The trumpet was more of a lead instrument and in the hands of such an artist, it would be logical that Armstrong’s dominance in jazz as well as popular music could have cast a dark trumpet shadow over the once revered cornet. Wallace continued in his paper, he compares the early ensemble style to Louis’s more leadership playing style and Armstrongs switch from cornet to trumpet was a logical observation. This quote was taken from the book Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (London,1955), page 190 by Louis Armstrong. For years I would not even try to play the instrument”.
Only the big orchestras in the theaters had trumpet players in their brass sections (….) at that time we all thought you had to be a music conservatory man or some kind of a big muckity-muck to play the trumpet. Wallace’s paper, he quotes Armstrong as saying “Of course in those early days we did not know very much about trumpets.
I have no doubt that a figure as revolutionary as Satchmo could have changed history. I was very impressed with his commentary of individual recordings and the subtle changes in Armstrong’s style of playing, first starting as an ensemble cornet player and eventually evolving into a dominating trumpet soloist. Wallace impressed me greatly after reading his play by play analysis of Pop’s transition via the recordings of that time. I have greatly simplified and perhaps misstated his thinking and for that reason you need to read his paper as he had originally written it. He wrote, and I agree with his theory, that during Armstrong’s evolution as a jazz musician, his switch from cornet to trumpet could have swayed the whole music scenes preference from the cornet to the trumpet. In his paper he traces the loss of popularity of the cornet and seems to think Louis Armstrong had a significant roll in the cornets loss of stature. Wallace a gifted player and trumpet teacher, he is a very interesting music historian (can there be such a person?). I strongly recommend that you read this paper for not only is Mr. In a paper written by John Wallace, entitled The Emancipation of the Trumpet, he traces the history and popularity of both the trumpet and the cornet. “Did Louis Armstrong cause the switch from cornet to trumpet?” Why did we put the cornet on the back shelf and replace it with the trumpet? After searching many sources on the internet, I found three possible reasons which I will share with you. This past week I have been bothered by one thought which has kept me up at night. Some might argue that they are the same instrument and that might be the real reason there is so much confusion and argument over the importance and use of each instrument. One instrument does a job that the other can not. Making the selection between a trumpet and a cornet should be made for the same reason. If I needed to hammer out some sheet metal, I would select a ball penne hammer. If I were a craftsman and needed to remove a nail from a board, I would choose a claw hammer. How this idea ever got started is a wonder to many of us. The reason could be that many think that we began on a cornet and when we got good, we switched over to a real instrument. Most of us are trumpet players and the thought of playing a cornet sometimes turns us off. This might be boring to the casual reader but for the rest of us who are deeply interested in how our trumpet/cornet history has been developing, I think this is worth reading. This will not be an entertaining document. Photo Credit: striking_photography on Flickrįirst I need to apologize to the uninitiated followers of trumpet history.
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