Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

by Thomas Brothers

  Death notice for May Ann (Courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum)

  But the show must go on. In July he scored another triumph when he took his orchestra for a two-week engagement into the Black Hawk Grill in downtown Chicago, an establishment for whites inside the Loop. The initial offer paid for only six musicians, but Armstrong insisted that all twelve members of his orchestra be hired or no deal.

  In the summer of 1927 Percy Venable returned to the Sunset, having left the previous March. Several rich descriptions of revues put together by Venable for the fall enhance our sense of what the entertainment was like. The September show was called Sunset Affairs. Cab Calloway had moved into the emcee position and was singing solos with chorus backing. Gorgeous gowns were supplied by Juliette Costumers. The opening number was based on the popular song Hallelujah (composed by Leo Robin and Vincent Youmans, 1927), performed by the trio Three Classy Misses, consisting of soubrette Eloise Bennett, pianist Irene Edie, and violinist Katherine Perry, who had become Earl Hines’s girlfriend. They were joined by the “boy Caruso,” Slick White; the “world’s greatest freak clarinetist,” Wilton Crawley; and blackface comedian and pantomimist Jimmy Ferguson. Blanche Calloway, with “personality a plenty,” sang I Need Lovin’ (Henry Creamer and Jimmy Johnson, 1926).

  The finale earned high praise. “Some weeks ago, a musical critic stated that Louis Armstrong’s Sunset Stompers could not play classics,” explained a reviewer, “but now this statement can be refuted.” The orchestra did well with Poet and Peasant and A Hunt in a Black Forest by George Voelker Jr., for which Venable choreographed challenging steps for the eight chorines, followed by the principals. The reviewer admired how “the two numbers are used in their straight composition forms, and the dance steps have been arranged to fit the variated tempo… . The principals are appreciated in their diversified presentations, but without the chorines and Louis Armstrong’s orchestra, they would be blanks.” Armstrong was still singing and playing Heebie Jeebies and Big Butter and Egg Man. He also contributed a version of Underneath the Moon (Vincent Plunkett and Jeff Branen, 1920), which, according to the Courier, was “a scream.”

  In late August Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra came to town for a six-week gig at the Congress Hotel. Peyton devoted several columns to the significance of a race orchestra cracking this “aristocratic hotel,” commenting only indirectly on the sadness of African Americans not being able to enter the venue: “I only hope that opportunity will allow one night for our group in Chicago to hear this wonderful orchestra before they leave,” he wrote. His wish came true and a concert was given on September 17 at the Coliseum, complete with a “battle” between Henderson and Armstrong’s Sunset Stompers. Tommy Ladnier—“a good blues man, good shout man, but he didn’t have no range,” according to Armstrong—from New Orleans was now Henderson’s featured hot trumpet soloist. An unmarked clipping quipped that Armstrong and Jimmy Harris, trombonist for Henderson, were seen “stopping the milkman, then drinking milk and eating doughnuts while sitting on Louis’s front steps” one morning. Armstrong hosted a party for the Henderson men and their “choice chicks” at his house, and 30 years later he still remembered how someone walked off with his personal copy of the OKeh Chicago Breakdown.

  In September Armstrong doubled up again with a theater job, now at the newly built Metropolitan Theater at 4644 South Parkway, directly across the street from the Savoy Ballroom, under construction and scheduled to open in late November. The Metropolitan was in vigorous competition with the Vendome and doing very well. Clarence Jones’s Orchestra took over the pit band in mid-September. Jones had a reputation as a fine pianist who was often heard on radio broadcasts, and his eleven-member group now placed him in the lead of theater orchestras. The Vendome was in rapid decline; by the following April, Peyton would lament the new low of four musicians in the orchestra.

  Even though Armstrong was now a star musician, receiving more attention than ever, he still performed comedy. He described a skit he did at the Metropolitan during intermission with Zutty Singleton, an old friend from New Orleans who was now playing drums with Jones. Singleton dressed up as “one of those real loud and rough gals,” in a short skirt with a pillow tied to his back, while Armstrong wore rags with his hat askew. Armstrong started the act singing I Ain’t Goin’ to Play No Second Fiddle from the stage, while Singleton, as his gal, walked down the center aisle, loudly interrupting the song and eliciting tremendous laughter from the audience.

  The band performed its nightly feature from the stage. The lights went out and an image was flashed on the lowered screen, introducing the band director and conductor. For their Metropolitan debut conductor Jimmy Bell announced a new number called Butterfly Fantasy that Jones had arranged, a medley of tunes based on the popular song Just Like a Butterfly That’s Caught in the Rain (Harry MacGregor Woods and Mort Dixon, 1927). The medley began with a theme from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and then flowed into a violin solo followed by a trombone solo; the trombonist then put his instrument down and sang Just Like a Butterfly with his lyric tenor voice. Then Armstrong stood up and was applauded wildly before he even played a note. “Well now comes the big punch,” wrote Peyton. “Louis Armstrong delivered the knockout wallop with that famous jazz version of his on the butterfly song. After this rendition the applause was deafening for at least 5 minutes.” Flowers were strewn over the musicians. The band’s hot specialty was an arrangement of The Joker, featuring Jones; as an encore the band repeated the tune, now adding Armstrong and “one of his freakish, high register breaks that brought the patrons to a howl.” The key to this unit’s winning combination, explained another reviewer, was the “nice, sweet arranging and playing of Clarence Jones, the ‘freak’ cornet playing of Louis Armstrong, and the ‘Paul Ash’ directing of Jimmy Bell.”

  In early November, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra arrived for a gig at the Chicago Theater, downtown in the Loop. Armstrong finished up late after the Sunset and then stayed up in order to see the morning show on Whiteman’s first day. He enjoyed the performance of From Monday On and purchased the recording by Paul Whiteman and the Rhythm Boys. The program highlight at the Chicago Theater was Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, with gun blasts, church bells, and sirens. This was the first time he heard Bix Beiderbecke playing in a large group, and he was impressed by how Beiderbecke’s cornet projected through the noisy spectacle. “You take a man with a pure tone like Bix’s and no matter how loud the other fellows may be blowing, that pure cornet or trumpet tone will cut through it all,” he explained. He went backstage afterwards to greet Beiderbecke and a few of the other musicians, whom he knew from the Sunset Café.

  Beiderbecke stopped by the Sunset every chance he had. Most jobs in the Loop and on the North Side usually finished at 1:00 a.m. or so, after which Beiderbecke and his colleagues headed for the South Side, took a seat, sat in with the band, and hung around after closing. “Bix used to start his journey to the end of the night after the places closed and he’d latch on to anybody who felt they could keep up with him—the brothers Dorsey, Ben Pollack, Joe Sullivan,” remembered Hoagy Carmichael, who also said that Armstrong was Beiderbecke’s idol. Several participants described late-night jam sessions after the doors were locked. Oliver might stop by and teasingly put a handkerchief over the valves of his cornet, disguising his fingering. “We sat around waiting to see if these guys were actually going to come up with something new or different,” admitted Hines candidly. Armstrong, whose position could not have been more secure, was relaxed and jovial: “Bring in that load of coal,” he used to say to drummer George Wettling when he saw him. Wingy Manone remembered how the “best jamming was on the blues.”

  In jazz histories, Beiderbecke and Armstrong are sometimes presented as a pair of binary opposites, each defining what the other wasn’t. That representation is ultimately based on race, but the language used sometimes moves around a contrast between introvert and extrovert, even drifting close to a feminine-masculine polarity.74 Bei
derbecke doesn’t play as high as Armstrong or as loudly, and he plays with less vibrato and smoother articulation. His melodic activity is not as dense or rhythmically vigorous. The atmosphere is reserved, laid back, lyrical, cool, by comparison.

  But it is clear that Beiderbecke had absorbed some important lessons from the New Orleanians. References to Armstrong’s style include occasional blue notes, upward rips, and eccentric patterning through irregularly placed accents. Especially important was the correlated chorus, though Beiderbecke had an independent sense of strong melodic design. “His intervals were so orderly, so indescribably right, like a line of poetry,” said Max Kaminsky, but he could have easily been talking about Armstrong. His solo on Singin’ the Blues, recorded in February 1927 with Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra, is one of his best known. There is something historically poetic about the recording of it midway between Armstrong’s Big Butter and Egg Man, from the fall of 1926, and Potato Head Blues in the spring of 1927. The three creations, very different from each other in mood and design, stand as distinguished examples of what jazz solos could be at this time.

  Beiderbecke owed something to Armstrong, but he also found his own way to become one of the great solo stylists. At the Sunset jam sessions he liked to play piano, too, and on one occasion he demonstrated on solo piano a new composition, In a Mist. He enjoyed classical music, especially the suave and harmonically sophisticated French impressionists. The extended harmonic palette of these composers had already been making its way into various types of American music; it found a direct path of entry into the Sunset Café through Beiderbecke. Mezzrow remembered him going on and on about classical music, “needling these kids with his skull busting classical jive.” Beiderbecke became one of the truly tragic figures in jazz history. Severe alcoholism and shadowy sexual deviance, including pederasty and masochism, indicate a deeply troubled mind that he tried to deal with through alcohol and an overwhelming dedication to music. He died at age twenty-eight, in 1931.

  In September 1927 and again in December, the Hot Five gathered for five separate recording sessions. The original five were now in place again, with the addition, in December, of guitarist Lonnie Johnson. The sessions generated nine different sides, three of which now stand among Armstrong’s most famous performances.

  From the September sessions came Put ’Em Down Blues, Ory’s Creole Trombone, and The Last Time. Ory’s Creole Trombone dated from the early days in New Orleans and features some splendid collective improvisation; the performance was almost certainly slapped together at the last minute. All of the September recordings—and, indeed, all of the December ones as well—conform to the repertorial policy that dominates the OKeh series: they were composed by local musicians who undoubtedly made a special deal with the company, signing away any claim to royalties.75 Only one trumpet solo from September, from Put ’Em Down Blues, sounds to me like it could have been a special chorus, worked out for the Sunset and played many times, though The Last Time could easily have been a vocal feature for Armstrong at the cabaret.

  The treasures came in December. Armstrong’s playing on Struttin’ with Some Barbecue is so superb—and so obviously planned, with density and variety, bluesyness and showiness—that we must assume it was regularly featured at the Sunset in the fall of 1927.76 Hotter Than That was probably generated for the studio, but the magical synergy of Armstrong and Lonnie Johnson made the performance very special. Savoy Blues was composed by Ory, who had a job at the Savoy Ballroom, two days before the recording session on December 13. Ory’s piece inspired one of Armstrong’s most delicate and poignant blues solos.

  Cornet Chop Suey, Potato Head Blues, Struttin’ with Some Barbecue—there was no shortage of food titles in the Hot Five series, as if Armstrong was rejoicing in a lifestyle where he no longer had to worry about where his next hot meal was going to come from. The title Struttin’ with Some Barbecue is rich in implications. There are a number of stories about him and his friends going out for barbecue; Big Fat Mammy from Alabamy was the name of one of their favorite places. Like Gut Bucket Blues, the title of this tune invokes an iconic dish from the plantation South, but “barbecue” was also slang for a woman. That usage was certainly in play here, since advertisements for the recording provocatively depict a black chef holding a knife in one hand and placing the other hand around the waist of a white woman, the two of them obviously enjoying the “juicy bit of fox trot HEAT!” provided by the recording. The word “struttin’” should not be overlooked, either. Cakewalk specialists were said to strut, and musicians spoke of “struttin’ time” to indicate a tempo and/or rhythmic figure, as referenced in a number of other titles (for example, Bogalousa Strut, recorded by Sam Morgan’s Jazz Band in October 1927). “Barbecue” and “struttin’” are thus in-group references to be picked up by southern blacks and their friends and relatives who had moved north.

  Armstrong’s brilliance shines in a well-coordinated performance that carries some hints of a preexisting arrangement, suggesting usage at the Sunset Cafe. To be sure, his trumpet carries all of these performances, but that is especially true here. The stunning stop-time solo is flawlessly executed and full of little eccentric conversations and correlated phrases that dart in and out of synchrony with the ground, while bluesy gestures come and go in a continuous sweep of melody. The climactic passage (around CD 2:02) shows off dexterity exercises he had learned at Kimball Hall and practiced with his wife. Bud Freeman held up this performance as an example of the “beautiful, graceful, powerful line” that set Armstrong apart.77 The last chorus, with vigorous collective improvisation, is one of the true joys in music. Armstrong rises through the texture and then sails high above, slightly out of phase as if floating, effortlessly and confidently, like some kind of god sitting on top of a cloud.

  Guitarist Lonnie Johnson was added to the regular group for December 10 and 13. If frequency of recordings and intensity of advertising are reliable indicators, Johnson, singing blues and accompanying himself on guitar, was an even bigger hit for OKeh than Armstrong. In the 1910s, Johnson made a living playing on the streets of New Orleans. He turned into a flashy guitarist; “Lonnie was the only guy we had around New Orleans who could play jazz guitar,” said Pops Foster. His presence accounts for some lovely moments in I’m Not Rough, Hotter Than That, and Savoy Blues.

  Armstrong said that it was OKeh’s idea to add Johnson to the Hot Five mix. On Johnson’s first day in the studio, the Hot Five greeted him with the familiar I’m Not Rough, another tune from the old days in New Orleans with lots of ensemble work. Johnson’s impromptu collaboration was facilitated by the new electronic technology that OKeh had been using for the group since May: the microphone carried his dancing and bluesy single-string lines through the thick texture.

  Armstrong immediately asked Ory to compose a piece for this group, and Ory responded with Savoy Blues, which the band recorded three days later. Armstrong said that he himself composed Hotter Than That (phonograph discs credit his wife). My guess is that this also took place during those interim days. Or perhaps he took a piece that was already made and thought about how to arrange it to feature Johnson. Hotter Than That was also grounded in New Orleans practice, since it was based on the harmonies of the widely known Tiger Rag.

  In recent decades Hotter Than That has become one of the best-known recordings of the Hot Five series. One reason for that is the overflowing abundance of African-American vernacular practices. It is as if the New Orleanians decided to turn the piece into a vehicle for their hometown bag of heartfelt musical tricks—a stunning passage of polymetric tension, rigorous commitment to the fixed and variable model, microphone-aided scat, vehement attack, vocal inflections on the guitar, plaintive dialogue, timbral diversity, and, of course, the Crescent City specialty, collective improvisation. At the climactic center (CD 1:55) stands an out-of-tempo exchange between Armstrong and Johnson. The lengthy polymetric passage (CD 1:40) is shocking, with Johnson running his obbligato through the entire stretch of Armstro
ng’s scat solo. Armstrong stunningly concludes the piece with a rocketing liftoff (CD 2:35), his trumpet rising magically out of a mushy trombone solo. In the final chorus he sits on top of the texture like a king on his throne, ripping off a dozen high C’s.

  Hotter Than That is justly famous today, but it was the flip side, Savoy Blues, that became the hit of these sessions after its release in late February 1928. In April, when Armstrong began working at the Savoy Ballroom, the piece became a featured number for him, often talked about in the press. The melody that Ory wrote for the first strain is in a style the New Orleanians sometimes described as “rinky dink,” with a seesaw feeling intensified by the accompaniment. Usually, when I listen to the Hot Fives I am not bothered by the accompaniment, which is discreet enough to let Armstrong’s splendor shine through. But on this recording I find myself imagining what the performance could have been without the oompah rhythms; there is also a problem of balance, with the guitar louder than Armstrong. The intrusive accompaniment makes clear the importance of the flat 4/4 that is more typical in the Hot Fives: the oompah fights with Armstrong’s eccentric and unpredictable phrasing, rather than laying down a neutral platform for him to interact with freely.

  The solo is lovely, nonetheless, softer and more delicate than most of his trumpet solos, and many listeners have heard great poignancy in it. The filigree is very traditional in some ways, with descending lines following the sawtooth archetype. Armstrong’s solo dances gracefully through a mix of pastel added tones (sixths, sevenths, ninths), harmonic anticipations, and the ubiquitous one chord, all of it detaching the line from the fixed foundation. The rhythmic fluency of the line alternately presses forward and hesitates in subtly shifting patterns.