NEW PLAYLIST AVAILABLE TO PAID SUBSCRIBERS - ASCENT/DESCENT, LOUIS, MA & BESSIE, ‘28, ‘29
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five The Hot band went through numerous changes. The lineup here includes a switch to trumpet from cornet, Fred Robinson, trombone, Jimmy Strong, clarinet, Mancy Carr, banjo, Zutty Singleton, percussion, and most importantly Earl “Fatha” Hines on piano.
Sidney Bechet matched Armstrong on technical virtuosity. So did Hines. Hines also matched Armstrong as a sound architect. Most musicians play the chords and melody. Exceptional musicians create a sound architecture. It could be as simple as the voice and acoustic guitar of Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings” or as overloaded as Kayne West’s “My Dark Twisted Fantasy.” To make exceptional, truly distinctive sounds musicians need to craft the entirety of the sonic experience. Armstrong and Hines both build complex, dense, fast changing harmonic structures. At any given moment they could sound to spin out of control into chaos but their edifices remain coherent and well structured. In this time period Louis blazes two trails at the same time. On one he takes the vernacular music of New Orleans Jazz, reshapes, reforms and polishes to a high luster of art music, high art, abstract, intellectual, un-common. And within the space of the same song he pairs this new genre Jazz with pop music lyrics and showmanship. All while projecting confidence, elegance, urbanity, hipness. The original idea for a recording group to make Southern sounding music for Northern migrants has transformed into an avant-garde lab.
“A Monday Date” (E. Hines) Opens with Hines rollicking on piano. Then a vocal skit with Louis and Earl. Quick woodblock, cymbal solo gets the full band moving, if in a somewhat chaotic arrangement, the horns fall out, Hines swirls spirals of notes like a spinning dancer as Louis coos out the lyrics sweetly. Muscular, rich, mid tempo trumpet soloing calls and gets responses from trombone, clarinet, percussion, piano in turn with the banjo strumming rhythm underneath all the while.
“Hey see here, see here, Hines...Why don’t you let us in on some of that good music, Pops?
Well, come on here, let’s get together then
Well, all right - tune up, boys…How’s that, All right?
That sounds pretty good
Yes, that sounds pretty good. I bet if you had a half a pint of Miss Searcy’s gin, you wouldn’t say “That sounds pretty good.” Lay it down, we’re gon’ play it anyway. Say c’mon Zutty, work them cymbals, Pops.
Don't forget our Monday date/That you promised me last Tuesday/ I have found a cozy place/ Oh please (find) me at noon-day/ But remember/ September/ When the preacher says we’ll bill and coo/ For ever and ever/ And to make a Monday date/ Or any date we’ll… (scat)”
“West End Blues” (J. Oliver) Louis trumpets a clarion call of triple notes in one of the most iconic moments in the Jazz canon. In “A Monday Date” the band goofed around. Here, recording the same day, the band goes to church. All controlled exuberance, the arrangement tight, focused. Louis takes center stage blowing majestically as the other horns embellish with reverberating heralds. He breaks into a suave, singing scat. Whether trumpet, singing, scatting or rapping a skit he projects as a singular instrument the tone and cadence of his voice on a continuum with his trumpet. Hines keeps the rhythm swinging and syncopating languidly with his left hand and flows into a beautiful solo like Chopin playing Ragtime. Louis comes back in, sustains and bends a note for a full ten seconds, lays into a heartfelt blues lament warmly supported by the high, pure tones of the trombone and clarinet. Hines and Armstrong trade brief elegant solos in the coda. In early Jazz we typically get a musical conversation suited to a loud night club or jook joint, all the players competing for sonic space, a bit of a cacophony. In the modern Jazz being invented here we hear an intellectual conversation suited to a quiet chamber. At the same time we take an emotional journey like in a Bessie Smith song. With this King Oliver tune Louis weaves together the threads. He’ll make another update in a few years.
“Beau Too Jack” (L. Armstorng, W. Melrose, A. Hill) Marvelous arrangement by Alex Hill and with Fred Robinson, trombone, Don Redman, clarinet and Alto Sax. This spitfire masterpiece stuns with sheer technical brilliance. The band zooms along seamlessly trading solos. With better recording technology Zutty can finally play drums, the rhythm section is bumpin’. This is waaay hotter than most of big band swing Jazz to come but this presages the sound of the 30s.
“Tight Like This” (H Whittaker, T. Dorsey) This dual personality song lays an extended silly, risque’ vocal skit between Louis and Earl, in a woman’s voice, on top of another foundational masterpiece of Jazz. Hines plays superbly, highly syncopated, arpeggiated, percussive, moving in, out, around the beat in swirling rhythms with more than a tinge of Spanish. He makes you want to cha-cha-cha. Sensual, seductive sax and trombone add atmosphere and Louis gives a domineering, intense, soaring performance. Zutty’s fills expand sonic space and the banjo drives on. Without the vocal skit this would be entirely in place for a classic Blue Note Records album from the 1960s.
“Weather Bird” (E. Hines, L. Armstrong) Armstrong, trumpet, Hines, piano Supremely elegant, Armstrong and Hines have now completely transformed the vernacular music form of Blues based early Jazz into something that not only rivals but arguably surpasses European Classical chamber music. This duet, whether fully or partially improvised, or part of their live repertoire, something unknown for certainty, displays phenomenal harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and compositional conception and singular playing ability. The twelve notes of Western music serves as a starting point. The two give equal exploration to the gradients between the standard notes. The bent note, the blue note is fundamental to Blues music but they bring this style into the realm of high art. Hines in particular plays in what will later be called Dilla Time after Hip Hop savant J Dilla. Hines’ rhythmic “grid,” the possible places in the sonic architecture where his multiple rhythms might fall is orders of magnitude larger than for a standard beat pattern. Likewise, call and response, has transformed from plantation field hollers to a level of sophistication rivaling Beethoven string quartets. But these musicians do not just play written notes. They call and respond in spontaneous improvisation.
“Symphonic Raps” (B. Stevens, I. Abrahams) Carroll Dickerson’s Savoyagers In 1927 and 28 Armstrong, in Chicago, plays with Carroll Dickerson’s house big band at Joe Glaser’s Sunset Cafe. Hines acts as musical director. All the members of the Hot Five belong to this live performing group augmented by a full horn line up. While more regimented as a big band must to function the whole band plays fully in swing time setting the stage for the Louis Armstrong Orchestra and the Age of Big Band Swing.
Louis, Earl and Zutty, “the unholy three,” made a pact to not accept gigs unless all three were hired. Fortune’s fate pointed otherwise. Had Louis continued to work with Earl he well might have been remembered differently as a “serious” Jazz musician grouped with players like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane. Of course he not only belonged to that group he started it. Hines never achieved massive fame. But whether knowingly or unknowingly his lineage extends to Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Q-tip, J Dilla and on and on. And if you don’t know, now you know.
Dizzy Gillespie. “He changed the style of the piano. You can find the roots of Bud Powell, Herbie Hancock, all the guys who came after that. “
Count Basie. “The greatest piano player in the world.”
Duke Ellington. “Modern Jazz starts with Earl Hines.”