One of the most enduring individual legacies from the Jazz Age is that of the towering figure of Louis Armstrong. The super-influential artist grew up in New Orleans’s Storyville district during a time of artistic upheaval. His exposure to the musical melting pot of New Orleans left an indelible impression on him. The flavor of that upbringing is reflected in Armstrong’s version of the W.C. Handy composition, “Saint Louis Blues,” which may have contributed to the creation of a dance we know today as the “foxtrot.”
Song of the Day: “Saint Louis Blues”
Max Gray
Read more of Max Gray at Big City Sasquatch or follow him on Twitter @City_Sasquatch. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Encounters, Mount Hope, Conte, tNY.press, and English Kills Review. He co-hosts the etymology podcast Words For Dinner and is a graduate of the Rutgers-Newark MFA program.