CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Improvisation of Louis Armstrong

LAWRENCE GUSHEE
Some of the first generation of New Orleans jazz musicians who moved to
Chicago between 1918 and 1925 went beyond the inherent limits of their local
style, taking not only a significant but an essential role in the formation of the
dominant jazz style of the 1930s. It was sometimes unspectacular so far as the
general public was concerned, as with a legion of string bassists; sometimes
mediated and indirect, as with the inspiration Jimmy Noone gave Benny Good-
man and Jimmy Dorsey, and which they in tum passed on; and sometimes so
early and special as to be easily forgotten, as with Joe Oliver's talking comet.
Against this background, Louis Armstrong's achievement is incomparable.
The direct impact of his example on trumpeters-indeed, on all jazz players
and singers-was unmatched in its time (approximately 1925 to 1935), as was
his eventual rise to world recognition and the durability of his art. Although
always a New Orleans musician in the bone, he grew with the music as it
developed nationally, learning something from each situation in which he
found himself, and teaching a generation of jazz musicians how to do it. He
became indispensable in the way summed up by pianist Art Hodes: "Jazz is
not-never has been-a one man show. But if I had to vote for one represen-
tative for jazz, that one would have to be Louis Armstrong" ("Roses for
Satchmo" 1970, 16).
***
There is nothing in Armstrong's early upbringing or musical experience to ex-
plain his genius-nor is there in any artist's biography-but there is much to
explain his competence and professional versatility. His first public perfor-
mances as an eleven-year-old were as a street singer, something not typical
for jazz musicians, from New Orleans or elsewhere. 1 Before Armstrong was a
cornetist, he was an entertainer; small wonder, then, that his international star-
dom rested on his extrovert singing personality, something of which he, in
contrast to many critics, was never ashamed. Perhaps his mugging and jiving
("Uncle Tomming," so far as many were concerned) were of a piece with this
early seasoning as a street performer, no doubt drawing on eighty years of
minstrel show stereotypes. 2
So far as his early comet experience goes, Armstrong played about every
kind of music that was available to a Negro musician in New Orleans at that
292 • Lawrence Gushee
time, with the exception of theater pit orchestras (of which there was but one).
He played in honky-tonk trios, in high- (Tom Anderson's) and low-class (Pete
Lala's) cabarets, at society dances, central city and suburban dance halls, with
street bands, and on the Streckfus excursion boats-in short, for every social
or economic class, black or white. This intensive six-year period of apprentice-
ship was not untypical, and it went hand-in-hand with whatever time he de-
voted to study of the comet as such, or to learning note reading and harmony.
Armstrong left no doubt whatever that Joe Oliver was his "main man"; not
only was Armstrong inspired by Oliver, but the older man taught him important
things about comet playing and musicianship. Most important of all, perhaps,
he restrained Armstrong's tendency to abandon the melody, to make variations
which were too free.
That's the first thing Joe Oliver told me when he listened to me play.... He
used to come around the honky tonks where 1 was playing in the early teens
[sic]. "Where's that lead?" I'd play eight bars and I was gone ... clarinet
things; nothing but figurations and things like that, like what the cats called
bop later; that was just figuration to us in the early days. Running all over a
hom. Joe would say, "Where's that lead?" and I'd say "What lead?" "You play
some lead on that hom, let the people know what you're playing." (Morgen-
stem 1965; see also Pleasants 1974)
If Joe Oliver insisted on staying close to the lead, in what sense was he as
"creative" as Armstrong repeatedly insisted? First of all, he played wonderful
breaks-and much of what Armstrong plays are seemingly limitless realiza-
tions of a basic dominant seventh break. Second, Oliver's music embodies a
kind of ethic of variation, in which, ideally, no note is played automatically.
Even the most inconsequential motif is shaped, and any repetition is varied. It
is this "ethic" which, applied thoroughly and with ingenuity, can make those
paraphrases of Armstrong's which stick close to the melody-and which are
therefore uninteresting to melodic and harmonic analysis-deeply satisfying
to hear. 3
Oliver showed a further concern for Armstrong that can justly be described
as paternal (without requiring us to see Armstrong as "needing a father"), invit-
ing him home, passing on his old comet to him. Armstrong often said that he
tried to play just like Oliver, and there is little doubt that his extraordinary
blues playing (including the rare instances in which he used one of Oliver's
favorite devices, the plunger mute in conjunction with a pixie mute) stems
directly from Oliver, the Oliver who was so spectacularly adept at blues, far
outclassing any of the older New Orleans players of whose style we have some
tangible evidence (Freddie Keppard, Mutt Carey, Bunk Johnson, or Ernest
Coycault). 4
It's not easy to identify models other than Joe Oliver, not least because of
the absence of phonograph recordings that would back up a claim of influence.
lmprov1sahon ot •
For example, Armstrong is said by many to have had much in common with
his near-contemporary, Buddy Petit, and had many good things to say about
his playing, perhaps even admitting to a major influence. 5 Indeed, so many
competent musical witnesses testify to resemblances that we would be foolish
to reject the evidence. What can't be determined, of course, is which aspects
of his style parallel Petit's, and how "major" the influence was.
It was Willie "Bunk" Johnson who was offered, and who offered himself, as
the major teacher of Armstrong, a claim which, on the basis of Johnson's re-
cordings of 1942-47 as well as his reputation as a notorious liar, has struck
most critics as of little merit. Collier is particularly skeptical, contending that
··what Louis actually believed we do not know" (1983, 60). In a little-known
interview from 1949, however, Armstrong clearly distinguishes between John-
son, someone admired from afar, and Oliver, who assumed an active and con-
cerned role in his apprenticeship:
Whenever ol' Bunk came by, I'd leave my comer [where he was selling news-
papers] and follow the wagon .... He'd let me carry his hom when he wasn't
playin', and it was a big thing for me .... I never knew a man that could get
the tone, or the phrasing, like Bunk. He was a young man then .... Bunk was
my idol, but Oliver used to come over to the honky tonk where I played and
sit in. He'd show me things you know. He had some ideas. I think he was a
little more alive musically than Bunk. Everything I did, I tried to do it like
Oliver. (Jones 1949)6
There were other musicians who taught the young Armstrong something
about note reading and the theory of music. The first of these appears to have
been saxophonist and mellophonist Dave Jones, who worked with him on the
Streckfus boats, "a fine musician with a soft mellow tone and a great ability to
improvise" (Armstrong 1955, 182). Armstrong could already "spell;' that is,
slowly decipher a written part, but could not play at sight, something he ad-
mired in Fate Marable (the leader for Streckfus) and his musicians and wished
to learn: "Kid Ory's band could catch on to a tune quickly, and once they had
it no one could outplay them. But I wanted to do more than fake the music all
the time, because there is more to music than just playing one style" (1955,
182). Jones taught him to sight-read, wrote Armstrong, well enough that he
could read "everything he [Marable] put before me." If "everything" consisted
only of the comet parts from stock arrangements of the current hits, this
wouldn't have been very difficult, and certainly not as difficult as the Fletcher
Henderson arrangements that are said to have given him so much trouble in
1924. On the other hand, Armstrong might have been reading very little in the
preceding two years and consequently merely rusty when he joined Hen-
derson.7
From the testimony of New Orleans contemporaries, there is no doubt that
by 1922, young Armstrong was one of the best young cornetists in the city.