Louis Armstrong the bandleader
The Louis Armstrong Hot 5
from left: Johnny St. Cyr, Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, and Lil Hardin Armstrong
In
1925 Louis began Okeh Record's dates with his Hot Five band featuring Johnny Dodds
on clarinet, Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny St. Cyr on banjo, and his wife Lil on
piano. The record company left him pretty much on his own to choose musicians
and songs for these recordings, a wise decision since these are considered to
be among the finest Jazz classics ever recorded even to this day. On November
12, 1925 Louis Armstrong made his first records that bore his name as bandleader.
The songs on the first Okeh 78 rpm record were "My Heart", and "Yes, I'm in the
Barrel". Masterpieces such as "Cornet Chop Suey", "Potato Head Blues", and "West
End Blues", recorded later, turned jazz into a soloist's art form.
Louis Armstrong, with
his Hot Five and Hot Seven, recorded between November, 1925, and December, 1928
changing the landscape of Jazz forever taking it from well organized ensemble playing
to a world of 'Hot solos'. During this three year period the instrumentalist changed
somewhat for different sessions, although all the sessions had some of the same
people as those first recordings, most interesting change to note is the replacement
of Lil by Earl 'Fatha' Hines. In 1928 Okeh switched from an acoustic means of
recording music to an electrical based system. The acoustic recording process
couldn't cope with the vibration created by drums or bass, thus recording engineers
preferred not to have these instruments in a session or placed them so far from
the recording horn, that they could rarely be heard. The Louis Armstrong with
his Hot Seven band added Pete Briggs on Tuba, and Baby Dodds on drums.
The Okeh recordings not
only changed Jazz into a 'Hot solo' art, but also revealed Louis as a pioneering
vocalist. In the February 26, 1926 session in Chicago while recording 'Heebie
Jeebies', according to Louis himself, the sheet music fell off the stand and rather
than stop the recording he continued with sounds similar to an instrumental break
as he was use to doing occasionally. This was the first recorded example of what
became known as 'scat singing', a Jazz vocal form used yet today (most notably
by Ella Fitzgerald).
In 1928 Louis returned to New York, and in 1929 was hired to play in the pit band of the popular all black musical reveiw 'Hot Chocolates' on Broadway which featured the music of Fats Waller and lyrics of Andy Razaf The show was a great success and 'Louie' stole the show with his rendition of Ain't Misbehavin' which he recorded July 19, 1929, and it became his biggest selling record to date.
In the begining
Those early years
The bandleader
The Big Band Era
The golden years
Webmaster note: the background for this page was created with Adobe Photoshop 5 using a photograph of the mouthpiece of the cornet Louis played at the waif's home. The mouthpiece was permanently attached to the horn and Louis cut these notches in it to suit his embouchure. Today it is in the Jazz Museum in the old Government Mint building in New Orleans.
