CHAPTER 12 | FOUR GIANTS OF EARLY JAZZ 295
records; with a single exception, they never played live engagements. To listen
to Armstrong as the leader of the Hot Five and the Hot Seven is to understand
why he became one of the most infl uential of all American musicians. In 1927,
for example, he recorded Struttin’ with Some Barbecue with four other players. The
piece begins and ends with ensemble choruses in the New Orleans mode, full of
call-and-response interchange. In between, the trombonist and clarinetist each
play a solo half a chorus long, and Armstrong plays a complete solo chorus. His
role in Struttin’ is far more prominent than was Oliver’s in Dippermouth Blues; his
lead cornet in the ensemble sections takes center stage by virtue of its powerful
sound and rhythmic energy, and his solo’s inventiveness outshines that of his
fellow players.
Armstrong’s impact could be dazzling. Trumpeter Max Kaminsky, after
hearing him live for the fi rst time in 1929, recalled having felt “as if I had stared
into the sun’s eye.” Examples of Armstrong’s solo artistry in these years are
legion. Among them is West End Blues (LG 12.4), a tune by Oliver that Armstrong
recorded in 1928 with pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines and three other musicians. With
the addition of the Pittsburgh-born Hines to the Hot Five, Armstrong fi nally had
a colleague who came close to matching his inventiveness and virtuosity. Hines
transformed the ragtime-based style of most early jazz pianists, developing his
own nervous, unpredictable manner based on cascading runs and what came
to be known as his “trumpet style”: melodic lines played in octaves, for greater
volume, with octave tremolos (rapid alternation of the two notes an octave apart)
that approximated a trumpet player’s vibrato.
West End Blues opens dramatically with an unaccompanied solo in free
rhythm—a cadenza—that immediately sets Armstrong above other trumpeters
of his time. This cadenza was so infl uential that learning to imitate it was for
decades a standard part of any jazz player’s training—and not just trumpeters, as
evidenced by Charlie Barnet’s 1944 version of West End Blues, in which the entire
big band leads off by playing Armstrong’s cadenza in unison. Armstrong’s 1928
recording follows this spectacular opening with a sudden change of mood, as
the band relaxes into a subdued blues. The fi rst chorus begins with A rmstrong
delivering King Oliver’s melody straight. He turns the second four-bar phrase
into an unadorned call and a fl orid response. And in the third phrase, the serene
melody is dissolved by Armstrong’s decorations.
Later choruses include a trombone solo, a delicate call-and-response duet
between the clarinet and Armstrong, who sings his responses in vocables—scat
singing—and a rippling solo chorus by Hines on piano. The last
chorus, played by everyone, starts with another surprise: Arm-
strong begins the melody an octave higher than before, sustain-
ing a high B fl at for almost four bars. Then the tension is released
in an improvised burst, based on a repetitive fi gure that seems to
break loose from rhythmic restriction, fl oating freely above the
accompaniment. Armstrong’s climactic conclusion manages to
sound both spontaneous and inevitable.
The musical synthesis that Armstrong achieved in the latter
1920s drew on three sources that were already present in the music
of Chicago’s South Side. The fi rst was the African American oral
tradition, with its practice of signifying, which in musical terms
means taking a preexisting melody, harmony, rhythm, or form
and changing it in a way that amounts to a musical comment: aLG 12.4K Louis Armstrong and
his Hot Five, including Lil
Hardin, piano; Kid Ory,
trombone; Johnny Dodds,
alto sax and clarinet; and
Johnny St. Cyr, banjo.172028_12_280-304_r3_ko.indd 295 23/01/13 8:40 PM