Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

by Thomas Brothers

  There is no reason to believe that the Hot Five recordings reached many white listeners at all, but Armstrong’s reputation among white musicians on the dance-band scene had by now spread widely. “Every professional musician admired and was greatly influenced by the blacks,” said white arranger Archie Bleyer. “As a white musician developed, he incorporated more and more of the black idiom into his arranging and playing.” No one was more closely studied than Armstrong, but Hines got his share of attention, too.

  White musicians flocked to hear him at the Savoy Ballroom, even though, unlike at the Sunset Café, they were a tiny minority amidst the huge gathering of black dancers. “We’d stand there with the colored folks and listen to those bands play,” remembered Wild Bill Davison. They made sure to visit Armstrong in the dressing room before and after the show and during intermission. Art Hodes remembered hanging out there with Armstrong, King Oliver, and a couple of Hodes’s friends, Armstrong keeping everyone relaxed with warmth and good humor. Hodes and Wingy Manone took turns wearing a warm bear coat the two of them had purchased. Every evening Armstrong greeted them with, “Who’s the bear tonight?”

  Spanier, Stacy, Teschemacher, O’Brien, and Wettling put together a (white) cover band at the Triangle Café, in Forest Park, for six months in 1928, playing his solos and arrangements note for note. “Yeah, Muggsy, rip it out!” Armstrong would shout from the sidelines, flattered by the imitation. Davison had the experience of playing his solos only to have Armstrong respond by bursting out in laughter, Davison not quite figuring out if the great man was laughing at him or with him.

  It must have been a heady experience for Armstrong, for Hines, and perhaps for a few of the other black musicians. Never before in the history of this country, it is safe to say, had so many white musicians shown such enthusiasm and indeed respect for black music. Nevertheless, we must resist the temptation to think of the scene as an idyllic postracial lovefest. The off-stage integration of black and white musicians in Chicago in the mid-1920s was a phenomenon of complex emotions. Not all musicians experienced it in the same way. It can be difficult from such a distance to identify the nuances of race relations, which were not regularly spoken about—especially by Armstrong.

  For one thing, it is easy to exaggerate how much integration there actually was. Scoville Brown was asked how close black and white musicians were and answered, “Well not too close then, not too close. We fraternized a little bit.” Brown had particularly harsh words for the white musicians’ union, which treated the black union “like master and slave.” Even Muggsy Spanier, one of the more aggressive of the white musicians who inserted themselves into the black scene, said that “White and Negro musicians kept to themselves pretty much.”

  But they sought out Armstrong; as Hodes put it, “it was just a bunch of people wanting to be around the fire.” Lillian remembered how they made afternoon stops at the house she and Louis owned, and Armstrong remembered them visiting the apartment he was renting with Hines and Singleton. In turn, he visited the white musicians at least once. Davison invited him to a party at his apartment on the North Side, at 6970 North Sheridan Road. Armstrong apparently made the trip by himself, and he turned out to be the only black person there. As much as Davison tried to make him feel comfortable, he could not persuade Armstrong to leave the kitchen. Caution about mixing with whites had been so thoroughly drilled into him since childhood that he could not let go, even among whites who idolized him.92 The gesture sadly links the experience of one of the greatest musicians America has ever produced to the history of slavery. “Though I had fled the pressure of the South, my outward conduct had not changed,” wrote novelist Richard Wright in Black Boy. “I had been schooled to present an unalteringly smiling face and I continued to do so despite the fact that my environment allowed more open expression. I hid my feelings and avoided all relationships with whites that might cause me to reveal them.”

  Robert Moton, principal of Tuskegee Institute and author of the 1929 book What the Negro Thinks, explained how, “other things being equal, the Negro prefers to retain his self-esteem in a restricted sphere rather than accept a larger freedom of movement under the implication of being tolerated. So widespread is this feeling that it is very difficult to get Negroes in any numbers to accept even specific invitations from white people to join them in mixed gatherings… . If the truth were known it would be discovered that there is far greater tendency on the part of white people to seek the association of Negroes than there is on the part of Negroes to seek the association of whites.” Clarinetist Garvin Bushell put an even finer point on that: “As a matter of fact, we had no desire to integrate then. Our culture was something else. We didn’t talk the same language, and we didn’t eat the same kind of food, and what was funny to whites wasn’t funny to us. We were thankful of the fact that they enjoyed what we did on stage. They’d applaud, stop the show, and all that. But when we’d come off the stage we’d go our way. Because we knew it was a precarious thing. Some drunk might come along and call you a nigger, and you’d either cut him or shoot him and have a fight with him. So we tried to avoid that. Living then as a black man you were too uncertain about what could happen from day to day. That’s why you were happy to get in your neighborhood and stay there.”

  Certainly Armstrong enjoyed the attention, and, being the gregarious person that he was, he found ways to relate to his new white friends. It was all so radically different from his experience in New Orleans, and, indeed, radically different from the normative experience in Chicago. It is no surprise that his attitudes toward whites, during this and other periods, are very hard to uncover. A lot of his commentary on this period comes from the 1950s, a time when he assumed the identity of Ambassador Satch and when he occasionally liked to articulate visions of universal brotherhood. Stories about staying in the kitchen on North Sheridan Road were not the ones that first came to mind.

  Did he and the other black musicians resent the alligators studying their music and then turning around and making a lot of money with it? “Well it’s human nature,” said drummer Red Saunders, “if someone takes a product of yours, any kind of a product, and takes it and does well, does better than you do, and you have the original and can’t do as well, and you don’t have not only the resources but you can’t reach the right people to even sell your product—naturally there would be some resentment.” What seems clear is that while the small number of black musicians at the top—Armstrong, Hines, and a few others—were flattered by white attention, the experience was very different for the wide swath of second-tier musicians, those less rewarded and more vulnerable, who didn’t have quite so much inventive power or dazzling technique. It is not surprising that, for them, the fact that whites were taking black music and making money off it in places where blacks could not perform stuck in their craw. “Save our stuff … don’t show them a thing,” wrote Peyton in the Defender, and he surely understood the challenges his readership was facing.

  Armstrong’s experience of integration was exceptional because he was exceptional—and the white musicians treated him that way. “There’s always another one coming along, like a streetcar,” he said in reference to his own ability to generate fresh music and in response to a thought about musicians having ripped him off.93 That was a position few could afford to take. “So if you learn how to maneuver with that, you can survive,” said Danny Barker. “But a lot of musicians died, you know, at the bar, you know, right next to the spittoon and the sawdust on the floor, drank themselves to death because they couldn’t stand up under the pressure.” Of all the Jim Crow injustices, with whites stacking the deck against black achievement and doing their best to ensure disadvantage and low wages at every turn, the sight of white success built on the imitation of black music was particularly tough to deal with. “It’s a hard thing for a man to sit around and play in a smoke-filled room, in a cellar, and play his heart out, and have some white guy come in there, and listen to him play, and go out there and half play what
he’s playing and become famous … and you still in that hole,” insisted Milt Hinton. “That’s the reason you’ve got to give a guy like Louis Armstrong so much credit… . You got to have a really tough skin.”

  The alligators got a lot by warming themselves at Armstrong’s fire. One thing they gave in return was marijuana. All that backstage laughing during intermission at the Savoy was enriched by “gage”—otherwise known as “weed,” “tea,” “mezz,” “muta,” or “muggles.” Hines and Armstrong were both very fond of marijuana.

  Marijuana usage among musicians has often been associated with New Orleans, but it is clear that Armstrong’s first exposure took place in Chicago, courtesy of white musicians. The liberated Mezz Mezzrow was such a strong user and seller that his nickname became another name for pot. An amusing letter from 1932, written by Armstrong while touring in England, to Mezzrow, his supplier, is full of barely coded directions about where and how Mezzrow should send the next batch. Mezzrow had been introduced to the drug by Leon Roppolo, a white clarinetist from New Orleans, and his supplier was a Mexican named Pasquale. A tobacco can of golden leaf without any sticks or seeds cost two dollars.

  The recording by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra of Muggles (December 7, 1928) is a lasting testament to those mellow days. Composer credit went to Armstrong and Hines jointly, and they play beautifully. Though “muggles” was a well-established nickname for marijuana, there is no obvious reference to the drug in the music. Muggles is a slow blues (about the same tempo as West End Blues), fancied up with interpolated and embellished chords in the beginning and merging into a splendid double-time solo by Armstrong (CD 1:38). He energetically dances through many repetitions of a single note, an old New Orleanian trick that both Oliver and Keppard were known to pull out, before stretching out with simple but effective blues licks. Apparently, the recording was a big hit at house parties, no doubt with a chuckle over the title.

  Armstrong spent most of his free time with Hines, Singleton, and his fellow black musicians. The summer of 1928 was full of camaraderie and even sports such as baseball and golf. He started a team called “Louis Armstrong’s Nine,” with Zutty as catcher, Boyd Atkins, composer of Heebie Jeebies, at second base, Hines at shortstop, tuba player Peter Briggs on third base, drummer Tubby Hall in left field, pianist Walter Johnson as umpire, tenor saxophonist Albert Washington in right field, and Armstrong himself in center field. Cab Calloway occasionally pitched. Hines shied away from hard grounders, protecting his hands, and Armstrong avoided catching pop-ups, afraid that he would miss the ball and injure his mouth. The team played visiting bands at Washington Park, the winner taking two barrels of beer. Crowds gathered to watch. Louis, full of beer and ribs and weighing 230 pounds, once hit a long fly ball, stumbled going around second base, missed third, and, with his teammates yelling for him to go back and touch the base, fell flat on his belly 20 feet from home plate. He just lay there, grinning.

  Basketball was a popular feature at the Savoy. The hall had its own semiprofessional team that was covered in the Light and Heebie Jeebies even more than the dances and music were. The games were scheduled before dances. Dickerson’s musicians became friendly with the players, and eventually the manager of the Savoy thought up a publicity stunt: make up two teams, drawn from the two dance bands, to play a little exhibition game before the real teams take the floor. Armstrong’s girth made it difficult to find a suit to fit him, so he wore a bathing suit. Tremendous applause greeted the players as they ran out onto the floor, but it quickly became clear that they had no idea what to do. As frustration mounted, Armstrong finally grabbed the ball and ran toward the basket without dribbling, the audience roaring with laughter. He assumed position under the basket and ceremoniously took his shot, missing wildly, while the other players fell to the floor, howling in delight. Clarence Black’s team won the game 2–0. Armstrong was so exhausted that he got pneumonia and spent the next week at home in bed.

  In September, Fletcher Henderson came to town and played the Savoy. He immediately offered Armstrong $200 a week to join him, but bad memories of New York interfered; he used the offer to increase his salary at the Savoy. One day the unholy trio met Jelly Roll Morton, wearing a pale pink silk shirt and a Panama hat, on the street after a rehearsal at the Savoy. They invited Morton over to Armstrong’s house to check out the Kimball grand piano he had just purchased for Lillian. Morton held them spellbound with his mix of playing and storytelling—where St. Louis Blues had come from and so on. The radio broadcasts from the Savoy on WCFL, were probably heard in St. Louis, for in December, Armstrong and the band were there for a featured dance, 75 cents in advance, $1 at the door.

  Armstrong said that musicians “were treated and respected just like some kind of a God” in the 1920s, and Milt Hinton concurred: “The early ’20s to the ’30s was the most glamorous era in Chicago for jazz, for black musicians. I can’t possibly … I wish I had the words to explain to you what tremendous glamour.” Armstrong strutted around town, chauffeured by his valet, living the life of a celebrity who worked seven days a week until the break of dawn. “Oh you were like Mr. Sousa,” explained Scoville Brown. “You were something … you were quite a boy.” Yet Armstrong remained, for the most part, a regular guy, or, as Doc Cheatham described him, “just an ordinary-extraordinary man,” joking around and dishing out nicknames left and right, usually with the suffix “face,” as in “Zuttyface.”

  In 1928 Armstrong and Hines made 29 recordings together, when they weren’t working or roaming around the South Side, picking up women, enjoying the adulation of fans and fellow musicians, finding themselves sought after by white musicians who wanted to befriend them, and having a great time. One wants to say that the joy of their friendship is sonically evident in the commercial recordings.94 Their musical synergy is delightful to listen to, and it is a fascinating part of Armstrong’s musical production around this time, even if it was largely limited to the recording studio.

  Crowd at Savoy Ballroom, 1941 (Library of Congress)

  Hines’s musical upbringing was quite different from Armstrong’s. He was not really trained in blues, for example, and the idiom never really interested him. Instead, what he cultivated was an eccentric style, with rhythmic and harmonic daring taken to an extreme. The term “trumpet style” fit his piano playing not just because of the strong octave doublings and clear lines: there was something cocky and brassy about his music, a confidence and assertiveness that were right in step with the brass players from New Orleans.

  Rhythmically, Hines was very good at taking his melodic lines further and further away from the fixed foundation, creating a radical sense of detachment for a few beats or measures, only to land back in time with great aplomb when finished with his foray. The left hand sometimes joins in the action. Drummers and bass players testified to how hard it was to keep up with him. “Earl is a very difficult person to play with,” said drummer Oliver Jackson. “His sense of timing is uncanny; he’s got practically perfect time on that piano and that means that you’ve got to do everything perfectly.” Hines and Armstrong were, unquestionably, among the leading exponents of eccentric phrasing in 1928.

  What is especially distinctive about Hines are the startling effects he creates by harmonically enhancing these rhythmic departures. Like Armstrong, he thought about chords creatively and with great precision. But he was a step ahead of his colleague in his willingness to experiment. He became fond of radical dislocations, sudden turns of directions with dim or nonexistent connection to the ground harmony. “Poor old Hines mess you up,” confessed bassist Montudie Garland. “Liable to be playing in A-flat and he jump way down to D-flat, jump back to C.” “He would show me chords I didn’t know existed and how you could fit so many different chords together,” added Pops Foster. By pulling away from the ground, temporarily but to an extreme, Hines was pushing the fixed and variable model in fresh directions. This put him right in step with Armstrong’s own creative exploration, coming from another direction.


  But with Hines—in contrast to Armstrong—the listener can be thrown into an atmosphere of reckless abandon. Musically speaking, he was a supreme risk taker. In early December 1928, in the midst of a busy stretch of recordings made with Armstrong in Chicago, he traveled to New York City to record a series of piano solos for a company named QRS. The chance to stretch out beyond the special chorus inspired a smattering of daring episodes in almost every performance. For example, the first take of A Monday Date includes a disorienting ten-second stretch (around CD 0:46) that seems to have no ground whatsoever. It is possible that he actually lost control here. But when he emerges from the chaos with complete confidence and locks his line back into a firm relationship with the regular periodicity of the tune, the whole thing sounds like it was planned. We realize that he has stayed connected to the fixed layer, even while seeming not to be. Risk-taking displays like this were well beyond Armstrong and virtually everyone else, and they make the eight QRS performances one of the true joys in early jazz.

  The two of them shared a strong work ethic, and not just in the sense of showing up every night. Lillian said that the introductory fanfare for West End Blues came from the classical exercises she and Louis were running through together, and it is clear from a piece like Chicago Breakdown, recorded in May 1927, that Hines was doing (or had done) something similar. Hines was also drawn toward the principles of musical density and variety, just like Armstrong and their colleagues Buck and Bubbles. And like Armstrong he was tremendously inventive. There were more than a few superb African-American pianists in the 1920s, but perhaps none of the others matched Armstrong so well, in all of these ways. Each was taking his instrument and his personal style into unknown territory, each was challenged and stimulated by the other; together they basked in the glory of their shared success. “We were very close and when we were playing we would steal ideas from each other,” explained Hines. Singer Anita O’Day articulated the nature of deep musical relationships in a way that rings true for the two of them: “I can tell you now that musical intimacy is on a completely different plane—deeper, longer-lasting, better than the steamiest sexual liaison. Passion wears out, but the closer you work with a really rhythmical, inventive swinging musician, the closer you become.”