TOWN HALL opened its doors in January of 1921. Located in the heart of Manhattan, on Forty-third Street between Broadway and the Avenue of the Americas, it was built by the League for Political Education during their struggle to pass the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Though educational lectures continued to be a mainstay of the space, music also played an important role in its history. In the 1920s, many classical musicians, including Sergei Rachmaninoff and the young prodigy Yehudi Menuhin, availed themselves of the theater’s grand acoustics. Jazz became an important part of Town Hall’s program in the 1940s, with Eddie Condon leading a significant weekly series of jam sessions that were broadcast internationally over radio’s Blue Network. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie brought the sounds of bebop to the venue in 1945.
On May 17, 1947, Louis Armstrong’s career was reborn on the stage of Town Hall. Not that it was dead. He was, after all, a major recording artist and one of the most popular entertainers in the world. If Armstrong hadn’t appeared at Town Hall for that 11:30 p.m. show, his career probably would have continued in the path it had followed since he left Chicago in 1929, as the leader of a big band. But Town Hall opened a new door for Armstrong. His appearance there suggested he could achieve greater success in a small group setting.
Town Hall was filled to its 1,500-seat capacity that Saturday evening, a standing-room-only crowd even though tickets had gone on sale only six days prior. Seven top-flight jazz musicians, almost all of whom had previously played with Armstrong, had been assembled by the evening’s music director, Bobby Hackett, to back the trumpeter. Armstrong arrived at Town Hall at six in the evening, joking with the musicians before going over the songs for the performance (he had been too busy to attend rehearsals). At 11:30, emcee Fred Robbins, a popular New York disc jockey, strode out and delivered his monologue: “Louie opens tonight with some of the golden things from his early Okeh days. And in another respect, this concert is unique. That is, we’ve surrounded Louie with the best jazz musicians attainable, with Jack Teagarden on trombone, Bobby Hackett on trumpet, Sid Catlett on the drums, as well as [drummer] George Wettling, Dick Cary at the piano, Bobby Haggart on bass. And so, from the golden Okeh days, we give you the greatest figure in American jazz, on a one-night stand, playing ‘Cornet Chop Suey,’ Louie Armstrong!” To thunderous applause, Armstrong appeared on stage and immediately launched into the unaccompanied introduction he originally wrote and copyrighted in January 1924 and later immortalized on wax with his own Hot Five in 1926. It was a gutsy choice of a tune, vaunted and difficult, a precursor to the more modern sounds of jazz that had sprung up in the 1940s. As a way of demonstrating that he wasn’t there simply to re-create the past, Armstrong offered a swinging, up-to-date take on the number, creating something entirely fresh and exciting. Even when he touched on the melody, he’d rephrase it in a new, mature way: different from, but no less effective than, the original. Armstrong was accompanied by just the rhythm section on the tune, and they swung relentlessly, drummer Sid Catlett breaking up the time with his superbly placed accents. Armstrong played only fifty-nine seconds of melody before the piano solo. The audience, already electrified, heartily applauded Armstrong’s effort, but the trumpeter was just getting started. The centerpiece of “Cornet Chop Suey” was always the stop-time chorus. Armstrong dove right in, using his original solo as a framework, but making enough changes to keep it fresh before his declamatory final ride-out chorus, his playing full of confidence and heat. He replicated the original “Charleston”-type coda before going into a short, improvised closing cadenza, building it up to a dramatic high concert C, held and shaken for all its glory, even higher than the high A that ended the piece in 1926. Tremendous applause filled the hall, including clapping by a beaming Joe Glaser, Armstrong’s white manager, punctuated by enthusiastic whistling and an ecstatic Armstrong yelling, laughing, generally signaling approval in his own inimitable way.
Though he most likely did not know it at the time, Louis Armstrong’s later years had just begun.
Armstrong’s popularity during the swing era has often been undervalued, despite the numerous Decca records of insipid pop tunes, accompanied by his big band, that influenced young musicians of the period. Armstrong broke attendance and box-office records all over the country. History fusses over Benny Goodman’s riotous, record-breaking appearance at New York’s Paramount Theater in 1937, but there is little mention of Armstrong’s performance there just two weeks later, which smashed Goodman’s box-office record.1 Even during the recording ban of World War II, Armstrong remained a top-drawing act, performing popular songs of the day such as “As Time Goes By” and “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo.” Personnel changes became more frequent in the 1940s, and a lot of young jazz greats passed through his ranks, including Charles Mingus, Kenny Clarke, and Dexter Gordon. And though he didn’t make many records during the war, one from 1945, a cover of Cecil Grant’s “I Wonder,” became an out-and-out hit. According to the Pittsburgh Courier, “his platter, ‘I Wonder,’ had no longer [sic] hit the music stalls before the first pressing of 75,000 of the tune were gobbled up. Now Decca is pressing another 75,000 and expects Louis’ recording to hit the million mark.”2
“I Wonder” was unusual because it was made with a group of studio musicians instead of his big band, but Armstrong soon began to feature the tune live with his larger outfit. At the time, Armstrong had no intention of ditching the big band for small-group playing—a view he expressed to Metronome in April 1945, just after “I Wonder” hit the charts.
Why should I go back? I want to stay up with the times. That’s why I surround myself with youngsters. Every once in a while I lay an old-fashioned phrase on ’em, but music’s better now than it used to be, it’s played better now. Whether it’s arranged or improvised, the music of today is way ahead of what it used to be. We’ve advanced a lot since the early days. Music should be played all kinds of ways, anyway. Symphonic stuff, beautiful things, everything goes. If there are people who want to omit arrangements, scored backgrounds, omit any kind of music, you tell ’em I said, “Omit those people!”3
Clearly Armstrong was comfortable in a big-band setting. Yet decades later, commentators such as James Lincoln Collier and Gunther Schuller asserted that Armstrong was shackled to his band, unable to perform the small-group New Orleans jazz he truly wanted to play. Armstrong had no patience for musical categories. In a 1945 letter to Leonard Feather, he wrote: “To me, as far as I could see it all my life, Jazz and Swing is the same thing … In the good old days of Buddy Bolden it was called Rag Time Music … Later on in the years it was called Jazz Music—Hot Music—Gut Bucket—and now they’ve poured a little gravy over it, called it Swing Music … No matter how you slice it, it’s still the same music.”4
Not everyone shared Armstrong’s views. During the mid-1940s, most jazz critics associated themselves with either “modern” or “old-fashioned” jazz, creating a divide that grew deeper after the bebop of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker exploded onto the jazz world in 1945. Such music had never been heard on record, and jazz would never be the same. Bebop, originally known as “rebop” and later shortened to “bop,” was developed by younger musicians looking to explore more complex chord changes, new harmonies, and difficult unison melodies, often delivered in the fastest of tempos. Bop may have spawned numerous geniuses such as Parker and Gillespie, but it also spawned chaos. From its very first notes, bop was met with either great admiration or fierce revulsion. A war soon broke out between the boppers and the “moldy figs,” as followers and performers of traditional jazz were called. All of a sudden, pure, unadulterated New Orleans jazz bands, such as those led by Bunk Johnson and Kid Ory, were popular again, influencing eventual white imitators such as Lu Watters and Turk Murphy. Things heated up in the music press with bop enthusiasts routinely lashing out against the moldy figs. The result was the end of jazz as America’s popular music. Boppers were not showmen (with the exception of Gillespie), and after the swing era, most bop was unsuitable for dancing, which turned off a large portion of the jazz audience. For its part, traditional jazz, while boasting a strong legion of fans, would also never again be wildly popular, for its very old-fashionedness. The new era belonged to singers such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, who stood in front of large orchestras, crooning hits of the day.
Louis Armstrong’s initial position on bop was flattering: “Don’t you know I’m crazy about that ‘Re Bop’ stuff? I love to listen to it,” he said in Esquire’s 1947 Jazz Book. “I think it’s very, very amusing. One thing, to play ‘Re Bop’ one has to have mighty good, strong chops from what I’ve witnessed. I’m one cat that loves all kinds of music.”5 Yet Armstrong’s musical world was about to change, as did his stance toward the new music.
On April 29, 1946, Armstrong’s big band received a devastating review in Time magazine of its engagement at the Aquarium in New York City. “The greatest jazzman of them all, Louis (“Satchmo”) Armstrong was back on Broadway. The word spread, the devotees gathered. But jazz purists who went prospecting for his golden trumpet notes had to pan out a lot of wet gravel. Satchmo arrived with one of the biggest (19 pieces), brassiest, and worst bands he ever had—a kind of unintentional satire on everything wrong with big bands: saxophonists who stood up and writhed as they played; a brass section with a nose for noise rather than an ear for melody.”6 A few months later, United Artists announced it would produce a movie that promised to tell the real story of New Orleans in 1917. The movie, simply titled New Orleans, would feature Armstrong and a number of other jazz musicians, including Bunk Johnson, Kid Ory, and Billie Holiday. More importantly, it would also feature Armstrong in small-group settings playing the traditional jazz classics of his youth.7 With a roster of musicians that also included clarinetist Barney Bigard and drummer Zutty Singleton, the film’s music was of high order. The soundtrack included a remake of Armstrong’s famous 1928 recording of “West End Blues,” his breath control still at its peak as he holds the climatic note during the last chorus for all four bars (ten seconds). On “Mahogany Hall Stomp,” Armstrong created new variations on his original 1929 solo, and he blew a tremendous chorus at the close of “Basin Street Blues.” The actual film turned out to be a forgettable melodrama, but the jazz community could only focus on the sights and sounds of Armstrong playing in a New Orleans setting. This was the music of Armstrong’s youth, the music of the Hot Five and Hot Seven era—an era some critics wished Louis would return to.
While filming New Orleans, Armstrong took part in a relaxed small-group session for Charles Delaunay’s Swing label, based in France. The results, including terrific interpretations of two standards, “I Want a Little Girl” and “Sugar,” were so successful they were released in America on RCA Victor. A month after that session Armstrong recorded for RCA again in a session that provided a clear picture of the crossroads where he stood. It started with two big-band tracks, “Endie” and “The Blues Are Brewin’,” both harmless remakes of tunes from the New Orleans soundtrack. Later, however, Armstrong fronted a small group with Kid Ory blowing tailgate trombone on numbers such as “Mahogany Hall Stomp” and the first recorded version of “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans.” Once again, the small-group efforts were preferable to those of the big band. Armstrong was very clear in a letter he wrote to Leonard Feather on December 5, 1946. Joe Glaser wanted Feather to help plan a concert at Carnegie Hall the following February. “I understand you and the Boss Mr. Glaser’s planning a concert for me and my gang,” Armstrong wrote.
Well I’ll tell ya planning concert’s alright—but if any an every old Tom Dick & Harry will be interfering I’d just sooner forget about the concert … They have all been awfully messy anyway—from what I can gather … So if you boys intend on doing the thing—for God’s sake—don’t have a lot guys whom think they know whats going down—and come to find out—they’re no where … It really wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the seven piece band (the one I used in the picture) in that concert … We really did romp … Just to give you a sort of rough idea of what went down in the picture … Maybe you can find a place for them in the Concert.8
Feather liked the idea and wanted to make the whole evening a small-group affair, but Glaser remained skeptical. It was arranged to have Armstrong front a sextet led by clarinetist Edmond Hall for the first half of the concert, but Glaser made sure the second half featured Armstrong’s usual big band, along with guest stars Billie Holiday and Sid Catlett, Armstrong’s former drummer.
The concert was given on a late Saturday afternoon, at 5:30 p.m.9 Armstrong performed a strong sampling of the small-band tunes he had made immortal two decades earlier, though listening to it sixty years later, one can hear that it was at times a pretty ragged affair. On “Muskrat Ramble,” the band played the wrong chords under Armstrong’s solo, causing a clash. And “Dippermouth Blues” and “Mahogany Hall Stomp” are also a little too loose, with occasional missed notes and sloppy execution of the routines. But even with the roughness of the early moments of the concert, one cannot deny Armstrong’s enthusiasm. He brought down the house with the hilarious duet with bassist Johnny Williams on “Rockin’ Chair” and his re-creations of a New Orleans funeral with the medley of “Flee As a Bird” and “Oh, Didn’t He Ramble,” two crowd-pleasing routines that would later appear in the All Stars’ repertoire. “Black and Blue,” the Fats Waller–Andy Razaf classic Armstrong made a racial protest song in 1929, was dusted off and given an emotional performance, the first surviving Armstrong performance of it since the original recording. Armstrong grew more powerful as the small-group session progressed, culminating in a hard-to-top romp on “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” The highlights of the second half were a duet with Holiday on “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” and drummer Catlett’s feature on “Mop Mop.” Armstrong continued to play with brio, especially on a slow “Back o’ Town Blues.” Even with the star-filled, jam-packed second half, all the critics and fans could talk about the next day was Armstrong’s first-half performance. Music Business magazine reported, “So with Bobby Hackett’s horn, an 11th-hour substitution for Satchmo’s, stolen from rehearsal the day before the concert, Armstrong reaffirmed for the reverent Carnegie audience the artistry that has made him the country’s master jazz man and master showman.”10 Dizzy Gillespie was at the concert, and though the press was trying to drum up a war between the boppers and the older New Orleans musicians at the time, Gillespie simply said to DownBeat magazine, “Didn’t he play wonderfully!”
Also in attendance that night was Ernie Anderson, a longtime Armstrong friend and the producer of Eddie Condon’s successful concerts at New York’s Town Hall. Anderson knew Armstrong’s big band was struggling after Bert Block, the booker at Glaser’s Associated Booking Corporation, privately told him that “the fee for the 16-piece band had fallen to $350 for a week night or $500 for a Saturday.” Anderson and Bobby Hackett approached Louis with the idea of Armstrong dedicating an entire evening at Town Hall to his old classics with an all-star small group. Armstrong quickly jumped at the proposal, but told him, “I can’t do this unless Joe Glaser wants me to.”11
Armstrong often said that. Joe Glaser, a central figure in Armstrong’s life, has always been viewed ambivalently. For sure, he got Armstrong’s career back on track in the 1930s, protected him from physical harm, and made sure he had more money than he would ever need. However, Glaser was a man of contradictions. He is often criticized for working Armstrong too hard and for withholding money.
There’s a bit of truth to both sides. Glaser was a product of the North Side of Chicago, involved in the city’s notorious gangster scene in the 1920s—he served as a henchman for Al Capone—and in charge of the Sunset Café, one of Armstrong’s steady gigs. Armstrong recalled a time in the mid-1930s when his career hit rock bottom: he spent over a year in Europe, nursing a tired lip and avoiding mob-related troubles brought on by another manager. When Armstrong returned to the United States early in 1935, he found himself essentially starting from scratch. Glaser wasn’t exactly thriving either; a Chicago Tribune article from April 9 of that year spelled out Glaser’s troubles clearly: “Joe Glaser, former owner of the Sunset Café at 315 East 35th Street, once convicted of the rape of a 14-year-old girl, was reported named in a true bill voted by the grand jury yesterday charging him with receiving stolen property in connection with his effort to reopen the resort. He is a fugitive. The state’s attorney’s office charges that Glaser was a participant in a conspiracy by which a $2,500 truckload of liquor was stolen and delivered to the Sunset last June.”12
Despite his shady background and current troubles with the law, Glaser was the only person from Armstrong’s past with the proper connections to make his mob troubles disappear and possibly put his career back on track. Armstrong sought Glaser out in Chicago and made his demands clear: “I want you to be my manager … You get me the jobs. You collect the money. You pay me one thousand dollars every week free and clear. You pay off the band, the travel and hotel expenses, my income tax, and you take everything that’s left.’ ” Armstrong and Glaser shook hands and their partnership was formed without an official contract ever being signed.13 “They needed each other and they suited each other perfectly,” David Ostwald, tuba player and Armstrong historian, says. “They realized they each had something that they could offer to the other. What Joe Glaser offered was security—and I mean physical security. He could give him physical protection, which was important. Louie’s life had been threatened. And also, one can’t underestimate the importance, as unfortunate as it is, of a black man at that time having a person accommodate him in a white world.”14
Some close to Armstrong felt that Glaser took advantage of Armstrong, working him relentlessly and growing rich from it. In July 1970 one such friend, Jack Bradley, sat down with three highly respected trumpeters—Clark Terry, Ray Nance, and Billy Butterfield—and asked if they believed this to be true. To Bradley’s surprise, all three men seemed almost envious of Armstrong’s deal with Glaser. “The only thing I could say about that situation is that Pops seemed to be very happy with the arrangement he had going with [Glaser],” Terry said. “And I understand, I don’t know the exact figures, but I understand whatever his salary was, x amount of dollars [went to him], which was sufficient for him to live like a king, and x amount of dollars for his wife, Lucille, which was enough for her to live independently, as she chose. And the rest, the taxes and all the worries and so forth with keeping up with the government and staying abreast, staying clear of tax problems, was left up to Joe Glaser. Now if he made a million dollars behind that, I understand that it was none of Pops’s business in the agreement. And if he didn’t make that, Pops expected his salary right on, and I understand it was a very substantial one.” Butterfield said, “[Glaser] kept him clean all the time and he never got in any trouble with government and all of that like a lot of other guys.” Bradley mentioned that Armstrong believed he never would have made it as big without Glaser, something Bradley did not feel to be true. But Nance responded, “It’s possible, because, I’m telling you, you’ve got to have good management. I don’t care how great you are, you’ve got to have good management. Good management goes hand in hand with success, with talent. Like we all know there’s a whole lot of people that are talented but they never get the right management.” Terry summed up the viewpoint of Armstrong’s fellow musicians: “If it went down the way I heard it went down, it ain’t a bad deal. It ain’t a bad deal.”15
Armstrong knew that some members of the black community frowned upon his being controlled by a white manager, but he paid them no mind. “We ain’t looked back since we signed up with Joe, whether we work or not,” he told fellow entertainer Babe Wallace in 1959. “There you go. ‘Oh, that nigger making all that money for a white man.’ So I just keep saying, ‘You ever see Louis Armstrong look like anybody who needs something?’ They say, ‘No.’ Well, what the hell? Figure that out. You know? There’s always some old spade who’s going to say some shit.”16
Armstrong was happy with the arrangement, following advice he received while still a child in New Orleans—advice he wasn’t afraid to share with Glaser: “Always keep a white man behind you that’ll put his hand on you and say, ‘That’s my nigger.’ ”17 When Armstrong conveyed that story to Wallace, he expounded on it, adding, “I always remember the old hustlers. Because in those days, what they’re talking about, a place gets raided, all Mr. Charlie got to say is, ‘You got my nigger down there?’ ‘Yes sir, Mr. Charlie.’ ‘If you don’t turn my nigger loose, I’ll come down there and’ … and you’re liable to have fifty thousand dollars in your pocket and you can’t get it. They won’t even let you use the phone. You understand? … See, but what them niggers told me was real shit. And I tell Joe Glaser many times, I say, ‘You that white man I’ve been looking for.’ ”18
Though some have argued that Glaser did indeed harm Armstrong by overworking him, the truth is Armstrong reveled in hard work. It was the only life he knew. When I asked five surviving members of the All Stars—Danny Barcelona, Joe Muranyi, Buddy Catlett, Jewel Brown, and Marty Napoleon—if Glaser was at fault, they all said it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Armstrong was only happy when he was constantly working and was known to complain to Glaser if he had too many nights off in a row.
Though Glaser undoubtedly loved Armstrong, and built an entire booking agency off of his talent, he also had a crude, foul-mouthed, racist side that didn’t endear him to many. Witnesses heard him call his secretary “bitch” and “cunt.” Ernie Anderson remembered Glaser once complaining, “These shines are all alike. They’re so lazy. You know that, don’t you? ”19 None of this seemed to bother Armstrong, who wrote in 1944: “I always admired Mr. Glaser from the first day I started working for him. He just impressed me different than the other Bosses I’ve worked for. He seemed to understand Colored people so much.”20 Perhaps Armstrong turned a blind eye toward Glaser’s character flaws because Glaser was responsible for resurrecting his career in the 1930s. He wouldn’t allow anyone—not even his wife Lucille—to criticize Glaser in his presence.
Ernie Anderson knew Armstrong didn’t want to put so many men out of work by breaking up the big band, which continued to make recordings for Victor in March 1947. More importantly, he knew Glaser was tough to deal with and would probably slam the door in his face. Taking a risk, he made out a check for $1,000 and gave it to Glaser’s secretary.
When Glaser received it, he grew irate, giving Anderson five minutes to explain. “What are you trying to do, you jerk?” Glaser barked. “That’s for Louis for one night without the band,” Anderson said. He told Glaser that he knew how badly the big band was struggling, earning $350 a night. “If this works as I think it will,” he said, “instead of $350 a night for Louis, you’ll be getting $2,500 a night.” Glaser said nothing more. Never one to refuse money, he agreed. Besides, Glaser knew that keeping the big band afloat was no longer an easy task. The previous summer, he grew very unhappy when he heard that some of Armstrong’s men were complaining about a ten-dollar deduction for upkeep of their uniforms. “The boys should be ashamed of complaining,” he wrote to the band’s musical director, Joe Garland. “As far as work is concerned they have been working more than any band in the business. I took jobs for them regardless of whether the office received commission or not and even went to extremes to see that they are happy at all times.” Glaser took this opportunity to make it clear to Garland that the band business was in quite a slump. “Promoters all over are going broke,” he wrote. “Bookings are being cancelled at the last minute—I can name at least half a dozen Colored bands that will disband in the next 30 days and at least 20 White bands that will disband so if our men are complaining then all I can say is God Bless them all and my only hope is that they change before it is too late as I assure you they will be very unhappy unless the situation changes in the immediate future.”21 With the situation not about to change any time soon, it was time for Glaser to give Anderson’s idea a shot.
Anderson immediately set up the date at New York City’s Town Hall for Saturday, May 17, naming Bobby Hackett musical director, in charge of selecting the rest of the group. With the exception of Sid Catlett, all the musicians Hackett brought in were white, starting a trend of integration that all of Armstrong’s future small groups would uphold.
Anderson thankfully recorded the performance, and though the sound quality is less than ideal at times, the recording is historic. Armstrong, without his big band, offered some of his most soulful playing of the evening on “Dear Old Southland,” dramatically accompanied only by Cary’s piano. He also turned in a smoking solo on “Big Butter and Egg Man,” clearly driven to transcendence by Catlett’s backbeats. Armstrong took only one break that night, letting Teagarden feature himself on “St. James Infirmary.” Otherwise, he continued to blow with a level of inspiration not present in his recent big-band records on renditions of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” and touching ballad performances of “Pennies from Heaven” and “Save It, Pretty Mama.” “Rockin’ Chair,” a favorite of the Carnegie Hall concert, was featured in arguably its greatest version, with Teagarden playing the role of the “father.” The love between the two men is wonderfully in evidence, capturing the audience convulsing in laughter at Armstrong’s witty comebacks and scat passages. But just as he got the audience laughing, Armstrong picked up his trumpet for a final, dramatic statement of the melody. The effortless mixture of comedy and serious music seemed to sum up Armstrong’s brilliance in a matter of minutes.
When the reviews came in, the Town Hall concert was a hit. British jazz critic Peter Tanner concluded that “Louis Armstrong is still without any shadow of doubt, the greatest virtuoso of the trumpet in the world. His playing had all the freshness and vigor of the early Hot Five and Seven days. He never strove for effects, never played to the gallery; each phrase, each note he played was always just right. Louis has wonderful taste, impeccable musicianship, and a way of making quite banal numbers as, for instance, ‘Sweethearts on Parade,’ seem like really great music.”22 Other critics were also bowled over by Armstrong. Wilder Hobson wrote that the concert featured “superb hot music, showing this art form at its best.”23
Less than a month later, Armstrong headed off to RCA’s New York studio for a date organized by Leonard Feather, one that might have seemed like a reunion of old friends as Hackett, Teagarden, and clarinetist Peanuts Hucko again joined him from the Town Hall concert. Armstrong debuted an original composition, soon to become a standard, “Someday You’ll Be Sorry.” He enjoyed talking about the origin of the song, saying: “We was in North Dakota or South Dakota, or somewhere. It was cold and this thing kept runnin’ ’cross my mind, like dreamin’ a musical comedy. And this ‘Someday’ was the theme of this show. So, we was asleep. Lucille was sound asleep. But I got up in my pajamas and got me a piece of paper and pencil out. I say, ‘I’m gonna lose it if I don’t write it down.’ And she wakes up and say, ‘Are you all right?’ I said, ‘I’m all right.’ But the next day I had it, and we looked at it … and everybody liked the tune.”24 Johnny Guarnieri’s celeste adds a charm to the delightful performance. The blues were represented by two vocal duets with Teagarden: a mellow “Fifty-Fifty Blues,” arranged to sound almost as if it were a leftover big-band performance, and a fierce remake of the 1944 V-Disc “Jack Armstrong Blues,” the new version featuring perhaps Armstrong’s best extended trumpet solo of the period; it builds higher and higher over sustained chords by the band. Dan Morgenstern has called it “to my ears the most modern Armstrong on record.”25
Armstrong was now playing with renewed energy, enlivened by the recent work he had done with small groups, and the press took note. “The public has rediscovered Satchmo,” DownBeat reported in an article titled “Louis Center of New Commotion.”26 However reluctant he remained to “throw eighteen cats out of work,” the time had come. Russell “Big Chief” Moore, who had been with Armstrong’s big band since 1944, remembered, “We were beginning to see signs of whatever you call it, the handwriting on the wall. All the bands were breaking up. It was an economic situation where big bands were getting out of style. Everybody was making small bands. So that left me without a job and everybody cut out and that broke up the band.”27 Armstrong wouldn’t have to worry about making a living anymore, as there was more money to be made with a small group. Glaser gave in; the big band was in its death throes.
The end of Louis Armstrong’s days as a big-band leader came during a July run at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Jack Teagarden had also recently given up his struggling big band and spent much of the early summer freelancing. Having had recent success with Armstrong, Teagarden was on board as a featured artist, sitting in with the band for specialty numbers such as “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues” and “St. James Infirmary.” A newspaper story of July 5, 1947, remarked, “The management of the Apollo is happy that Teagarden consented [to] desert his band for this one week in order to be able to appear with Armstrong.”28 After their week of success at the Apollo, it was clear that Teagarden would have to be a permanent part of Armstrong’s new band. Considered by many to be jazz’s greatest trombonist, and a fine singer in his own right, Teagarden had admired Armstrong ever since he heard him play on a riverboat even before the trumpeter was well known. He first got the chance to record with his idol in 1929 on the famous integrated “Knockin’ a Jug” session for Okeh. “The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone I got goose pimples all over; in all my experience I had never heard anything so fine,” recalled Louis.29 Teagarden’s laid-back demeanor was compatible with Armstrong; the two never let their egos get in the way of their friendship or the music they created. Barney Bigard said, “Louis got along just fine with everyone in the band, but he loved Jack.”30 Teagarden was happy to join Armstrong. His own big band had led him into great debt, so much so that he barely cleared any money in his early days with Armstrong after paying it. Pianist Dick Cary remembered, “He was in such a low state, he used to say to me, ‘Dick, if I don’t have enough to buy a pint of Four Roses every day I’m going to quit playing.’ ”31
It was imperative that drummer Sid Catlett be in the mix. Legendarily known as “Big Sid,” he was versatile, able to sit in with everyone from Armstrong’s sextet and Benny Goodman’s big band to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in their early bebop sessions. While a very large man, Catlett possessed a soft touch behind the traps and had the ability to inspire and swing any band he anchored. Other musicians loved him for his style, his swing, and a showmanship that featured feats of stick twirling and tossing. A veteran of Armstrong’s big-band days, he felt right at home in the All Stars. “Louie Armstrong often pronounced him the greatest jazz drummer and hired him on every possible occasion,” said Ernie Anderson.32 Dick Cary, recommended for the Town Hall performance by Bobby Hackett, was chosen to remain as Armstrong’s first pianist. As Cary recalled, when they were picking musicians for the band, “Louis said, ‘That little ofay who played Town Hall would be pretty good.’ ”33 Cary, also a fine arranger, was essential to making the first edition of the All Stars sound as good as it did. Replacing Hucko on clarinet was Barney Bigard, with whom Armstrong had performed in the movie New Orleans and on the small-group sessions Leonard Feather produced for Victor in 1946, as well as on a Johnny Dodds record date from 1927. Born in New Orleans, Bigard studied clarinet early with the famous teacher Lorenzo Tio Jr. After playing with King Oliver in Chicago, he joined Duke Ellington in December 1927 and remained with him until 1942, contributing many classic solos and a number of compositions, including the seminal “Mood Indigo.” Bigard later said, “I enjoyed both bands but I enjoyed Louis’s more because I had more freedom in my playing, where Duke, you got to play what you see on the paper plus, what you say freedom, but it wasn’t that much freedom. It doesn’t give you a chance to even concentrate on really what you want to do because it’s so short.”34 The newest face in the band was bassist Morty Corb, a busy studio musician from Los Angeles.
The new small group was set to debut at Billy Berg’s, a nightclub in Los Angeles, on August 13, 1947. A DownBeat ad from August 1947 finally gave a name to Armstrong’s new congregation: “Louis Armstrong and the Esquire All Stars.” The Esquire sponsorship would soon end, and though some early critics called the band “Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five,” “All Stars” stuck and would be the name of every Armstrong small group for the rest of his career. (Eddie Condon joked, “Joe [Glaser] makes it sound like a basketball team.”)35 Two days before the opening, Armstrong and his new band got together for a warm-up. As reported in Time magazine, Armstrong confirmed his confidence in the band: “I don’t need no rehearsals. I don’t go through that and never will. All these cats I’m playing with can blow. We don’t need no arrangements. I just say, man, what you going to play? They say ‘Musk’at Ramble.’ I say follow me, and you got the best arrangement you ever heard.”36
The jazz world turned out in droves to see the new coming of Louis Armstrong, the greatest jazz musician of their time. People lined up around the building for the chance to get in. Armstrong didn’t disappoint the audience, which included musicians such as Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer, Woody Herman, and Benny Goodman. A later DownBeat story, by John Lucas, stated, “In returning occasionally to small band jazz, he has revealed that he thoroughly understands the value of basic jazz … And now that the smaller groups seem on the way back, Armstrong is beginning to lean more and more toward such ensembles. Jazz is never stagnant and neither is Louis.”37
Time magazine put it even more dramatically:
Louis Armstrong had forsaken the ways of Mammon and come back to jazz. Shorn of his big (19-piece), brassy, ear-splitting commercial band, he was as happy as a five-year-old with his curls cut off. Billy Berg’s neon & chromium Los Angeles jazz temple wasn’t big enough to hold the faithful who thronged to welcome him back.38
In the Time article, Armstrong took fresh swipes at the boppers. While he had been supportive earlier on, he no longer was:
Take them re-bop boys. They’re great technicians. Mistakes—that’s all re-bop is.… Some cats say Old Satch is old-fashioned, not modern enough. Why, man, most of that modern stuff I first heard in 1918. Ain’t no music out of date as long as you play it perfect.39
Armstrong, probably figuring any publicity was good publicity, must have known that knocking the boppers would keep the spotlight on him and his new group—he wasn’t about to stop any time soon. Armstrong stayed in California after the Billy Berg’s engagement, performing to a sold-out crowd at one of Gene Norman’s “Just Jazz” concerts in Pasadena on September 9.40 Bassist Morty Corb was still mentioned in advertisements for the band’s September engagement at the Rag Doll in Chicago, but he had already been replaced by the time of the Pasadena concert. “My biggest compliment was when Louis said, ‘I like your playing. I would like you to go to Europe with me,’ ” Corb remembered. “I declined—partly because I do not like to fly, but also because I was just starting to get roots in the studios, and that was what I wanted to do.”41 Corb’s departure left an opening filled by Arvell Shaw. The youngest member of the band, Shaw had previously played in Armstrong’s last big band.
In a 1997 interview, Shaw fondly recalled joining the All Stars. When Armstrong was asked, “Who you gonna get on bass?” he replied, “Well, I have a young kid who can really play. Why not get him?” “We’ve never heard of him,” critics said, to which Armstrong responded, “So what! At one time nobody never heard of me.”42 Shaw would remain with Armstrong, on and off, until his very last gig, summing up his stay with the band this way: “Working with Louis was like working for a head of state. We made at least one around-the-world tour every year. We played for kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers, popes. He was born the grandson of a slave and he rose to become a world figure and a multimillionaire, but during that time he still remained a very human human being.”43
By the fall of 1947, female vocalist Velma Middleton had also joined the All Stars. Born in St. Louis in 1917, the heavyset Middleton (she weighed nearly 300 pounds) was originally a dancer. A veteran of the bands of Blanche Calloway, Erskine Hawkins, and Jimmie Lunceford, she entered Armstrong’s big band in 1942 and soon assumed a role as Armstrong’s comedic foil. The centerpiece of Middleton’s routine was a split that always left the audience roaring and the critics screaming “Tasteless!” But her innuendo-filled duets with Armstrong on numbers like “That’s My Desire” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” always brought down the house. “Deeply devoted to Louis, she didn’t mind at all acting the foil for all kinds of unflattering (if always good-natured) badinage,” wrote Dan Morgenstern. “She was a special pet peeve of the critics, who seemed to take personal offense at seeing a fat black woman do the splits—Velma, all 300 or so pounds of her, could do a mean split and was light on her feet. No one (including herself) would have claimed her to be a great singer, but she was important to the show the All Stars put on and gave Louis some needed rest from the horn.”44 As Trummy Young, Armstrong’s trombonist from 1952 to 1964, would say, “They were a fantastic team together. Velma wasn’t a great singer or nothing like that, but she certainly was the right foil for Louis. I would have hated to follow them two on stage, man.”45
On October 17, 1947, Armstrong and the band headed back to Victor’s studios to record four more songs. Released under the name “Louis Armstrong and His All Stars,” they were the first recordings by Armstrong’s working sextet. The Victor session, however, would be Armstrong’s last for almost two years. An American Federation of Musicians’ strike shut down commercial recording for most of 1948, and Armstrong wouldn’t record again until 1949. Still, his live shows were wildly popular. George Hoefer’s review of a November concert at the Chicago Opera House (calling the band the “Louis Armstrong Hot Sextet”) stated, “The group as a unit is not and does not pretend to be a Dixieland Band, nor does it offer anything new or sensational in music. Satchmo’s superb stage presence binds together a showcase of jazz stars into a jazz production that warmed the hearts of nostalgia music lovers. The greatest contribution to jazz that has come out of the revival of Armstrong’s small band is the release of the trumpeter from the fetters of a large commercial jump band. Consequently, Louis is playing and singing with more heart and inspiration than he has for years.”46 Hoefer reserved his wrath for Velma Middleton: “This reviewer has yet to feel the humor that is apparently present when an obese person jumps around on a stage.”47
On November 15, Armstrong appeared at Carnegie Hall, a midnight concert that lasted until 2:30 a.m. Recorded but never released commercially, a good number of tracks survive, capturing the band already in tight form. Again, disc jockey Fred Robbins was the emcee, and in an eloquent speech pronounced the importance of Armstrong:
He’s shaped the entire course of jazz for the past twenty-five years. His influence on countless musicians here and abroad has been unfathomable. It extends all the way through to every instrument, to singers. No one musician has picked up everything, but almost everyone owes a small debt to this gentleman. It’s really a thrill to be able to revel in a genius while we have him. Not to be able to talk about him years from now but to appreciate him and enjoy him while he’s still able to put that vibrating lip to his golden horn. This is American music, concert-style, and believe me, it’s with a very deep bow of reverence that I introduce you to Louie Armstrong.
Armstrong then took the stage, personally introducing the members of the All Stars. One has to put into perspective the star power on stage during those early All Stars shows. Most jazz fans were very familiar with musicians like Teagarden, Bigard, and Catlett, and Armstrong made sure to feature them well. But to Armstrong, each band member was an All Star. According to Arvell Shaw, “With Louis everybody had a featured spot, and he’d tell you: ‘Go out there and tear up the house if you can’ … That’s one of the things I admired about him. He gave everybody an equal chance … He was always the first one on stage and he worked hard, harder than anybody else. Nothing can top that.”48 At this Carnegie Hall performance, twenty-six complete numbers were played over two sets (not counting theme-song statements). Of the twenty-six, seventeen featured other members of the group. But on each and every one of them except for Teagarden’s “Lover,” Armstrong played impressive horn; he sang “Rockin’ Chair” with Teagarden and “That’s My Desire” with Middleton. He turned in blistering solos even on two Teagarden specialties, “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home” and “Basin Street Blues,” incorporating a quote from the pop song “The Gypsy” in his break on the latter. Armstrong soared on “Back O’Town Blues” and was explosive at the end of “St. Louis Blues.” During intermission, Robbins summed up Armstrong’s performance by comically announcing, “The smelling salts are just to the right!” According to the New York Times, “This jazz concert … proved that no jazz musician can blow Louis off the street even now.”49
Although the All Stars had been in existence for only three months, the show was as tight as one of Catlett’s snare drums. These were professional musicians who teamed up to put on an evening of entertainment. The pacing of the show, the contribution of the other musicians, Velma Middleton’s split, the comedy routines on tunes like “Rockin’ Chair”: all were in place by November 1947. Because the performances were so fresh, critics lavished them with superlatives. But it wouldn’t take long before some writers began complaining that Armstrong played the same songs and repeated the same routines night after night, a complaint that would dog the All Stars for more than two decades. The All Stars’ band book was huge; new material was always being added after recording sessions. Some favorite charts were perennial (“Basin Street Blues,” “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue”); others became staples through hit records (“Hello, Dolly!” “Mack the Knife”); some lasted only a short time (“That’s for Me,” “The Dummy Song”). Once you include the features for the other sidemen—which Armstrong almost always played on—there are more than two hundred songs played by the All Stars in their twenty-four-year history, a repertoire larger than those of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Lester Young during the same period. It cannot be denied that some parts of Armstrong’s stage show were set in stone, but what working jazz band didn’t rely on a set list of familiar songs night after night? Armstrong knew which songs worked and which songs his audience wanted to hear, and he didn’t care about anything else. Trummy Young recalled, “What he played was Louis and nobody else could do it that well. I played the same numbers over and over with him and every night they sounded pretty to me. Because Louis felt it every night. He had one thing he went by—If you’re playing it good, it doesn’t matter. And also—If you don’t feel it, you can’t make them feel it. And he was right. There was a lot of logic in what he said. What most people overlook is that Louis was very sincere and very dedicated [in] what he did. He worked hard at making his music sound good all the time.”50
Armstrong treated his performances not as jam sessions but as shows (sometimes he would thank the audience “on behalf of all the members of the show”), and he worked hard to ensure that they were tight and entertaining. He was a fanatic about tape recording and listening to his own performances. Once, publicist Ernie Anderson introduced Armstrong to recording his shows by taping one of the trumpeter’s concerts without his knowledge and playing it back for him later that night. Armstrong was stunned, and the very next day he bought two reel-to-reel recording machines. “From that time on until the end of his life he saw to it that every performance he did was recorded. Then later that night if you happened by Louis’s digs you’d hear what he had played that night. He studied those shows.”51 Armstrong studied them to see what worked and what didn’t. If a line got a big laugh, he kept it in. If a song received a lukewarm response, it was left out. Armstrong even studied his solos, tinkering with them until they flowed perfectly.
As to the “set” aspects of the All Stars’ live performances, this was a band that traveled so much they never had time to rehearse. They played in front of so many new people every night, they always felt compelled to play something familiar, something they knew would work. “If you come out of an 18-hour road trip from one place to another … you come out and you hit in front of thousands of people,” Dan Morgenstern explains. “And the spotlight goes on, boom! You are far better off knowing exactly what you’re going to do and what the routine is.”52 Armstrong’s final clarinet player, Joe Muranyi, agreed. “Of course, then there’s the old business of ‘Well, it’s the same show every time,’ ” Muranyi said. “Well, I guess if you’ve heard him twenty times, he’s going to play all the songs again. I never understand what people get out of music. That’s a very deep, profound question. Some maybe get an erection, some get hungry or some want to dance, God only knows. Someone might want to murder, you know. So somebody that heard him fifty times, they might get bored. But if you’ve got to live through it like me—and God, I wanted to live through it!—I always found beauties in things that were new to me, even if it was ‘[When It’s] Sleepy Time Down South.’ The other thing you’ve got to think about it is 365 one-nighters in a row, you want a sure thing. You can’t be worried about how you’re going to do this or you do that. It’s a show, not a jam session. But he got a lot of criticism for that.”53
Interestingly, Armstrong told a radio interviewer in 1952 about what he expected from his band. “Whatever we play together, we try to remember that. It’s just like an arrangement. I say whatever background and things like that—of course, if a man wants to change his personal solo, that’s his business. But I do ask the boys to try to remember what we play together every night, no more than that. See, that’s pretty easy. Some nights you feel like you want to change your solo around. As long as it fits right in there, it’s all right.” Because Armstrong played in big bands from 1924 to 1947, he was familiar with set arrangements, but he enjoyed the freedom of having a small group that could change things whenever needed. “And you can’t do that with a big band,” Armstrong continued. “You’ve got to stick to the music at all times. So that makes it nicer, and I think it’s better for the individual man. It makes him a better musician. It expands his starts and his improvisations and a whole lot of things. It’s much better.”54
Two weeks after the Carnegie Hall show, Armstrong and the All Stars headed to Boston for a concert at Symphony Hall produced by Ernie Anderson. Anderson recorded it and a few years later released the date as a two-LP set for Decca, Satchmo at Symphony Hall. It was one of the best documents of the early All Stars, including arguably the greatest version of “Muskrat Ramble” ever recorded. The Decca record has gone on to become a classic while the Carnegie Hall show is still unreleased. When one listens to both performances, it’s amazing to hear the similarities: the choice of material, the pacing, and even the solos (never mind Armstrong; Catlett’s solo on “Steak Face” is virtually unchanged from performance to performance). The biggest change from show to show was of course the audience; they were different, and the Boston crowd didn’t care if Armstrong played songs from New York. They were there to be entertained, and Armstrong complied brilliantly at both venues.
Looking back at the early All Stars concerts, one gets the impression that a typical show seemed to cover most of the history of jazz up to that point. There are early New Orleans numbers such as “Royal Garden Blues” and “High Society”; songs Armstrong made famous in the 1920s, like “Muskrat Ramble” and “Black and Blue”; swing-era standards such as “Stars Fell on Alabama” and Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues”; the recent rhythm-and-blues hits “Since I Fell for You” and Frankie Laine’s “That’s My Desire” (both sung by Velma Middleton); and even a number recorded by beboppers Howard McGhee and Max Roach, “Mop Mop” (sometimes titled “Boff Boff”). Armstrong proved that even though he had what seemed like an old-fashioned Dixieland small group, he was still forward looking. Soloists were propelled by background riffs played as if in a big band, the rhythm section swung effortlessly in four-four time, and the whole ensemble played with more polish than any of the antiquated revivalist bands on the scene at the time. It wasn’t pure Dixieland, it wasn’t big-band swing, and it wasn’t bebop. It was great music that couldn’t be categorized.