Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

by Thomas Brothers

  The proof of this is the recording of the piece made two years later, in February 1926. The fascinating thing is how close the recording is to the piece notated two years before. In his first run-through of the tune, there are a few improvements—that is the best way to think of them, and not simply as manifestations of a felt freedom to vary the material.23 They illustrate the continued engagement of tinkering with a melody over time, little revisions of the kind that composers constantly make. Comparison between the lead sheet and the later recording documents the working method of someone who should be regarded as one of the twentieth century’s great masters of melody.

  The differences between recording and performance for the first run-through of the theme are not anything like what one would expect if one takes the view that jazz is a matter of adding vernacular performance traditions to received tunes, that what is written is simply a starting point for the performer’s creativity. That model does not hold here. Instead, what we discover is that Armstrong conceived his piece so that it could be transmitted, completely and essentially, in writing. Nothing important is left out. The root cause of this situation was this: he was working in an environment where written transmission promised greater rewards than performance. The role of the written document in making a claim to copyright causes him to form his musical thought in terms of what can be inscribed.

  There is no sense that his ideas have been awkwardly forced into notation. Jazz was born around the turn of the century in New Orleans, in an environment that favored unnotatable musical expression, and that kind of expression has been important for its entire history. Armstrong became one of the leading experts in it, but here he is pursuing a different creative model.

  He was not good at freak music, so he searched for an alternative way to make his mark. There was no way to notate freak music anyway. To put Oliver’s Dipper Mouth Blues solo on paper is to leave out most of what is important. Freak music had nothing to do with the economic nexus that surrounded the notation of tunes for copyright and came instead from the oral tradition that gave advantage to performers, not composers. The patrons who crowned Oliver at Royal Gardens were acknowledging him as a master in this tradition, which was expanding its territory through the Great Migration. In Cornet Chop Suey Armstrong was pursuing a musical idiom that was closer to ragtime (as Scott Joplin thought of that word) than to blues. He was thoroughly trained as a blues specialist and spent nearly two years in a late apprenticeship with Oliver at a venue that rewarded blues, but his creative breakthrough went in a different direction.

  Taking a step away from Oliver, creating a showpiece for himself, thinking in terms of what can be notated and copyrighted—all of this shaped Cornet Chop Suey. So, perhaps, did another musical practice that is a bit surprising, a musical tradition that had a solid place in New Orleans, even though it seems trivial today: whistling.

  Lillian said that she could hear Louis whistling from a couple of blocks away as he approached their apartment. His whistling was creative and unusual, “all the fancy runs that he later played,” she said. Whistling had been part of the musical scene in New Orleans. “They came up whistling and dancing and singing and it’s born in them,” said Baby Dodds about working-class Negroes in New Orleans. Cornetist Bunk Johnson learned to whistle Buddy Bolden’s solos. The Ory–Oliver band in New Orleans in the mid-1910s actually worked out new pieces by whistling them. Lillian De Pass claimed that a certain style identified a whistler as a musician in New Orleans. And Preston Jackson described hanging out as a teenager, listening to a band and then having whistling contests among his friends the next day in an attempt to duplicate the event. “I could whistle anything anyone played,” he bragged.

  Armstrong whistled as a way to create ideas that he did not yet play on his cornet. “The thing that makes jazz so interesting is that each man is his own academy,” said pianist Cecil Taylor. Whistling served as Armstrong’s compositional laboratory, a way to sketch precursors to the fancy runs that eventually made him famous. There is no way to know how much that played out in Cornet Chop Suey, but it is certainly full of fancy runs, and it is the earliest of his famous solos.

  Lillian urged him to break away from Oliver and develop his own style. “She didn’t want me to copy Joe,” Armstrong explained, “liked me to play the way I felt it.” Experimental whistling combined with woodshedding the classics, with growing confidence acquired through recitals at church picnics and the composition and recording of Tears; with his competitive nature, developed through years of cutting contests; with technical lessons in the Eurocentric tradition; and with advanced lessons, sui generis, from Oliver, and his increased understanding of tune construction and how to notate. He put all of it together in his own academy, and the result was Cornet Chop Suey.

  Lots of repetition helps a phrase stay with you; the recorded performance of Cornet Chop Suey from February 1926 offers more than usual. The piece is a hybrid of traditional strain form, used so often in the Oliver recordings from 1923, and verse and chorus form, associated with songs. Four distinct parts are marked in the notated lead sheet and two of them have labels—introduction (4 measures), a first strain or verse (16 measures), a section marked “chorus” (32 measures), and a section marked “patter” (16 measures).24 Repeat signs for the chorus turn it into a 64-measure block that dominates the performance; the recorded version from 1926 includes one additional iteration, to make 96 bars.

  The main melodic gesture, presented in the first two measures, is repeated a total of ten times in the first two choruses—perhaps a few too many (in the 1926 recording, Armstrong deliberately varies it in the third chorus). Yet it is a bouncy and attractive little phrase, with a little bit of swagger. It could be compared to the attractive melodic nuggets that open Scott Joplin’s greatest rags, the first two measures of Maple Leaf Rag, for example, or the first two measures of The Entertainer. Armstrong is not quite at Joplin’s level, perhaps just a notch below. But the gesture is certainly more distinctive and memorable than any other he had produced up until this point.

  There may be too much repetition in Cornet Chop Suey, but there is also variety. The buglelike introduction announces the arrival of something special. It is followed by stepwise, continuous motion, in the manner of the first strain of Weather Bird Rag. Melodic contours are interesting, varied, and neatly organized, again resembling Weather Bird. Each section is different in this way, with the chorus featuring the swaggering, descending gesture that has a good bit of rhythmic energy and the patter section returning to the military assertion of the introduction, then taking that idea in a fresh direction. The chorus includes notated breaks; this may have been new. When Louis and Lillian composed Tears in October, they did not notate a single break, which we now see as the main point of the piece. In Cornet Chop Suey he notates four of his breaks for copyright. I see no obvious precedent for this in his Chicago circle.

  One would like to know where he got the idea of calling the main section a “chorus,” a word usually reserved for vocal music. The word highlights this section as a melodic statement that is memorable and repeatable, like a song lyric. “Patter” indicates “stop time,” the technique of reducing the accompaniment to punched accents from the band, in this case on the first beat of each measure. There seem also to have been few precedents for copyrighting a stop-time chorus. In any event, stop-time choruses would, in just a few years, frame some of Armstrong’s most important solos.

  Compared with lead sheets filed by Oliver, Hardin, and Armstrong around this time, Cornet Chop Suey stands out for its melodic variety. Bugle fanfare, a taut two-bar gesture that stands up to repetition, continuous motion in the style of Weather Bird Rag, notated breaks, fragments of second playing, and a stop-time chorus that combines twisting arpeggiations (Oliver would have called them snakes) with step-by-step motion—that is a lot of melodic variety. He throws in harmonic variety, too, including notated blue notes and, once again, a diminished chord. It is clear that by January 1924 he had abs
orbed the stylistic principle of variety, which would dominate his mature style for the rest of the decade and beyond.

  “Where’s that lead?” Armstrong heard Oliver say in 1915, and that admonition was still ringing in his ears when he soloed on Chimes Blues in early 1923. By the end of the year he was redefining what a lead might be like. Why not bring some of the energy of the break, the rhythmic tension and melodic surprise, into a lead? This is the kind of question I imagine Armstrong responding to, unconsciously or consciously, during the 1920s and 1930s: What kind of a melody will a jazz solo be? That question would continue to animate the central innovators in jazz for decades to come, their solutions depending on training, audience, employers, notation, bandleaders, social justice, racial pride, and the searchings of creative minds. Cornet Chop Suey is Armstrong’s first bold answer.

  To see Cornet Chop Suey as a musical and psychological breakthrough is to connect it to a complex biographical moment that included his late apprenticeship, his marriage, and his reluctant but felt need to break away from Oliver. The reluctance is indicated by a fascinating detail: his bold assertion of independence was suppressed. The piece was notated, sent to Washington, D.C., and then tucked away in a drawer for two years. There is not a shred of evidence that it was ever performed beyond the back steps of Lillian’s house until early 1926.

  The most obvious explanation for the silence is that Armstrong was committed to staying under Oliver. Oliver was not interested in shining a spotlight on his apprentice’s splendid piece of bravura; I find it highly unlikely that Armstrong even broached the idea. If Cornet Chop Suey reminded Louis of the cutting contests back home, there was only one other cornet player on the stage of Lincoln Gardens to challenge. The piece would have left Oliver in the dust. Even after he broke away from Oliver in the summer of 1924, Armstrong could not find a way back into the creative channel opened up here for quite some time. There would be no outlet for it with Fletcher Henderson in New York City, and his chance didn’t come until Lillian convinced a cabaret owner to feature him upon his return to Chicago.

  Newlyweds (Courtesy of Chris Albertson)

  Armstrong married his fiancée on February 5, 1924, at City Hall. The Defender noted the bride’s “Parisian gown of white crepe elaborately beaded in rhinestones and silver beads.” A reception was held at the Ideal Tea Room, 3218 South Michigan Avenue, on February 7, with music provided gratis by the Oscar Young band, including Preston Jackson on trombone. (Years later, Armstrong rewarded Jackson’s generosity with a job in his big band, one of countless gestures of loyalty.) On their wedding night the happy couple made the rounds of after-hours spots, and at each one they were showered with rice, the door sills blanketed with white. In lieu of a honeymoon they decided to put money away for the purchase of a house. They moved into a rented apartment at 38th and Indiana.

  If Oliver and the other musicians in the band were surprised by the marriage, it was even harder for Lillian’s mother, Dempsey, to get used to the idea. Alberta Hunter said that Dempsey “had a fit when she heard that Lil was going to marry Louis.” She thought Lil “was too good for Louis, you know.” Lil later reported that her family “gave me hell for marrying Louis; they said he was almost ignorant.” As a devout Christian who worked for whites as a cook, Dempsey raised Lillian with higher goals; a few church picnics would not have been enough to change her bias against a dance-band musician from New Orleans. Dempsey taught her daughter to pay attention to things like table manners, and the rough ways of the New Orleanian musicians were precisely what she was trying to hold at bay.

  Today it might easy to sneer at Dempsey’s dash of snootiness, but it must be noted that everybody else’s initial reaction was that Lil was too good for Louis, too—that was the first thought even of the future bride and groom when they met back in late 1922. From his side there must have been at least a little bit of hesitation as well, rooted in more than just a sense of insecurity. His mother May Ann had taken him to the Sanctified Church, where the sisters used music for intense emotional release and communal bonding, and where they surrounded him with loving approval when he made his first attempt to sing in public. Dempsey would not have been shouting with the sisters; her place was in a forward-looking church focused on racial progress. The paradox for Louis was clear: May Ann taught him to disdain anyone who put on airs, but his betrothed and her mother offered a classic example of what dicty could look like.

  Perhaps Louis’s burgeoning success, combined with his good nature, finally won Dempsey over. “He was just as sweet and nice as he could be,” said Hunter. From the other side of the match Lil offered savvy career sense and firm loyalty. What mattered in the end was not her credentials but Armstrong’s confidence in her, and the confidence she in turn gave him. His sense of who this small, pretty, intelligent, and ambitious woman was exceeded reality, but his own reality turned out to be what counted. “If she hadn’t run into the New Orleans Greats she probably would have married some big politician or maybe play the Classics for her livelihood,” he believed. Though exaggerated, her education and refinement were immense in his eyes. She was a big, high-powered chick who gave him courage to plunge into their joint schemes for fame and fortune, which ended up being mostly about him.

  “I remember someone told me that when a woman marries she should work for her husband,” explained Lil. “So if I wanted to be someone, Louis had to be someone.” Exaggerated claims have been made for Lil’s role during these important musical years, but she herself did not play that game. She framed the matter well when she said that it was her job to stand “at the bottom of the ladder, holding it, and watching him climb.” It is not so easy to carry the burden of working your own academy, and not easy at all for a dark-skinned, undereducated musician from New Orleans. Thanks to Lillian, there would be no more staying under. Neither one of them could have imagined how high his ladder would reach, but in February 1924 the world seemed full of possibilities, musical, financial, and romantic.

  Opposites do not always attract. Certainly Armstrong’s love interests in New Orleans had been nothing like Lil, and it would have been easier for him to hook up with someone like Alpha, his third wife, who was much less like Lil and more like him. The social dynamics of the Great Migration threw people from diverse backgrounds and aspirations together—a classically trained pianist and a blues specialist from a culture that ridiculed note-reading musicians as “cute boys.” The two of them sat down to play in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, and the friction that marked their partnership was productive, at least for a while. Circumstances put them together, violent love fueled a romance, and their opposite qualities turned complementary. Eventually Armstrong grew tired of the friction, but for now it carried a creative edge. After his wedding he gradually gathered the courage to break away from Oliver. And then came an unexpected opportunity to play in New York City with the most successful African-American dance band of the time, another felicitous intervention in his rapidly unfolding march toward the big time.

  FOUR

  The Call from Broadway

  While Louis was playing more than anybody I ever heard before, Joe Smith was doing what the people understood.

  —Clyde Bernhardt, on hearing Armstrong in 1925

  Shortly after Lillian and Louis were married, in February 1924, Oliver was approached by a booking agency with a proposal to take his band on tour. The plan was to swing through the midwestern states, and the promised pay was attractive. A rift broke up the band, however, and replacements had to be found at the last minute.

  The breakup had multiple causes. In one telling of the story, Armstrong said that the Dodds brothers and Dutrey did not want to travel, Dutrey especially, because of his asthma. Johnny Dodds noted a musical conflict: because of Oliver’s failing abilities, the melody instruments covered him up, yet he was not willing to solve the problem by letting Armstrong play lead. There was also some bitterness about Oliver having used other musicians on a few recording sessions.

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p; But the main problem seems to have been money. Gennett Records did not pay up front but instead distributed royalties dependent on sales; these were supposed to be shared with the entire band. When the checks came in, Oliver refused to show them to anybody, while the shares got smaller and smaller. “King Oliver’s men were always talking about striking for something or other,” Armstrong said, and in the heat of anger the Dodds brothers took that defiant attitude a step further, threatening to beat up their leader. Oliver answered that threat by purchasing a pistol, and the happy days were clearly gone. After the breakup, Dutrey led a band with the two Dodds brothers at Lincoln Gardens for a while, and then he took a job at Kelly’s Stables; Johnny Dodds continued to play there for a number of years.

  Oliver band, 1924: Charles Jackson, Snags Jones, Buster Bailey, Oliver, Zue Robertson, Lil Hardin Armstrong, Armstrong, Rudy Jackson (The Frank Driggs Collection)

  To rebuild the band, Oliver brought in Buster Bailey from Memphis on clarinet and Rudy Jackson on clarinet and tenor sax. Zue Robertson eventually joined on trombone, Charlie Jackson on bass sax, and Clifford “Snags” Jones on drums. Only Lil and Louis remained from the group of 1922–23. The reformed band rehearsed and launched their tour on February 22.

  Armstrong believed that Oliver’s was the first African-American band ever booked by the agency MCA. The band followed the Orpheum vaudeville circuit through Pennsylvania, Maryland, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan on a series of one-nighters. Bailey and Jackson were intrigued by the Oliver-Armstrong duet breaks and tried to do some of their own in Madison, Wisconsin, but couldn’t pull it off.