The trumpet is an instrument full of temptation.
— LOUIS ARMSTRONG
THE IDEA OF A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT INVESTED with demonic powers is not new. The Middle Ages viewed the violin (of its day) as the devil’s instrument. In the early nineteenth century, Paganini’s astounding virtuosity sparked a rumor that he had made a pact with the devil. The Faustian bargain even found its way into African American culture. According to legend, blues singer Robert Johnson met Satan at a crossroads, where he received otherworldly guitar powers in return for his soul. Armstrong’s idea of temptation, to be sure, was a little different. He saw the trumpet not as a transmitter of dark gifts but as a receptacle of desire itself, specifically the desire to play high notes—“top notes,” in Armstrong’s words—and receive acclaim. Just as Jesus was tempted to jump off the pinnacle of the temple to be upheld by angels in the eyes of all, so likewise was St. Louis tempted to defy gravity, by scaling the heights of his instrument in a similar bid for worldly glory. Unlike Jesus, of course, Armstrong yielded to his temptation—again and again and again.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Armstrong’s lifelong fascination with high notes became an obsession, perhaps an addiction. Stories abound of him playing gushing streams of high Cs—350 in a row, by one account— while admiring musicians stood in the wings counting every one.1 Over the years he gradually climbed to high F, a note well beyond the capacity of most jazz players of the day. He pushed himself so hard that on more than one occasion his upper lip exploded from the effort, splattering blood down his tuxedo front and sidelining him for weeks or months at a time. This willingness to injure himself betrays more than ordinary ambition. In the trumpet world, high notes represent something like the Nibelung’s ring of power, capable of bringing money, fame, and influence, but also of corrupting the player beyond the hope of recovery. Just so, in his single-minded pursuit of the upper register, Armstrong dominated his field at the cost of nearly destroying his career. After an especially gruesome blowout in late 1933, he was forced into a prolonged semiretirement while his lip healed. When he finally resumed his regular performing schedule in 1935, it was with an apparently chastened perspective. Twelve years later he made his statement about temptation during a Down Beat roundtable. One wonders if he recognized himself in his pious rebuke of the rising generation: “All the young cats want to kill papa, so they start forcing their tone.”2 Needless to say, he knew something about forcing.
Armstrong’s vicious self-punishments make sense when we consider them in the gruelingly competitive context of vaudeville. Weaned on old-school doctrines of novelty, Armstrong recognized that high notes could separate him from the pack and capture the public’s attention. By the early 1930s, however, attitudes toward jazz were changing rapidly, and artistic purists attacked old-fashioned appeals to the lowest common denominator. Against such critics, Armstrong’s friend Preston Jackson defended him: “The public don’t understand jazz music as we musicians do. A diminished seventh don’t mean a thing to them, but they go for high notes. After all, the public is paying. If musicians depended on musicians at the box office they would starve to death.”3 When Armstrong played 350 high Cs in a row, mere music was beside the point; his obvious and sole purpose was to demonstrate superhuman strength and endurance, virtues beyond the capacity of ordinary trumpet players. Armstrong’s stunt calls to mind the fierce competitions of stage performers vying to be the highest high wire act, or the strongest strong man. A close parallel might be Sandow the Magnificent, who in a famous photo is shown supporting nineteen members of Ziegfeld’s Trocadero Company on a platform on his back.4 By playing 350 high Cs in a row, Armstrong—like Sandow—was presenting himself to the world as a stage artist worthy of top billing, guaranteed to elicit awe.
Like his clarinet-style arpeggios, high notes represented a different kind of novelty, one based on difficulty rather than humor. Armstrong was initially regarded as a stunt player for his ability in the high register. The word most often used to describe him is freak. In the late 1920s a Variety reporter noted that Armstrong “has a style bordering on the freakish when it comes to hitting top notes on the instrument.” Another writer made a similar point, hailing his “freakish, high-registered breaks.” “The west coast is going wild over the freak playing of Louis,” wrote one reviewer of Armstrong’s performances at Sebastian’s Cotton Club in Los Angeles, where he became especially well-known for his high notes. Suggesting a physical deformity to match Armstrong’s musical freakishness, another joked that perhaps he “had an extra lung.”5 Within a few years, however, such terms as freak and stunt disappeared as Armstrong’s techniques went mainstream through the playing of his many imitators.
Like any serious vaudeville artist, Armstrong trained conscientiously offstage. He carefully observed the fate of his teacher and mentor, King Oliver, who developed pyorrhea of the gums, lost his teeth and embouchure, and faded into obscurity. Mindful of this horrifying example (which played out before his eyes in the mid-1920s), Armstrong took scrupulous care of his teeth and gums.6 He even became the spokesman for a local dentist in Chicago, according to an unidentified newspaper ad from 1928: “Louis Armstrong—World’s Greatest Cornetist Now Featured at [the] SAVOY BALLROOM—says that ’It’s a poor man who’ll let his teeth rot’—Get your TEETH FIXED.”7 In addition, he heeded popular theories about the benefits of deep breathing on trumpet technique, and worked to increase his lung capacity. In the summers at Lake Michigan, according to Rex Stewart, “Louis outswam almost everybody, doing at least a mile a day.”8 In winter he used the bathtub to hold his breath underwater, Houdini-style, for three minutes at a time, using a waterproof watch to time himself.9 The wisdom of these preparatory measures, however, gave way to recklessness when he stepped into the spotlight. When it came to feeding the public’s appetite for sensation, no asset was beyond sacrificing, not even the precious lips that made it all possible.
Despite the artistic and human costs of Armstrong’s high-note exhibitions, the power and audacity of his approach to the upper register yielded a positive musical legacy. Through his relentless exertions he not only expanded the practical range of his instrument, but he also developed new expressive techniques that influenced future soloists and lead trumpet players in the 1930s and 1940s. Although Armstrong flirted with the high register during his time with Oliver and Henderson (and probably even before that, in New Orleans), the recorded beginnings of his serious high-note campaign can be dated to the spring of 1927. During this period he performed with his Hot Seven a swaggering solo on “S.O.L. Blues” (repeated almost note for note on “Gully Low Blues” the following day). This solo unveiled, in embryonic form, all the elements of Armstrong’s mature high-note manner, an approach that ran stoutly against the grain of prevailing practice at the time, in both jazz and classical realms. It opened a new and exhilarating vision of what the trumpet could do, and how it could sound.
Armstrong’s interest in high notes was closely bound up with his aspiration to play first chair—and, no doubt, with his denial of that privilege by his early employers King Oliver and Fletcher Henderson. “If [Oliver] would have thought of it,” Armstrong recalled in 1956, “he’d have let me play the lead. You notice all these records you hear more harmony … because his lead was weak.… He should have put me to play the lead, knowing I had that first-chair tone.”10 Similarly, “Fletcher only let me play 3rd cornet,” Armstrong complained, even though “he’d let me hit those high notes that the big prima-donnas, first-chair men, couldn’t hit.”11 To be clear, Armstrong wasn’t talking about high notes in a solo; rather, when high notes came along in an ensemble passage, he had to “jump up to first trumpet—hit them cats’ high notes and get back to third”12 But if Armstrong was already shouldering the most difficult aspect of first-chair playing—the high notes—why couldn’t he do the rest of the job as well?
High notes represented an important consideration for a bandleader assigning seats in a cornet or trumpet section. Early in the twentieth century, the instrument’s normal range was considerably narrower than it is now, and first-chair players—or lead players—were chosen in part for their facility in the upper register—a space from about G above the staff to high C at most.13 The reason was strictly practical: arrangers usually assigned the highest notes of the chords to the first part in all sections so the melody could be clearly heard, rather than buried in the middle of the texture. Even though the first clarinet or saxophone might double the first cornet part, the cornet, being inherently louder, was obliged to play high notes with particular elegance and control. To be sure, other aspects of cornet technique were important to bandleaders as well, but the issue of range weighed heavily because of the seemingly universal difficulty of executing high notes on the instrument. A fluent and dependable upper register became an important emblem of superior cornet skill, and the honor of first chair was seen as its reward.
Armstrong got a close look at top New York lead players in the white bands that played opposite Henderson’s each night at the Roseland Ballroom. Two impressed him especially: B. A. Rolfe, the first-chair player for Vincent Lopez, and Vic D’Ippolito, first trumpet for Sam Lanin. Twenty-five years later, Armstrong would name them both, along with King Oliver and another New Orleans player, “Old Man Morette,” as the four trumpet players he most admired. An obscure player, Morette won Armstrong’s admiration for the same reason as Rolfe and D’Ippolito: his ability “to hit those top notes every time.” When Armstrong heard D’Ippolito at the Roseland, he “first commenced to notice how valuable a first chair man is. Vic had tone and he had punch; he was all but a hot man in that band.”14 This appreciation would stay with him throughout his life. In 1971 he remarked, “I always like to hear a good lead-trumpet in a big band—that first chair is so important.”15
If D’Ippolito opened Armstrong’s ears to the value of strong lead playing, it was Rolfe who kindled his desire to master the upper register. Born into a musical family led by a man who aspired (but failed) to do big things in show business, Benjamin Albert Rolfe (1876–1956) excelled at the cornet from a young age, and became a vaudeville headliner around the turn of the century. For his seemingly unnatural command of the extreme upper register, Rolfe was known as a stunt player. His act consisted of nine or ten brass musicians forming a semicircle while he stood in the center, playing solos. He typically decorated simple melodies with his specialty— high-register lip trills—while working his way up to the top of his range, usually double high C. In addition to playing in vaudeville and dance bands, Rolfe made it big in radio when he signed a ten-year contract in the 1930s with the Lucky Strike Corporation to play weekly broadcasts. At the peak of his success he was known to have earned $12,000 for a single night’s performance, reason enough to inspire the emulation of admiring young players.16 When at the Roseland Armstrong heard Rolfe take “Shadowland” an octave higher than it was written, he later recalled, “it inspired me to go after the high range.”17 It took a few years, though, for the inspiration to bear fruit. Armstrong admitted he waited until 1929 to make a recording in conscious imitation of Rolfe. On that record, “When You’re Smiling” Armstrong plays at a medium-slow tempo the entire thirty-two-bar melody in the region of high C (climaxing on an F)—an astounding exhibition of endurance and control. “The way I look at it, that’s the way a trumpet should play,” he said.18
Armstrong plays high Cs and Ds in several of his recorded solos with Henderson, including “Naughty Man” (first take), “One of These Days,” and “Tell Me, Dreamy Eyes” (second solo). It is hard to know what high notes he took over for the first-chair players in the section work. Although Henderson certainly knew of Armstrong’s technical abilities, however, one can see why he kept him on third: Armstrong lacked the formal training and “legitimate” style normally required of a first-chair player in a society band. Teeming with idiosyncrasies, Armstrong’s playing style was quirky, uneven, and absolutely unique. It was all right to individualize and jazz up a solo passage or an outchorus, but Henderson would have wanted stylistic precision and predictability on the more straightforward ensemble work. Armstrong the crowd-pleaser probably seemed a bit too rough-hewn a personality to entrust with the serious responsibilities of first chair. To Armstrong’s protests at being undervalued, Henderson would only respond, “If you gonna be good someday, you’ll take some lessons.”19
Henderson’s main first-chair player in the 1920s was Russell Smith, who joined the band shortly after Armstrong left in late 1925. Reedman Garvin Bushell considered Smith “one of the best legitimate trumpet players in the business,” and bassist Wellman Braud said of him, “I never have heard a first-chair trumpet man like that in all my life. He sings first parts.”20 Although, as will be shown, Armstrong absorbed some legitimate trumpet skills and played first chair frequently in Chicago in the late 1920s, he never acquired the refinement characteristic of Smith’s lead playing. This became evident in the spring of 1929 when Armstrong returned to New York. He was hired to play with Henderson’s orchestra in the theater pit for Vincent Youmans’s musical, Horseshoes (later called Great Day). According to the New York Age, the orchestra was to be “augmented by 20 musicians, strings, wood wind [sic] and French horns.” Befitting Armstrong’s by-then imposing reputation, the Age continued,
Louis Armstrong was supposed to be first cornetist in the orchestra and Russell Smith, second cornetist. In fact, it is alleged they were so seated at a rehearsal, and after a number was played, either Dr. Felix, who is said to have arranged or composed the music, or the conductor, is alleged to have told Armstrong to change chairs with Smith.…The number was replayed and the decision was made that Armstrong was not adapted to the show business and his seat was declared vacant. Russell was retained as first trumpet.21
Armstrong, in fact, may have left the show for his own reasons, as drummer Kaiser Marshall contends in the same article, but the account rings true in one sense: in contexts requiring classically oriented lead playing, like that of a Broadway show, Armstrong would have fallen well short of standards exemplified by such musicians as Smith.
Armstrong would have been acutely aware of the classical training expected of first-chair players and the corresponding high-class aura that surrounded them in musical settings. As a poorly educated young man from the South who even regarded himself as a “country boy,” Armstrong interpreted Henderson’s refusal to let him play lead in 1924–25 strictly as social prejudice: “Fletcher was so carried away with that society shit and his education he slipped by a small-timer and young musician— me—who wanted to do everything for him musically.”22 Henderson and his musicians expected Armstrong to play hot jazz because that fit with his New Orleans background. Playing first chair, on the other hand, not only seemed incompatible with Armstrong’s basic playing style but must have run counter to Henderson’s conception of him as socially uncouth, uneducated, and essentially unprepared for the responsibilities of society life, whether on the bandstand or off. But despite his fabulous success as a hot soloist, Armstrong resented being denied first chair, with all that that denial implied.
When Armstrong explained his frustrations to Lil over the phone, she told him to come home and play first cornet in her band, “which was an elevation for me,” said Armstrong.23 In joining Hardin’s band, Armstrong may initially have thought simply to add lead-trumpet skills to his already impressive collection of solo techniques. Ultimately, however, he came to fuse the two performance strains, changing the way both lead and solo trumpet players approached their musical assignments.
Shortly after arriving back in Chicago, Armstrong switched from cornet to trumpet. Authorities generally agree that the change first appeared on record 28 May 1926, in three sides made with Erskine Tate, even though Armstrong had probably used the trumpet at the Vendome Theater for several months before that. One reason for the switch was purely musical. Since the trumpet has a cylindrical bore (as opposed to the cornet’s conical bore) it produces an acoustically purer, more brilliant tone—one Armstrong heard as “mellow,” “rich” and “pretty.”24 The cylindrical bore also gives the trumpet a more focused sound with less resistance, making it a congenial instrument for the taxing high-range excursions increasingly favored by Armstrong. As he himself put it, “the cornet works you harder.”25
Another significant reason for the change had to do with the cultural meanings conveyed by the two instruments. Initially Armstrong switched because his section mate at the Vendome, Erskine Tate’s brother, Jimmy, played the trumpet, and Erskine didn’t like the way Armstrong’s “stubby” little cornet looked alongside Jimmy’s sleek trumpet.26 In part, Armstrong took up the trumpet for the same reason he began wearing fine clothes: to elevate his social status and improve his image with the public. But the regal appearance of the trumpet was only one factor in this regard. In the 1920s the trumpet was widely regarded as a high-class instrument in musical terms, much more so than the cornet. Whereas cornets were used in concert bands, trumpets were used primarily in symphony orchestras, thereby benefiting from the rarefied ambiance of the concert hall. Possibly for that reason, “while [famous cornet soloists] were better known to the general public, the star trumpeters of the symphony became, as early as the second decade of the twentieth century, more celebrated within the musical world.”27 Armstrong sensed this hierarchy and was cowed by it. In New Orleans, he recalled, “only the big orchestras in the theaters had trumpet players in their brass sections.” Accordingly, “we all thought you had to be a music conservatory man or some kind of a big muckity-muck to play the trumpet. For years I would not even try to play the instrument.”28 Perhaps, for Armstrong, finally picking up the trumpet did more than mitigate the physical problem of playing high notes. Perhaps adopting this powerful instrument was itself an act of audacity, helping to build the confidence bordering on arrogance that he would assuredly need to face down high F.29
A year after taking up the trumpet, Armstrong began exploring the upper register with greater intensity. His explorations led him ultimately to found what might be called the modern school of lead trumpet playing in a jazz orchestra. Part of his influence came from simply playing higher than anyone had done before in jazz. A more important contribution, though, derived from the way he played in the upper register. Unlike those of his contemporaries, Armstrong’s high notes were loud, fat, and full of power.
Classical players had already pioneered the extreme upper register. As early as the turn of the century, Herbert L. Clarke was playing up to high F on such virtuoso display pieces as “Carnival of Venice” and “Bride of the Waves.” Recordings, however, show that his tone thinned out progressively as he went above high C. Armstrong’s hero B. A. Rolfe manifested the same shrinking of tone as he ascended in range. On “Why Do I Love You,” recorded with Vincent Lopez around 28 April 1925, Rolfe’s high notes actually sound falsetto. This was not poor playing on the part of Clarke and Rolfe, but reflected normal practice among classically trained players in the early part of the century. A weak high register followed naturally from the pedagogy of the day regarding embouchure— the placement of the mouthpiece on the lips.
Following long-standing practice, early twentieth-century method books for cornet and trumpet admonished players to form a smile, drawing back the corners of the mouth before placing the mouthpiece, and to broaden the smile as the notes got higher. It was thought that stretching the lips created more rapid vibrations; as the vibrations sped up, the pitch would rise as well. The theory overlooked the byproduct of a thinner sound as the lips were stretched. A complementary theory, born around 1910, compounded the problem. In reaction against earlier teachings to press the instrument against the lips to ascend, a vast movement devoted to “nonpressure” took root. The aim was to protect the lips and allow them to vibrate freely. By the 1920s, nonpressure systems dominated studios and method books, particularly in Chicago.30 As jazz-playing southern migrants moved north, many of them jumped on the bandwagon as well. After hiring Tommy Ladnier, Sam Wooding recalled being “very disappointed in his ability to blow: I found out from talking to him that it was because he was changing over from the pressure system of trumpet playing to the nonpressure system.”31 King Oliver sought relief from his pyorrhea in the nonpressure system as well, according to his wife, Stella.32 Even Armstrong checked it out: “To find out what all that talk of the non–pressure system was about, he took some lessons from a German teacher down at Kimbal hall,” in the Chicago College of Music.33 (Whatever he heard, he disregarded it.)
Late in the decade, a backlash began against both of these theories. The campaign was led by symphony trumpeters, who demanded a higher “quality of tone, power, and consistency” than current practices would allow.34 In 1928 William A. Thieck, former principal trumpet for the Minneapolis and San Francisco symphonies, assailed nonpressure methods:
I would like to hear a trumpet section of a symphony orchestra play “Ein Helden Leben” … by Strauss using a non pressure device on their instruments, what a bunch of dead heroes there would be. I would like to hear a non pressure artist play Herbert Clarke’s “Bride of the Waves.” … Playing trumpet without pressure is the biggest nonsense, and I don’t fear anyone in making this rather drastic statement.35
Thieck’s point, generally accepted today, was that to play high with any strength, some pressure was required: “It is a simple matter to play high C without pressure if the lips are used correctly … but the tonal quality or volume would be absolutely worthless in a ff phrase.” At this date, however, Thieck was a voice crying in the wilderness. It would take another ten years before his views became widely accepted. Over that same period, the smile method was abandoned for the “pucker,” an embouchure that helped keep the sound full in all registers. Equally important, teachers began to recognize the role of tongue movement in controlling pitch.
While pedagogues were developing new theories on how to attain a robust high register, Armstrong was leading the way in practice. Standing nearly alone in his ability to play powerful high notes, Armstrong astounded listeners with the sheer force of his playing. Rex Stewart, a cornet soloist for Duke Ellington, wrote of a cutting contest he witnessed between Armstrong and Cladys “Jabbo” Smith, the only trumpet player, according to many contemporaries, who posed a threat to Armstrong’s supremacy. Smith played first. “And I’ll say this,” Stewart recalled, “he was blowing.” Smith could play high, too—up to “high F or G.” But his high notes paled in comparison to Armstrong’s. Bouncing “onto the opposite stage, immaculate in a white suit,” Armstrong lifted his horn in response. “I’ve forgotten the tune,” Stewart said, “but I’ll never forget his first note.”
He blew a searing, soaring, altissimo, fantastic high note and held it long enough for every one of us musicians to grasp. Benny Carter, who has perfect pitch, said, “Damn! That’s high F!” … Louis never let up that night, and it seemed that each climax topped its predecessor. Every time he’d take a break, the applause was thunderous.36
It wasn’t the mere fact of having played a high F that impressed the audience (for Smith had done the same), but it was the mass and weight of Armstrong’s note that made the difference. As cornetist Red Nichols put it, “Jabbo had a wide range, but his high notes were more falsetto, not full-blown like Louis’.”37
Ray Nance, another Ellington trumpet player, recounted a similar experience from the 1920s about Armstrong’s power in the upper register and its effect upon listeners. The occasion was Collegiate Night at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago. Armstrong was playing “Tiger Rag” with Carroll Dickerson.
He used to play those choruses and make one hundred high Cs. A cat in the wings was counting them. When Louis got to ninety-nine, he’d hit C and rattle it—eeeEE! By then, the people were hardly able to control themselves.…Then he’d rear back, roll his eyes, take a breath, and hit that note—bam! The whole place would be in pandemonium. I’m telling you, that was the greatest thrill I’ve ever had in my whole life.38
How did Armstrong play high notes with such strength? Being largely self-taught in trumpet technique, he mostly ignored prevailing ideas and unwittingly anticipated future orthodoxy. First, as photographs of his embouchure make clear, he did not pull back the corners of his mouth in a smile but puckered his lips. Approaching his instrument intuitively, he somehow stumbled onto an embouchure that was ahead of its time. Though he erred in pressing the mouthpiece too hard against the lips, according to trumpet virtuoso and pedagogue Wynton Marsalis, he at least used enough pressure to create the necessary seal behind his powerful high notes.39 (At the Waif’s Home, the reform school that taught him how to play at age twelve, Armstrong may have learned to press against the mouthpiece to go higher, as this had been standard pedagogy since the mid-nineteenth century.) Second, he played with maximum relaxation in the throat, allowing the air free passage in all registers. This was crucial, since the natural tendency is to constrict the muscles in the throat as one goes higher, paradoxically blocking the air stream and thwarting the ascent. In 1938 one M. Grupp, a specialist in “Wind Instrument Teaching,” interviewed Armstrong to analyze his high-note technique. Grupp reported with some amazement:
In studying his range, I had Louis play for me certain difficult tonguing and slurring intervals, from low F sharp to G above high C. … I made a study of this natural player’s instrumental and musical ability, of his personality, and physical make-up. With that hoarse-like voice of his, he impressed me as having one of the most relaxed speaking apparatuses I have ever known.…When “Hightoneking” [Grupp’s nickname for Armstrong] plays the trumpet, he employs these physical equipments almost in the same relaxed manner as when speaking. This relaxation and cool-headedness … makes possible perfect co-ordination of his mind, breathing, lips, and tonguing apparatuses.40
Although Grupp may have been influenced by racial stereotypes in emphasizing the “naturalness” of Armstrong’s technique, his point about the importance of relaxation when playing high notes was nevertheless insightful.
Third, Armstrong possessed a large (if stocky) physical frame, and trumpet players, like opera singers, have always derived breadth and power from imposing bodies. Indeed, his inclination to accent high notes may have been reinforced by his experience of listening to Enrico Caruso, the Italian tenor who revolutionized operatic singing style in the early years of the century.41 Armstrong enjoyed listening to Caruso from the year he bought his first phonograph in 1918, and probably on other people’s machines many years before that. He recalled that as a young street performer, “I used to sing tenor when I was twelve years old—with my hat around my ears—hit those big high notes like Caruso.”42 Caruso is said to have been the first to successfully bypass the break in the male vocal register, nullifying the qualitative distinction between “chest” and “head” voice. Whereas previous tenors sang falsetto in the region above the break, Caruso continued in the full strength of his voice as he ascended in register.43 His ringing, majestic high notes captivated audiences and decisively altered vocal technique, laying the path for future powerhouse tenors like Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. One could make a similar statement about Armstrong and his influence on the trumpet.
Armstrong’s inclination to play high notes forcefully may have grown out of an expressive device he used a bit lower in register. Early on, he had developed a habit of approaching notes above the staff with a “rip”—a ragged, ascending glissando that led up to the note in question. Armstrong created the ascent in pitch by adjusting his air stream, oral cavity, and embouchure. The raggedness derived from harmonic partials—intermediate notes that sounded, briefly and vaguely, en route to the top note. Early Hot Five recordings display Armstrong’s rips in abundance. His first break on “My Heart” begins with a rip to A (concert G) above the staff. Similarly, his solo on “Muskrat Ramble” features a rip to high B, in the second measure. And in the fourth phrase of his solo on “Big Butter and Egg Man” Armstrong rips to a G above the staff.
As these examples make clear, the rip had the effect of making the highest note a goal that Armstrong accented upon arrival. In this way his own performance practice set a precedent for emphasizing high notes rather than pulling back as the register increased. Still, in these early recordings he didn’t hold the goal notes for very long. As the Hot Five series progressed, Armstrong made three important changes in his approach: (1) he began ripping to higher notes, particularly high C; (2) he bolstered the accent on the goal note by lengthening its value and oftentimes adding a “shake” (an exaggerated vibrato effect that Armstrong evidently invented); and (3) he began smoothing out the rips by slightly depressing his valves, thereby eliminating intermediate partials and achieving a portamento effect like that of a trombone. In the absence of the former raggedness, Armstrong’s rips became what writers call “half-valve glissandos.”
These changes first began to coalesce in the Hot Seven recordings, from May 1927. As noted in chapter 2, Bud Freeman speculated that the experience of playing with Brown and McGraw and other dancers at the Sunset Café stimulated Armstrong to probe the upper register: “Louie began to develop a high range nobody had ever heard in Chicago.”44 Perhaps the kinetic excitement of the dancers’ steps inspired Armstrong to strive for something similar on the trumpet, sending him upward with greater intensity than before. Whatever the reason, a change did occur. Compared with the session that produced “Big Butter and Egg Man” six months earlier, the Hot Sevens reveal an Armstrong newly energized in the upper register. His preoccupation with high notes is everywhere evident, beginning with the sustained high C (with a shake) on “Willie the Weeper” and his sustained high B (with a shake) on “Alligator Crawl.” His highest note from this period marks a moment of real drama: his rip to high D at the climactic end of his stop-time solo on “Potato Head Blues.” One can hear his budding interest in playing melodies an octave higher than written, on “Alligator Crawl,” in which he makes a coy, abortive attempt (were he to continue he would have been forced up to high F#), and on “Weary Blues,” where he quotes “Twelfth Street Rag” briefly in the region around high C. On “Willie the Weeper,” “Potato Head Blues,” and “Keyhole Blues,” he also inaugurates a new practice of playing out-choruses an octave higher than usual, often as a dynamic continuation of a solo chorus that ends in the upper register.
But the most impressive high-note display, certainly, is on “S.O.L. Blues” and its twin “Gully Low Blues,” which I will consider as a single performance. In preparation, let us briefly consider the meaning of high C in the 1920s. Though no big deal today, high C then represented the peak of a trumpet’s written range and the fondest dream of every young player. “An accomplished Trumpet player can play … as high as D,[concert],” admitted Arthur Lange in his book Arranging for the Modern Dance Orchestra (1926), but this range “is not practical to write. ”45 Lange’s suggested range went to G above the staff, with A and B, (high C) in parentheses. With a touch of derision, symphony trumpeter William Thieck noted that “most Cornet or Trumpet players’ aim is to get high C. No tone on the Trumpet or Cornet is mentioned so often among beginners, also semi professionals, as high C.” Yet even Thieck saw it as a kind of barrier: “Occasionally one finds a player who will do stunts with … extremely high tones but they belong to the class of the phenomenal and should be no guide to the average student.”46 Not surprisingly, Armstrong’s high Cs stirred excitement, even as late as 1930. In that year a New York reporter marveled that Armstrong “blows a mean trumpet, and we don’t mean maybe, hitting high C with apparent ease and comfort.”47 A few weeks later, a Chicago reporter wrote that “Louis Armstrong, ’World’s Greatest Cornetist’ is knockin’ ’em cold at the Regal and will continue to trumpet ’high C’ to thousands of riotous fans now storming the South Side Palace of Pleasure to hear him.”48
This was the period when Armstrong was unleashing high Cs by the hundred. In his haughty, unequivocal command of that register on “S.O.L. Blues,” however, he performed a stunt in some ways no less impressive. The solo is dominated by five consecutive high Cs, each sustained for several beats at a slow tempo, each of strapping tone and volume and energized by Armstrong’s trademark shake (example 4.1). Each high C is immediately followed by up to two octaves of plunging arpeggios, which—in contrast to the constancy of the high notes—change in shape and harmonic content from one to the next. The very idea of a series of lofty plateaus followed by precipitous descents is a powerful one. Other trumpet players in the 1920s were incapable of executing the high-note part of the solo, and the effect would have been lost if another instrument—such as clarinet or piano—played it. The effectiveness of Armstrong’s solo stemmed directly from those blazing, shuddering high Cs, symbols of technical conquest.
Armstrong begins each high C with a brief but vigorous upward rip, smoothed out somewhat through half-valving, which endows the solo with the insistent urgency of a siren. Half-valving allowed Armstrong, in theory, to extend the upward lead-in indefinitely, producing a suspense that called for even greater emphasis upon the arrival of the goal note. Moreover, when the valves on a trumpet are depressed halfway the tone sounds muffled, for unlike the trombone, the trumpet produces glissandos artificially.49 Armstrong’s half-valve ascents, therefore, were accompanied by an escalating need for sonorous release—for the unhindered open sound of a trumpet resonating in one of the seven standard valve combinations. That release occurred when Armstrong reached his intended high note, which he invariably executed in an ecstatic fortissimo, shattering the built-up tension. An outstanding example of this practice appears during the middle of Armstrong’s chorus on “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues,” recorded on 26 January 1933. Following a string of repeated high Cs, Armstrong begins the two-bar break with a descending glissando, then reverses direction and for a measure and a half inches gradually upward to land on an exultant high E on the downbeat of the next section.
EXAMPLE 4.1 Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven, “S.O.L. Blues,” 13 May 1927, Louis Armstrong’s solo.
Although such dramatic half-valve glissandos do not appear in the Hot Five series, the same principles are at work in incipient form. After the piano solo on “Don’t Jive Me,” recorded 28 June 1928, Armstrong leads the ensemble on sustained high Cs, blowing the first one so hard that he goes sharp. Armstrong precedes each high C with a tiny half-valve scoop. Too brief to be called glissandos, the scoops nevertheless dramatize the high notes. Because half-valving mutes the tone, and since releasing the valve is a continuous (rather than a discrete) process, Armstrong’s goal note emerges as “wah”—as though he were using a plunger. Thus, he actually employs half–valve effects in place of articulation with the tongue. Instead of hitting high C squarely with a “dah” or “tah,” he witholds the tongue attack and lets the release of the valve on “wah” do the work for him. The rapidly expanding vowel in the w sound, combined with the scoop’s rise in pitch, accentuate the goal note more powerfully than could the abrupt consonants d or t. Preceded by half–valve scoops, Armstrong’s high Cs come at the listener like massive objects hurtling from a distance. The half-valving on “Don’t Jive Me,” it should be noted, is much smoother than on “S.O.L. Blues.” Indeed, one can see, by comparing these two pieces, how he eventually found his way to “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.”
The lyrics to “S.O.L. Blues” and “Gully Low Blues” may shed light on the meaning of Armstrong’s solo.50 On the latter recording, he sings of romantic frustrations that may have hit his wife, Lil Hardin, playing piano at the session, painfully close to home:
Now, momma, momma, momma, why do you treat me so?
[repeated]
(I know why you treat me so bad!)
You treat me mean, baby, just because I’m “gully low.”
Now, momma—If you listen, baby, I’ll tell you something you don’t know.
[repeated]
If you just give me a break and take me back, I won’t be “gully” no mo’.
The term “gully low” referred to an extreme form of “lowdown,” which could mean uncouth and unsophisticated as well as immoral or dirty.51 “Lowdown” was used in a positive sense to characterize deeply honest and expressive jazz and blues. But Hardin and her socially aspiring family would not have approved of its manifestation in social settings.52 As is shown in chapter 6, she was constantly upbraiding Armstrong for small breaches of etiquette, including the deep-seated habits he had acquired in the rough part of New Orleans where he grew up. Over several years the contention pushed them apart, eventually ending their marriage in the 1930s. During their on-again, off-again relationship in the mid-1920s, though, Armstrong may have promised “I won’t be ‘gully’ no mo’” many times in an effort to pacify Lil.53
So far, so good. After singing this lyric, however, Armstrong lifts his horn and plays that cocky, ebullient solo, full of lowdown idiosyncrasies: shakes, half-valve rips, bulging high Cs, to say nothing of the soaking wet bluesiness of the falling arpeggios—probably just the sorts of thing that in 1929 would get him fired from his job playing first chair in Great Day. The solo, in other words, repudiates the very idea of social reform, making a mockery of the singer’s promises. But through the power of those high Cs it does so with a towering, masculine authority that both exalts lowdown values and negates the tremulous abasement of that last line: “I won’t be gully no mo.’”54 The cruel irony of the solo is reinforced by the contrasting lyrics on “S.O.L. Blues” (which communicate a G-rated version of the message coded in the abbreviated title: “Shit-Out-of-Luck Blues”):
Now I’m with you sweet mama as long as you have the bucks,
(Bucks, bucks, bucks, bucks—I mean money, mama!)
[repeated]
When the bucks run out, sweet mama, I mean you out of luck. (Out of luck, mama!)
Thomas Brothers writes of the fierce pride and independence, bordering on defiance, that Armstrong learned from the church women who raised him in New Orleans.55 Although Brothers speaks of these values in the context of race, they applied to gender as well. From the pimps and gamblers, Armstrong learned this bloodless lesson about relationships: “Never worry over no one woman—no matter how pretty or sweet she may be. Any time she gets down wrong, and ain’t playing the part of a wife—get yourself somebody else, also.—And get another woman much better than the last one at all times.”56 Armstrong’s occasionally misogynistic comments about his wives or women generally are in line with this philosophy, which fits this second set of lyrics much better than the first one.57 Thus, the two lyrics are Janus-faced twins, one telling the truth and the other a falsehood. The trumpet solo tells the truth in both.
Let’s consider, in closing, some of the paths to which this extraordinary solo led. First, through such performances Armstrong changed the practical range of his instrument. Like Roger Bannister shattering running standards with the four-minute mile, Armstrong demystified high C for younger players, who began to see it as a starting point to greater heights rather than as a goal in itself. In school “we played all Louis Armstrong’s things note for note,” recalled Cat Anderson, Duke Ellington’s high-note specialist from the 1930s onward. “All the trumpet players played ’Shine’ and made a hundred Cs with the F on top.”58
Second, Armstrong inspired a multitude of swing trumpet soloists to adopt the expressive devices he used in the upper register, devices that together constituted what my old teacher Mark Tucker called majestic style. This brawny, aggressive style of playing, typified by full-bodied high notes, soaring half-valve glissandos, and electrifying shakes, perfectly suited the romantic showmanship of the swing era. Armstrong performances in this idiom, such as “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues,” can be seen as the direct ancestors of such later bravura performances as Bunny Berigan’s “I Can’t Get Started” (1936), Ziggy Elman’s “And the Angels Sing” (1939), Cootie Williams’s “Concerto for Cootie” (third “open horn” theme) (1940), and Ray Nance’s “Take the ‘A’ Train” (second “open horn” solo) (1941). Williams, of course, became famous for continuing the plunger-mute tradition begun in the Duke Ellington band by Bubber Miley. But “with my open horn playing,” he admitted, “my influence was Louis Armstrong.”59
Third, first-chair jazz trumpet players in the 1930s and 1940s began assimilating characteristics of majestic style into their lead playing with the ensemble, either through arrangers’ notated instructions or through their own initiative.60 It took a while for Armstrong’s lead-playing followers to match his strength in the high range. As late as 1938 white trumpet star Harry James remarked, “I’ve never heard a trumpet player whose tone didn’t thin out considerably when he played above high C—with the exception of Louis’s.”61 By the 1940s, though, lead players had begun superceding him. In The Swing Era Schuller reminisces nostalgically about listening night after night to Charlie Barnet’s band, one of the few swing bands still operating after the war, but, along with Dizzy Gillespie’s and Stan Kenton’s, “clearly one of the most exciting” of the period. Schuller especially marveled at Barnet’s first trumpeter Al Killian, who routinely unleashed “full, round, fat altissimo B,s and As.”62 The description recalls Rex Stewart’s characterization of Armstrong’s duel with Jabbo Smith. Postwar lead players continued to build on Armstrong’s early 1930s style. Snooky Young, widely regarded as a founder of modern lead style, acknowledged Armstrong as his “main influence.”63 Even Maynard Ferguson, not technically a first-chair player but probably the century’s preeminent high-note specialist, and one who thoroughly exploited majestic style devices, said that his main influences were “Louis Armstrong and my mother.”64
After being denied first chair by Oliver, Henderson, and the conductor of Great Day, it must have been sweet revenge for Armstrong to observe his own special approach to “top notes” adopted as the standard by virtually every lead player in the country. That this approach can be traced back to recordings like “S.O.L. Blues” reveals a prophetic innovation of the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings that is not generally attributed to them.