Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five

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Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (often short Hot Five ) was a hot jazz studio formation in Chicago from 1925 to 1928; she made 65 recordings. The band, under the formal direction of Louis Armstrong , only performed publicly twice, on February 27, 1926 and June 12, 1926 - both times at the Chicago Coliseum Theater .

history

The members of the first Hot Five were Louis Armstrong initially on the cornet and occasionally also as a singer, from 1927 on the jazz trumpet , with his second wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on the piano , Johnny Dodds on the clarinet and alto saxophone as well as Kid Ory on the trombone and Johnny St. Cyr at the banjo , partly supplemented in 1926 by the singer May Alix , partly supplemented by the legendary jazz and blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson in December 1927 .

The musicians in the quintet had known each other for years. After the first two sessions, which also served to grow together as a band, they worked extremely professionally and quickly: The pieces were not rehearsed beforehand, but mostly decided in the studio. Most of the time they were supposedly played through only once with the help of a lead sheet , without any fixed arrangements. Between four and eight pieces could be recorded in the studio within three hours of the morning; often the first recording was already on.

In May 1927 this line-up of the "Hot Five" was also recorded as Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven (or Hot Seven ) , supplemented by Pete Briggs on tuba and Baby Dodds on drums ; Thanks to advances in studio technology, it was now possible to record a complete rhythm section in such a way that it was heard correctly on the records.

In 1928 there were changes in the line-up. The Hot Five was now a sextet with Louis Armstrong on singer and jazz trumpet, Jimmy Strong on clarinet and tenor saxophone, Fred Robinson on trombone, Mancy Carr on banjo, Zutty Singleton on drums and Earl Hines on piano and singer. The selected musicians could now all read from the sheet, which made it easier to play the notated passages, but were sometimes less dexterous as improvisers than the musicians who replaced them. In December 1928 the clarinet and alto saxophonist Don Redman joined the band, which became a septet . In December 1928 the group called themselves Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five . Under this name, Armstrong took on after another line-up in March 1929, before this band with changed stylistics became a new formation, Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra .

meaning

With the Hot Five in the original line-up and the Hot Seven, Armstrong presented "a series of recordings that are still unsurpassed today." In contrast to the later recordings, his virtuoso playing is still integrated into the band as primus inter pares ; he is not yet the dominant soloist. "That is what makes this studio ensemble so large."

Armstrong made jazz recordings with this band for the first time , in which the soloists were given more room for improvisation , and paved the way for jazz with artistic aspirations as we know it today for the first time. For Ralf Dombrowski , the recordings of the Hot Five and Hot Seven are therefore “one of the foundations of jazz in general”: The artistic potential that can be perceived in them could help “jazz to gain a reputation for serious music”. According to critic Gary Giddins , it is "the most influential recording project in jazz, perhaps in all of American music." For Brian Morton and Richard Cook , Louis Armstrong was "in the late 1920s ... a great soloist who influenced everyone in jazz, shifting the focus from group play to solo improvisation and creating a new style of singing that is almost as influential as his trumpet play." . Armstrong's music is one of the cornerstones of jazz. ” Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Günther Huesmann state in their jazz book :“ Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven were the perfect soundtrack for the new world of particles and particles, moving images, lightning-fast Communication, Freudian psychology, automobiles, stream-of-consciousness literature, Cubist and Dadaist art and the Manhattan skyline. "

The audio recordings of this formation were as 2002 Louis Armstrong Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions to the National Recording Registry received the United States. According to the National Recording Registry , “Louis Armstrong was the first great jazz soloist and one of the most important and influential figures in American music. These sessions, especially his solos, set a standard in their beauty and innovation that musicians still strive for. "

Discographic notes

The recordings initially appeared as shellac records . It is thanks to George Avakian that their value for jazz history was recognized and that they were reissued in 1940. Avakian also spotted some recordings, like Ory's Creole Trombone , that didn't hit stores at all in the 1920s, and got them first released.

The recordings of the Hot Five and Hot Seven did not appear on LPs until the 1950s . The first collections of recordings of the Hot Five and Hot Seven brought the Dutch Philips (1956) and, more extensively, the British Parlophone or, with introductory texts by Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, the German Odeon label onto the market around 1960. In 2000, a complete edition of the sessions on Columbia Legacy ( The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings ) and another complete edition on JSP Records ( Hot Fives & Sevens ) were released as a 4-CD box .

literature

  • Gene H. Anderson The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong (Cms Sourcebooks in American Music) Pendragon Press 2007, ISBN 978-1576471203
  • Brian Harker Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (Oxford Studies in Recorded Jazz) Oxford University Press 2011, ISBN 978-0195388411

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gene H. Anderson The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong , pp. 79-80, 82
  2. ↑ Armstrong had previously worked with these musicians in King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band .
  3. ↑ On one of the recording dates, November 27, 1926, Ory was replaced by Hy Clark .
  4. ^ Gene Henry Anderson The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong p. 47
  5. ^ Gene Henry Anderson The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong, pp. 23f.
  6. ↑ Trombonist John Thomas played instead of Kid Ory on May 7th
  7. ^ Armstrong's Hot Five and Seven
  8. ^ William Howland Kennedy: Chicago Jazz. A Cultural History, 1904-1930 . Oxford University Press, New York 1993
  9. ^ Dietrich Schulz-Köhn ( Liner Notes :) Armstrong Hot Five and Hot Seven. Volume 1 Odeon C-062-04-873 M
  10. ↑ Ralf Dombrowski : Basis-Diskothek Jazz (= Reclams Universal-Bibliothek. No. 18372). Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-018372-3 , p. 14f.
  11. ^ G. Giddins Visions of Jazz: The First Century , p. 93
  12. ^ Brian Morton, Richard Cook: The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1000 Best Albums . Penguin Books Ltd., 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-195900-9 (English): “He began recording under his own name in Chicago, 1925, with the Hot Five and Hot Seven for OKeh Records. By the end of the '20s, he was a great soloist, influencing everyone in jazz, shifting the emphasis from group playing to solo improvising and creating a new vocal style that is almost as influential as his trumpet-playing. Armstrong's music is one of the cornerstones of jazz .... ”
  13. ↑ Joachim-Ernst Behrend, Günther Huesmann: Das Jazzbuch . 7th edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-15964-2 , p. 98 .
  14. ^ National Recording Registry 2002. Retrieved August 8, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Louis Armstrong & his Hot Five: Columbia Records Set C-57 with liner notes by George M. Avakian
  16. ↑ Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz . 2013, p. 164; Gene Henry Anderson The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong . 2007, p. 145
  17. ^ A b Louis Armstrong's Hot Five. Retrieved June 28, 2017 .
  18. ↑ a b Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven. Retrieved June 28, 2017 .
  19. ^ Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven. Retrieved June 28, 2017 .