Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

(Note: Sample material is taken from uncorrected proofs. Changes may be made prior to publication.)

Armstrong, Louis

From 1925 to 1928, Louis Daniel Armstrong (Dippermouth, Satchelmouth, Satchmo, Pops) made a series of more than sixty recordings with his small groups the Hot Five and the Hot Seven. Jazz writers of later years hailed these recordings for their role in helping to transform jazz from an ensemble entertainment to a solo art. But observers in the 1920s admired Armstrong less for his recordings per se than for his utter dominance in a highly visible professional field. The respect and even awe that Armstrong aroused among white and black musicians alike made him a shining example of the New Negro, even though he was not involved in the more rarefied artistic aspects of the Harlem Renaissance. From his destitute youth in New Orleans to his triumphant performances on Broadway in 1929, Armstrong struggled to better himself musically and socially while stopping just short, as he put it, of "putting on airs."

Armstrong was born out of wedlock in the poorest section of New Orleans, in a neighborhood so violent that it was known as the Battlefield. His father moved out when Armstrong was a child, and his mother supported the family as a domestic worker and part-time prostitute. Louis helped by singing in the streets for pennies and scrounging for food in garbage bins. In 1912 he was arrested for firing a gun in the air on New Year's Eve and was sentenced to eighteen months in reform school. At the school Armstrong was subjected to military-style discipline and learned to play the cornet. Upon his release he began developing a reputation as a gifted cornetist. He sought out musical instruction from his idol Joe "King" Oliver, performed with parading brass bands, and played the blues in honky-tonks late at night. When Oliver moved to Chicago in 1918, Armstrong took his place in Kid Ory's band, the leading jazz band in New Orleans. From then on, Ory recalled, Armstrong "went up like a sunflower. His name went right through New Orleans." Yet some contractors still wouldn't hire him for certain events in polite society. One of them, Edmond Souchon, considered Armstrong "a rough, rough character" who blew "false" (he may have meant "out of tune") and played too loudly. Indeed, most of Armstrong's role models were rough characters themselves. Early on he had developed an admiration for pimps, gamblers, and other figures of the New Orleans underworld, the most charismatic and influential males in his cultural milieu. The drummer Baby Dodds recalled that in 1920-1921 Armstrong dressed like "low-class hustlers" and gamblers, "because that's what he wanted to be in those days. . . . Back at that time he was always broke from gambling."

Armstrong's aspirations changed after he moved north in 1922. He began his career in the north playing with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago and Fletcher Henderson's orchestra in New York. Armstrong seems to have been at least vaguely aware of artistic and cultural trends in Harlem. In his first autobiography (1936), he mentioned several black celebrities active in New York while he was there in 1924-1925, including James Weldon Johnson, Charles Gilpin, Paul Robeson, and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Armstrong was especially impressed with Robinson, whom he had seen perform in Chicago. Above all, Armstrong admired the dignity and independence Robinson brought to his stage performance. "To me, he was the greatest comedian and dancer in my race- better than Bert Williams," he recalled. "He didn't need blackface to be funny." Robinson, unlike the performers in minstrel shows, did not wear rags or tell self-disparaging jokes; he dressed immaculately and exuded power and self-confidence. The example of prominent northerners like Robinson moved Armstrong to embark on a somewhat ambivalent quest for outward "respectability"- in manners, literacy, clothing style, and most significantly music.

A catalyst in this transformation was Oliver's pianist Lillian (Lil) Hardin, who became Armstrong's second wife. In 1918, in New Orleans, Armstrong had married a young prostitute named Daisy Parker. Their relationship was turbulent, involving brickbat fights in the streets and still more dangerous confrontations behind closed doors. After moving to Chicago, Armstrong divorced Daisy in order to marry Hardin, a woman from Memphis who had taken some classes at Fisk University. Hardin immediately began overhauling Armstrong's rough New Orleans persona, buying him new clothes, changing his hairstyle, and demanding a certain propriety in his behavior. When Daisy made a visit to Chicago in an effort to reclaim him, Armstrong assured her that they were incompatible, especially since he had lately been trying to "cultivate" himself. Publicity photographs from the late twenties show the results of Lil's handling: wearing expensive clothing and jewelry, Armstrong invariably looks sophisticated. And yet despite his willingness to make changes in his appearance, Armstrong chafed under Lil's exacting standards in other realms. He ultimately rejected the highfalutin lifestyle that required, as he put it, "a certain spoon for this, and a certain fork for that." By around 1927 he had begun to live with Alpha Smith, a less pretentious working-class woman who would later become his third wife.

Armstrong may have resented Hardin's overbearing social direction, but he remained forever grateful that she had pushed him to expand his musical sensibility. From the moment he arrived in the north Armstrong had electrified audiences with the boldness and originality of his playing. But the type of music he and other New Orleanians played- "hot jazz" and the blues- drew harsh criticism in the 1920s from moralists and social reformers. The critics denigrated such music, using epithets such as "lowdown" (or "low-class"), "gutbucket," and "barrelhouse," and worried that it inspired lewd dancing and generated business for nightclubs and speakeasies owned by mobsters. To insulate themselves from ill repute, many black musicians sought for "high-class," "dicty," or "society" credentials by working in vaudeville theaters, fashionable ballrooms, and dance orchestras that included elements of European art music in their programs. The ability to play within the European tradition demonstrated a literacy and refinement that raised the "class" quotient of any musician. Indeed, the musicians who most self-consciously participated in the Harlem Renaissance—such as Robert Nathaniel Dett and Roland Hayes—aspired to compose or perform works based on European classical practice. At Hardin's urging, Armstrong himself tried to acquire some classical training; he practiced concert pieces at home to Hardin's accompaniment on a grand piano, and he even studied briefly with a German trumpet teacher known in Chicago for advocating the "nonpressure" method of playing.

The bands and venues Armstrong played in after leaving Oliver show his concern for building a "high-class" musical reputation. In 1924 Fletcher Henderson's orchestra was the leading black society dance band in the country. When an opportunity came for Armstrong to join the band, Hardin encouraged him wholeheartedly, even though it meant that the two had to live separately for a year. As Jeffrey Magee has argued, Henderson's musicians, with their elegant deportment and thorough musical training, embodied the New Negro in popular music. In fact, Henderson, though impressed with Armstrong's solos, told him: "If you gonna be good someday, you'll take some [music] lessons." Armstrong apparently ignored this advice. But when he returned to Chicago in 1925, he bowed to Hardin's insistence that he join Erskine Tate's "Symphony Orchestra" at the Vendome Theater, an organization featuring violins and double-reed woodwinds as well as the more traditional jazz instruments. At the Vendome Armstrong became more skilled at reading music and learned to play pieces from the classical repertoire. He even performed featured solos during transcriptions of Italian operas such as Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Within a year or so Armstrong was playing at the Sunset Café, one of the most exclusive nightclubs in black Chicago. At the Sunset and later the Savoy Ballroom, Armstrong accompanied floor shows in a style that would have required considerable versatility and technical polish. A mere handful of recordings document Armstrong's work with these bands: Erskine Tate, "Stomp Off (Let's Go)" and "Static Strut" (both 1926); and Louis Armstrong and His Stompers (the Sunset band), "Chicago Breakdown" (1927).

During the same period that Armstrong was performing high-class music at the Vendome and the Sunset, he was also recording plenty of New Orleans-style blues and jazz, the kind that most appealed to working-class southern migrants. These records, known collectively as the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, show the same gradual reconciliation of high and low that was occurring simultaneously in Armstrong's personal life. The early Hot Five records- including such celebrated performances as "Cornet Chop Suey" and "Big Butter and Egg Man" (both 1926)- feature only New Orleans musicians (except Hardin), emphasize traditionally raucous polyphonic textures, and often suggest a casual spontaneity with little advance preparation. Over time, however, Armstrong gradually introduced ritzy prearranged elements. In "You Made Me Love You" (1926), "The Last Time," and "Once in a While" (both 1927) the band plays introductions and accompanimental figures redolent of the music of floor shows. In the Hot Fives of 1928 Armstrong replaced his New Orleans sidemen with the northern musicians he employed nightly at the Savoy. This last series of records features classical and other "society" elements in instrumentation, repertoire, texture, harmony, and form. For example, the meticulously arranged "Beau Koo Jack" has a structural complexity nowhere evident in earlier Hot Five recordings; and the band accompaniment to Armstrong's solo in "Muggles" alternately rises and falls in volume, showing a classical concern for dynamics (patterns of loud and soft). And yet Armstrong did not cut himself off from his New Orleans roots. His most famous records of the period, such as "West End Blues" and "Weatherbird," are a convincing hybrid of northern and southern, "high-class" and "gutbucket" elements.

By the late 1920s Armstrong's musical innovations- particularly his virtuosity, power, coherence, rhythmic "swing," and eccentric vocal style- had established him as a rising force in American popular music. His achievements had won over much of the black community, including those who earlier had fretted that the unsavory social aspects of jazz would have negative effects on the black cause. Dave Peyton, the chief music critic for the Chicago Defender, began calling Armstrong the "Great King Menalick" after Menelik II, the Ethiopian emperor who overthrew Italian domination in the late nineteenth century. Nor was Armstrong's influence limited by race. At a banquet in 1929 a group of white musicians gave Armstrong a wristwatch engraved: "To Louis Armstrong, the World's Greatest Cornetist, from the Musicians of New York." Also in 1929, he created a sensation on Broadway singing "Ain't Misbehavin'" in the musical Hot Chocolates. In 1930 he made his first film appearance in Ex-Flame (now lost), an achievement he proudly emphasized in his passport application two years later, wherein he stated his occupation as "actor and musician." He needed the passport to undertake his first tour of Europe, where an already flourishing group of fans attested to his international popularity.

In the 1930s European and American left-wing commentators lauded the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings as great works of art. Such praise might have gratified musicians of the Harlem Renaissance who consciously sought to equal the achievements of western classical composers. Armstrong, however, had a different goal: to bring his music- which he viewed primarily as entertainment rather than art- to the widest possible audience. In the 1920s that had entailed diversifying and refining his music and his demeanor; in the 1930s it involved singing and telling jokes as well as playing the trumpet. During this period Armstrong became a hero to the black community for his high profile in recordings, radio, and film. But after World War II black America required a new New Negro, one not only culturally accomplished but politically assertive. In this changed environment many accused Armstrong of Uncle Tomism because of his sincere desire to please an audience. For Armstrong, though, professional success and mass appeal represented the most significant advance a black musician could make. Such recognition may not have satisfied the generation of the civil rights movement, but it fulfilled some of the highest objectives of the Harlem Renaissance.

Biography
Louis Armstrong was born 4 August 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He attended Fisk School for Boys until around age twelve and was confined in the Colored Waif's Home for Boys in 1913-1914. He joined Kid Ory's Brown-Skinned Babies in 1918, Fate Marable's band on the Streckfus Steamboat line in 1919, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago in 1922, and Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra in New York in 1924; performed in Chicago with the bands of Lil Hardin Armstrong, Erskine Tate, Carroll Dickerson, and Clarence Jones in 1925-1928; and accompanied many blues and vaudeville singers, including Bessie Smith and Alberta Hunter, in 1924-1930. He appeared in a Broadway show, Hot Chocolates, in 1929. He made his first European tours in 1932-1935; hired Joe Glaser to be his manager in 1935; hosted the Fleischmann's Yeast radio program on NBC in 1937; and appeared at Rockefeller Center in the musical Swingin' the Dream in 1939. Armstrong performed in the first Esquire All-American Jazz Concert at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1944. In 1947 he performed at Carnegie Hall and organized the septet Louis Armstrong's All-Stars. He performed at the first international jazz festival in Nice in 1948, was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1949, and made international tours in 1949-1968 and television appearances in 1949-1971. His television work included appearances on the shows of Horace Heidt, Ed Sullivan, Danny Kaye, Steve Allen, Mike Douglas, Jackie Gleason, Dick Cavett, David Frost, Johnny Carson, and Flip Wilson, and on What's My Line? He was given a seventieth (actually sixty-ninth) birthday tribute at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1970. Armstrong died in Queens, New York, 6 July 1971.

Brian Harker

See also: Dett, Robert Nathaniel; Hayes, Roland; Henderson, James Fletcher Hamilton; Jazz; Music; Musicians; New Negro; Oliver, Joseph "King"; Ory, Edward "Kid"; Robinson, Bill "Bojangles"; Savoy Ballroom

Selected Recordings
As a sideman: K. Oliver, "Chimes Blues"/"Froggie Moore" (1923, Gen. 5135), F. Henderson, "Copenhagen" (1924, Voc. 14926), Red Onion Jazz Babies, "Cake Walking Babies from Home" (1924, Gen. 5627), Bessie Smith, "St. Louis Blues" (1925, Col. 14064D). Hot Five/Hot Seven: "Muskrat Ramble"/"Heebie Jeebies" (1926, OK 8300), "Cornet Chop Suey" (1926, OK 8320), "Big Butter and Egg Man" (1926, OK 8423), "Potato Head Blues" (1927, OK 8503), "S.O.L. Blues" (1927, Col. 35661), "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" (1927, OK 8566), "Hotter than That"/"Savoy Blues" (1927, OK 8535), "West End Blues" (1928, OK 8597), "Muggles" (1928, OK 8703).

Duet with Earl Hines: "Weatherbird" (1928, OK 41454).

Big bands: "Sweethearts on Parade" (1930, Col. 2688D), "Star Dust" (1931, OK 41530), "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" (1933, Vic. 24233), "Jubilee" (1938, Decca 1635), "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" (1938, Decca 1661).

All-Stars: "Rockin' Chair"/"Save It Pretty Mama" (1947, Vic. 40-4004), "Basin Street Blues" (1954, Decca 29102), Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954, Col. CL591), Satch Plays Fats (1955, Col. CL708), "Hello Dolly" (1963, Kapp 573), "It's a Wonderful World" (1967, ABC-Para. 45-10982).

Selected Films
Rhapsody in Black and Blue, 1932; Pennies from Heaven, 1936; Artists and Models, Everyday's a Holiday, 1937; Going Places, 1938; Cabin in the Sky, 1943; Atlantic City, 1944; New Orleans, 1947; The Glenn Miller Story (1954); High Society (1956); Satchmo the Great (1957); Jazz on a Summer's Day (1958); The Beat Generation (1959); Paris Blues (1961); A Man Called Adam (1966); Hello Dolly (1969).

Further Reading
Armstrong, Louis. Swing That Music. New York, 1936. (Reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1993.)

---------. Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954. (Reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1986.)

---------. Louis Armstrong in His Own Words: Selected Writings, ed. and intro. Thomas Brothers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Bergreen, Laurence, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, New York: Broadway, 1997.

Joshua Berrett, ed. A Louis Armstrong Companion: Eight Decades of Commentary. New York: Schirmer, 1999.

Collier, James Lincoln. Louis Armstrong: An American Genius. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Gabbard, Krin. "Actor and Musician: Louis Armstrong and His Films." In Jammin' at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema. Chicago, Ill., and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Giddins, Gary. Satchmo. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Harker, Brian. "'Telling a Story': Louis Armstrong and Coherence in Early Jazz." Current Musicology, 1999.

Jones, Max, and John Chilton. Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story 1900-1971. London, 1971. (Reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1988.)

Miller, Marc H., ed. Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy. New York: Queens Museum of Art, with Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1994.

Schuller, Gunther. "The First Great Soloist." In Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Sample Entries