SummaryLouis Armstrong's Black & Blues offers an intimate and revealing look at the world-changing musician, presented through a lens of archival footage and never-before-heard home recordings and personal conversations. This definitive documentary, directed by Sacha Jenkins, honors Armstrong's legacy as a founding father of jazz, one of the first inter... Read More
Directed By:Sacha Jenkins
Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues
Metascore
Generally Favorable
80
User score
Mixed or Average
5.8
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
80
100% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Oct 31, 2022
90
Jenkins has made a movie that captures both the joy of Armstrong’s music and the distinctive nature of his personal charisma, though he doesn’t shy away from some of the more controversial elements of Armstrong’s legacy.
Oct 18, 2022
88
In this Golden Age of biographical musical documentaries, the filmmaker who is now working on an Ed Sullivan doc has taken a subject we thought we knew all we needed to know about, and all but re-introduced him to a new age. Well done
Oct 28, 2022
83
Most of the participants who knew Armstrong are dead and there’s something melancholy about realizing that the human being behind that voice is silent. What remains is a quality that Marsalis identifies as essential in Armstrong’s music, a gift which he was fully conscious of, conveying a “transcendent joy” through sound.
Oct 27, 2022
80
Built around excerpts from Armstrong’s home audio recordings, which he made in private over the decades, the documentary is far from exhaustive and yet, as a primer for why Armstrong remains influential, this inquisitive portrait successfully manages to render him as both a titan and a nuanced human being.
Oct 27, 2022
80
Luxuriating in a wealth of archival material that encompasses radio and TV interviews, privately recorded conversations from reel-to-reel tapes (Armstrong could swear like a sailor), and good old-fashioned newspaper clippings (remember them?), this documentary about the great Louis Armstrong is a real keeper.
Oct 27, 2022
75
"Black & Blues” is a doc that will make you appreciate Armstrong, the man. Someone far too complex to reduce to any one thing.
Oct 27, 2022
70
A delightful experience for jazz buffs and more than an eye-opener for any youngsters who barely know who Armstrong was, it’s worth applauding just for its belief that it can meaningfully touch on private life, public persona, musical legacy and everything else — even if, on each front, it leaves one wanting more.
User score
Mixed or Average
5.8
50% Positive
2 Ratings
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50% Mixed
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0% Negative
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Nov 6, 2022
7
Louis Armstrong não passou de um chaveirinho de gente branca, mas de certa forma, consciente disso. À certa altura, o documentário deixa claro: ele nunca participou ativamente da luta pelos direitos civis, e fez o seu nome de forma individualizada.
Obviamente isso não o impedia de ter um tremor ao tocar em lugares onde, por exemplo, havia banheiros separados, mesas segregadas, enfim, toda uma estrutura separatista que por outras vozes ecoaram de forma mais visceral para tentar acabar com o racismo estrutural. E como podemos afirmar que ele perdeu a razão?
Há pessoas que são combustível para o conflito, e outras, servem como exemplo pela presença, resignação, mas, acima de tudo, evitando o caos coletivo. Louis Armstrong era um desses caras, e quando toca "What a wonderful world", eu não aguentei, as lágrimas escorreram. Ouçam a música. Sinta a música. E você sentirá a alma desse grande artista.
