I had the good fortune to teach jazz history at Queens College, in the jazz department of the Aaron Copland School of Music, between 2010 and 2017. I say good fortune because ACSM is a short hop from the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, and an even shorter hop from where the Louis Armstrong Archives, in their entirety, were tucked away at the time, behind a secure door off the front entrance of Queens College’s Rosenthal Library. (They’ve since been moved to the newly constructed Louis Armstrong Center, across the street from the Museum.)
I say good fortune also because the public face of these institutions, Ricky Riccardi, now a two-time Grammy winner for Best Album Notes, whose enthusiasm for Armstrong doesn’t border on obsession but crashes through the border and redefines the very word, came to speak to my classes once a semester, every semester I was there, without fail.
Listening to Ricky on Satchmo’s life and times was another window into American pop and Americana as a whole. But the significance of Armstrong’s exuberant and innovative rhythm, equally revolutionary in terms of trumpet and vocals, is a thing that should inspire more than just musicians.
Arguably more than any single musician, Armstrong put modern African American music on the map. He began doing it before he even led his own band, much less became a household name. It is that history and legacy of Black artistic innovation that is under attack in Trump’s America.
The Solo: Prelude
I can’t remember if I discovered Armstrong’s 1925 “Alone at Last” solo through Ricky or somewhere else. As an example of Armstrong’s revolutionary swing concept, it’s hard to top.
To this day, the lay public mainly knows Armstrong the celebrity. They know the voice, the ebullient grin, the horn, the wiping of brow with handkerchief, the major hits, the way he carried himself. Students of jazz, and a lot of contemporary jazz players, are also mainly aware of him that way; it doesn’t necessarily go deeper. Charlie Parker and his postwar heirs are far more top-of-mind.
Parker and the beboppers, however, were building on a prior rhythmic revolution, the one Armstrong had sparked 20 years before: first with King Oliver and His Creole Jazz Band at the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago, then with Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra at the Roseland Ballroom in New York.
One tune from Armstrong’s short-lived (one-year) stint with Henderson was “Alone at Last,” a long-forgotten number credited to Fiorito and Kahn, which Henderson and the band recorded under the name the Southern Serenaders in August 1925. (The very first Hot Five sessions took place in November, back in Chicago.)
To compare, here is the Henderson band (recording as the Black Swan Dance Orchestra) in June 1921, before Armstrong had even left New Orleans to join King Oliver. The alto saxophonist is believed to be Edgar Campbell.
Assuming it’s Campbell, note his phrasing and sense of time, which do not resemble what we think of as swing rhythm. This was the sound of a New York society band of the very early ’20s.
The Solo: Mind, Blown
Fast-forward to August 1925. Armstrong is well into his one-year tenure when he records “Alone at Last” with Henderson’s group. Listen to this clip, which begins at 1:04 with two choruses of reeds playing the melody in the “sweet” harmonized style of the period. At 1:38 Armstrong enters with his solo and instantly tilts the rhythmic emphasis to beats two and four. The entire sound and character of the composition changes. Suddenly we’re in the 20th century and heading toward the Space Age.
Part of this is a function of the arrangement, I believe by Don Redman. During the trumpet solo, the reeds now answer Armstrong back, creating a call-and-response structure. This gives Armstrong something to work with in addition to the main melody — and it is the main melody he is using to guide pretty much every idea. He is not “blowing on changes” in the postwar jazz sense. He takes the melody, and in an earlier jazz parlance, he “rags” it.
Players “ragged” melodies all the time before Armstrong, but not like this. Beyond just syncopation — which there is plenty of — there are little moments that almost push against or float free of the beat, a device that gives the rhythmic phrases even more snap and contrast. If a modern player transcribed and played this note-for-note on any instrument, it would sound hip — not cute, not ironic, not “vintage” or “retro,” just hip. Precisely in the postwar jazz sense. The paradigm has not been superseded or improved upon.
Can a Jazz Solo Change the World?
Well, one thing is perfectly clear: A jazz solo can certainly change jazz, and Armstrong’s solos did that, as did his vocals. In Henderson’s reed section sat Coleman Hawkins, three years younger than Pops, destined to become the father of modern tenor saxophone in the late ’30s — his rhythmic conception shaped to a huge degree by … Louis Armstrong. One could do a separate column on Hawkins’s playing before and after he heard Armstrong.
Ricky gives a whirlwind audio tour in some of his talks, intended to demonstrate how a significant chunk of Swing Era big-band arranging is essentially “orchestrated Louis Armstrong.” Like this shout chorus at the end of “Swingin’ the Blues” by Count Basie, 1938:
The riff is borrowed directly from Armstrong’s 1929 solo on the W.C. Handy standard “St. Louis Blues.”
It’s a shout-out to Pops, arranged by the great Eddie Durham (who should be far more widely known). That bright-tempo blues riff is rocking, it’s danceable, it is Kansas City jazz in all its glory, which directly paved the way for rock-n-roll. It is the sound of Louis Armstrong, the sound of America.
A big part of the JazzTimes mandate, as I see it, has to do with looking ahead to jazz’s future while also venerating its past — not with lip service, but with real analysis and commentary and a true sense of passion, not obligation. And why begin at 1945? Why miss out on decades of incredible music that all the beboppers and modernists grew up on and listened to and loved?
That’s how they learned to play, from those early, weird-sounding records, because they contain essential knowledge. Someone in our time, however, must tune in extremely closely and listen. Please do. Let it inspire — you might just save the country. JazzTimes will have your back as you protect and further the Armstrong legacy and work to keep that sound ringing out. JT