Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

by Thomas Brothers

  In New York City Armstrong had been finding ways to bring rhythmic complexity into his solos. He refined his approach with greater clarity in Muskrat Ramble and Oriental Strut. By the fall of 1926 the idea of composing melodies by ear and keeping them in his head, rather than thinking about what he could wrestle into notation, must have seemed like the obvious way to go. Besides, the copyright project wasn’t going anywhere. It must have been clear by now that he was not going to publish the next St. Louis Blues or Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Meanwhile, Venable was giving him a bigger spotlight. Armstrong did not stop writing tunes for copyright, but from now that would no longer be his creative priority. His special choruses could not harvest the rewards of a notated tune that hit the jackpot, but between the Sunset, the Vendome, and the Hot Five series he was being rewarded handsomely enough.

  The chiseled perfection of Big Butter and Egg Man came from working on it night after night, like a sculptor fussing over a chunk of marble. Armstrong changed the history of jazz solos by composing rather than improvising. He knew the difference, and so did his New Orleanian colleagues, who relentlessly heaped scorn on bebop improvisation in the 1940s, calling it Chinese music, playing routines, music that musicians play for themselves and not for the public, modern slop, catcalls, and a gang of hogs crying for corn. The idea of putting a jam session before the public was simply incomprehensible to them.

  As for the relationship of Armstrong’s breakthrough solo to Brown and McGraw’s dance steps, I find it difficult to imagine him learning much about rhythm from anyone in 1926. The lack of documented detail makes it hard to say anything with certainty, but dance rhythms seem to have been simpler than the rhythms of this solo. Earl Hines described the relationship as one of Armstrong adding a melody to the dancers’ simple riffs, and Cheatham said plainly that “their act was nothing without a trumpet.” His famous solo probably had little to do with the music he played for their dance: these were independent creations, made for different purposes, performed at different times and with different results. Nevertheless, the idea that he was inspired by and in competition with dancers brings us closer to the internal dynamics of the cabarets. Given the integration of body movement with music in the African-American vernacular, it is not surprising to see parallels at the highest professional levels, with Armstrong and the Brown and McGraw duo both experimenting with density, variety, and rhythmically vigorous activity at the Sunset Café. It is easy to believe that if dancers were going to dazzle the audience with eccentric figures, one after the other, he was prepared to do them one better.

  What about the first phrase of Armstrong’s solo, which reminded Schuller of Mozart and Schubert? Critic André Hodeir found it “impossible to imagine anything more sober and balanced.” The phrase is beautifully conceived, but instead of relating it to standards outside the tradition, I find it more revealing to locate it in the stream of melodic exploration Armstrong had been pursuing during the previous two years. This phrase is actually a paraphrase of Venable’s melody, which we can identify from Mae Alix’s vocal rendition in the opening chorus, as shown in Example 6.1.

  From Venable’s tune Armstrong extracts a single pitch, which he places at the top of three upwards arpeggiations of the “one” chord (or something close to that; there are subtle and important adjustments). In Chapter 4 we noted his experiments with this kind of radical reduction, a technique Bessie Smith often used, for example, in St. Louis Blues. Oliver’s Dipper Mouth Blues solo is not a paraphrase, but it is close to this phrase from Big Butter in its simplicity and use of repetition. The benefit Smith and Oliver get from this kind of simplification is this: it is a way to shift emphasis away from melodic contour and toward the nuances of blues phrasing. Armstrong uses melodic reduction for a different purpose.

  Example 6.1 Big Butter and Egg Man (After Anderson 2007, 122)

  Example 6.2 Chimes Blues (After Anderson 2007, 184)

  The most telling comparison of the first phrase of Big Butter may be with the first phrase of his solo for Chimes Blues (Example 6.2).

  The phrases are of different lengths, but the similarities are striking.65 In each case Armstrong finds a way to hold a little melodic idea—let’s call it a riff—steady through three chord changes, with only slight alterations. The riffs are based on chordal arpeggiations. He is thinking carefully about the chords, yet he is not obsessed with harmonic accuracy: continuity of the riff through the chord changes is more important to him than complete harmonic precision. In each solo, a contrasting idea follows the triple statements.

  The conceptions are similar, yet Chimes Blues has never inspired comparisons with Mozart and Schubert. Why is the first phrase of Big Butter and Egg Man so superior? The answer leads us directly into the heart of Armstrong’s mature style.

  First, notice the subtle changes in rhythm that mark the three statements of the riff in Big Butter and Egg Man. Pushes and pulls against the regular pulse keep the line from settling into synchrony with the fixed foundation. Armstrong has things both ways: it is easy to hear the repetition and easy to hear the variety. This had not been part of his thinking in the spring of 1923, but by the fall of 1926 variety had become central to his concept of a solo. The principle conditions the entire chorus for Big Butter and Egg Man.

  Second, consider Armstrong’s deepening interest in musical logic. Thanks to the triple repetition of the rising riff in Big Butter and Egg Man, the arrival of the high F in measure 6 sounds like a completion of the upward trajectory; the arrival is then answered by a balancing descent. The high F is the main pitch of the piece, making it stronger still, and it initiates yet another (now descending) arpeggiation of the main chord of the piece. The “one” chord is the basis for the entire phrase. This is strong musical logic indeed—strong to the point of being overdone. A phrase like this could easily flop into banality.

  What saves it is the fact that the high-note climax and the subsequent arpeggiation come too early. Doubly early, in fact. The chordal accompaniment—that is, the “fixed” level of harmonic rhythm in regular groupings of four beats, eight beats, and eight-measure phrases—arrives in predictable, periodic fashion on the F chord at measure 7. But the solo arrives on this chord a measure ahead of time, creating a harmonic clash against the foundation. The other thing that makes the high note feel like it has come too early is that each of the triple riffs begin on beat three, creating a pattern that is broken by the sudden leap to high F on the second half of beat one. Now we can understand the utility of his overdone musical logic: it draws attention to the out-of-phase early arrival and helps justify the radical clash of harmonies. Harmony, melodic design, and rhythm work together toward the same end.

  Armstrong used harmony in the same anticipatory way in Mandy (December 1924) and Muskrat Ramble (February 1926); now he strengthens the conception with melodic design that governs the entire phrase. Harmonic dislocations like this account for some of the most distinguishing features of jazz. During the 1930s the practice got extended through substitute chords, and in bebop it was intensified further still. These harmonic dislocations rest on the fixed and variable model. They simultaneously provide a connection to the ground harmony while also stretching that connection, pulling the variable line away from its foundation without severing the tie. It is the same process that happens all the time on a purely rhythmic level.

  The third detail that contributes to the success of the first phrase of Big Butter and Egg Man is the use of two intervals, specifically the ninth and sixth. Paraphrasing Venable’s melody, Armstrong discovers the pitch A, which Venable treated (in measures 3–5) as a nonchordal tone that must resolve. Armstrong’s solo features the A without the resolution: in measure 3 the pitch hovers on top of a G7 chord, forming an unstable ninth above the root of the chord, and in measure 5 it’s on top of a C7 chord, forming the sixth. He is drawn to ninths and sixths because they occupy an uncertain middle ground that is neither fully consonant nor fully dissonant. Seizing this in-between status, he finds
a way to extend the fixed and variable model. The sixth and the ninth float above the foundational harmony, detached from it but not fully severed, adding richness to the phrase. His clever strategy integrates melodic design, rhythm, and harmony, all working toward the same effect—the effect of the fixed and variable model.66

  The phrase succeeds on three levels that were most important to his evolving conception of style in the fall of 1926: it is memorable; it highlights variety; and it offers a fresh, compelling version of the fixed and variable model. With Schubert and Mozart he shares the first concern; the second was a staple of cabaret culture; the third was part of the vernacular splendor he had been immersed in since childhood. The coordination of all three put him in a class by himself. Armstrong could only have developed this stylistic model by ear. Chimes Blues was compatible with notatable visions of the melodic lead, but no one would have given the slightest thought to notating this solo. His admirers understood that they were witness to an ear-playing virtuoso who was taking the African-American musical vernacular to a completely new place.

  Potato Head Blues and Stop Time: “Strictly Negro”

  While Armstrong may have benefited from competition with dancers at the Sunset, an even greater spur came from his former mentor, who was working across the street. In most narratives of Armstrong’s life Oliver tends to drop out after 1924, but that is a mistake. From March 1926 through March 1927, Oliver was producing thriving and vigorous jazz, even while he struggled with serious gum problems that limited his performance. Oliver’s achievement during these 12 months undoubtedly stimulated this wonderfully productive period of Armstrong’s career.

  The Plantation Café staged elaborate revues, just as the Sunset did. Yet there are signs that the Plantation may have conceded a sliver of superiority in this area to its neighbor. Dickerson’s orchestra had 12 musicians, Joe Oliver’s Dixieland Syncopators only 10. At the Sunset Venable was a well-publicized force running revues, but there is less information about those at the Plantation, where Paul Barbarin played for the dance segments of the evening only, with a different drummer brought in for the revue; Oliver apparently did the same thing.

  The Plantation’s emphasis on the dance segments may have been part of a strategy to craft an image on the far edge of the uncivilized wing of the spectrum of African-American entertainment. “People preferred dancing to seeing shows,” remembered trumpeter Bob Shoffner, and Oliver’s hard-driving cornet was the key. Oliver’s band used written music for the revues, but head arrangements and collective improvisation for the social dancing. “Dixieland is a style of music that makes people happy and want to dance,” said Shoffner, explaining the choice of styles. The throbbing primitive heat at the Plantation—“loud, wailing and pulsating,” as Variety described it—was a draw: “Whites from everywhere crowd this place to hear Joe do his stuff, as only he can do,” wrote Peyton in October 1926.

  During social dancing Oliver could keep a single number going 30 or 40 minutes, opening up a leisurely stretch of improvisatory creativity. Shoffner said that expansions like this helped him and the other band members generate musical ideas that were later turned into compositions. Armstrong and many other musicians admired Oliver’s ability to invent, which was steadily documented through a series of recording sessions: two numbers in March 1926, two in April, three in May, three in July, and four in September; another five came in April 1927, before he quit Chicago for New York City. This run included Snag It and Doctor Jazz, two of his best-known pieces.

  The two cabarets were so close to one another, and the two New Orleanian principals had each internalized the tradition of cutting contests so deeply, that it would have been impossible to avoid direct competition. The musicians regularly walked across the street to visit each other’s bandstands. Oliver popped in one night and dashed off a phrase from Snag It; as he turned around and headed for the door, he called out over his shoulder, daring the Sunset trumpeters to try and play it. “I can play it alright, but I run out of gas,” Armstrong confessed to Natty Dominique. We know that Oliver and Armstrong both featured slow drags in the dance segments, which gave them a chance to demonstrate their skill with slow blues. Armstrong performed Jelly Roll Morton’s Wild Man Blues (recorded with Johnny Dodd’s Black Bottom Stompers in April 1927 and then, at a slower tempo, with the Hot Seven in May) at the Sunset in this way. He played it so slowly that Earl Hines made a show of going out to the kitchen to eat a steak, returning before the solo was finished.

  Louis Armstrong’s Sunset Stompers (University of Chicago)

  Wild Man Blues is something of a throwback with its many breaks, recalling the good old days with the Oliver band. Armstrong devours the breaks with so much enthusiasm that it is easy to imagine him hurling them across 35th Street as answers to Oliver’s challenge. The performance may also be taken as a measure of how far Armstrong had come with his melodic experiments. In Chapter 4 we noticed him adding breaklike material to his solos, mixed with simpler embellishments and straight presentations of a tune. Wild Man Blues is marked by an effortless flow between melody, embellishment, fillins, and breaks.

  The solo also documents a breathtaking breakthrough. There is a sense of drama here that, if not unprecedented, is very fresh. Perhaps the slower tempo for the Hot Seven recording (relative to the Dodds ensemble’s tempo a month before) inspired him, or perhaps he had simply grown more relaxed with the tune. His emotional intensity is right in step with New Orleans tradition, and the principle of variety is also evident. But what is new is how those two values put together lead him to a loud and sudden, vibrato-filled and stretched-out high note around two-thirds of the way into his chorus (CD 1:13). After this anything can happen. The usual variety in filigree, blue-note figurations, pace, and range unfolds in a more highly charged atmosphere. This is not the drama of opera, certainly, and it is only partly related to the “colored folks’ opera” of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. It is really a matter of Armstrong’s own sense of drama as it is now emerging from well-developed principles of how to construct a solo, which in this case stretches out for two minutes.

  An even more magnificent outpouring, apparently, was crafted to go along with Noel Coward’s Poor Little Rich Girl, which became a feature for Armstrong during the dance sets. He never recorded the piece, no doubt because of OKeh’s policy of avoiding royalty payments whenever possible and selecting repertory accordingly. But we know that it was one of his outstanding numbers. Several reports describe him extending his solo for 20 or 25 choruses. The band supplied minor theatrics by walking off the stand, leaving him in the spotlight for his choruses and returning as his solo swelled to an exciting climax.“I have never heard anything like it,” insisted Bud Freeman. Venable worked the tune into a revue and used it as the basis for the fat-thin-fat-thin Charleston routine. Cross-fertilization between dance set and revue must have been much more common than we know.

  A hapless Johnny Dunn, whom Perry Bradford identified as “the first hot cornet man in the recording field,” naïvely wandered into this glorious atmosphere one evening. Four years older than Armstrong, Dunn, from Memphis, had established a solid career with W. C. Handy and Mamie Smith before forming his own band. Known for double-time effects and wah-wah, the well-dressed Dunn had a huge and commanding presence; he liked to flash around large wads of bills. One night he entered the Sunset with his entourage and demanded that Armstrong yield his horn. In one version of the story, Dunn stumbled embarrassingly while trying to negotiate an unfamiliar key. In another, the two of them took turns dueling with set solos, Armstrong dishing out Poor Little Rich Girl. “Every time he played a new one [chorus],” said Hines, “he just kept going higher and higher.” Dunn slithered away in shame.

  If Armstrong was focused on keeping up with Oliver during 1926, by early 1927 he seems to have arrived at a place where he could relax. By this time it seems that Oliver’s lip was rapidly declining. A cryptic report in the Light and Heebie Jeebies implies serious dissatisfaction with Oliver’s pl
aying.67 On tour that spring and eventually in New York City, it was clear to his musicians that he was crippled by the gum disease known as pyorrhea. Armstrong’s comment that he started to “take Joe Oliver’s crowds away” may refer to the first months of 1927. He gently asked Oliver if there was anything he could do for him. The Sunset erected a billboard describing Armstrong as the “World’s Greatest Trumpet Player,” which must have embarrassed him, at least slightly. In April the Plantation burned to the ground, and Oliver was in New York by May. He apparently tried to get Armstrong to come with him, but Armstrong declined, citing the lack of a firm job offer.

  His growing success must have made the idea of leaving seem ridiculous. “Luis [sic] Armstrong and his hot Recording Rhythmasters are keeping patrons on their toes [at the Sunset],” wrote the Light on January 8, 1927. This notice is the earliest documentation of him taking over the Sunset band, which would be known more commonly as “Louis Armstrong’s Sunset Stompers.” Dickerson was fired sometime between October 1926 and January 1927. He was a good musician, though crippled by stage fright and a problem with alcohol. He was resilient enough to quickly organize another band, which he called Carroll Dickerson’s Syncopators. He got the idea of hiring out Warwick Hall every Sunday afternoon and charging admission for dances. The arrangement must have been profitable since it continued for many months; it established a precedent that Armstrong himself would follow a year later.

  Also in January the Sunset came up with a promotion night, handing out a free recording of Big Butter and Egg Man from the West to all ladies. Bill Bojangles Robinson stopped by and heard Armstrong perform Heebie Jeebies, which inspired him to incorporate the piece into his own act. Armstrong recognized that leading a band was not for him, and even though he was nominally the leader, Hines did the conducting and rehearsing and worked with Venable. “Earl Hines smiles continuously while directing,” reported a reviewer.68