Louis Armstrong and Transcendence

"At the heart of my confession, therefore, is the hunch that with beings such as Mozart we are forced to speculate about transcendence, and this makes us very uncomfortable," said Saul Bellow, quoted by The American Conservative's Scott Galupo, who then quotes Murray Horwitz as calling the opening of Louis Armstrong - West End Blues 1928 "maybe the most important 15 seconds in all of American music" — King Louis and All That Jazz.

Not mentioned is the jazzman's audience with Venerable Pope Pius XII, or more properly the pope's audience with the jazzman, as it was the pontiff, a fan as a boy, who requested the meeting.