Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism
Page 41
The Lafayette was the favored place for musicians to go and hear him. Natty Dominique believed that all New Orleans musicians were entertainers first; they were artists only for other musicians. That was very much the dynamic that trapped Armstrong at the Lafayette. He felt like he was “standing on my head, blowing my brains out, to please the musicians,” who clustered in the first three rows, a cloud of marijuana smoke hovering over their heads. Eventually, he turned himself in the direction of the audience. At the Lafayette he started introducing numbers from the microphone, to “tell the people what we’re going to play and what’s happening.” In attendance was fourteen-year-old Billie Holiday, recently arrived in the city and eager to hear him sing West End Blues; to her disappointment, he didn’t.
In September he performed five numbers for a Harlem fundraiser—Ain’t Misbehavin’, St. Louis Blues, Tight Like That, Heebie Jeebies, and I Can’t Give You Anything but Love. If he had any time for reflection in his crazy schedule, he might have simply shaken his head in disbelief at the staying power of Heebie Jeebies, the studio throwaway from February 1926 that had set him on a path to fame as a singer. “Louis’s orchestra was all dressed in flannel trousers and the men wore beautiful brown double-breasted coats with large pearl buttons,” reported the Defender.
“I believe that great song, and the chance I got to play it, did a lot to make me better known all over the country,” he remarked about Ain’t Misbehavin’ seven years later. On September 10, OKeh called him back into the studio to record Some of These Days, an old cabaret standby that had been recorded some 22 times before this and was Sophie Tucker’s theme song. On September 11 came a recent Broadway hit, When You’re Smiling (the Whole World Smiles with You), and then on November 26 After You’ve Gone, another older repertory piece, having been recorded some 16 times previously.
Rockwell was clearly trying to extend the success of I Can’t Give You Anything but Love and Ain’t Misbehavin’ with some well-known songs. There were no more concerns about cutting cheap deals with local composers in order to avoid royalty payments. Yet he was still hedging his bets. What is interesting about these sessions from a marketing point of view is that two different versions of each song were made, one with Armstrong singing and the other purely instrumental. The vocal versions of Some of These Days and When You’re Smiling were immediately released on the OKeh “popular” series, marketed for whites, the instrumental versions on the race series that Armstrong had been associated with for years. After You’ve Gone was then released only as a vocal version.
What was going on in Rockwell’s head? Blacks had been gobbling up Armstrong’s vocal recordings ever since Heebie Jeebies, and there is no reason to believe that they had lost interest now. To the contrary, all signs suggest that his singing was just as popular as ever. Why then have two versions, and why market them in this way? The answer, it seems to me, is indicated by the low quality of the vocals.
The instrumental performances are strong, and it seems clear that the band had played these arrangements a lot, either at Connie’s or perhaps in the show Louisiana at the Lafayette. And Armstrong’s trumpet solos are well done. We know that his familiarity with Some of These Days went back to his days at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago; his solo here skillfully builds in dramatic intensity over two choruses. When You’re Smiling gives us another glimpse of Dickerson’s violin (CD 0:26), mixed in with the Lombardo-style saxophone chorus. For the final chorus Armstrong plays the melody an octave higher, showing off his range; he remembered hearing trumpeter B. A. Rolfe first perform this trick with the song In Shadowland at the Roseland, back in 1925. The whole package for When You’re Smiling was conceived for white audiences, with Armstrong’s riff-based trumpet solo (CD 0:51) added as the hot spice.
But the vocal solos are generally uninteresting and sometimes sloppy. They make clear the importance of the woodshedding he put into Ain’t Misbehavin’, which was apparently absent here. Some of These Days sputters along without any clear definition or recasting of the tune. After You’ve Gone opens with a splendid trumpet solo, a carefully worked-out paraphrase of the tune with lots of beautiful detail, but the vocal is less well conceived; the break (CD 1:56) is uninteresting and the second half (beginning at CD 2:00) dissolves into incoherence. The vocal for When You’re Smiling is not flawed by clinkers like this, but neither is it especially interesting.
Most likely the band had three instrumental arrangements ready to go. Realizing the white marketing appeal of his singing, Rockwell asked for vocal versions, too. The vocal versions were then issued in the series that was heavily represented by Seger Ellis, the lily-white crooner and one of OKeh’s bestsellers. The integrity of the instrumental versions encouraged OKeh to issue them on the traditional race series as a way to cover all bases.
In fact, OKeh had been experimenting with how to market Armstrong for over a year. The company made a fresh move with West End Blues, recorded in June 1928 as part of the first batch of recordings that document Armstrong’s new microphone-based style of singing. The recording was quickly released on the race series, and just as quickly—judging, at least, from the catalogue number assigned to it—it was released in the popular series, as well.115
The experiment must have paid off, for OKeh immediately started to think about other possibilities. Here is a list of recordings that were issued as both race and popular numbers; recording dates are in parentheses, but the order of the list follows the numerical sequences assigned to phonograph records in the catalogues.
West End Blues (6/28/1928) and Fireworks (6/27/1928)
Knee Drops (7/5/1928) and Skip the Gutter (6/27/1928)
St. James Infirmary (12/12/1928) and Save It Pretty Momma (12/5/1928)
I Can’t Give You Anything but Love (3/5/1929) and No One Else but You (12/5/1928)
Basin Street Blues (12/4/1928) and No (12/4/1928)
Ain’t Misbehavin’ (7/19/1929) and Black and Blue (7/22/1929)
That Rhythm Man (7/22/1929) and Sweet Savannah Sue (7/22/1929)
What is clear, first, is a degree of caution. In 1928 Armstrong was the headliner for nineteen recorded tunes; all but two (Don’t Jive Me and Weather Bird) were soon released on the race series. Of those seventeen, six were issued in the popular series in a timely way. I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, recorded in March 1929, inspired the rerelease of three more (No One Else, Basin Street, and No, from December 1928). OKeh was feeling its way ahead with Armstrong as a cross-over artist, the more recent label for this phenomenon.
Ain’t Misbehavin’ was then issued in the same double way, as both a race record and a popular record marketed for whites. It must have been even more successful, for it caused Rockwell to reassess the strategy. What he came up with was the curious plan of producing two versions on each session, one vocal and one instrumental, the former issued on the popular series, the latter in the race series:
Some of These Days (9/10/1929)
When You’re Smiling (9/11/1929)
After You’ve Gone (11/26/1929): two versions recorded, but only the vocal issued right away
In December OKeh adjusted once again. They continued to produce two versions, one vocal and the other instrumental, but the pattern of release was flexible:
I Ain’t Got Nobody (and Nobody Cares for Me) (12/10/1929): vocal released in race series only, instrumental not released
Dallas Blues (12/10/1929): vocal released in race series only, instrumental not released
St. Louis Blues (12/13/1929): vocal released in popular series only, instrumental not released
The double versions stop with Rockin’ Chair, also recorded on December 13. From now on there would be no more instrumental versions; Armstrong sings on every record. But the experimenting continued as the executives divided up the tunes, placing some in the race series and some in the popular series:
Rockin’ Chair (12/13/1929): released in race series only
Song of the Islands (1/24/1930): popular series only
Blue, Turning Grey Over You (2/1/1930): popular series only
My Sweet (4/5/1930) and I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me: popular series only
Indian Cradle Song (5/4/1930) and Exactly Like You: popular series only
Dinah (5/4/1930) and Tiger Rag: race series only
The four tunes recorded on May 4, 1930, were split down the middle, two for the race series and two for the popular. And that was the end of the experiment. Armstrong soon left New York City, headed for California, greeted with the decision to release all recordings in the popular series, the race records that had been such a prominent part of his artistic life since the moment he arrived in Chicago a thing of the past.
It is hard to imagine what the discussions were like when OKeh decided, for example, to put Rockin’ Chair, a new song by Hoagy Carmichael, in the race series and St. Louis Blues in the popular series. Maybe they were guided by good data about marketing trends, or maybe they were simply shooting in the dark. But what is clear from this nearly two-year process is that Armstrong’s place in the white market was not automatically obvious. OKeh was testing the market with various probes. The milestones in this long transition are clear: West End Blues inspired the double-release strategy; I Can’t Give You Anything but Love put an end to the penny-pinching limitations of repertory and matched him up with well-known hits;116 Ain’t Misbehavin’ led to a process of dividing up the performances, one for the race series and the other for the popular series. It took white record buyers a while to get used to Armstrong. His debut at the Hudson Theater marked Broadway’s acceptance of his voice, and in recordings he was gradually catching up with Henderson, who had been selling records to whites since 1924.
He had, of course, been singing prominently for three years, at the Vendome, the Sunset, and the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago. His singing was featured on the Hot Five series, where the number of vocal performances runs very close to the number of purely instrumental performances, and there is every reason to suspect that similar proportions were at work in the Chicago venues. The success of his singing was not new for him in 1929; new was the acceptance of his voice by mainstream white America—not the relatively small group of admiring alligators and slumming whites who liked to flaunt bourgeois conventions at the Sunset and Connie’s, but theatergoers who filled up Broadway houses like the Hudson. These were the people who now made him a singing celebrity on recordings, not just in the minority market of race records but as a primary presence across the nation. His vocals carried him forward in his white turn, and it was in his vocals that he put his main creative energy during his second modern phase.
At some point in late fall 1929 the Dickerson band broke up. The gig at Connie’s ended; Armstrong attributed that to poor behavior from several members of the band. Most of them went back to Chicago, with Zutty Singleton staying on at Connie’s with the new band there, having made himself indispensable with his tunable tom-toms. “All the show girls and principals wanted me to stay,” Singleton remembered.
Rockwell started booking Armstrong as a single act. He hooked him up again with Luis Russell’s group and told him to “just stand in front of the band.” Around 1928 the jazz industry had turned its attention to college campuses as a source of revenue for concerts and recordings, and Armstrong was now in a position to come along. One of his admirers at Princeton in the fall of 1929 was the actor José Ferrer, then a student there. Excursions were made to Boston and Philadelphia, the latter for New Year’s Eve.
The Russell band included his buddies Barbarin and Foster from the old days, and also the young Henry “Red” Allen, a trumpeter who was closely modeling his style on Armstrong’s. Armstrong remembered this band fondly: “the warmth, the feeling, the swing, the beat, the everything were there,” he said.
The December 10 recording session with the Russell band appears to have been an impromptu affair, with weak vocals, especially I Ain’t Got Nobody (and Nobody Cares for Me), in which exaggerated dragging behind the beat doesn’t hang together. But on December 13 there was no holding back for St. Louis Blues. The band was obviously familiar with this driving, riff-based arrangement. Foster’s slapping 4/4 bass is prominent here and elsewhere through these sessions. Trombonist J. C. Higgenbotham tosses off some nice licks (urged on by a wailing, sustained blue note from Allen at [1929] CD 0:57), and Allen leads the band in riffs behind Armstrong’s vocal. With its rousing momentum of chorus after chorus, the recording seems to capture better than any other the excitement of a live performance around this time. It is one of the great performances of New Orleans jazz.
With the Russell band, Saratoga Club, New York, 1930, Teddy Hill, Paul Barbarin, Otis Johnson, Charlie Holmes, Pops Foster, Red Allen, Armstrong, Bill Johnson, Luis Russell, J. C. Higginbotham, Albert Nicholas (The Frank Driggs Collection)
Rockin’ Chair, a tune composed by Hoagy Carmichael that later became a repertory piece for Armstrong (he performed and recorded it often and as late as January 1971), was a completely different story. It sounds like the band is sightreading an arrangement, with Foster missing some changes; according to saxophonist Charlie Holmes, that was precisely what happened. Carmichael found his way into the studio carrying a lead sheet and directly approached Armstrong about doing the number. Armstrong had a hard time saying no. “Poor Russell had to get up the ideas for the arrangement,” remembered Holmes, and the band turned around and cut the record.
Rockin’ Chair was one of countless songs from this period that lightly touched the stereotypes of minstrelsy. The songwriter could buy into the ideology of racism without having to do the dirty work himself or herself. One antecedent for the song’s “Aunt Harriet” was the legendary anti–Uncle Tom song Aunt Harriet Becha Stowe (1853), a blatant and successful southern effort to counteract Stowe’s celebrated novel.117 Armstrong delivers a solid rendition of the melody on his trumpet, but in general the results are uninspired, even if they are historic, with Carmichael himself bantering a vocal duet with Armstrong. The performance anticipates a practice he would use a lot during the 1950s, when, in more prepared contexts, his fillins around the leads of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and other white singers were often brilliant and effective at the same time that the arrangement made clear that it was the white celebrity who was in charge; the effect was integration without a challenge to the established social order. Some of the duets with Sinatra (Lonesome Blues, Birth of the Blues) are particularly interesting, with Sinatra becoming more and more uncomfortable, while Armstrong, with his dazzling, emotive, and playful commentary, seems to be making love to the great man.
Armstrong’s march into the white market actually played out over several years, and the musical details also played out gradually. As usual, we are forced to rely heavily on recordings, but must also realize that the story they tell can be misleading.
Collective improvisation had been going out of fashion on race recordings for some time, which makes it seem unlikely that the transition to written arrangements had anything to do with an attempt to reach white markets. The Hot Five series was originally conceived for the record-buying public in the Deep South—poor people who bought record players before cutlery—and it went over big at Lincoln Gardens; those are the reasons why collective improvisation was prominent on the early Hot Fives. But the texture drops away from Armstrong’s recordings during the second half of 1928. It is well represented in the summer, usually at the beginning and end of each performance (A Monday Date, Fireworks, Skip the Gutter, and Knee Drops), but in the December recordings it is nowhere to be found. Coordinated with this disappearance was a change in names, from the Hot Five (and Hot Seven) moniker to “Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra” and “Louis Armstrong and His Savoy Ballroom Five.” In the second half of 1928, OKeh’s marketing strategy for Armstrong more closely reflected what was happening at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago, where collective improvisation was not part of the scene.
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nbsp; In the years around 1930, “sweet” jazz was far more popular than “hot” jazz; this balance would not shift until the middle of the 1930s, marking the beginning of the swing era. Somewhere between the two was a style that may be thought of as “cool,” based on later use of that word. As jazz became more diverse, a bohemian stance, laid back and detached, found expression in Bix Beiderbecke’s lyrical, introspective trumpet and Frankie Trumbauer’s saxophone, with softer attack, lighter tone and vibrato, subdued phrasing, and diminished intensity of the fixed and variable model, especially with Trumbauer. “Compared with the Hot Five, this music sounds almost lethargic,” complained trumpeter and critic Humphrey Lyttleton.
This white bohemian stance was all about turning away from bourgeois values; unsurprisingly, the utility of that was not immediately obvious to upwardly mobile black musicians in the 1920s. The difference between the two groups shows up in tune titles. Trumbauer and Beiderbecke named one of their compositions For No Reason at All in C, while Armstrong and his friends stated the reasons very plainly in titles like Struttin’ with Some Barbecue and Beau Koo Jack. Yet many black musicians were eventually influenced by the white bohemians, especially Trumbauer, who was an important model for Lester Young and others.
The interesting thing for Armstrong is that while he was in step with white crooning styles during the early 1930s, his trumpet solos did not depart very much from the style he had created during the 1920s. His vocals felt like they belonged to the private reflections of the front porch or drawing room, but his trumpet, for the most part, continued the “brassy, broad and aggressively dramatic” (Amiri Baraka) vein of communal music making from the streets of New Orleans. The breathy whispering of a Miles Davis trumpet, if it had been an option, would not have made sense to him. The only signs of the cool aesthetic in this New York period come with his use of a mute, which pops in and out on the recordings, usually in an early chorus and yielding to open playing at the end (After You’ve Gone, Blue, Turning Grey Over You, Exactly Like You). But there is no discernible change in his melodic style in these muted passages, which mainly serve to add another dash of variety to the arrangement.