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Events on Thursday 28 June 1928 1
1928West End Blues -- the opening cadenza changes everythingArmstrong records 'West End Blues' on 28 June 1928 -- and opens it with an unaccompanied trumpet cadenza of such brilliance that it redefines what the instrument can do. The cadenza lasts twelve seconds. It has no precedent in jazz and establishes the principle that the jazz soloist can command an audience alone, without harmonic or rhythmic support, purely through melodic invention and rhythmic authority. Gunther Schuller calls it 'the first unmistakable masterpiece in jazz.' Every subsequent jazz trumpet player -- Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown -- plays in Armstrong's shadow.