Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians

5. The Great Louis Armstrong

I met Louis Armstrong on his forty-eighth birthday—July 4, 1948. At least, that was the day he celebrated his forty-eighth birthday. As a waif in New Orleans, Armstrong probably did not know his exact date of birth, and Independence Day 1900 was likely an arbitrary choice. Drummer Zutty Singleton, his boyhood friend, told me: “Louis and I were the same age, and I was born in 1898.” In Louis Armstrong, An American Genius (Oxford University Press, 1983), James Lincoln Collier also concluded that July 4, 1900, was an incorrect birth date. Various sources have indicated that Armstrong was born August 4, 1901. But the national holiday has always seemed an appropriate day to commemorate the life of a man who became a national treasure—and so July 4 remains his “official” birthday. On the day I met him, Armstrong had just returned from a successful European tour with his recently formed All-Stars and was appearing at the Bal Tabarin, a questionable venue in southwest Los Angeles. With a borrowed tape recorder, I meekly ventured backstage and asked if I might be allowed to tape an interview for my radio program, which was heard only by those few who had discovered that recent innovation , FM radio. I was ushered into an adjacent room and greeted by a smiling Louis Armstrong, who sat nibbling a piece of birthday cake—stark naked! He was changing clothes between sets and agreed to talk to me as he dressed. After our brief conversation, he invited me to remain and in5 THE GREAT LOUIS ARMSTRONG terview the members of his band. Before the evening was over, I had recorded conversations with Barney Bigard, Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, Arvell Shaw, and Cozy Cole—enough material for six broadcasts. Over the years, scores of books have carefully depicted Armstrong’s illustrious accomplishments. His instrumental and vocal innovations influenced generations of artists, and he remains one of jazz’s most beloved and most respected heroes many years after his death. It was my privilege to know him personally, and I admired him not only as a musician but also as a man. His status as jazz’s most visible personality —its first and greatest celebrity—often overshadowed his accomplishments as a musician. But each phase in his long career is a vitally important part of the music’s history. Louis Armstrong’s Underrated Recordings during the Big-Band Era During his first six years as a professional musician, Louis Armstrong played in small groups—King Oliver’s eight-piece Creole Jazz Band and Armstrong’s own Hot Five and Hot Seven. He spent the last twenty-five years of his career leading a small All-Star band at worldwide concerts and club dates. But for almost two decades between those important periods, Louis Armstrong led big bands. This segment of Armstrong’s career, approximately 40 percent of his professional life, has been overlooked or discounted by most jazz critics. Many thought he sold out to commercial interests during this period, abandoning his jazz roots to become an entertainer. These same detractors felt Armstrong played only a minor role in the swing era of the late ’30s and early ’40s. Such opinions ignore the fact that swing came as a direct outgrowth of Armstrong’s musical innovations in the ’20s and early ’30s. They also fail to recognize the quality and significance of the trumpeter’s big-band work. A careful reassessment of Armstrong’s recordings reveal that his influence on the music scene—and on American culture as a whole—expanded greatly during those twenty productive years. From 1928 through 1947, the trumpeter fronted various orchestras bearing his name. However, he never was the true business leader of those groups. Armstrong disliked the administrative duties and mundane responsibilities that leadership required. Leaving those chores to Louis Armstrong’s Underrated Recordings during the Big-Band Era 219 Chick Webb, Les Hite, Luis Russell, and others, he was free to let his adventurous musical instincts roam. The result: a succession of recorded masterpieces that will always be studied and admired. Incredibly, most of those recordings were made after or in the midst of an exhausting road trip. Armstrong and his sidemen would rush into a studio in New York or Chicago and record unfamiliar tunes, often using only sketchy lead sheets as “arrangements” for mediocre numbers selected by the record companies. Under these deplorable conditions...