Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

by Thomas Brothers

  91Garvin Bushell (IJS 1977) commented on the power of radio. He turned down a job at the Cotton Club in Harlem, even though it paid $1,100 per week for the band. “We had no idea the potential of radio, we didn’t know about radio… . And had we known what radio could do we would have given them $1,100 a week instead of them giving us $1,100.”

  92Kenney 1993, 114. Charlie Carpenter (Dance 1977, 150) told a similar story about Hines: “I used to go places with Wallace Bishop, the drummer, where it was a borderline thing in a white restaurant. Sometimes, when we had sat down, we’d see Earl Hines looking through the window… . He explained how he felt about that kind of situation to me one time, and I give him credit: ‘You went to Hyde Park High School, son. You went with all those white kids… . You were the star of the football team, and for two or three years there wasn’t another Negro on it. You just got used to white people, ’cause you were always around ’em.”

  93Brothers 2006, 211. Earl Hines had a similar attitude. He was asked (COHP 1971) how he felt about white musicians “taking so much of your stuff, picking up a lot of your musical techniques, your ideas.” His answer: “Oh we didn’t pay any attention to that. No no, the idea is this, that you just keep on creating ideas of your own to play and actually I didn’t know anybody was playing what I was playing until years later they began to tell me that. I never paid any attention to it because all I was doing was playing the way I felt, and on my recordings the same way, and I still do the same doggone thing… . I constantly play from the heart. I don’t try to imitate anybody.”

  94It is easy to overstate this kind of thing. Jeffrey Taylor (1993, 141) has observed how, in Armstrong’s two recorded performances of Weary Blues, one with Hines as pianist and the other with Lillian, Armstrong plays better on the one with Hardin, thus bringing into question the idea that “Hines’s presence on a date invariably caused Louis to ‘catch fire.’” This resonates with arguments made in the present study, that the quality of Armstrong’s playing was dependent on a number of factors, such as his familiarity with the tune and tempo. Nevertheless, as Taylor and many others have pointed out, the creative dialogue that is evident on performances like the celebrated Weatherbird is certainly a reflection of the synergy between two great musicians.

  95Facsimile in Chevan 1997, 486, and Gushee 1998. A new lead sheet was copied by Armstrong himself (facsimile in Chevan 1997, 487, and Taylor 1998, 23) and sent to Washington, D.C., in January 1929 as a follow-up to the December recording; the beginning of what Armstrong labels “4th Part” displays the same kinds of problems that he had in the rhythmic notation of Cornet Chop Suey five years earlier, as he took what may have been an improvised trombone break on the 1923 Oliver recording (Taylor 1998, n. 69) and incorporated it, with flawed rhythmic notation, into his lead sheet. A splendid transcription of the entire 1928 performance is given in Taylor 1993, 251. Taylor 1998 includes excellent analytical discussion of the performance; see the comments on pp. 30–32 for signs of lack of rehearsal.

  96Armstrong, Lillian HJA 1959. Two of the titles given to these tunes were nicknames for Armstrong, Papa Dip and Gate Mouth; see also the excellent article by Bruce Boyd Raeburn, Jr. (2004). “That’s not me, but I won’t do it again,” Armstrong quipped when confronted with the evidence of the recording (quoted in Raeburn 2004). Further on these sessions, see also Anderson 2007, 14. On a train much later, he hit Alpha and his fist “kept travelling through the double plate glass window. We knocked over the poker table and the chips went all over the floor… . It was a miracle. If God was ever with a person! I could have cut me right here [illustrating tendons]. There were other times when I’d have thrown her out of the hotel window if nobody had been around” (Armstrong WRC 1953).

  97Here is Armstrong’s commentary (Armstrong 1950, 24) on trombonist Charlie Green: “Long Green was all right but there was something in his playing—other than hitting those bell tones and he was strong and everything like that—but I always felt he didn’t think about the music; his mind didn’t function. All he was thinking about was: when is intermission so he can call home and see if his wife is still there.” Consider also this from Armstrong (1970): “Joe Garland … he disliked bad notes the same as me. Like I mean you can’t help it. I mean I ain’t perfect either. That’s why I hate ’em because I don’t hear myself with ’em. That’s why I try to make all my records with good notes at least and that’s the way they all came out. I wouldn’t let it pass. ‘Oh that’s all right let it go.’ Bullshit! It had to be ok by me as long as the notes were right, whatever I attempted to do, high or low. Not thinking years and years from now when people simmer down with them ears to really listen and you can see, like a whole lot of musicians, the big names that recorded twenty years ago—goddamn!! … of course at that time they were putting their heart in it, and that’s the way they feel … but you hear that shit twenty years later and my God, how did it pass the bar?”

  98Don Redman in Williams 1962, 99; Singleton IJS 1975. The Savoy disappears from the Light around May 1928; they obviously cut back on advertising, which meant that the weekly column dedicated to the hall was also eliminated. The reason for the cutback may have been the swarming crowds that Armstrong brought in, which would be ironic since his success apparently cut off a good source for us about what he was doing. By July 7 he was leading his own band at the Savoy, playing in alternation with a band led by Dickerson (Defender, July 7, 1928, p. 6). But by September he appears to have folded back into Dickerson’s band (Defender, Sept. 22, 1928, p. 6).

  99On the copyright and the published arrangement, see Chevan 1997, 206, 233, 420, and 497. The situation implies that Armstrong was again leading one of the bands at the Savoy, and that he asked Redman to visit and make the arrangements for his band. This suggests that all of the arrangements recorded on Dec. 5 and 12 were made by Redman and destined for the Savoy; they were probably still very new to the musicians. I have not been able to see a copy of the published arrangement, but from their recording made in February 1929, it sounds like Earl Hines and His Orchestra are playing a literal statement of Armstrong’s solo, while Armstrong’s December version is somewhat embellished. Armstrong’s solo is transcribed by Schuller (1968, 128). Beau Koo Jack did not get recorded often, but apparently it did circulate; see Bernhardt 1986, 66.

  100Jeff Taylor (1993, 133) observes the similarities of Armstrong’s tune to The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else, by Isham Jones and Gus Kahn (1923).

  101Feather 1970, 35; Armstrong 1950a, 26. Armstrong also said (Herndon 1964, 72) that the Dickerson band, at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago, imitated Lombardo’s phrasing. But he immediately qualified that by adding that the Dickerson band “meantime … played THE HOTTEST MUSIC THIS SIDE OF HELL” (emphasis in original).

  102Armstrong’s appearance at the Regal is dated in the Chicago Tribune April 29, 1929, p. 28; April 30, 1929, p. 36; and May 2, 1929, p. 34; there is also an undated clipping in Scrapbook 83, LAHM. Another undated clipping from Scrapbook 83 mentions that he was there for a week, that he was featured on stage with Peyton’s Regal Symphonists, that Bob “Uke” Williams was the emcee (Williams began in early February), that the “king of jazz started to sing his favorite, I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, in his own characteristic style, and the last chorus he burnt ‘hot’ with his penetrating cornet tones,” that “after five healthy encores, [he] left the stage wringing wet and triumphantly retaining his crown as the king of jazz,” and that he was going to Cincinnati for a one-night engagement on Tuesday, followed by a trip to New York to record. A notice in the Defender on May 25, 1929, places him in Cincinnati on May 7. Yet the reference to a trip to New York to record could be to the March 5 sessions, which would place this Regal appearance in late February. Information about the showdown with Reeves comes from Barker (1986, 129), citing an unnamed “witness,” and is not dated, though the years 1928 and 1930 are both mentioned near this discussion; hence, it is my suggestion that the showdown with Reeves happened at this time. One contr
adiction between the two accounts is that Barker has Armstrong winning the contest not with I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, but with Chinatown. On the Reeves-Armstrong rivalry, see also Harker 2011, chap. 6.

  103Schuller (1989, 161) transcribes without comment the solo from an alternate take that was not released until much later. The version released as OKeh 8669 and 41204 is the one that came out immediately, and my assumption is that it includes the trumpet solo that Armstrong played in Chicago. Schuller notes that “there are better solos” than the second take that he transcribes, and the primary take proves his point; the primary solo is transcribed in Ecklund 1995, 40. Charlie Holmes (Holmes IJS) remembered that it took an entire day to record I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, which was unusual. “Everything had to be perfect for him, according to the technicians,” remembered Holmes, another indication of how OKeh was raising the stakes with Armstrong.

  104An intriguing remark from bandleader Sig Meyer suggests that an African-American tenor named Leon Diggs may have provided one precedent for Armstrong. Meyer said (Meyer CJA 1971) that Diggs “was the first to mix jazz singing with ballade singing.”

  105The phrase “legitimate musician” remains part of jazz vocabulary today. Early uses may be seen in Peyton’s columns for the Defender, for example, Aug. 10, 1929, p. 7. On Great Day, see also Magee 2005, 121.

  106As Gene Matthews, writer for the Interstate Tattler, put it in one column (April 5, 1929, p. 11), “I finally got into Connie’s.” A publication called Nightlife from 1931 (Shaw 1931, 75) explained that the clientele at Connie’s was “wholly white.” Other clubs seem to have aimed for at least some integration, perhaps with an eye toward the frisson of interracial intimacy, as documented again in an Interstate Tattler (May 10, 1929, p. 11) column: “Club Harlem, as usual, was pretty well packed, and quite a few ofays in the crowd. Danced with an ofay girl once. Nice little dancer, only she seemed to be trying to dance like colored people and kept hopping around.” On segregation at Connie’s, see Magee 2005, 236; Scott IJS 1979; Erenberg 1981, 257. Blake (in Huggins 1995, 339) implies that Connie’s was integrated. Hughes (1986, 224) implies shifting policies, which may account for discrepancies.

  107Mezzrow 1946, 236. Garvin Bushell (1988, 55) said that “there was always a jungle number in the Negro shows … they’d always give the same reason to have some jungle music: tom-toms and hoochie-coochie.”

  108Woll 1989, 72. According to the Amsterdam News (June 26, 1929, p. 13): “The dramatic department of the Amsterdam News has been searching zealously for the usual two tickets usually sent by producers or press agents of these shows, but so far he has been unable to locate the magnetic little pasteboards that admit we of sundown hue along with the white boys from downtown.” William Hall in the Interstate Tattler (May 24, 1929, p. 9) discusses the reluctance of some established Broadway theaters to book colored acts because they tend to draw too many colored patrons, with some advice for the community to stay home: “we are doing the Colored performer an injustice when we crowd to a white theatre whenever a Colored performer appears… . Certainly, we want to do nothing to hinder their progress… . If our crowding white theatres hinders his progress, ‘Give him a break.’”

  109Armstrong made two recordings on July 22, 1929, that provide a direct sonic connection to the dancing in Hot Chocolates. Sweet Savannah Sue was a number that featured the Bon Bon Buddies in a soft shoe (Morgenstern 1978). In fact, the tempo here is identical to that of the Ellington band’s Black Beauty, as they accompany the celebrated “one man dance” in Dudley Murphy’s 1929 film Black and Tan; the film is one of the great treasures of 1920s jazz. The uptempo That Rhythm Man that Armstrong also recorded on July 22 was conceived for the first-act dance finale, “the best thriller I have found on Broadway … you are screaming, rocking and applauding like a savage,” as the Interstate Tattler (June 28, p. 9) put it. That Rhythm Man was one of the first chances Zutty Singleton had to show what he could do on a recording, there having been only a few brief moments to shine in the Chicago recordings where, even in electrical productions, he was often put on woodblocks (Heah Me Talkin’ to Ya?, for example) or otherwise reduced for reasons of balance. In That Rhythm Man Singleton drives the band, vigorously and creatively, with off-beat accents similar to those that still define New Orleans street drumming. That Rhythm Man is a reminder of how incompletely most recordings reflect what actually happened in live performance.

  110New York Times (June 21, 1929, p. 17): “One song, a synthetic but entirely pleasant jazz ballad called Ain’t Misbehavin’, stands out, and its rendition between the acts by an unnamed member of the orchestra was a high light of the premier.” Afro-American (June 29, 1929, p. 9): “Louis Armstrong does a specialty just before the opening of the second half.”

  111I imagine that the white Hudson Theater audience reacted similarly to Leon René’s Creole (I assume) mother when she first heard Armstrong sing scat. René told the story (Louisiana State Mint, vertical file Louis Armstrong) of Armstrong coming over to their house in Pasadena, in 1931, for dinner. Through the radio came a Guy Lombardo record. “Somewhere in the middle of the record Louie let out a burst of gravel tones ‘Bop-o-dap-Du—Boo-La-Ba-do-da’ that shook the room and stopped everything. My mother was so flabbergasted she just stood there with Louie’s second plate of gumbo in her hand. She had never heard a musical break like that before… . After dinner we all went into the parlor to smoke and relax on the old antique chairs and sofa my parents brought from New Orleans.”

  112Hints at the terms of this negotiation can be picked up here and there. The New York Times (June 21, 1929, p. 17): “it should be recorded that the newcomer [Hot Chocolates] has its moments of ingenuousness. But such moments are in the Broadway tradition rather than that of Harlem, and on the whole the diversion is an expert amalgam of naïve freedom and superficial skill.” According to Frank Taylor (1987, 51–52), Alberta Hunter “called Sissle a dicty because he had an air of superiority coupled with a ‘color complex.’ He considered her too dark to be in his show [Shuffle Along], she said.” Ethel Waters was likewise turned down for Shuffle Along because the casting director considered her “just a cheap honky tonk singer” (Taylor 1987, 52). See also Woll 1989, 109–13; Stearns and Stearns 1994, 146–48; Dixon 2003, 138.

  113Zora Neale Hurston (2006, 184): “I found the Negro, and always the blackest Negro, being made the butt of all jokes, particularly black women. They brought bad luck for a week if they came to your house of a Monday morning. They were evil. They slept with their fists balled up ready to fight and squabble even while they were asleep. They even had evil dreams. White, yellow and brown girls dreamed about roses and perfume and kisses. Black gals dreamed about guns, razors, ice-picks, hatchets and hot lye. I heard men swear they had seen women dreaming and knew these things to be true.” See also the obvious humor in the performance by Blanche Calloway—with fine trumpet playing of Reuben “River” Reeves—in the Vocalion recording by Reeves and His River Boys of (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue (advertised in the Defender, Oct. 26, 1929); also Hughes 1986, 234.

  114Singer 1992, 12. Razaf begins the verse with a minstrel reference to “old Ned”: “Cold empty bed Springs hard as lead Pains in my head / Feel like old Ned.” Stephen Foster’s 1848 song Uncle Ned was about a pathetic old man who became a stock figure in minstrel shows.

  115In 1928, the only other African-American musician OKeh experimented with similarly, as far as I can see, was Ellington. Four sides recorded by his orchestra were released on the popular series (Black and Tan Fantasy, What Can a Poor Fellow Do, Jubilee Stomp, and Take It Easy), while nine others were released on the race series. See Catalogue for OKeh Electrical Records 1929 (held by the New York Public Library, Performing Arts Division); Laird and Rust 2004. My estimations of release times for Armstrong are based on where the catalogue numbers fall in relation to established artists whose recordings were probably released quickly. For example, I infer that West End Blues was released in the popula
r series soon after it was recorded, while Skip the Gutter, recorded a day earlier, was assigned catalogue numbers that imply a release three months later; this is based on the proximity of their catalogue numbers to recordings by Bix Beiderbecke made on July 7 and Sept. 21, 1928.

  116Various writers have speculated about the causes that lay behind changes in the repertory Armstrong recorded. They have, for example, looked at the racial identity of the composers of the tunes and wondered if Armstrong perhaps (1) bought into a vision of black autonomy during the early and mid-1920s by recording, in the overwhelming majority of cases, tunes and songs written by black composers; and (2) whether he then sold out when he shifted, in the early 1930s, to songs composed by whites. The numerical weight of the transition is impressive, though it is likely that the choices had nothing to do with racial identity and everything to do with the economics of the recording industry. All recordings during this period, regardless of who was doing them or when they were done, demanded that the choice of tune be guided by two primary concerns: How much does it cost? and What advantages will it bring? All other concerns were secondary. In the end, race didn’t matter, and musical quality didn’t matter very much, either. OKeh wanted the tunes copyrighted “in house,” with no obligation to pay royalties to an outsider. If Armstrong didn’t compose the piece himself, there were plenty of friends around town who were asking to have their pieces recorded. Studio musicians like Richard M. Jones, who had an ongoing gig with OKeh, worked this angle heavily. It was easy for a Crescent City buddy like Paul Barbarin to convince Louis to record Come Back Sweet Papa, and it is certainly no coincidence that he recorded Fats Waller’s Alligator Crawl during Waller’s brief tenure at the Vendome Theater. These kinds of close connections account for most of the Hot Five and Hot Seven numbers. In all cases, we can assume, the deal was sealed with very good terms for the recording company on the matter of copyright. Race never entered anyone’s mind. The black orientation of composers in this series is thus an epiphenomenon; the connections were personal and pragmatic. When Armstrong arrived in New York City in the spring of 1929, things took a different turn, but not because there was a change in the twofold logic guiding choice of repertory. Immediately he stepped into African-American Broadway, its history, its marketing logic, and its composers.