Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Welcome to Chicago" -- Oliver's band and the "blues age" -- Opposites attract : Louis and Miss Lil -- The call from Broadway -- "This is what really relates to us" : the Dreamland Caf�e, the Vendome Theater, and the first Hot Five records -- Melody man at the Sunset Caf�e -- "Some kind of a god" -- The white turn -- The Rosetta stone -- Sleepy time down South.

The definitive account of Louis Armstrong--his life and legacy--during the most creative period of his career.

Nearly 100 years after bursting onto Chicago's music scene under the tutelage of Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong is recognized as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. A trumpet virtuoso, seductive crooner, and consummate entertainer, Armstrong laid the foundation for the future of jazz with his stylistic innovations, but his story would be incomplete without examining how he struggled in a society seething with brutally racist ideologies, laws, and practices. Thomas Brothers picks up where he left off with the acclaimed Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, following the story of the great jazz musician into his most creatively fertile years in the 1920s and early 1930s, when Armstrong created not one but two modern musical styles. Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism blends cultural history, musical scholarship, and personal accounts from Armstrong's contemporaries to reveal his enduring contributions to jazz and popular music at a time when he and his bandmates couldn't count on food or even a friendly face on their travels across the country.--Publisher information.