Hot Fives and Sevens Vol. 3 (1928)

Liner notes:

Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines first met as members of Erskine Tate's Little Symphony orchestra at the Vendome Theatre, Chicago. The following year, while working for the band leader Carroll Dickerson, both musicians also were to be heard at the Windy City's Sunset Cafe, where, at the insistence of the owner, Joe Glaser (later to become Armstrong's manager) the trumpeter was fronting a band - drawn from Dickerson's personnel - known as Louis Armstrong and his Stompers, of which Hines was pianist and musical director.

At the time of the opening tracks on this compilation, Armstrong, Singleton and Hines were to be heard at Chicago's Savoy Ballroom with Dickerson; the pianist also doubled in a small group led by the New Orleans born clarinet virtuoso, Jimmie Noone, both at the Apex Club and on record.

The Armstrong/Hines studio partnership began in April 1927 on a Vocation date under Johnny Dodds' leadership unlike the trumpeter, the clarinettist was not contracted to Okeh. The following month Louis took his Sunset Cafe Stompers into the Okeh Studio, while just one day prior to the June 1928 titles that open this set, Armstrong and Hines joined forces with banjoist Mancey Carr, from Carroll Dickerson's orchestra and the clarinettist, Jimmie Noone to add the musical substance to the gloriously mediocre singing of a lady named Lillie Delk Christian.

Armstrong and Hines, then, were versed thoroughly in each other's styles. The inclusion of trombonist Fred Robinson, reed man Jimmy Strong, Mancey Carr and Zutty Singleton, colleagues from the Dickerson orchestra, indicate that this small group was a feature of live performances. Indeed the polished, evidently well-rehearsed routines and the ensemble voicings, with use of dynamics etc., would appear to confirm it.

The plays-on-words invited by the up tempo opener, Fireworks apply up to a point: there are no flashy pyrotechnics merely intended to dazzle, but there is an effervescent lightness throughout and brilliance in the solos of the main protagonists. The sympathetic interplay between the frontline horns, supported by the tight, unobtrusive rhythm is characteristic of the outfit's cohesive sound. Both Robinson and Strong, here and throughout, adaptable, supportive ensemble players, also contribute commendable solos, without attempting to upstage the stars. Earl Hines' solo, is a good illustration of his innovatory style, and rhythmic flexibility. In his trumpet solo – he had switched from cornet since the final Hot Five date of December 1927 – Louis exudes authorative swing, his beautifully integrated phrases dance over the stop chords with effortless grace. He caps this infectious performance with a thoughtful cadenza. Incidentally, special pressings, retitled Skyrocket were to be heard as intermission music in several cinemas and theatres by their lucky patrons. Earl Hines already had recorded his own number, My Monday Date (with Rosetta his contribution to the standard jazz repertoire) in a different, though equally memorable, version with Jimmie Noone. The highspots are Hines' break, then his supportive accompaniment to Armstrong's insouiant, rhythmic reading of the slight lyric besides the sheer zest of his debonair muted trumpet chorus.

It is evident Earl Hines was one of the few jazz soloists of any style or period equipped to meet Louis on equal terms without sounding either combative or threatened. (In both Louis' earlier and later studio encounters with Sidney Bechet, plus his recordings with the Empress of The Blues, Bessie Smith, there is a keen, needlematch edge) Skip The Gutter features an eloquent illustration of the affinity between Armstrong and Hines in a duologue where each inspires the other to new heights of lyrical invention. Earl Hines claimed his famed "trumpet style", that is phrasing in octaves as a trumpeter would do, was inspired by Joe Smith, the cornettist, whose melodic tones graced many Fletcher Henderson and Bessie Smith recordings. Hines added, "Now, of course, you couldn't be around Louis as much as I was without catching some of his spirit and drive." Yet it was Hines' harmonic inventiveness and acute rhythmic sense too that made his playing so compatible with Armstrong's. His solo on Knees Drop exemplifies the way in which Hines's work, along with that of such stride pianists as James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, was enriching and expanding the jazz piano vocabulary away from ragtime/blues patterns.

The earlier Hot Five and Seven recordings had charted Louis Armstrong's development of jazz as a soloist's medium, by virtue of the astonishing fluency of his ideas, besides the total technical command that enhanced it. The Hot Five and Seven repertoire may have been restricted to fundamental sequences, usually stomps, vaudeville songs and blues, yet Louis' musical experiences outside the studio between 1925/27 had served to broaden his horizons, thus enriching both the form and the content of his recorded solos. With Erskine Tate's Little Symphony orchestra for instance, Louis was featured on such diversities as Noel Coward's Poor Little Rich Girl and Cavalleria Rusticana – thereafter the latter would remain as his "warm up" piece before a performance.

Thus having opened the floodgates to the possibilities of improvisation for the soloist, these sides found Louis consolidating his past achievements, while further exploring his capabilities. One of his many assets was Louis' refusal to dominate ensemble work with fussy brash demonstrations of technique. His mentor, King Joe Oliver once told him: "If a cat can swing a lead and play a melody, that's what counts." Louis never ignored the advice, although as Leonard Feather once commented what might constitute a straight lead from Armstrong would sound alike an exquisite jazz solo by the standards of others."

A supreme confidence and an awareness of his gifts precluded Louis' either needing or wanting to cram all his prowess into every bar of each solo. Such assurance allowed him to succinctly select, with a masterful sense of timing, the exact ideas to add spontaneity, those which also contributed to the construction of a lucid solo, without a superfluous note. The sprightly Knees Drop and Sugar Foot Strut, (both with Singleton's spry cymbal work) Don't Jive Me, taken at medium tempo plus the languid Two Deuces, each contain stunningly original Armstrong creations of melodic invention, expressive power, tonal finesse and rhythmic subtlety. The last named, with its swift exhilarating tempo switch, also contains Carr's delicately melodic banjo solo, a description not readily associated with that instrument.


The Carroll Dickerson Savoyagers' items not only add insight to Louis' regular musical environment outside the studio but are comparative rarities too. Exclusively made for the Argentinian Odeon label and not issued in the United States in 78 form, these items made their microgroove debut some fifty years later on an Armstrong compilation issued in Britain. The up tempo Stomp Convariagones – which has been translated loosely as Symphonic Raps, although Tiger Rag would seem nearer – is lifted out of the routine dance music category by dint of the scoring, with plenty of dissonance and textured contrasts. The articulate Hines' solo, with some dramatic orchestral interjections, previews later recordings with his own outfit, suggesting that the pianist also was responsible for the arrangement. Louis' magnificent solo, mainly over stop chords, bristles with a vitality that definitely inspires the spirited ensemble finale. Poor Jimmy Strong has the unenviable task of following the breathtaking Armstrong tour-de-force opening chorus on Blues Convariagones (or Savoyager's Stomp, aka Muskrat Ramble). Small wonder Strong sounds a trifle overwhelmed in his rather halting tenor solo. The elegant, pensive Hines feature is built around shifting rhythm emphasis and suspended time. Armstrong's thrilling lead predominates in the final chorus, after which the gentle, period tag sounds quaint.

The serene swing of Squeeze Me, with Earl Hines' lyrical introduction has the Armstrong performance as its centre piece. The delicate celeste playing from Hines, with the subdued harmonies of Robinson and Strong set the scene for two unimpeachable Armstrong trumpet features on Basin Street. The first an understated example of his expressive blues playing, then after his wordless vocal (it would be a further three years before Jack Teagarden and Glenn Miller appended a verse and a lyric to Spenser Williams melody) a virtuoso Armstrong showcase. By contrast, Louis' solo on the atmospheric No Papa No is a copybook example of simple, forthright blues playing.

There had been several previous recordings of West End Blues - including a charmingly introspective one from its composer King Oliver – but this version justifiably has eclipsed them all. The superlatives lavished upon this extraordinary testimony to Louis Armstrong's technical resources, musical artistry and communicative powers, have long been exhausted over the past sixty three years. Yet no description really could capture the aura, from the resplendent fanfare introduction, which – when transcribed has flummoxed even the most technically accomplished, to Zutty's final cymbal tap. Along the way we hear Robinson's doleful trombone preface to Louis' wordless, bittersweet lullaby lament, so fittingly underlined by Strong's clarinet. Hines reflective solo is the perfect interlude before the trumpet spectacular.

Earl Hines has related that he and Louis would love to interchange ideas during the course of a performance. This reached its peak in their duet version ofWeather Bird, a number Louis had recorded as Weatherbird Rag with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1923. Indeed, the King Oliver/Jelly Roll Morton versions of King Porter Stomp and Tom Cat Blues made for the obscure Autograph label in 1924 might have inspired this trumpet/piano duologue. The electricity between Armstrong and Hines is established at the start; the tension mounts with each chorus as ideas flow back and forth with astonishing rhythmical elasticity. The solo order of Muggles indicates Armstrong's increasing awareness of his pivotol role on these sides, besides his showman's sense of presentation. Hines opens with a sensuously slow, blues tinged chorus. Robinson, then Strong perform pleasant solos, but thus far Louis has not been heard. His unassuming entry, a capella, in double time, lifts the tempo and the mood. Captured in the "holy roller" vein of King Oliver, Louis "signifies" on his horn as never before or since. Dramatically reverting to a slower pace, the trumpeter holds us in thrall: a mesmeric, preaching blues singer in a soul stirring, heartfelt solo.

The addition of Don Redman to the Savoy Ballroom Five not only meant the inclusion of his stylish alto sound but also one of the most influential arranging talents in big band jazz. In fact, when both men were members of Fletcher Henderson's orchestra in 1924/25, it was Louis Armstrong's unfettered, rhythmically charged trumpet outings that began to inspire Redman's scores. Redman's arrangements here for his own numbers, No-One Else But You and Heah Me Talking' lend a fulsome depth, creating the impression of a larger unit. Louis' solo work here seems like a barometer of his progress and its influence upon the subsequent nature of jazz, since his previous association with Redman in the Henderson period. Beau Koo Jack is a welcome reminder of its composer and arranger Alex Hill, a short-lived, versatile pianist/songwriter/orchestrator, largely neglected today, despite his co-authorship of I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby, with Fats Waller. His ambitious score, showcases an inspired Hines solo and a Louis feature which, at points, anticipates his work on the 1938 recording of Wolverine Blues, on which sequence the number is based.

Save It Pretty Mama, another Redman composition, contains a glimpse of Dan's pithy, pert alto playing and a sensitive Hines solo. Louis' performance here, though, in terms of material and interpretation, sets the precedent for the next phase of his career. His tender, unsentimental singing reveals a new melodic sensibility in his handling of a lyric, unlike his impressionistic scat singing and far removed from his rather strident harshness on the Hot Five's You Made Me Love You two years earlier. In his muted solo too there is an intimate sensitivity as he adheres to the pretty melody.

Despite the hokum patter that prefaces and concludes Tight Like This – a nod to the enormous popularity of Georgia Tom's It's Tight Like That – there is a gorgeous Hines solo, while against an hypnotic rift Louis' sublime playing attains new heights of majesty.

A fitting note of splendour with which to conclude the Hines/Armstrong studio partnership, a fruitful association that would be resumed twenty years later in the All Stars. Of these historic dates Earl Hines recalled, " ... we were getting kicks without thinking about making our reputation by records. But I think the public realised we were playing from the heart."

In early March 1929, Louis had travelled to New York to rejoin his former boss, Fletcher Henderson in the orchestra for the show, Great Day. The reunion did not work out and Louis left during rehearsal. Discovering the trumpeter was in town, the guitarist Eddie Condon, without whose enterprising initiative a lot of early jazz might well have gone unrecorded, hastily organised a recording session and selected the musicians for the final item, Knockin' A Jug.

The drummer, Kaiser Marshall recalled, "We took a gallon jug of whisky with us." The refreshment inspired the title, for when asked for the name of the twelve bar blues Louis remarked, "We sure knocked that jug. You can call it Knockin A Jug."

The balance here is not up to Okeh's usually high standard, in fact at times Marshall's drumming sounds as though he is knitting with amplified needles. (Whether the effects of the whisky or the poor sound quality caused the first item recorded, I'm Gonna Stomp Mr. Henry Lee to be rejected will never be known). No matter, the date marked the first studio meeting of the greatest jazz trombonist, Jack Teagarden with his mentor Louis Armstrong, the realisation of an ambition for both since their first chance encounter in New Orleans seven years earlier. Eddie Lang's lilting guitar presages two superb Teagarden choruses demonstrating both his musical and emotional range in a solo imbued with blues notes and gospel-like fervour. In common with Earl Hines, Teagarden could hold his own in Armstrong's presence without resorting to competitive displays, as his relaxed, quietly assured articulation of his own ideas here proves. (Unfortunately, it would be another fifteen years before Jack had another opportunity to record with Armstrong). After Lang's winsome solo – Happy Caldwell's endearingly inept tenor solo need not detain us – Joe Sullivan's persuasive blues playing is all but lost under the overwheening weight of Marshall's over-recorded drumming. The centrepiece Armstrong solo is a virtual gauntlet in the face of his legion disciples and imitators to challenge his supremacy.

This recording marked a watershed for Louis: the closing chapter on the period of phenomenal achievement that began with the first Hot Five date of 1925, whilst heralding the next significant phase of his remarkable career.

-Sally-Ann Worsfold.

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Tracks:

Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
01 Fireworks 3:09
02 Skip the Gutter 3:10
03 A Monday Date 3:15
04 Don't Jive Me 2:50
05 West End Blues 3:21
06 Sugar Foot Strut 3:23
07 Two Deuces 2:58
08 Squeeze Me 3:26
09 Knee Drops 3:28
Carroll Dickerson's Savoyagers
10 Symphonic Raps 3:15
11 Savoyagers' Stomp 3:13
Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra
12 No (No, Papa, No) 2:54
13 Basin Street Blues 3:16
Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five
14 No-One Else But You 3:24
15 Beau Koo Jack 3:01
16 Save It, Pretty Mama 3:19
17 Weather Bird 2:42
Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra
18 Muggles 2:52
Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five
19 Heah Me Talkin' to Ya? 3:17
20 St. James Infirmary 3:14
21 Tight Like This 3:12
Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra
22 Knockin' a Jug 3:15


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Hot Fives and Sevens Vol. 2 (1927)

For affordability and sound quality, JSP outshines Columbia and most other labels with its high protein four-disc Hot Fives & Sevens collection. Volume two of this set documents an especially fine segment of the Louis Armstrong story with 21 classic sides waxed in Chicago between May and December 1927. These are some of the best records Louis Armstrong ever made. They also rate among the most important jazz recordings of all time. "Willie the Weeper," for example, defines the artist, the genre and the entire human condition. Armstrong's Hot Seven swelled to ten pieces at the sessions held from May 9-14; pianist Earl Hines came aboard for these exciting dates and Carroll Dickerson acted as bandleader. All of the essential Armstrong components are here in concentrated form; "Alligator Crawl" and "Potato Head Blues" are unparalleled masterworks, and "That's When I'll Come Back to You" is a distillation of the great Afro-American vaudeville tradition. Here Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong align themselves with Butterbeans & Susie and their contemporaries Coot Grant and Kid Wilson. During the autumn of 1927 Louis Armstrong pared his ensemble back down to the original quintet. Highlights from this period include "Ory's Creole Trombone" (first recorded by Kid Ory in 1922) and Lil Armstrong's magnum opus "Struttin' with Some Barbecue." The sessions which took place on December 10 and 13 featured guitarist Lonnie Johnson, an exceptionally fine improviser who brought yet another level of artistic eloquence to this already sublimely endowed jazz band. ~ All Music Guide

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Tracks:

01- Willie the Weeper (3:10)
02- Wild Man Blues (3:13)
03- Chicago Breakdown (3:21)
04- Alligator Crawl (3:04)
05- Potato Head Blues (2:58)
06- Melancholy (3:05)
07- Weary Blues (3:01)
08- Twelfth Street Rag (3:06)
09- Keyhole Blues (3:29)
10- S.O.L. Blues (2:55)
11- Gully Low Blues (3:18)
12- That's When I'll Come Back to You (2:58)
13- Put 'Em Down Blues (3:17)
14- Ory's Creole Trombone (3:07)
15- The Last Time (3:32)
16- Struttin' with Some Barbecue (3:06)
17- Got No Blues (3:26)
18- Once in a While (3:19)
19- I'm Not Rough (3:05)
20- Hotter Than That (3:05)
21- Savoy Blues (3:28)

Chicago, May to Dec. 1927

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Liner Notes:

1927 was the year when Colonel Lindbergh, by flying the Atlantic, inspired a new American dance, the "Lindy Hop". That autumn Jack Dempsey just failed to regain the Heavyweight Championship of the World from Gene Tunney. There were demonstrations in London and Paris, Buenos Aires and Tokyo, when, after waiting for six years on Boston's Death Row, Sacco and Vanzetti ("Those anarchist bastards", as Judge Thayer described them) were executed. In Chicago, reaping the rewards of Prohibition, gangsters kept a firm grip on City Hall - and on Chicago's flourishing night clubs and speakeasies. "If you played the North Side you worked for Bugs Moran", Jess Stacy recollected several decades later, "And if you worked on the South Side, It was for Al Capone".


Several of those nightspots were to acquire a legendary status in jazz history. The Dreamland Cafe on South State Street, for instance, where Louis Armstrong, after returning from a stint with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra in New York, joined the band led by his wife Lil. And in February, 1927 the 25-year-old Armstrong became a bandleader himself. That took place on 35th and Calumet, at the Sunset Cafe, one of the clubs run by Capone's syndicate; Armstrong and the pianist Earl Hines had been working there with Carroll Dickerson's Orchestra, but because Dickerson had a drinking problem his band was replaced by Louis Armstrong's Stompers, with Hines as its musical director. (Incidentally, the Sunset was managed by Joe Glaser, who eight years later become Armstrong's personal manager and exerted a powerful influence upon his later career).

Armstrong always took a delight in playing, enjoying what for a less dedicated or less gifted musician would have seemed a punishing routine. During 1927 he and his Stompers performed at the Sunset Cafe until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, but that was after Armstrong had already been featured with Erskine Tate's Little Symphony Orchestra in four shows at the Vendome movie theatre on South State Street, playing between – and often behind – the silent film (when he left the Vendome it was to work with Clarence Jones's band at the Metropolitan Theatre). It seems to have been Erskine Tate who encouraged Armstrong to switch from the cornet, the traditional instrument in New Orleans, to the more brilliantly-toned trumpet. Nevertheless, Armstrong continued for some time to use the cornet on his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings. His earliest "hit" record, in fact, was "Cornet Chop Suey", made early in 1926. And in 1927 the Chicago music publishers, Melrose, brought out two books of transcriptions, "Louis Armstrong's 50 Hot Choruses for Cornet" (selling at $2) and "Louis Armstrong's 125 Jazz Breaks for Cornet" ($1).


From November 1925 until the end of 1927 Armstrong's recordings for Okeh were almost exclusively the work of pick-up groups consisting of New Orleans players who had moved to Chicago (the prime exception was the pianist, Armstrong's wife Lil, born in Memphis and a former music student at Fisk University). On May 9, 1927, however, Armstrong took his regular band, the Sunset Stompers, into a studio for the first and only time, to record a Jelly Roll Morton tune, "Chicago Breakdown" (it was, coincidentally, the only recording ever made by the saxophonist Boyd Atkins, who is heard taking a soprano solo). But that was the only departure from Okeh's policy of catering for a market of blacks who had migrated from the South and wanted to hear traditional New Orleans jazz.

The format of the original Hot Five records (available on JSPCD 312 relied, therefore, upon the collective interplay of the classic New Orleans front-line of cornet, clarinet and trombone. But Armstrong's rapid development meant that he began dominating the ensemble, while his solos set a standard that became hard for his colleagues to live up to. All the more reason to praise the clarinettist Johnny Dodds for the way he held his own especially on the 1927 recordings. Always an outstanding blues player, capable of performing with a rare intensity, Dodds takes solos immediately alongside Armstrong's that leave the listener with no sense of anti-climax.


Dodds was still a regular member of the recording group in May, 1927, when Armstrong expanded the Hot Five into the Hot Seven. So was Johnny St. Cyr, playing (as the New Orleans jazz historian William Russell has explained in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz) a six-string "guitar-banjo" that he had "constructed himself from a banjo head and a guitar neck and fingerboard". But Kid Ory had gone off touring with King Oliver's band, so his place as trombonist was taken by John Thomas, a musician from Kentucky who was working with both Eriskine Tate and Armstrong's Sunset Stompers. The Stompers also supplied one of the two additional instrumentalists, the tuba player Pete Briggs; the other, the drummer Baby Dodds, was working at Kelly's Stables with his brother Johnny.

The five sessions by the Hot Seven, fitted into just over a single week in May, produced an extraordinary number of jazz masterpieces. Perhaps it is unfair to single out "Potato Head Blues" (not a genuine blues, incidentally, but constructed like a pop song), yet it remains one of the greatest of all jazz recordings, a peak in the careers of both Armstrong and Dodds. Armstrong's stop-time solo illustrates superbly how much this musician's approach had moved away from the embellishment of New Orleans cornet playing. The method now was much bolder, not so much a paraphrase of melody as an improvisation above a set of chord changes.

The performance of "Twelfth Street Rag" may be less exalted than that of "Potato Head Blues", yet it illustrates very clearly the way that jazz musicians can transform their material. In this case a highly repetitive theme, usually treated in a jokey fashion, becomes a slow stomp, largely because of the way Johnny Dodds treats it as a kind of blues, and – even more importantly – the drastic fashion in which Armstrong sabotages, even caricatures, the composition's intrinsic jerkiness, tilting it all to his own triumphant ends.

"Twelfth Street Rag" was one of a number of Hot Seven and Hot Five recordings not to be released at the time and which remained unissued until the masters were discovered in 1940. Another was “S.O.L. Blues” (the fact that SOL was an acronym for “shit out of luck”, meaning extreme helplessness, may have contributed to the delay). However, the same tune was recorded again the next day, this time under the title “Gully Low Blues”, Okeh’s policy – in Chicago at that time, anyway – of scraping rejected masters clean means that this is the closed one can get to comparing alternative “takes”. Armstrong sings blues lyrics in both pieces. But perhaps the most significant development as far as his singing went was the increasing flexibility with which he handled words in pieces such as “The Last Time” and “Put ‘em Down Blues” (the latter, incidentally just like “Potato Head Blues”, “Keyhole Blues” and “Got No Blues”, is not harmonically blues at all).

When Armstrong resumed recording at the Okeh studios in early September it was with his original Hot Five. Kid Ory, back in Chicago again, give a zestful performance of “Ory’s Creole Trombone”, a tune of his own celebrating a particular New Orleans tradition. Not so traditional, however, was the interpretation of another of Ory’s tunes, “Savoy Blues”, virtually a succession of solos followed by two choruses of riffing before the ensemble rounds the piece off in a New Orleans manner. For the final session, in December, the rhythm section was strengthened by the guitar playing of Lonnie Johnson, active as a blues singer as well as a guitarist during the 1920s, but who also – and somewhat unusually – recorded with various jazz groups, including the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Johnson’s presence at the Hot Five sessions added a kind of exoticism to the music as well as enabling the group to swing in a way it had never been done before. This is heard at its most dramatic in “Hotter Than That” (the theme is built on the final strain of “Tiger Rag”), where Armstrong not only gets close to surpassing his playing on "Potato Head Blues” but the music seems to be unified at every level, achieving an extraordinary impetus. Quite apart from this being another jazz masterpiece, one senses that the trumpeter (he had almost certainly given up the cornet by now) hovered on the brink of a new phase in his career, 1928 was to show how true that was.

- Charles Fox

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Potato Head Blues (1927)

"'Potato Head Blues' by Louis Armstrong... one of the few reason why life deserves to be lived." (Woody Allen in 'Manhattan')

Here's a transcription of this wonderful Louis's tune I did recently both in standard notation and tab for guitar. And here's my version of this one and other great Satchmo's tunes played on diatonic amplified harmonica!



Musicians:

Louis Armstrong (trumpet), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Lil Hardin (piano), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), Babby Dodds (drums), John Thomas (trombone), Pete Briggs (tuba). Composed by Louis Armstrong

Recorded: Chicago, May 10, 1927

"Hello Dolly" and "What A Wonderful World" may get the airplay. "West End Blues" might receive more praise in the jazz history books. But, frankly, "Potato Head Blues" encapsulates Louis Armstrong's artistry as well as any recording he made during his half-century long career. The authority of his phrasing and the grandeur of his tone dominate the soundspace, and his stop-time chorus stands out as the most impressive solo of its time. I dare say no other horn player in the Spring of 1927 could have matched this achievement, and one merely need compare Armstrong's performance here with Oliver, Keppard and his other predecessors to see how far he pushed the art form ahead at this critical juncture. This set a new bar for the trumpet but also—and more profoundly—changed the essence of jazz ensemble playing. The collective sound of early New Orleans jazz was now replaced by an emphasis on the individual soloist. Tone and textures no longer signified as much as virtuosity and daring. Only a towering talent could have spurred this transition, one which still shapes jazz music so many decades later. Potato head? What an inadequate name for such a world-changing work, more deserving of commemoration in granite or marble. (jazz.com)

Hot Fives and Sevens, vol 1 (1925-26)

Sólo una pega tiene esta monumental colección en cuatro entregas de los primeros y decisivos discos de Louis Armstrong a su propio nombre, para convertirla en definitiva. Y no es un inconveniente insignificante, dado el nivel de los contenidos: las portadas. ¡Horrorosas! Como la mayoría de las reediciones de clásicos tempranos de jazz y blues por el sello de John Stedman en los años 90 (véase "Lonnie Johnson Playing with the Strings", por ejemplo, en este blog también), la selección de material, el remasterizado y las documentadas notas son modélicos, pero, amigo, es que las dichosas portadas... ¡parecen sacadas de cualquiera de esas colecciones "Vuelve el Blues" Made in Spain que proliferaron como nocivos hongos en otros tiempos no muy lejanos! Precisamente en Gran Bretaña, donde hay una tradición señera de buen gusto en los temas gráficos que se remonta... ¡joder, hasta William Morris a medidos del XIX, por lo menos!
Dado que se trata de música que hemos degustado y vuelto a degustar, sin el menor empacho, tropecientas mil veces en LP, en cassette y en CD, y que vamos a seguir escuchando en MP3 y en lo que sea per secula seculorum, no me parece un tema baladí esto de "las carátulas". Además, mire usted, el iPod y similares están muy bien, pero los que crecimos rodeados de LPs, siempre necesitaremos asociar la música con algún tipo de imagen gráfica que le haga una mínima justicia. En fin, desde este rinconcete intentaremos hacer lo que se pueda al respecto (por ahí andan las portadas de los álbumes Columbia Jazz Masterpieces de los 80, por ejemplo, que son harina de otro costal).
Y tras este cabreado pero oportuno preámbulo, les dejo ya con la reseña y las liner notes [click en los temas para escuchar aparte] de este Santo Grial de la música americana y mundial: los Hot Five y Hot Seven de Louis Armstrong.

~ Jay Bee Rodríguez

With superior transfers by British music engineer John RT Davies, this JSP reissue of the first 25 sides by Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens is a first-choice disc for newcomers, while also being a very worthwhile purchase for the discriminating fan. Columbia's more high-profile, yet poorly remastered early Armstrong releases are muddy and limp sounding in comparison. Studio discrepancies aside, these records represent one of highest achievements in jazz and all of music for that matter. Armstrong 's brash and advanced trumpet playing transformed jazz from the somewhat stilted ensemble polyphony of New Orleans to the fluid art of the improvising soloist, paving the way for the advances of swing and bebop and sparking the equally bold conceptions of future jazz luminaries Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker. And although these Chicago recordings (1925-1926) do not include later milestones like "West End Blues" and "Weather Bird," there's plenty here in the way of Armstrong's innovations: his stop-time solo on "Cornet Chop Suey" and the early scat singing on "Heebie Jeebies." And beyond textbook considerations, there's Armstrong's infectious spoken commentary and vocals on "Gut Bucket Blues" and "Big Butter and Egg Man From the West," not to mention his joyous trumpet exclamations on "Yes, I'm in the Barrel" and "Muskrat Rumble." Topped off with fine contributions by Hot Five regulars clarinetist Johnny Dodds, trombonist Kid Ory, pianist and wife at the time Lil Armstrong, and banjo player Johnny St. Cyr, this Armstrong release is not to be missed. Essential music for any record collection.

~ Stephen Cook, All Music Guide

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Tracks:

01. My Heart
02. Yes! I’m In The Barrel
03. A Gut Bucket Blues
04. Come Back, Sweet Papa
05. Georgia Grind
06. Heebie Jeebies
07. Comet Chop Suey
08. Oriental Strut
09. You’re Next
10. Muskrat Ramble
11. Don’t Forget To Mess Around
12. I’m Gonna Gitcha
13. Dropping Shucks
14. Who’ sit
15. He Likes It Slow
16. The King of the Zulus
17. Big Fat Ma and Skinny Pa
18. Lonesome Blues
19. Sweet Little Papa
20. Jazz Lips
21. Skid-Dat-De-Dat
22. Big Butter and Egg Man from the West
23. Sunset Café Stomp
24. You Made Me Love You
25. Irish Black Bottom

Chicago – Nov. 1925 to Nov. 1926

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Liner Notes:

Few jazz records can have had so drastic an impact as the series Louis Armstrong began making in Chicago during the autumn of 1925. Three years earlier he had caught the train from New Orleans to Chicago to join King Oliver's band on second cornet. In 1923 that band's pianist, Lil Hardin, became his second wife and promptly began planning a career for her husband. It was she who persuaded him to hand in his notice to Oliver, then to accept an offer to work in the big band that Fletcher Henderson was leading at New York's Roseland Ballroom. At the first rehearsal Henderson's musicians were skeptical about this cornet player from out of town who looked like a simple country boy ("He was big and fat and wore high-top shoes with hooks in them, and long underwear down to his socks" was how Don Redman, Henderson's arranger, recalled that original encounter). But Armstrong brought with him a rhythmic sophistication and a boldness of imagination that was a revelation to even the most hardened of New York professionals.

A year later – in the first week of November, 1925 – Louis Armstrong returned to Chicago and immediately set about performing in the cabarets and theatres which catered for black audiences. Lil had organized a band to feature him at the Dreamland Cafe on South State Street. The following month he also began working with Erskine Tate's twenty-piece "Little Symphony" Orchestra at the nearby Vendome Theatre. At both venues he played in a style that was noticeably more advanced than what his contemporaries were up to. And within a week of arriving back in Chicago he had begun making records with the group he called his Hot Five, records which at the beginning, anyway – used the collective improvising typical of New Orleans bands and were aimed at the vast numbers of Southern blacks who had moved northward during and just after World War I.

Four members of the Hot Five – Armstrong, his wife Lil, Johnny Dodds and Johnny St Cyr – had worked alongside one another in King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band; Armstrong had played the cornet with Kid Ory's band in New Orleans not long before leaving for Chicago and Ory was now playing with him nightly at the Dreamland Cafe. So the musicians knew one another well enough to be relaxed. Indeed, every recording by the Hot five was a "first take" with no worrying out fluffs or missed cues or other occasional streaky moments. The first session was something of a warm-up, a preparation for a more ambitious future. Even the tune titles had a homely flavour. Yes, I'm In The Barrel was slang for being without money (in other words, if you couldn't afford clothes you wore a barrel instead). In Gut Bucket Blues (a gut bucket collected the drippings from wine and beer barrels in barrel houses) Armstrong introduced everybody in the band. It is noticeable, in fact, that Armstrong's voice came to be heard regularly on his own records (he had, he declared later, resented Fletcher Henderson's reluctance to allow him to sing). In February 1926 he could be said to have popularized scat singing by his gravelly improvising on Heebie Jeebies. It was not the first scat to get on to record (that honour seems to belong to Don Redman on Fletcher Henderson's 1924 version of My Papa Doesn't Two-Time No Time) but it certainly became the most influential.

Heebie Jeebies was Armstrong's first hit record, selling 40,000 copies with a few weeks. But fellow cornet players were overwhelmed by another recording made at that session, one that seems lucky to have been released (a test pressing found many years later had "Recommended for rejection" scribbled on its label). That was Cornet Chop Suey, full of exciting stop-time solo work and demonstrating how Armstrong was breaking away from the tradition of New Orleans ensemble playing, turning instead into an individual virtuoso. That session also saw the first recording of Muskrat Ramble, destined to become one of the most enduring of all Dixieland-style tunes. Martin Williams (in "Jazz Masters of New Orleans") has outlined the conflict of evidence about its composition. Kid Ory claimed to have written it in 1921 while working at a taxi dance-hall in Los Angeles ("It had no name then", he recalled, "Lil Armstrong gave it that title at the record session". On the other hand, Louis Armstrong, interviewed by 'Down Beat', also claimed that he wrote the tune ("Ory named it, he gets the royalties," he said, "I don't talk about it"). Meanwhile Sidney Bechet maintained that at least part of theme had come from an old folksong, The Old Cow died and the Old Man Cried.

The Hot Five performed together in public on only two occasions. Both took place – the first on February 27,1926, the second on June 12 – at the Coliseum Theatre. Both were organized by the Okeh Record Company in association with the local black musicians' union. Bands taking part included those of King Oliver, Charlie Elgar, Bennie Moten and Erskine Tate as well as the Hot Five, while among the singers were Lonnie Johnson, Sara Martin, Chippie Hall, Sippie Wallace and the duo of Butterbeans and Susie. Perhaps that occasion prompted Okeh to use the Hot Five to accompany the last-named two performers on He Likes It Slow, recorded about a week after the concert. Jody ("Butterbeans") Edwards came from Georgia, his wife Susie from Florida. They had been, respectively, fifteen and fourteen when they were married – on-stage – in 1916. They remained favourites; on the black vaudeville circuit for decade after decade, recording for the last time only a short while before their deaths in the early 1960s.

A couple of days earlier. Armstrong's Hot Five recorded a set of pieces that reflected the pop-song patterns of 1926. Just as he had done in the earlier Come Back Sweet Papa. Johnny Dodds played alto saxophone In Don't Forget To Mess Around, while Who' sit had Armstrong taking a chorus on the Swanee (or slide) whistle, a popular novelty Instrument of the day. The session that took place on June 23 allowed Clarence Babcock to earn a tiny niche in history by acting as master of ceremonies in Big Fat Ma and Skinny Pa, and, more memorably, as the intrusive West Indian character offering to play “one o’ me matove jazz tunes" in The King Of The Zulus (subtitled "A Chit'lin' Rag"). The reference here was to the Zulu Aid and Pleasure Club, one of the organisations which takes a prominent part in the annual Mardi Gras Parade in New Orleans. By a pleasing twist of history, Armstrong himself was in 1949 to be crowned King of the Zulus - and to ride in the parade.

Five months later the Hot Five came up with two of their very finest performances. In both his singing and playing on Skid·Dat-De-Dat Armstrong began exploring a melancholy ambience & bringing to it his own mixture of the poignant and the majestic. A different kind of eloquence, exuberant rather than introspective, emerged in his solo on Big Butter and Egg Man. That was one of several pieces devised by Percy Venable, who produced the floor/shows at the Sunset Club where Armstrong was currently featured with Carroll Dickerson's Orchestra, May Alix, who sings on both that track and Sunset Cafe Stomp, was part of that floor show and most renowned for a running split which had her sliding halfway across the clubs' small stage. Venable also collaborated with Armstrong on You Made Me Love You When I Saw You Cry – not to be confused with James V. Monaco's more famous You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want To Do It), published in 1913 ... and Irish Black Bottom ("I was born in Ireland" may be the most unlikely line Armstrong was ever called upon to sing.

Kid Ory had to miss the Hot Five’s final session in 1926. Otherwise the personnel had remained unchanged throughout the preceding twelve months. It was a period which saw Louis Armstrong's emergence as a blazing new presence in jazz cornet player who elbowed his way out of the ensemble to become the music's first great soloist.

During the following year he not only consolidated that reputation but with his expanded group, the Hot Seven, took jazz to even greater heights of virtuosity and expressiveness.
- Charles Fox

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