, a tough kid who just happened to be a musical genius, about one of the places where he performed and grew up. This raucous, rich tale of his early days in New Orleans concludes with his departure to Chicago at twenty-one to play with his boyhood idol King Oliver, and tells the story of a life that began, mythically, on July 4, 1900, in the city that sowed the seeds of jazz.

Not only biography, but also one of the earliest American attempts to trace the development of jazz."--from the foreword by Dan MorgensternThe first autobiography of a jazz musician, Louis Armstrong's Swing That Music is a milestone in jazz literature. Armstrong wrote most of the biographical material, which is of a different nature and scope than that of his other, later autobiography, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (also published by Da Capo). Satchmo covers in intimate detail Armstrong's life until his 1922 move to Chicago; but Swing That Music also covers his days on Chicago's South Side with "King" Oliver, his courtship and marriage to Lil Hardin, his 1929 move to New York, the formation of his own band, his European tours, and his international success. One of the most earnest justifications ever written for the new style of music then called "swing" but more broadly referred to as "Jazz," Swing That Music is a biography, a history, and an entertainment that really "swings."

Seven kids, Thor's hammer and a whole lot of Valkyries are the only things standing against the end of the world . . .When thirteen-year-olds Matt Thorsen and Fen and Laurie Brekke - modern descendents of Thor and Loki - discovered they were destined to take the places of the Norse gods in an epic battle against the apocalypse, they thought they knew how things would play out. Gather the other descendents, defeat a giant serpent and save the world. No problem, right?But their journey grinds to a halt when their friend Baldwin is poisoned. Matt, Fen and Laurie must travel to the murky Underworld to try and save him before they can continue with their quest to find Thor's hammer. Ahead lie colossal monsters and legendary battles . . . Will Matt and the other descendents do enough to become heroes in their own right?Authors K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr return to Blackwell in the epic sequel to Loki's Wolves with more explosive action, adventure and larger-than-life Norse legends.

"In all my whole career the Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played in. It was the honky-tonk where levee workers would congregate every Saturday night and trade with the gals who'd stroll up and down the floor and the bar. Those guys would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles would come flying over the bandstand like crazy, and there was lots of just plain common shooting and cutting. But somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all, I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn." So says Louis Armstrong, a tough kid who just happened to be a musical genius, about one of the places where he performed and grew up. This raucous, rich tale of his early days in New Orleans concludes with his departure to Chicago at twenty-one to play with his boyhood idol King Oliver, and tells the story of a life that began, mythically, on July 4, 1900, in the city that sowed the seeds of jazz. ( Amazon review)