Louis Armstrong

[Chaszz]

As an aside between the Armstrong-Hines collaborations and the final chapter, this post is about the Red Hot Jazz Archive, which some listeners might be interested in. It has links for a great number of pre-1930 recordings of many jazz musicians and bands. This site was set up in the early days of the internet by one Scott Alexander, and has gone through periods of neglect. But it seems that the links are working now. Nobody seems to know where Scott is these days, but either he, someone else, or Real Player downward compatibility have kept it working. My version of Real Player, which is the next-to-latest, went out for a quick new software download, then played the tracks.

Archive:
http://www.redhotjazz.com/

Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens:
http://www.redhotjazz.com/hot5.html

[Chaszz]

7. The Early Big Bands



This is the final installment of my review of Louis Armstrong's greatest records as a trumpeter. After two negative comments at the beginning, I haven't heard any reaction from readers and listeners, although it seems between 100 and 200 people are reading each installment. I'd like to ask for some feedback, positive or negative. Particularly, what are your reactions to the recordings?

After 1928 Earl Hines left Louis Armstrong to lead his own band. Meanwhile Armstrong's recording career shifted from small groups to big bands. There were two reasons: one, he'd been appearing in public mostly in big bands throughout the 1920s. Okeh record executives had on the other hand looked at his recording success with Clarence Williams' small New Orleans-style bands in 1924, and run with it. The various Hot Five and Seven recording bands followed that template. But by 1929 big jazz bands were getting popular with young people, both ordinary ones and dedicated jazz fans, and Armstrong could sell more records in that format. Two, in slow tunes, he himself liked big band sweet music. The sugary strains of Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians were a favorite of his. He wanted arranged big-band syrup backing his singing and his playing in slow ballads. It has to be said his recorded sweet performances, filled with genuine emotion and jazz phrasing, were often superlative. His gravelly singing voice, now smoothed out from his rough approach of the 20s, was a marvelously flexible instrument capable of expressing a wide range of feeling.

He did not run his big bands, but hired bandleaders to work out the musical details, while his manager Johnny Collins ineptly managed the bookings and also got Louis into trouble with Prohibition-era gangsters, who wanted a piece of the lucrative Armstrong earnings. His personal troubles aside, the results of these years for art were a number of up-tempo jazz records and a fairly long list of popular ballads which mostly had great creative trumpet work as well as great singing. The trumpet work (but not the singing) began to decline toward the middle and end of the 1930s, which will bring an end to this essay.

The following records are from 1929-32. Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas starts out with a few solos by sidemen and then is lifted  to another plane of swing by Armstrong's rhythmically inspired vocal, which turns into scat ("I done forgot the words"). Then, a four chorus trumpet solo that is great, if not quite up to the Hot Fives in inspiration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEn2nlFX-K8

I'm Confessin', which Satchmo made famous, is typical of his pop ballads in these years. The arrangement is sweet, the band is clunky in some places, syrupy in others, and even more sugar is in the Hawaiian guitar intro. Yet it works because of the power of Louis' feeling, which gets inside the meaning of the lyrics and produces genuine, not fake, emotion in the lovely vocal. Unlike with countless other singers, you feel the actual possible loss of a love in the entire B section starting with "I'm afraid some day you'll leave me...". (Years ago I went through a divorce with this performance as consolation, and the B section never failed to bring a tear to my eye.) The slurred, casual scat additions to the lyrics contribute more gentle feeling. The ending trumpet solo, unfortunately shared with a mediocre sax player (what was the MATTER with these producers?) is again full of tender feeling and great artistry. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VMr1S475bE

In the fast number My Sweet, Louis seems to have made a bet with himself as to just how casual he could be. He lets the vocal slip, the words slip, the rhythm slip, the trumpet solo slip. In both vocal and trumpet solo, he spins out long lines that stretch the beat out like pulled taffy, then near the end of each snaps back to the original rhythm in an electrifying way. Pure joyful fooling around while producing great music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEm_6u7mrB0

If I Could Be With You is another pop ballad. A trumpet statement of the melody, with beautiful harmonic deorations, is followed by a great vocal. Then two forgettable solos by sidemen are followed by some more lovely harmonic probing by Louis' trumpet. The  clunky ending is best ignored.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwEz0VLCnh4
 
(What Did I do To Be So) Black and Blue was written by the great jazz pianist and composer Fats Waller. Stepping away for a moment from sweet ballads and back to his roots, Satchmo gives it a fine blues-tinged treatment, though it is not actually a blues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHLTI2cMCQk

Up The Lazy River has a two-chorus vocal, the second chorus a feast of double-time scatting, with the comment "Oh you dog -- boy am I riffin' this evening, I hope some," sandwiched in. This chorus could not be equaled except by the following trumpet solo that near its beginning hauntingly uses the ninth of the six chord in anticipation of harmonies to come years later in modern jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BVpuBMLH54

Sweethearts on Parade, a typical pop song, is lifted at the end by a trumpet solo that can bear comparison with the best solos of the Hot Fives and Sevens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaH3mdr7sTQ&spfreload=1

Titles of other Armstrong records from the early 1930s can be found in the list at the following link, then looked up on Youtube. Again, you might get a remake from years later, so when on Youtube try to check the year of recording.

http://michaelminn.net/discographies/armstrong/index.php?section3

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Troubles with gangsters caused Louis to flee to Europe in 1932, where he toured to acclaim and then just laid low, vacationing for a year or so. One version of the origin of the name Satchmo is that is was introduced during these tours by a British journalist, shortened from the previous appellation Satchelmouth. In 1935 he returned to the U.S. and signed with manager Joe Glaser, who straightened out his troubles. Glaser, an associate of Al Capone, could protect him from other gangsters and additionally ran nightclubs and a legitimate booking business.

Glaser kept him booked for virtually the entire year, either in extended big-city engagements or on the road. This was a lucrative though exhausting schedule which gratified Satchmo's desire to be in front of an audience virtually every night. He stayed gratefully with Glaser for the rest of his life. Glaser saw him signed in 1935 with Decca Records, which steered him increasingly toward novelty numbers. These sold well but the results for his art were not too good. Also troubles with his lips were present on and off.

Gradually as the thirties went on his trumpet work began to be more rote and less inspired. He started to rely on stock jazz phrases that could be pulled out for almost any melodic or harmonic occasion. Commercial showmanship with reliance on high notes to provide excitement for the audience were frequent. Here are two examples from the later 30s:

The Music Goes Round and Round:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngvGBl7SZSc

Swing That Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSxKZpkJmWU

There is always something worth listening to in any Armstrong performance. But the greatest years, when his solos and ensemble leads had electrified fans and musicians and virtually created jazz as a high art form, had passed for him. Years of novelty playing, grueling touring and lip troubles had combined to wear down his trumpet playing.

In 1947, with the swing era waning, big bands no longer profitable, and a traditional jazz revival in full swing, Joe Glaser allowed Louis to return to the New Orleans style of his youth, in a series of groups called Louis Armstrong and his All Stars that featured good and sometimes great sidemen, trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden being the standout. There were various All Star groups until Louis died in 1971. A very loose version of the New Orleans frontline horn ensemble sometimes sounds more like a collection of soloists than a cohesive polyphony. The rhythm section plays the sophisticated rhythm of modern jazz, the bebop style that had developed in the meantime. The heaviness of earlier jazz rhythm with its banjos, tubas, guitars and the piano playing a steady left-hand beat, had gradually been replaced by a standard lighter section of piano, string bass and drums where only the bass and the drummer's ride cymbal carry the actual beat, the rest being suggested and accented.

With the All Stars, Satch's singing was always great, while his trumpet playing alternated between flashes of real inspiration on the one hand, and the stock phrases that were always at hand to be pulled out when needed on the other. The best version of the All Stars is the early one with Teagarden, which can be heard at its finest in the album Satchmo at Symphony Hall, a live Boston 1947 concert that is found on Youtube. Satch's trumpet work is at its post-1924-32 best here. The entire concert recording is worth listening to, and will follow along on this link if left to play. It has a format wherein each All Star has a number featuring his soloing. Here to introduce it, and to conclude these posts, is a fine Muskrat Ramble from that evening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpZMFjuqpLM&list=PLQZfrVhldOdGQSD-b34jGdrc9NBzJuVRk&index=1

In closing, I would like again to request some feedback, and some reactions to the recordings, individually and as a whole.


Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden in one of the early All Star bands in the late 1940s. Earl's and Louis' egos clashed and Hines left Armstrong again after a few years to lead another group of his own. 

[Bogey]

Back in 2004ish, three installments of Armstrong's Decca recordings were released and a number of folks here (Dave-Sonic being one, I believe) started to snap them up and I must say some very nice sound from Definitive here. I have the first two on the shelf (the third on its way, though it has a large chunk of material I already own on another cd set).  Nonetheless, these sets have collected way too much shameful dust.  I decided revisit them and listen to them, but just allow one year per day, so 1935 it is.  Reading the notes, Armstrong returned from a long tour across Europe and then connected with Decca.  The notes also indicate that he bagged some of the higher note blows for a much more leveled sound due to his lip damage.  So, time to enjoy the sounds from the year that gave way to the Social Security Act in the U.S. and the release of the board game Monopoly.

[NikF]

That looks an interesting box. I'll be keeping an eye open for it.

And as an aside, I have only two photos mounted and framed in my home. Both are in my office and one is of Louis Armstrong. It was shot by Anton Bruehl and I believe is from the first year of that box - 1935.



e: although dates from before that set, this guy discusses my favourite Armstrong performance http://dippermouth.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/80-years-of-thats-my-home.html It's the second/alternate take from 1932.