Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

by Thomas Brothers

  46There is also a report of Armstrong playing this tune at the Sunset Café, where he started working in spring 1926, having been lured from the Dreamland. Johnny St. Cyr explained (St. Cyr HJA 1958) that bands at different venues on the South Side often played the same repertory at the same time, since they wanted to keep up with current arrangements, as they were published. This made it easy for musicians to move in and out of bands, St. Cyr observed.

  47There are many reasons to draw out these issues, and two stand out. First, many writers who accept the African origins of jazz do so with little or no reference to specific musical features that are central to that connection. Second, it is still possible for a major scholarly press to publish a book in which the African origins of jazz are casually (and somewhat covertly) dismissed: see Sudhalter 1999, p. 749, n. 8.

  48A word about racially defined audiences. As already discussed, the Dreamland Café was characterized by the Defender as a “place of our own”; Milt Hinton (IJS 1976) said that the Vendome Theater was “all black”; and race records certainly targeted black markets. Yet many actors and musicians visited the Dreamland, and we know that Jack Teagarden was one white who purchased Armstrong’s recordings. It is important not to be misled about the predominant ethnic makeup of a venue based on an exception, and this is especially true of white exceptions, for two reasons: first, whites, unlike blacks, could go anywhere they wanted to go and thereby instantly turn an all-black venue into a mixed one; second, whites, and especially white musicians, are exceptionally well represented in oral histories, giving a distorted picture.

  49Armstong’s two most compelling solos through May 1927, Big Butter and Egg Man from the West and Potato Head Blues, each clock around 192 beats per minute; compare that with the frantic performances with Erskine Tate of Static Strut and Stomp Off Let’s Go from May 1926, both around 240. Oriental Strut moves at 188 and Muskrat Ramble at 182.

  50The information that Armstrong composed the lyrics for Heebie Jeebies comes from St. Cyr (Anderson 2007, 240). He did not get co-composer credit on the Hot Five discs, but that kind of omission was not uncommon. The same thing happened with Don’t Forget to Mess Around, which is credited on the discs to Barbarin; co-composer credit to Armstrong is given on the copyright deposit now held at the Library of Congress (Chevan 1997, 474). In any event, typical contractual arrangements for race recordings generally did not grant royalties directly; rather, the composer sold rights to the company. Thus, Armstrong’s quip about Atkins making a lot of dough did not hold for the sale of 40,000 copies of the Hot Five recording; the yield came with sheet music and recordings by others.

  51According to listings for these recordings at www.redhotjazz.com, the record labels note the “vocal chorus by Louis Armstrong” in all six performances from June in which he sings.

  52My dating of Venable’s revue Jazzmania to July 1926 is based on the following conflation of datable appearances in Chicago of performers who were featured in it. The list of performers in Jazzmania is documented in two undated clippings (transcribed below from Scrapbook 83, LAHM) from Heebie Jeebies; the datable appearances (noted in brackets) were drawn from newspapers and other scrapbook clippings. Clipping 1: “Sunset. Percy Vanable’s [sic] latest production, ‘Jazzmania,’ which opened Thursday night at the Sunset Café, has been declared the fastest and most colorful show ever staged at this popular night club. The show is one riot of singing and dancing from the beautiful and impressive opening to the finale, in which Luis [sic; this is one of the earliest references to the nickname “Louie,” which would stay with him for the rest of his life] Armstrong and Kid Lips, supported by the entire cast, features the “Heebie Jeebies” song. The show is built around a cast of stars including Brown and McGraw [July 10, July 26], Mae Alix [July 3, Aug. 7], Margaret Simms, Slick White [July 24], Kid Lips, Ralph Delaney, Ted McDonald [Aug. 7] and Chick Johnson [Aug. 14].” Clipping 2: “Sunset ‘Jazzmania.’ Percy Venable’s production now being featured at the Sunset, drew the largest crowd of the season last Saturday night. The proverbial sign ‘Standing Room Only’ might well have adorned the walls of the lobby as Mae Alix and Margaret Simms put over their song and dance numbers, Brown and McGraw executed their difficult steps and Luis [sic] Armstrong and Carol [sic] Dickerson’s orchestra featured the ‘Heebie Jeebies.’”

  53As Junius B. Wood (Wood 1916, 25) wrote in 1916, “Among the white patrons [of the Panama Café, at 35th and State] most conspicuous are the ‘slummers,’ largely of the class who kiss on the corner while waiting for street cars and whose terms of endearment would be considered cause for justifiable murder in the far west. Equally numerous but less noisy are the white men who strike up acquaintance with colored girls living in neighboring ‘buffet’ flats. There are also white women who associate with colored men. The waiters do a profitable brokerage business in arranging meetings.”

  54The following quotations give a good sense why the depth of the primitivist view should not be underestimated. The first is from Dr. Frank Damrosch, director of the Institute of Musical Art in New York City (now the Juilliard School of Music), as published in Etude magazine in August 1924 (reprinted in Walser 1999, 44): “If jazz originated in the dance rhythms of the negro, it was at least interesting as the self-expression of a primitive race. When jazz was adopted by the ‘highly civilized’ white race, it tended to degenerate it towards primitivity. When a savage distorts his features and paints his face so as to produce startling effects, we smile at his childishness; but when a civilized man imitates him, not as a joke but in all seriousness, we turn away in disgust.” The second quote is from composer Arthur Foote in the same issue (reprinted in Walser 1999, 45): “[It is odd that] after centuries of musical development we should be returning to the primitive.”

  55Anderson (2007, 83–85) provides good coverage of the recordings and copyright. My hunch is that the lead sheet (facsimile in Anderson, p. 227) was notated by Barbarin (it is not in Armstrong’s hand), which suggests that Barbarin composed the music, Armstrong the words. Barbarin’s piece was recorded as an instrumental number in February 1926 by Austin and His Musical Ambassadors, and then as a vocal by the Hot Five in June, with Armstrong’s lyrics; the lead sheet was received in Washington, D.C., on March 10. Valaida Snow introduced the dance—and perhaps the song—to the Sunset; she began a run there in May (Defender, Aug. 28, 1926, p. 7; Courier, May 22, 1926, p. 10). Alberta Hunter recorded the song in September 1926. Cross-references to other dances were not unusual: see Banes and Szwed 2002, where the lyrics of Perry Bradford’s The Original Black Bottom Dance (1919) are transcribed on p. 178, with Bradford referencing the Mess Around, the Black Bottom, and the Charleston.

  56Defender, Aug. 28, 1926, p. 7. Valaida Snow’s appearance at the Sunset in May 1926 and her connections to the Mess Around may have been the start of an interesting relationship with Armstrong. She was one of the more versatile women performers on the cabaret circuit. Hines said (Dance 1977, 63) that she “could sing, dance and produce a show. She could play trumpet, violin and piano… . Louis Armstrong had a fit when he saw her. ‘Boy I never saw anything that great,’ he told me.” Armstrong welcomed her into the Sunset Orchestra to sit next to him and play second trumpet (Miller 2007, 42). Eventually she became an Armstrong imitator, calling herself “Little Louis” in England in 1934. Cross-gendered imitations like this were not unusual; for example, one Mae Fanning “stopped the show” at the Sunset in January 1927 with an act imitating Johnny Hudgins (Light, Jan. 8, 1927, p. 18).

  57In August, Charles Cooke and Johnny St. Cyr composed their own song (Cooke writing the music and St. Cyr the words) to go with the dance; they called it Messin’ Around. The Defender reported (Aug. 28, 1926, p. 7) that this tune was “written to the slow, draggy ‘Messin’ Around’ rhythm” and that recordings were being planned by both Cooke and King Oliver. The song by Cooke and St. Cyr was also featured at the Vendome in August (Scrapbook 83, LAHM). It is interesting that Armstrong and St. Cyr wrote lyrics for these songs, which
both reference New Orleans as the source of the dance.

  58Quotation from Taylor 1987, 74. Alberta Hunter claimed to be the originator of the Black Bottom, and, according to Heebie Jeebies (Sept. 4, 1926, p. 16), she tried to copyright the dance in order to “protect ‘her interests’ through the law to restrain the promiscuous use of her dance invention. Miss Hunter is said to have had the step, hop, shake, or whatever it is, copyrighted.” Heebie also reported that the Chicago Daily News planned on publishing lessons for the Black Bottom, and that the Daily News Service would be showing the dance at movie theaters. On crouching: Brothers 2006, 143–44; Thompson 1983, 125.

  59Quantitative results from database searching of major newspapers (Atlanta Constitution, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Daily Tribune, New York Times) can be revealing. For the period 1920 through 1925 the words “black bottom” turn up in 16 different advertisements or articles; the number for 1926 through 1927 leaps to 605.

  60Courier, March 12, 1927, p. 2; Afro-American, March 19, 1927, p. 9. The Sunset recovered, but early 1927 brought strife for two people close to Armstrong. In March, Hines sued his wife, Laura Hines, for divorce, claiming desertion. According to the Courier, they had married in Pittsburgh in April 1924. The article suggests that Hines’s suit was prompted by alimony claims made by Laura. Joe Glaser, who had assumed ownership of the Sunset from his mother and would later become Armstrong’s manager and close friend for many years, also experienced legal difficulties. In February he was arrested (Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 26, 1927, p. 3) for “attacking” a fourteen-year-old girl.

  61Harker 2008, 93. Tap dancer Honi Coles (quoted in Dixon 2000, 104) said that black dancers “used to try and load their steps up to the point that they couldn’t be stolen.” In other words, density of activity was part of the period’s emphasis on short bursts of exciting entertainment, but it also became a defensive move, designed to prevent theft.

  62Cheatham IJS 1976; Dance 1977, 48. The format became part of Armstrong’s expanding array of entertainment niches. On Halloween night 1926 he and Brown and McGraw were scheduled to perform Heebie Jeebies in exactly the same way—they must have done so already at the Sunset—but the swarming crowd filled up the dance platform, leaving no room for the dancing duo (Scrapbook 83, LAHM). Rex Stewart remembered him later accompanying the dance team Dave and Tressie, and there is mention of the chorines doing taps to his solo breaks in a finale for a 1927 revue that Venable named Jackass Blues (CJA Steiner Collection, box 83, folder “Darnell Howard”; Dance 1977, 48; Harker 2007, n. 141).

  63In a high-handed stroke of decontextualizing new criticism, the vocal duet was expunged from Big Butter in the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, leaving a truncated and purely (with emphasis on pure) instrumental piece; the instrumental solo was the “classic” part of the performance, in other words. I can remember how shocked I was when I eventually heard the complete recording, an experience that must have been shared by many for whom this otherwise wonderful collection provided an initial introduction to jazz history.

  64The practice was surely standard. Charles McConnell (CJA): “As soon as [saxophonist Frankie] Trumbauer had ‘set’ an improvisation (often during rehearsal) he continued to use the same solo, note for note.” For further discussion of jazz solos in the 1920s as composed rather than improvised, see Tucker 1991, 246 and 253; Magee 1992, 326–31; Harker 1999, 51. Not surprisingly, the same technique worked in other areas of entertainment. As actor Jimmy Cagney explained (Snyder 1989, 108), “Vaudevillians by persistent trial and error and unremitting hard work found out how to please … they spent years perfecting those acts so that they knew their jobs and they did their jobs without slighting either their talent or their audience.” Mary Cass Canfield discussed (Snyder 1989, 104), in an article from 1922, “the comedian’s carefully crafted image of spontaneity.” In this regard, the Sunset Café and the Vendome Theater did not share much with the paid jam sessions of the 1940s, where expectations were quite different. Douglas (1995, 429) discusses the views of Gilbert Seldes, who may have been the white writer of the period most sympathetic to African-American jazz: “Black musicians might be ‘geniuses’ but they were ‘wayward, instinctive and primitive’ ones; nothing they did could count for much as long as they lacked, as he thought they did, ‘mind,’ the ‘fundamental brainwork’ needed ‘to write out precisely what … [they] want us to hear.’”

  65The two phrases are of different lengths and they work differently in the overall form of each solo. The phrase from Chimes Blues is the first four measures of a 12-bar blues chorus, while that from Big Butter and Egg Man is the first eight-bar phrase of a 32-bar chorus. That accounts for a fundamental difference in phrase construction: the phrase from Chimes Blues ends with a transitional gesture that leads into the next four-bar blues phrase, while the phrase from Big Butter and Egg Man brings closure. Holding a riff like this over chord changes was standard practice in the blues; for example, consider the famous Royal Garden Blues, or countless riff-based choruses from the swing era. The first phrase of Armstrong’s solo for Muskrat Ramble, recorded in February 1926, shows a similar conception (transcription in Anderson 2007, 76).

  66See Brothers 1994 for further discussion. As Lawrence Gushee points out (1998, 315): “Almost from the beginning, Armstrong had used such pitches [sixth, major seventh, and ninth] in a manner that seemed entirely natural, in distinction to such ‘advanced’ trumpeters as Beiderbecke and Nichols.”

  67The report from the Light, Feb. 26, 1927, is a boxed feature on p. 22 entitled “Rating King Oliver.” It runs: “While listening in over Station WEDC we heard Joe Oliver’s Dixie Syncopators broadcasting between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., from the Plantation Café. We are rating ’em as we heard ’em.” The list then begins:

  Jos. Oliver, cornetist … 25

  Thomas Gray, cornetist … 29

  Ed. Ory, trombone … 30

  Junie Cobb, banjo … 30

  Luis Russell, piano … 68

  Darnell Howard, saxophone … 85

  Rudy Jackson, saxophone … 86

  Bonnie [sic] Bigard, saxophone … 89

  Bert Cobb, bass … 92

  Paul Barbarin, drummer … 98

  Walter Burton, announcer … 100

  If this seems like an indirect put-down of Oliver today, it probably was not so subtle at the time. Preston Jackson (2005, 85–86) discusses Oliver’s decline around this time: “Things had begun to break bad for Joe Oliver. The Plantation closed and he was booked on the road and we heard he was coming to the Wisconsin Roof (early April 1927)… . I liked Joe Oliver and began to feel sorry for him that his band was just not together and his teeth were beginning to bother him too but we felt our jobs were at stake and so we continued to pour it on… . It was sad to see how much he was struggling.”

  68Scrapbook 83, LAHM. Another clipping from Scrapbook 83 reports that Armstrong was the “owner” of the “aggregation,” Hines the conductor, with Mrs. Armstrong “officiating at piano.” Armstrong may have turned away from conducting after a scathing review from Dave Peyton (Defender, March 19, 1927, p. 6). Hines once came off the stage at another venue and found that his smiling muscles had frozen into place; “I had gone too far,” he explained (Dance 1977, 86–88).

  69Alligator Crawl, on the other hand, is much less polished and crafted, suggesting that it was created on the day of the recording. In many of these solos from May 1927, even those that are less polished, we can hear Armstrong working on gestures, figures, phrase patterns, and designs that surface in his more famous solos. It is hardly surprising that his stylistic language is consistent. The difference in quality has to do with design and confidence, both factors indicating sustained familiarity rather than the limitations of hasty improvisation.

  70Amsterdam News, July 7, 1926. Trumpeter Punch Miller (Miller IJS 1960) from New Orleans was asked about the history of stop time and explained that musicians took the practice from their accompaniments for tap dancers. “Every tap dancer that came up wan
ted Sweet Sue in stop time,” Miller remembered. He also spoke about a musician named Georgie Boyd who wrote a piece that included a stop-time chorus for clarinet solo. On the connection of stop-time dance to stop-time jazz solos, see also Harker 1999, 48–49. Harker (Harker 2008) also relates Potato Head Blues to stop-time dancing; my discussion is indebted to his work, though his approach to the analogy is more literal and more focused on the dancers Brown and McGraw. Harker quotes (2008, 111, n. 150) dance historian Heather Rees: “The spaces in the music [during stop time] are ideal opportunities for ‘busy’ tap sequences, rather like a musician’s solo in jazz improvisation sessions”; and also Anita Feldman: “throughout the history of tap, dancers have competed for the ‘fastest feet.’ The audience waits for the moment when Stoptime comes in the music, and the tap dancer dazzles us with remarkable speed.”