Th is 1927 Hot Five recording is an illuminating example of the way Arm-strong revolutionized the New Orleans tradition. Th e thirty-two-bar chorus is based on the chords of the main strain of “Tiger Rag,” a New Orleans jazz tune, popularized in 1918 by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, though no one knows who wrote it. An unusual aspect of this performance is the ad-dition of a guest, the pioneer guitarist Lonnie Johnson. Johnson, a native of New Orleans, apprenticed on riverboats and went on to enjoy two dramati-cally diff erent careers: as one of the fi rst jazz guitar soloists in the 1920s and as a popular blues singer-guitarist of the 1940s and after. His very presence reminds us that long after New Orleans generated jazz, the city also provided sustenance for rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
Th e banjoist in the Hot Five, Johnny St. Cyr, doesn’t play on “Hotter Th an Th at,” so that the dialogue between Armstrong and Johnson is emphasized.
Armstrong plays the fi rst chorus, which is entirely improvised: there is no written theme to set up the improvisations, only a harmonic underpinning borrowed from “Tiger Rag.” Th e third chorus features one of his most memo-rable scat-singing vocals. Listen to what follows the mid-chorus break, where Armstrong sings counterrhythms of enormous complexity. Try counting four beats to a measure here, and you may fi nd yourself losing your moorings, be-cause his phrases are in opposition to the ground beat—a technique used by later musicians, such as Miles Davis.
The most infl uential small band in jazz history, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, existed only to make records: Armstrong, trumpet; Johnny St. Cyr, banjo;
Johnny Dodds, clarinet and saxophone; Kid Ory, trombone;
Lil Hardin Armstrong, piano.
Chicago, 1926.
FRANK DRIGGS COLLECTION
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146 ■ CHAPTER 6 LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND THE FIRST GREAT SOLOISTS
LISTENING GUIDE
hotter than that
LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND HIS HOT FIVE
Louis Armstrong, trumpet; Kid Ory, trombone; Johnny Dodds, clarinet; Lil Hardin Armstrong, piano; Lonnie Johnson, guitar
■ Label: OKeh 8535; Louis Armstrong: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Sony/Legacy 57175)
■ Date: 1927
■ Style: New Orleans Jazz
■ Form: 32-bar popular song (A B A C)
What to listen for:
■ polyphonic collective improvisation vs. homo-phonic solos
■ Armstrong’s soloing and scat-singing
■ his intense improvised polyrhythms
■ dialogue between voice and guitar
INTRODUCTION
0:00 The band begins with collective improvisation, with Armstrong’s trumpet clearly in front. The remaining instruments provide support: the trombone plays simple single-note fi gures, while the clarinet is distantly in the background. The harmo-nies are those of the last eight bars of the chorus.
CHORUS 1
0:09 A Armstrong begins his improvisation. Many of his notes are ghosted—played so lightly that they’re almost inaudible.
0:18 B
0:25 Trumpet break.
0:27 A Coming out of the break, Armstrong places accents on the backbeat, before fi nish-ing with a quick triplet fi gure.
0:36 C Armstrong emphasizes a high note with a shake—an extra vibrato at the end.
0:43 During a two-measure break, Dodds begins his clarinet solo.
CHORUS 2
0:45 A Dodds plays his solo in the clarinet’s upper register. Beneath him, Hardin plays rhythmic piano fi lls.
0:54 B
1:02 Dodds’s clarinet break ends on a blue note.
1:03 A 1:12 C
1:19 A scat-singing break introduces the next solo, by Armstrong.
CHORUS 3
1:21 A Armstrong begins his solo by singing on-the-beat quarter notes, backed by the guitar’s bluesy improvised lines. The timbre of his voice is rough but pleasant.
1:30 B As his melodic ideas take fl ight, he stretches the beat in unpredictable ways.
1:36 Scat-singing break.
1:39 A Armstrong ingeniously uses melody, rhythm, and scat syllables to create a strong sense of polyrhythm.
1:47 C INTERLUDE
1:55 In a loose extension of the previous chorus, Armstrong exchanges intimate, bluesy moans with Johnson’s guitar.
2:13 Hardin on piano calls the band together with four bars of octaves.
1.21
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EARL HINES ■ 147
■ ENTER EARL HINES (1903–1983)
In 1926, Armstrong was hired as featured soloist with the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, at the Sunset Café in Chicago. For the fi rst time, his name was up in lights, as “the world’s greatest trumpet player.” Young white musicians, in-cluding Bing Crosby, cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, and clarinetist Benny Good-man, fl ocked to hear him. Th roughout that year and the next, Armstrong produced such benchmark recordings as “Potato Head Blues,” “Wild Man Blues,” “Willie the Weeper” (famous for its climax
pro-pelled by the drums of Baby Dodds), and “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue.” But something just as special was also developing at the Sunset. While on tour earlier, Dick-erson had recruited a young pianist from Pittsburgh, Earl Hines, an utterly original stylist who subverted the techniques on which other jazz pianists relied.
Hines was content neither to play on-the-beat back-ground chords, in the manner of Lil Armstrong, nor to confi ne himself to the propulsive rhythms of stride or boogie-woogie (a Midwestern phenomenon in which the pianist’s left hand plays eight beats to every bar; see Chapter 8). He preferred to combine those approaches, with the result that his idiosyncratic style seemed to play
games with the rhythm. Above all, he was determined to use the piano much as Armstrong used the trumpet, as a solo instrument improvising single-note melodies. To make them audible, he developed an ability to improvise in oc-taves (instead of hitting an A, he hit two As an octave apart) and tremolos (the speedy alternation of two or more notes, creating a pianistic version of the brass man’s vibrato).
Hines and Armstrong hit it off immediately. As Hines recalled, “I was amazed to fi nd a trumpeter like Louis who was playing everything that I was trying to do on the piano. So, there were the two of us expressing the same spirit.” For the 1928 Hot Five recordings, Armstrong changed the personnel to employ the younger musicians he worked with in Dickerson’s band at the Sunset Café and New York’s Savoy Ballroom. (Th e Savoy posters
CHORUS 4
2:17 A Ory takes a sharply accented trombone solo, which echoes the beginning of Arm-strong’s scat solo.
2:26 B
2:33 Trumpet break: Armstrong interrupts Ory’s solo with a rocket-like string of quick notes, ending with a high B.
2:35 A Collective improvisation, with Armstrong hitting his high note again and again in a short, syncopated riff.
2:43 C The last eight bars are in stop-time: Armstrong generates tension by playing un-predictable short lines.
CODA
2:50 Johnson and Armstrong exchange brief solos.
2:56 Johnson’s line ends on a dissonant diminished-seventh chord, which leaves the harmony suspended.
Earl Hines earned the nick-name Fatha for the originality of his piano style, making him an ideal partner for Armstrong.
Chicago, 1926.
FRANK DRIGGS COLLECTION
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148 ■ CHAPTER 6 LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND THE FIRST GREAT SOLOISTS
advertised: “Special attraction. The great Louis Armstrong in per-son!” To capitalize on his success in New York, many of the 1928 recordings were released as Louis Armstrong and His Savoy Ballroom Five.) On occa-sion, he recruited guests—notably Fletcher Henderson’s arranger and saxo-phonist, Don Redman.
Th e new recordings, regarded as an advance on their sensational predeces-sors, included the seminal “West End Blues,” “Basin Street Blues,” “St. James Infi rmary,” and “Tight Like Th at.” With these records, the polyphonic New Orleans ensemble all but disappeared, replaced by the mixture of solos and homophonic section work that continues to dominate jazz today. Th e best ex-ample of the interplay between Armstrong and Hines came about at the end of one of the sessions, when the ensemble had fi nished for the day. Th e two men improvised a duet on an old Armstrong rag they had played in concert,