Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

by Thomas Brothers

  Jazz was “the free, frank, sometimes vulgar spirit of the bourgeoisie”—as Henry Osgood defined it in So This Is Jazz (1926). White dance-bandleaders reproduced the style characteristics of composed jazz songs. It was their job, after all, to accompany not only the tango and waltz but also the fox trot, while the Charleston intensified this trend. This is what caused the label “jazz” to be hung on bandleaders like Jones and Whiteman, who futilely tried to shake it. “What we have played is ‘syncopated rhythm,’ quite another thing,” insisted Whiteman. More than a few black musicians would have agreed with him. “We didn’t accept Whiteman’s as a great jazz band,” explained saxophonist Benny Waters. “We just called it great music.”

  Yet the usage stuck, and it became attractive to think of jazz as something that naturally belonged to the bourgeoisie—and Osgood did not have to say that it was the white bourgeoisie he was thinking of. The more jazz belonged to whites, the less it had to do with blacks. Osgood nods briefly to the black vernacular in So This Is Jazz, but he quickly argues for its irrelevance, pointing out, for example, that musical improvisation was practiced in Europe all the way back to the Middle Ages. And since European composers sometimes created musical events resembling jazz, perhaps the African-American antecedents had no importance at all. Beethoven, for example, could write some pretty aggressive syncopations when he wanted to, and the most sublime blues chord ever heard was located in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

  Henderson showed that by working hard to eliminate “vulgarities and crudities,” blacks could be just as bourgeois as whites. Now we can see why he was a little concerned in that October 1924 rehearsal about just how vulgar and crude his new hot soloist actually was. And we can also see why many historians who have written about the Henderson band are at complete odds with talented-tenth critics who admired this unit in the mid-1920s. The common interest of these two groups in “jazz” is an illusion: they are working with completely different definitions of the word. Each scorned what the other treasured. Talented-tenth critics looked at Henderson’s accomplishment as hope for the future of the race; Armstrong was not even on their radar screen. When, a half-century later, jazz historians looked at the great jazz tradition they loved and regarded Armstrong as its first great master, perhaps even the central figure, disdain for Henderson’s early work, which was so out of sync with what they valued, was not unusual.

  Symphonic jazz brought the imagined sequence all the way to “pure art.” The February 12, 1924, premiere by Paul Whiteman’s Palais Royal Orchestra of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at Aeolian Hall in New York City may have equaled the impact of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recordings in 1917. Whiteman and Gershwin wanted to show that jazz could be a new kind of vibrant American art music. Their concert brought into high focus the phenomenon of “symphonic jazz,” a phrase that was increasingly used to clarify not only this new artistic possibility but also the conceit that there was a continuum, an evolutionary progression of jazz with precise social-cultural markers along the way. The concert was designed to demonstrate this by opening with a condescending performance of the ODJB’s Livery Stable Blues.

  Some insisted that symphonic jazz required violins, while others dropped that condition and applied the phrase to bands like Henderson’s. “Symphonic” made clear the refined nature of this kind of jazz compared to all others, promising complex arrangements, strong ensemble work, and slick harmonies. And it communicated the complete separation of white jazz, created by and for the white bourgeoisie, from black jazz—with the occasional exception of an exceptional person like Henderson.

  Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (Courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum)

  What was Armstrong’s opinion? As a professional musician running for top dollar, he was willing to put up with a lot of “society shit,” and he never flinched from that willingness for the rest of his life. But my guess is that if he took the time to reflect on jazz’s alleged upward mobility, he was not impressed. The fiction of lining up these five definitions to form a narrative of cultural evolution was very much a white project, from which it became a matter of interest to the talented tenth. One thing we do know is that Armstrong was ambivalent about the word “jazz,” as were many of his colleagues from New Orleans, who understood the term’s commercial advantages but put little stock in it. The intensely racist ideologies that shaped so much thinking may be part of the reason why musicians from Armstrong to Ellington to Gillespie and beyond tried to avoid labels for their music altogether, as a general principle.

  Henderson, on the other hand, made it his business to stay in close touch with what was jazz, what was becoming jazz, and what used to be jazz but was now symphonic jazz. During the first half of 1924, when the “Fletcher Henderson Club Alabam Orchestra” (aka “Fletcher Henderson and His Famous Recording Orchestra,” and “The Greatest Colored Dance Orchestra in the World”) was advertised heavily in the New York Times, the word “jazz” was nowhere in sight; it was also absent from most of the small press releases on Henderson in black newspapers. January 1924 advertisements for his Vocalion recordings do not mention jazz; a Defender ad on March 29, 1924, makes a fleeting reference to his “jazzy fox trots.” An ad for Emerson Race Records in the Baltimore Afro-American on May 30 describes the band as “nightly performers on Broadway in a weird, wild mixture of jazz and soothing symphony.” Thus, by the summer of 1924, Henderson had solidified an image that made his band attractive to the Roseland Ballroom.

  Keeping up with the likes of Lopez, Lanin, and Whiteman meant playing a certain repertory. Henderson’s orchestra recorded 36 different titles during Armstrong’s year with them, and most are right in step with the elite white bands Henderson was emulating.

  Ever since the dance craze of the mid-1910s, the popular-song industry and dance bands had been discovering symbiotic ways to make money. Publishers recognized the potential of a dance band to promote a song, and songs were conceived with dancing in mind. A bandleader who plugged a tune could get his picture on the cover of published sheet music. As Osgood wrote in 1926, “where one person knows a popular song from hearing it sung, a dozen will be familiar with its title and tune through its fox-trot orchestral version.” It was with pride that the Afro-American called Henderson one of the “best of dance tune purveyors” in August 1925.

  In October 1924, Armstrong’s first month with the band, Henderson recorded numbers that were also recorded by the Benson Orchestra, Isham Jones and His Orchestra, Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, and the California Ramblers, with lesser-known white orchestras represented, too. The pattern continued through Armstrong’s 12 months with Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra, with Henderson often recording the same title within weeks or days of rival white bands.26 His choices indicate what the Roseland patrons were interested in hearing and also his sense of how to position himself. His was often the only black band to record these tunes, which is precisely what he wanted. He was competing with elite white bands on their terms in a splendid display of talented-tenth confidence.

  Like many bandleaders, Henderson often relied on standard commercial arrangements—“stocks,” as they were called—that could be personalized. The arrangements juxtapose different combinations of instruments, accompaniments, and textures in a colorful flow of variety. Each section contrasts with the one before and after. Lively introductions, interludes, breaks, and codas pop out of nowhere. “The new demand is for change and novelty,” wrote Whiteman. Chicago bandleader Sig Meyer referred to this as the “stodgy New York ballroom style.” To modern ears the style often seems cluttered and overblown.

  Henderson hired Armstrong as “hot soloist,” which meant playing brief solos, 15 to 30 seconds long, at designated spots in the arrangement, providing another bit of variety. This was how the distinct worlds of the talented-tenth bandleader, who shapes the arrangement and the ensemble to his liking, and the vernacular specialist, who brings to the moment a very different skill set, came together. The flow from ense
mble to solo and back could be seamless, with no difference in style from one to the other, or it could be one of startling juxtaposition. It was a relatively new format, and it is no exaggeration to say that its potential would continue to be explored for the next two decades as a source of creative tension in the swing era.

  Many years later Armstrong bristled at the limitations—“He’d give me 16 bars, the most, to get off with.” It is easy to project on these performances a sense that he is bursting out of the tightly controlled arrangements, but at the time he seems to have accepted the assignment fully and did everything he could to make the best of his brief moment in the spotlight. His willingness to work with the situation made it an important moment in his development as a soloist.

  Henderson got what he wanted when he decided to challenge the elite white bands, but at a price. It was not only Armstrong and Ethel Waters who thought he was dicty. Clarinetist Garvin Bushell insisted that he “was never accepted by blacks as much as Duke. I don’t think the blacks of Harlem bought many of his records: they were too sophisticated, not racy enough, and sounded like a white band.” When Henderson toured in the spring of 1926 and played a big hall on the South Side of Chicago, attendance was slight; “our group is slow in supporting artistic organizations like this one,” lamented Peyton in the Defender. High praise for Henderson in the black press creates an unbalanced impression. As always—and especially with the history of African-American music—we have to remind ourselves that voices in print are not necessarily representative. In this case, that means that the talented tenth did not speak for the entire black community.

  Manhattan

  1.Audubon Theater

  2.New Manhattan Casino

  3.Cotton Club

  4.Savoy Ballroom

  5.Fletcher Henderson’s house

  6.Small’s Paradise

  7.Lafayette Theater

  8.Rhythm Club

  9.Connie’s Inn

  10.Columbia Recording Studio

  11.Roseland Ballroom

  12.Gaiety Theater

  13.Club Alabam

  14.Hudson Theater

  The fascinating thing about the meeting of Armstrong and Henderson in October 1924 is that, though they were on very different social trajectories, they were converging by virtue of their drive to enter white markets. Armstrong was one of the leading young representatives of the black vernacular that smelled like garbage to the talented tenth, but with the help of his wife and some lessons at Kimball Hall, he had achieved more precision, more control over his instrument, more speed, and less funk. As he mimicked the elite white bands, Henderson followed their tendency to pick up on the energy of jazz.

  Hot Solos

  Baby Dodds claimed that bandmates need to be relaxed and familiar with each other’s ways, like husband and wife. “Your wife can look at you and you understand what she means,” he explained, and “that’s the way an organization of musicians should be.” Armstrong enjoyed that kind of rapport in New Orleans and Chicago, and its absence for him in the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra was disconcerting. Fortunately, help was on the way. Henderson asked him to recommend a hot clarinet soloist, and he put forward Buster Bailey, his buddy from the Oliver band. Bailey arrived before opening night at the Roseland, October 13, 1924. “Then I had company in the band, and that made a difference,” Armstrong remembered.

  The difference emerged in a performance of Tiger Rag. After about two weeks at the Roseland, Henderson called for this old New Orleans standard, which he set up as a feature for Bailey and Armstrong. Bailey used a growl technique, and his playing inspired Armstrong. “They gave me about four choruses,” he said. “Following Buster made me really come on a little bit.” The performance seems to have made a huge impression. “His faults and everything, his deficiencies, he made up in his playing,” said Howard Scott, the second trumpeter. “He brought that New Orleans stuff here.”

  Armstrong could impress simply with his sound, his big, confident, imposing, authoritative sound, produced with razor-sharp precision, a bursting initial attack, a full, rounded tone, and lots of volume. “We were told that there were some people passing by that stopped, listening to him, he was so loud,” said Scott. It was a sound born on the streets of New Orleans, “brassy, broad and aggressively dramatic,” in the words of critic Amiri Baraka, and shaped by a cultural vision of sound production whose roots lay in West Africa. Today New York City is the undisputed capital of the jazz world, but in 1924 it was hardly on the map. It is easy to believe that Armstrong’s four choruses on Tiger Rag stopped the Roseland dancers in their tracks.

  Yet it is also true that his unrecorded solo on Tiger Rag was exceptional. His normal duties did not allow him to expand through four choruses, but instead required brief snippits of paraphrase. Armstrong’s early solos with Henderson sound tentative and unconvincing, as if he doesn’t quite know how to proceed. Manda, the first, has a lot of noodling; saxophonist Coleman Hawkins’s offering on the same performance is more polished and effective. Armstrong’s solos on Tell Me Dreamy Eyes and My Rose Marie are straightforward and slightly clumsy. For all the talk over the years about how he immediately changed the band, these solos are right in step with those from trombonist Charlie Green and Hawkins. In Words his embellishments are poorly integrated with the melody, creating the pronounced effect that they are two different things (CD 0:43–1:03); Hawkins immediately follows with a more sequential approach, a straight presentation of the tune followed by hot filigree. In many of these October solos Armstrong seems happiest when he gets to the break (or to the place in a phrase where it would be logical to insert a break), which was something he definitely knew how to play. These breaks have the feeling that he is putting his feet up in his Harlem apartment after a stuffy rehearsal, tired of flashy dressers sneering at his clunky shoes.

  In paraphrase solos (Go Long Mule and My Rose Marie, for example), he sometimes takes one of his own embellishments and turns it into a little musical motive, a technique heard on Chimes Blues back in 1923. Repeating a small musical gesture was a simple way to create a “phrase that stays with you.” To my ear, the solo that shows his debt to Joe Oliver most clearly comes in Shanghai Shuffle, where he cleverly recasts the written tune and produces a melody in the mold of Dipper Mouth Blues. The first four measures (CD 1:56–1:59) basically paraphrase the original tune and intensify its blues implications. That reworking becomes the basis for the whole solo, which expands in range upwards, in the manner of Oliver’s three choruses, with the extra touch of a few exciting leaps. The strategy balances paraphrase and free invention.

  Henderson’s recording of Copenhagen (October 30) has been heralded as a landmark in jazz history, an unveiling of the arranging skills of the leader and Don Redman. The performance is indeed much jazzier than the other seven titles recorded in October. In a classic study, however, musicologist Jeffrey Magee has shown that, rather than leading the way with Copenhagen, Henderson and Redman were actually tracking the elite white bands. No other performance so vividly reveals the musical-social dynamics surrounding jazz in late 1924.

  The story of Copenhagen begins with a white band, Charlie Davis and His Orchestra, performing their leader’s new composition in Indianapolis in April 1924. Among Davis’s admirers were members of the Wolverine Orchestra, seven musicians very much in the mold of the young alligators who were sitting at Oliver’s feet in Lincoln Gardens and including, in fact, one of those alligators, cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. With Davis’s blessing, the Wolverines made Copenhagen their own. Beiderbecke created a head arrangement, which the Wolverines recorded in May 1924.

  The captivating opening section joins a neatly arranged chromatic passage of four measures, played in unison rhythm, to a four-measure phrase of comparatively wild collective improvisation. The effect is one of controlled, 1920s cool bursting into excitement. This is followed by two blues choruses, one for clarinet solo and the other for tenor sax. The performance continues with a series of calls and responses, somet
imes with solo instruments in the call position and sometimes with an alternative refrain idea, also chromatic and also in unison; all the calls are answered by collective improvisation. A great deal of this Wolverine recording would be repeated verbatim by Henderson five months later.27

  The transmission to Henderson occurred not through the recording, however, but through a published arrangement that carried full acknowledgment of both Davis and the Wolverines. The publication promised to capture the spirit of collective improvisation. “This arrangement is RED HOT as written,” screamed the title page. “Play what you see and the horns will start smoking.” Copenhagen got picked up by the Benson Orchestra of Chicago, the California Ramblers, and Al Turk’s Princess Orchestra, all recording it in September and October along with nine other units plus Henderson’s.

  Collective improvisation, blues, call and response—Copenhagen documents the increasing reach of black New Orleans, first to young white musicians in the upper Midwest, then into a published arrangement, and from there to elite white bands. The piece neatly moved through the first four definitions of “jazz” outlined above, and it demonstrates how Henderson was following well-marked currents of fashion.28

  The arrangement was dictated from afar, and so was Armstrong’s famous solo, at least in part. The assignment must have pleased him greatly, for it was the first straight blues he had a chance to put on record with Henderson’s band. He tried to tweak his solo for Shanghai Shuffle into a blues, but Copenhagen was a straightforward invitation to do what he did best.