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[Paradoxically]… the most persuasive witness to the lyrical distillation of Bix [Beiderbecke]’s broken life, Louis Armstrong, was a man whose life was never broken, even by the full force of America’s most tenacious social malignancy, white prejudice. If it is a political nightmare no longer, Armstrong’s shining trumpet certainly contributed to the wake-up call. But there is only so much art can do against injustice, and the blues, from which jazz took flight, were an embodiment of the sad truth that much beauty begins as a consolation for what can’t be mended.
— Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts.
