20Jones WRC 1938. This source is part of a collection of notes made by William Russell, who was interviewing for his book Jazzmen. Hoagy Carmichael’s report that Louis took “lessons from a German down at Kimball Hall, who showed Louis all the European cornet clutches” (1999a, 203) is often cited, along with the colorful assertion that “Lil worked the fat off Louis.” But Carmichael is clearly dependent on Jazzmen for this and other content in Sometimes I Wonder; he is also acquainted, it is clear, with Lil Hardin’s Satchmo and Me, issued on Riverside Records (1963). This is a common problem for historians: what looks like independent verification is actually derivative from a published source. In any event, Russell’s notes from the 1938 interview with Richard M. Jones identify a German teacher at Kimball Hall, and there is no good reason to doubt Jones as a witness.
21The lead sheet for Cornet Chop Suey demonstrates that Armstrong does not yet control rhythmic notation fully. Measure 1 of the chorus has an extra beat notated, and the mistake is repeated every time this gesture comes around. The likely solution is that the first quarter-note should not be dotted and the last rest should be an eighth-rest. On several occasions Armstrong uses a V-shaped rest uncertainly, sometimes as an eighth-rest and sometimes as a quarter-rest. The first strain of the piece also shows mistakes in dotted half-notes.
22Here is the sequence of tunes that were created at least partially by Armstrong and filed for copyright in 1923 and January 1924 (this information derived from Chevan 1997, 495–97), along with identification of the handwriting, based on my own analysis of these documents and others. The most telltale sign is the treble clef, but there are a set of scribal patterns that are consistently presented (this analysis differs from that offered by Gushee 1998, 297): Weather Bird Rag, April 14, 1923, notated by Lillian; Dipper Mouth Blues, May 21, 1923, notated by Lillian; When You Leave Me Alone to Pine, Aug. 6, 1923, notated by Lillian; Tears, Oct. 20, 1923, notated by Lillian; Coal Cart Blues, Nov. 3, 1923, notated by Lillian; Drop That Sack, Dec. 8, 1923, notated by Louis; I Am in the Barrel, Who Don’t Like It?, Dec. 8, 1923, notated by Louis; Papa What You Are Trying to Do to Me I’ve Been Doing It for Years, Dec. 13, 1923, notated by Louis; Cornet Chop Suey, Jan. 18, 1923, notated by Louis. It is significant that three of the last four pieces, all notated by Louis, were co-composed with people other than Lillian, with the last composed only by him, providing another possible explanation for his appearance in the notated record at this time. The notation of Weather Bird Rag and Dipper Mouth Blues by Lillian is telling, since she was not the co-composer of either one.
23Chevan 1999, 299, has parallel transcriptions of the manuscript and the recorded solo. See also Gushee 1998, 298, on the comparison between lead sheet and recorded performance. In the third and final statement of the chorus, Armstrong does deliberately vary each statement of the core melodic gesture, in traditional jazz variation style—or “ragging the tune,” as they said in early New Orleans.
24Arthur Lange (1926, 207–8) describes a popular-song form that resembles Armstrong’s: “The average popular song consists of two strains, viz. ‘verse’ and ‘chorus.’ Sometimes a third strain is added, commonly known as ‘patter,’ which if musically interesting, may be incorporated in a dance arrangement. Verses vary in length, and are from sixteen to thirty-two measures long, whereas, the average chorus is thirty-two measures long.” Lange also explains (p. 209) that “the patter may take the place of the third chorus”—the third statement of the chorus in a repetition scheme—and (p. 211) that “the third chorus may be properly termed ‘arranger’s chorus,’ because, in this chorus, the arranger may take any liberty, and let his imagination take vent.” There are many references to patter in black newspapers, most of them associated with comedy, dance, and song without being too specific. Exceptions include this from the Afro-American, Nov. 19, 1927, p. 8: “Mike Bow and Willie Toosweet handle the blackface comedy in good style, using an unusually clean brand of patter, nothing unusual however for a Whitman show”; and this from the Pittsburgh Courier, Oct. 12, 1929, p. B3: “With the advent of the ‘talkies’ a new vocabulary has come into the picture studios and new terms are coined daily … some of the more picturesque terms follow: Patter Blender—one who writes the ad-lib talk or patter which gets the actor into his song.”
25I have benefited from the inquiries of John Howland and Jeffrey Magee into this issue. My aim is to go beyond Howland’s conclusion (2009, 51) that “in this era, jazz was a catchall term that simultaneously referenced the syncopated music of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, ‘sweet’ dance bands, symphonic jazz orchestras, and ‘hot’ jazz (black or white). This inclusive definition of jazz was part of a variety entertainment culture that regularly encouraged stylistic confluences.” Certainly it is difficult to tease out the precise cultural-racial logic that shapes various usages, which are more or less vague, more or less general, more or less informed, and more or less articulate. But I am convinced that the deep assumptions of the period included such logic, even when masked by more “inclusive” usages (which are often invoked, especially in nonmusicological literature).
26The close dates also indicate availability of a stock arrangement, an important topic for future research, as demonstrated by Magee (1995). Here are some recordings by white bands and singers that are close in time to those by Henderson: Jones and Whiteman: Tell Me Dreamy Eyes; Benson: My Rose Marie; Benson Orchestra, Bernie Cummins: Words; Benson, Charlie Fry and His Million-Dollar Pier Orchestra, International Dance Orchestra, Al Turk’s Princess Orchestra, Kitty Irvin, Russo and Fiorito’s Oriole Orchestra, Varsity Eight, California Ramblers, Five Birmingham Babies, Arkansas Travelers: Copenhagen; Jones: One of These Days; Lopez: The Meanest Kind of Blues; Wolverines, Tennessee Tooters, Ralph Williams and His Rainbow Orchestra, Frank Quartell and His Little Club Orchestra, Lampe’s Orchestra from the Trianon Ballroom, Dave Harmon and His Orchestra: Prince of Wails; Ray Miller Orchestra, Whiteman, Bailey’s Lucky Seven, Arkansas Travellers, Marion Harris, California Ramblers, Lewis James, Sam Lanin: I’ll See You in My Dreams; Frank Crumit, George Olsen and His Music, Sam Lanin: Why Couldn’t It Be Poor Little Me; Red McKenzie and His Mound City Blues Blowers: Play Me Slow; Whiteman, Ben Selvin, Bailey’s Lucky Seven, Lucille Hegamin and Her Dixie Daisies: Alabamy Bound; California Ramblers, Ben Selvin, Isham Jones, Harry Reeser: Swanee Butterfly; Bernie Cummins: Poplar Street Blues; Anthony Parenti’s Famous Melody Boys: Twelfth Street Blues; Lopez, Lee Morse: Me Neenyah; Jimmy Joy’s Baker Hotel Orchestra: Memphis Bound; Jack Stillman’s Oriole Orchestra: When You Do What You Do; Irving Post, Goofus Five, Ray Miller: I’ll Take Her Back If She Wants to Come Back; Ted Lewis, Carlyle Stevenson’s Bon Ton Orchestra, California Ramblers, Eddie Peabody, Whiteman, Reeser: I Miss My Swiss; Coon Sanders Nighthorse Orchestra, California Ramblers: Alone at Last. Information gathered from Lord 1992, Magee 1995, ProQuest database searches, and www.redhotjazz.com.
27The information that Beiderbecke made the head arrangements comes from Mezz Mezzrow (1946, 79, 81), who was on the scene. Beiderbecke’s participation as arranger and soloist in Copenhagen adds another layer of irony to the story, with Armstrong essentially receiving on the Henderson bandstand a creative accomplishment from the cornetist who would become his most successful white follower.
28Variety noted the sudden “vogue in dance numbers for the hot order” in a November column (Magee 1995, 55). How much Henderson was following the lead of his white competitors is indicated in a Variety review (Oct. 8, 1924, p. 38) of the reopening of the Roseland, featuring Sam Lanin: “Sam Lanin, the Roseland ballroom veteran, has assembled a new dance orchestra that is a revelation to his contemporaries. For dance rhythm it need doff the mythical chapeau to nobody. Lanin for many seasons has enjoyed an enviable reputation as an orchestra leader with a band capable of producing ultra dance music. This year he has outdone himself. Having gone far and wide for his material, the western additions particularly bring to New York that rhythmic tempo so favored around Chicago and so little known around t
hese parts.” Henderson’s “western additions”—Armstrong and Bailey—were clearly designed to outdo Lanin.
29Based on my listening, Armstrong paraphrases the melody of each piece from his year with Henderson, except Don’t Forget You’ll Regret Day by Day, My Dream Man, and Araby. In Why Couldn’t It Be Poor Little Me, however, his references to the tune are very slight. Paraphrase was not a new procedure for him; there are even a few recorded examples from his time with Oliver. See, for example, the transcription and analysis of solos by Armstrong and Oliver for Froggie Moore in Harker 2003, 148.
30My guess is that this “little book” was a collection of his tunes, not tunes by Oliver; as I have argued in Chapter 3, Armstrong was probably the composer of Dipper Mouth Blues, to which Oliver added his famous solo, thereby making it possible for him to claim joint ownership of the evolving “piece.” It seems less likely that Armstrong would have kept a collection of pieces by anyone else, and that he would have offered tunes by others to Redman.
31It was standard practice for the hot soloist to play not first chair but second or third chair; the logic was to divide up the taxing demands of the respective jobs. In several comments (for example, 1966, 33), Armstrong hinted at his dissatisfaction about not being able to play first chair, that is, carry the lead. Drew 1950, 46; Armstrong 1971, 216; Henderson 1950; Hadlock 1965, 17; Gushee 1998, 300.
32Henderson 1950a. An early interview made by Bill Russell with Armstrong (Armstrong WRC 1939) that touches on this topic is worth reporting: “Louis said he started singing with the Henderson band. Used to scat around. I gathered that Henderson didn’t give him much of a chance to sing in public. Louis thought some more and then said it was the Vendome theatre where he really began to sing. Used to sing a lot there. Sort of featured his singing. I said ‘Louis when did you change from your cornet to trumpet?’ He said, that was at the Vendome. The other fellows had those long trumpets and I had that short cornet and it didn’t look right. He laughed at remembering that.” And this from Armstrong LAHM 1970: “As Fletcher were concerned, singing was out the whole time I was in his band. He wouldn’t listen to me sing nothing. All the singing that I did before I joined Fletcher Henderson’s band went down the drain the whole time that I was with him.”
33Albertson 2003, 82. It would be wise to avoid making too much out of Smith’s preference for Joe Smith over Armstrong, and instead approach it in the light of Doc Cheatham’s comment (Cheatham IJS 1976): “We didn’t appreciate so much playing with blues singers… . Not until Joe Smith, when he came throughout the circuit with Ethel Waters or Bessie Smith, one of those—I have to go back to that, then that’s when he played with a plunger you know. He did all of his work with a plunger behind this blues singer. Then the musicians started waking up to see how—how it was a pleasure to play with the blues singers. This was done by Joe Smith. He made it interesting to the musicians to play with them.”
34Lyttelton 1978, 75, including a good analysis of the performance. St. Louis Blues is an example of Armstrong’s collaborative ability at its finest—in addition to the many examples of collective improvisation, where the collaboration is imbedded in the texture. In most of his blues accompaniments from 1924–25, there was simply not enough preparation to reach this level.
35Defender, Nov. 21, 1925, p. 8. Chicago bandleader Sig Meyer said (CJA n.d., box 86) that Peyton was “officious, talked down to people. ‘I’ll put my staff on it right away,’ he would say, but he was the total ‘staff.’” “He was high class and he was high brow,” said Milt Hinton (COHP 1971), “he was bourgeois, a black bourgeois musician.” Hinton also said that Peyton’s musical penmanship was unbelievably neat and looked like printed music (Barker IJS). Further on Peyton, see Kenney 1993, 53–57; Hennessey 1994.
36The Broad Ax, a conservative African-American weekly from Chicago, had an interesting spin on the term “chop suey” in its Sept. 18, 1926, issue (p. 7): “Jazz is a razz of aborted syncopation and instrumentation… . Its origins cannot be definitely described. It has no limitations. It is the ‘chop suey’ of the musical world … it is a blessing that Schumann, Mozart and Mendelssohn are not present to hear it, for they would think, indeed, that they had lived in vain.” The use of “chop suey” here, as a put-down and as mongrel food that is superficially satisfying but ultimately malnourishing, certainly reflects an awareness of Armstrong’s successful piece.
37Darnell Howard (CJA n.d.), who worked at the Vendome with Armstrong, said that the typical schedule was 7:00 p.m. overture, hot number, and movie, then 10:15 overture, hot number, and movie, then on to the cabaret; see also Samuels COHP 1971. Armstrong wrote (1936, 84) that, after he moved from the Dreamland to the Sunset, he had this work schedule: “I surely began to work hard then, starting in at 7 every night at the Vendome, then going to the Sunset and working through to 3 or 4 in the morning, rehearsing, planning new arrangements and all of that.” Movies probably began at the Vendome at 2:00, with the orchestra starting work at 7:00. Leon Washington (COHP 1971) explained that “there were a lot of pit bands [in theaters]. I mean not all of them were large, but some of them had six pieces, seven like that. And some of the theatres had a piano player that would play in the afternoon until the band got there, and they had very good pianists during this particular period.”
38As Dave Peyton wrote (Defender, July 31, 1926, p. 7): “When the orchestra is through with their specialties the house empties considerably. The picture used to be the big card. Now it is the orchestra when it delivers.” See also Altman 2004; Anderson 1988; Koszarski 1990.
39“Our leaders must stop and think what they are doing when they use the phrase ‘symphony orchestra.’ It is wrong to apply it to dance combinations and small theater orchestras.” Dave Peyton, Defender, Nov. 21, 1925, p. 6.
40Armstrong 1966, 33. “Cornet” and “trumpet” continue to be used with almost equal frequency to describe Armstrong’s playing throughout the period covered in this book. Armstrong’s memorization of a solo from Cavalleria rusticana has been associated with New Orleans (Berrett 1992), but I find it highly unlikely that he heard the piece before playing at the Vendome. Certainly, none of the bands he played with up until this point performed it. The idea that New Orleans had a cosmopolitan, southern European musical atmosphere in which opera floated through the air like the scent of magnolia blossoms is highly remote from everything we know about Armstrong’s experiences growing up there.
41Randolph FDC 1973. As Eubie Blake observed (Feather 1976, 73), “In those days Negro musicians weren’t even supposed to read music. We had to pretend we couldn’t read: then they’d marvel at the way we could play shows, thinking we’d learned the parts by ear.” On Armstrong reading music fluently, see also Nicholas HJA 1972; Havens 1992; Wilson 2001, 13; Jackson 2005, 117.
42Tate hired New Orleanian cornetist Fred Keppard in 1923. But it is not clear that Keppard improvised jazz solos—at least, that kind of solo is not represented in the few recordings Tate made in that year. Ralph Brown (COHP 1971) said that in the beginning Tate did not have get-off (or “break-off”) men. Buster Bailey (Russell 1994, 169) noted that Keppard loved to play I pagliacci.
43My references to the magazine Heebie Jeebies include a continuous sequence of publications with three different names: Heebie Jeebies: A Sign of Intelligence, the Light and Heebie Jeebies, and the Light: America’s News Magazine. I have identified some of the scrapbook clippings as Heebie Jeebies based on comparison of fonts and mention of the magazine in the articles. In December 1926, the magazine merged with the Light (Courier, Nov. 27, 1926, p. 11); by April 1928 the name had changed to the Light: America’s News Magazine. The Chicago History Museum holds 18 issues of the three titles; one issue is at Yale’s Beinecke Library; one issue is at the Missouri Historical Society; and a number of issues are held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. My suggestion that the scrapbooks held at the Louis Armstrong House Museum were compiled by Lillian is based on comparison of hand
writing in the margins with lead sheets notated by her in the 1920s. The scrapbooks are extremely fragile. Heebie Jeebies circulated outside of Chicago: references to the magazine pop up in the Norfolk New Journal and Guide, the Baltimore Afro-American, the New York Amsterdam News, and the Pittsburgh Courier, so more copies may still turn up. My thanks to Deborah Gillaspie, archivist at the University of Chicago Jazz Collection, for her help with this search. In July 1926 the magazine was sued by bandleader Sammy Stewart, who claimed that a fictional story entitled “Sammy and His Nude Cult” was a thinly veiled reference to him. Stewart lost the suit, which was covered in major African-American newspapers. In the late 1930s Armstrong wrote for another weekly called the Harlem Tattler; a few copies are now held at the Institute for Jazz Studies, Newark, N.J.
44Armstrong 1971, 212; Brown COHP 1971. The Vendome may well have included some kind of reduced staged version of the opera, for these were very common at the time (Altman 2004, 380); or there may have been a silent-film version. Armstrong said (Millstein HJA) that he knew the story and “just put it in spade life—colored life—where this guy in the story he fooled around with this man’s wife and this cat finally picked up on it and stuck him in the back with a knife or somethin’ like that. I could see if it was two colored cats diggin’, he mightn’t stick him in the back with a knife—he’d scratch him across the behind with a razor.”
45My views on Armstrong and opera differ substantially from those advanced by Joshua Berrett (1992), who makes some valuable contributions but errs, in my opinion, in his use of evidence and in his primary conclusions. I would observe the following: (1) Too much is made out of Armstrong’s only documented connection to opera in New Orleans—his ownership of a few phonograph discs. I find it unlikely that these purchases reflect a “taste that was formed in part by the environment in which he grew up” (Berrett 1992, 219). Instead, note how few African-American recordings were available for purchase in 1917, and, conversely, how prevalent recordings of arias were. (2) Though it is a marginal point for Berrett’s article, it should be noted that the problematic document “Louis Armstrong and the Jewish Family” (published in Armstrong 1999), written near the end of his life after a life-threatening illness, is confused in both chronology and content; this document should always be used cautiously. For example, Armstrong writes there that he received his first cornet from this family in 1907, but there is so much earlier evidence in contradiction to this, from Armstrong and from others, that the statement has no value; certainly he did not play the cornet until he entered the Waif’s Home. (3) It is troubling to read (in Berrett 1992) an account of Armstrong’s early singing—and, indeed, an account of musical models that he “deeply internalized and fluently expressed in his brilliant improvisations”—and see no mention whatsoever to blues singing or church singing, the primary musical experiences that shaped him. (4) As I argue here, the pieces Berrett cites all fit perfectly at the Vendome Theater; to claim that his interest in this music is “fully consistent with what is known about Armstrong’s earliest preferences in music” (emphasis added) is to willfully ignore what was an extensive and thorough immersion in the early preferences of a rich and strong array of African-American vernacular traditions (as argued in Brothers 2006). It is unlikely that he even heard these pieces before the Vendome, as he indicated (Armstrong 1966, 33): “Never [before the Vendome] played any classical music—Cavalleria Rusticana, reading music, turning sheets and all that.” (5) Vocal and instrumental styles associated with African-American church singing and blues are a far more likely source for many of the rubato and filigree techniques Armstrong favors than opera is.
Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism Page 57
