Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars - Jazz Is Back In Grand Rapids - 2 LP ORG Music

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“On records, Armstrong produced between 1925 and 1932 a body of work which was a primer to a whole generation of musicians. In person, he emerged as the first band leader to be a complete artistic personality as well; he played, sang, and took an active part in floor and stage shows wherever he appeared.

He was the most daring, skillful and impassioned of all improvisers. They didn't use the expression then, but his "swung" more than anyone else; again and again an otherwise dull performance would flash to life when Louis blew a solo, even if for only eight bars.

As an innovator, he tossed off fresh ideas which — spread by his recordings — became the cliches; out of them grew still other bits of good music (often by Louis himself), which in turn again became familiar to everyone in jazz. Eventually the popular music business came to know the ideas that Louis had thought of first, although often without recognizing the source.

Louis developed a whole school of jazz singing, based on a literal interpretation of the folk and blues singers' approach to the voice as an instrument. Louis showed that the emotional meaning of a lyric can be expressed through vocal inflections and improvisations of a purely instrumental quality just as effectively — more so, in fact — as through words. This line of development paralleled the growth of his instrumental influence. It still embraces every jazz and popular singer today.”

• George Avakian, Jazz historian and record producer

The title of this feature is derived from the recent release on a double LP set of Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars - Jazz Is Back In Grand Rapids by G.B.H. Records which is a division of ORG Music [ORGM 2097]. We received our preview copy courtesy of Chris Estey at www.bigfreakmedia.com.

It is another example of how the current interest in vinyl, a revival in and of itself, has led to a revival or reissue of some of the more obscure recordings by significant Jazz artists - in this case - Louis Armstrong [1901-1971].

Of Louis’ importance, the late bandleader Artie Shaw once commented to an admirer of Pops:

“You are too young to know the impact Louis had in the 1920s. By the time you were old enough to appreciate Louis, you had been hearing those who derived from him. You cannot imagine how radical he was to all of us. Revolutionary. He defined not only how you play a trumpet solo but how you play a solo on any instrument. Had Louis Armstrong never lived, I suppose there would be a jazz, but it would be very different."

The double LP set consists of 15 tracks that were recorded in concert on the evening of March 26, 1956 at the Civic Center Auditorium in Grand Rapids, MI by what was to become Louis’ long-standing group through the remainder of the 1950s as made up of Trummy Young, trombone, Edmond Hall, clarinet, Billy Kyle, piano, Arvell Shaw, bass, Barrett Deems, drums and Vera Middleton, vocals.

As explained in the following essay by George Avakian, who would shortly become Louis’ producer at Columbia Records, Louis had just returned from a triumphant tour of Europe and was at the height of his popularity both at home and abroad. The essay is from Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff’s The Jazz Makers: Essays on the Greats of Jazz.

George passed away on November 22, 2017 and was memorialized by Downbeat in its February 2018 issue. Here’s an excerpt from his obituary as carried in the magazine:

“GEORGE AVAKIAN, THE GRAMMY-WINNING JAZZ PRODUCER AND

label executive who worked with some of the genre's most important artists and brought numerous innovations to the music industry, died Nov. 22 in Manhattan. He was 98.

George Avakian was known particularly for his production of Jazz and popular albums at Columbia Records, including the first regular series of reissues of jazz albums. In 1948, he helped establish the 33 l/3-rpm LP as the primary format for popular music. A short list of classic jazz recordings produced by Avakian includes Louis Armstrong’s Plays W. C. Handy (Columbia, 1954), Duke Ellington's Ellington At Newport (Columbia, 1956), Miles Davis and Gil Evans' Miles Ahead (Columbia, 1957), Benny Goodman’s In Moscow (RCA Victor, 1962) and Sonny Rollins' Our Man In Jazz, (RCA Victor, 1962-63). …

Avakian received a DownBeat Lifetime Achievement Award (2000) and Europe's prestigious jazz award, the Django d'Or (2006). In 2008, France bestowed on him the rank of Commandeur des Arts et Lettres, and in 2009 he received the Trustees Award from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences for contributions to the music industry worldwide. Avakian was a 2010 recipient of the A.B. Spellman NBA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy.”                                                              DB

Here’s George’s insightful essay on Pops, one that is particularly germane to the era of Louis’ music represented by the 1956 Grand Rapids, MI concert and recordings:

“It is entirely possible that the encyclopedias of the future will identify jazz simply as a semi-improvised music of the twentieth century, developed and popularized by American musicians, and perhaps they will say that in both respects the most noteworthy contributor and exponent was Louis Armstrong.

Similar telescopings and oversimplifications have taken place in the histories of other minor arts. Despite the expansions of jazz in the past fifteen years, Armstrong remains the most outstanding figure in its over-all development, and on a world-wide basis he is the most popular personality the field has ever known.

The scope of Armstrong's accomplishments is such that one chapter in this anthology cannot cover it properly. But a brief review of his contributions to jazz can serve as a reference, assessing the present position of this man, who, in his fifty-seventh year, has become the strongest single international symbol of jazz.

Louis Armstrong was born in the right time and place: in 1900 [this has since been corrected to 1901] in the tough uptown Negro section of New Orleans. In his childhood years he heard the musicians who were the first to play what our ears would recognize as the origins of jazz. Louis's friendly, outgoing personality as well as his semi-tutored playing brought him to a favored position under the wing of Joe "King" Oliver, greatest of the New Orleans cornetists of the World War I period. Poppa Joe eventually brought Louis to Chicago where, at the age of twenty-two, Armstrong embarked on the most fabulous career that any American musician has ever known.

Within two years, Louis was playing the most exciting, powerful and original solo style of jazz improvisation yet to be heard. His fellow musicians quickly recognized his ability, and even the public, in a limited way, realized that this was an extraordinary talent Louis's audience was confined at first to the Negro record public, primarily in the Northern cities (although he also enjoyed good sales in the South, but again mostly in the urban areas), and the habitues of the clubs where he worked in his first jobs. There was no other means of reaching and developing a following in those days.

On records, Armstrong produced between 1925 and 1932 a body of work which was a primer to a whole generation of musicians. In person, he emerged as the first band leader to be a complete artistic personality as well; he played, sang, and took an active part in floor and stage shows wherever he appeared.

He was the most daring, skillful and impassioned of all improvisers. They didn't use the expression then, but his "swung" more than anyone else; again and again an otherwise dull performance would flash to life when Louis blew a solo, even if for only eight bars.

As an innovator, he tossed off fresh ideas which — spread by his recordings — became the cliches; out of them grew still other bits of good music (often by Louis himself), which in turn again became familiar to everyone in jazz. Eventually the popular music business came to know the ideas that Louis had thought of first, although often without recognizing the source.

Louis developed a whole school of jazz singing, based on a literal interpretation of the folk and blues singers' approach to the voice as an instrument. Louis showed that the emotional meaning of a lyric can be expressed through vocal inflections and improvisations of a purely instrumental quality just as effectively — more so, in fact — as through words. This line of development paralleled the growth of his instrumental influence. It still embraces every jazz and popular singer today.

Sometimes the line is sharply, though incongruously, clear. About a year ago, a veteran Miami club singer who had achieved no particular success suddenly skyrocketed to a short-lived but intense television and nightery fame on the strength of a close (though twistedly exaggerated) imitation of the vocal of Louis's twenty-five-year-old recording of Lazy River. Even Elvis Presley fans might find it rewarding to compare their hero's Hound Dog to the way Louis sang Hobo, You Can't Ride This Train on a record of similar vintage.

Louis has never stopped working before the public since he left New Orleans, but his career has had its ups and downs, mostly as the music business itself has gone through various stages that have affected jazz musicians as a class. By the nineteen thirties, he had achieved a limited success in his own country — limited both by the boundaries of the jazz field and the prejudice against Negro performers which has always kept them out of the biggest and most lucrative jobs. His reputation in Europe, however, approached the phenomenal.

Phonograph records were responsible. The American companies had exchange agreements with European labels. However, except in England, the pop songs which formed the bulk of the American catalogues were almost worthless because of the language barrier. Louis, as a trumpet player of striking qualities and a singer who barely used language at all, was highly importable—all the more so because post World War I Europe welcomed things that were basic and things that were different. Jazz was certainly both, and it was also American, which made it admirable in the special, mixed way that America fascinated intellectual Europe in those years.

It was the European press that first took American jazz seriously, although some of the early appreciations were more enthusiastic than discerning. Unfettered by the heavy chaff of radio and the popular music business, Europeans heard the best of jazz through the releases of a record industry that chose its American-made releases with an ear for exciting instrumental music rather than the most popular songs. When Louis went to Europe for the first time in 1932, he found the most wildly enthusiastic acceptance that any American performer had ever experienced.

Yet in this same period, Louis found his American career sharply limited to a few pointedly "black and tan" night clubs, theatres (usually in the Negro districts of large cities), and one-night stands—mostly through the South. He had the first network radio show ever given to a Negro artist, but lack of sponsorship killed it quickly. It was apparent that all the commercial radio shows, as with all the best "location" jobs in hotels and top night clubs, would go to white artists. This is as basically true in 1957 as it was a generation ago, although the edges have been chipped in many places by singers like Nat Cole, Lena Home and Harry Belafonte.

The rising cost of "road" travel often trimmed Louis's accompanying band from thirteen to five in the early 'forties, but this proved ultimately to be the foundation of his greatest success. He went back to his roots and played in a sort of neo-Hot Five style, dusting off much of the old repertoire in the process. The quality of the sextet which he has since featured has varied greatly through the years, but his own playing and singing has maintained a high level, and the innate showmanship which developed gradually from his Chicago days blossomed to full proportion in the 'forties. Honed by an occasional appearance in a Hollywood musical, Louis soon became an entertainer who could have laid down his trumpet for keeps and still have made a good living. He is, within the limitations of his field, a great comedian, and he probably could have been a great actor. As it is, he plays in public a part which is based on his true personality, that of an enthusiastic, happy and elemental jolly-good-fellow, and he does it very well indeed.

Until recently, the American public has not given to Louis the idolatry that it has bestowed on others in the field of popular jazz. Actually, only two musicians before Louis have sustained an extremely high level of popularity for any length of time; both were white dance-band leaders, and one of them had so little to do with jazz that it is only politeness and the desire to set up a measuring stick that persuades one to mention him at all. (That, of course, is Glenn Miller, who was popular enough before he died, but whose posthumous fame was a unique phenomenon until James Dean piled up his sports car.) The other, Benny Goodman, never abandoned jazz, although sometimes the percentage of pay dirt dropped rather low.

Musicians recognized Louis as the master almost from the start; his coming to New York in 1924 to join Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom was the real beginning of his influence on his compatriots. When he finally began to make an impression on the great bulk of the American public, it was not so much as the most important single figure jazz has ever known; it was much more as the most lovable and amusing personality the field has produced. This did not, of course, prevent the people who presented him in the latter capacity from cloaking themselves in the role of honoring

Armstrong the musician while cashing in on Armstrong the entertainer. Nor should we scorn those who have done this; one has become part of the other, and Armstrong himself scarcely separates them.

In the period when "swing" became a household word, and Benny Goodman was catapulted to fame by leading a band which might have been described as "every man playing in the Armstrong style," Louis chugged along as he had before, leading a large band (usually on the road). The swing era touched Armstrong — the one person who had contributed most to what the public went for — only in that bookings were easier and better because of the increase of interest in his kind of music. The emphasis on his personality had not yet begun; Louis was far better known for his pyrotechnical skill as a trumpeter than for his singing, mugging and emceeing.

His development as a public personality did not actually start on a large scale until the 'forties. His motion-picture appearances presaged his acceptance by a wide public, and obviously it was the rubbery, chop-shaking comedy that had the greatest appeal to John Q. So it was that Louis was sharpening his God-given gift for reaching out to every last person in the house when suddenly the jazz revolution exploded, giving birth to bop and creating a cleavage that all but cut off the influence Armstrong had exerted since the middle 'twenties on every jazz musician who thereafter drew breath. The two events were not related, however.

In fact, in retrospect it seems surprising that Armstrong was so far removed from the thoughts of the revolutionaries who were, without realizing it, overthrowing his teachings of two decades. Perhaps it was because Louis was so much in the background of the swing era; he was acknowledged as the source of it all (if any one man could be called that), but otherwise he was little more than the leader of a second-flight band, getting along and occasionally being given a chance to work up his show-business personality in a movie or on an out-and-out commercial recording. (There was always some great trumpet blowing and fine singing on those records, nonetheless).

When Louis gave up his big band once and for all in 1947, he returned to the New Orleans format of three horns and three rhythm. This meant that he played more than before, but he also turned on the charm and built up the comic aspect of his personality. His vocal duets with Velma Middleton on That's My Desire and Baby, It's Cold Outside gave him a greater opportunity to expand his gift of comedy than he had ever enjoyed in the past, even with Bing Crosby on the Paramount lot. He had become a top concert and club attraction by the time he made his real bid for world fame in 1955.

The way was paved a year earlier by the proof that the Old Man was still the greatest when he recorded the "Armstrong Plays Handy" album. This was a miraculous blending of material and performer in which everything came out perfectly; it demonstrated for the first time in many years what a warm, ingratiating and communicative artist Louis was when he was presented in the proper way. It was a sensation among the American jazz fans, but in Europe it was a sensation with a still larger public; as in the pre-war period, the European companies were again releasing jazz as a sort of international currency, and the percentage of jazz sales in the total European record market had risen to new heights.

On the wings of this success on records, Armstrong went to Europe in the fall of 1955, just as he had done several times since his first triumphal trip, but this time a new excitement was in the air. Armstrong had finally become a major personality in Europe; an artist who did not have to be identified as the greatest jazz musician any more; he was known instantly by name in every level of European society. His triumph was complete when Felix Belair, a New York Times correspondent covering the four-power conference at Geneva that October, wrote a story about how much more Louis was accomplishing for world understanding (and sympathy to the United States) with his trumpet and gravel voice than all our diplomats put together. It landed on the front page of the Sunday Times.

At the same time, Ed Murrow was filming the tour for a special report on CBS television; it was shown in December, 1955, and Louis was made as a top commercial attraction in his homeland at last. (That TV film has since been expanded into a feature for theatres, and the expectation is that it will be the most internationally popular documentary ever made).

As always, there are bad things with the good when an artist gets into the big chips. Louis has long been content to sit in a comfortable groove. Musically, he has fallen into the easy way of repetition and has resisted changes in his repertoire to such a degree that except for Mack the Knife, which Turk Murphy generously arranged for him, Louis is playing the same program which has served him for at least five years. His solos have become rather fixed in content. Novelty instrumentals and vocals have become the basic keynote of Louis's show — and it has, indeed, come to be a routined show that the public sees wherever Louis performs.

The result has been a slick stage presentation which has won incredible acclaim for Louis throughout the world. A new debate has arisen as a result; is it a good thing or bad that people everywhere are being won over to the idea of "spontaneous American jazz," with all its beauties and excitement, through performances of a repetitive, set nature, freely laced with comedy?

I don't profess to know the answer, but the winning over seems to be impossible to achieve on such a large scale in any other way. Jazz of a more representative nature — in spirit as well as content - would certainly be far less successful than Louis has been in winning friends for the whole of American jazz. The more recent forays into the East by the big bands of Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman could scarcely be said to be more typical of jazz than Louis's group. The small ensemble alone is an argument in Louis's favor; reports indicate that Dizzy's tour show was, if anything, even more gimmicked than Louis's comic routines; Benny and his band are even more limited in scope than Louis and Dizzy. Jazz is a big subject.

A troupe of four contrasting groups would be able to cover most of its spectrum acceptably, but even the best possible one-night show would not do the job with anything near completeness, and it would have much less impact and success than Louis can accomplish by sheer force of personality and brilliance of showmanship.

Uninitiated audiences — domestic as well as foreign — find it easier to attach to one person, and have proven to be quite capable as well as eager to equate Louis with jazz; which is another way of saying that, like it or not, Louis Armstrong remains our best musical ambassador to the world. And I would go so far as to say, with Mr. Belair, that he is the best ambassador this country has ever had, Benjamin Franklin's celebrated success notwithstanding.

But let us look, for a moment, at the musical objections that have been raised as Louis achieved the most dangerous thing (in the eyes of some of his fellows) that anyone can achieve — success. On the subject of repetition, both as to repertoire and as to the content of his solos within that rather rigid repertoire, one must confess that this has become a standard practice in the jazz field. George Wein, proprietor of the Storyville nightclub in Boston and producer of the Newport Jazz Festival, sounded off with courageous clarity on this very point during one of the 1956 Festival panel discussions.

"It's far more prevalent than the public — and even musicians — realize," he said, "but as a night-club operator I know at first hand how many bands do exactly the same thing every night, down to the solos." Referring specifically to Dizzy Gillespie's recent engagement, Wein said, "If you heard his solos the first time, you'd have sworn they were completely spontaneous. But they were all worked out and repeated every night, down to the last little turn. I could tell without looking at my watch what time it was, because every night the tunes were played in the same order on every set."

Wein did point out, however, that there are some things which have become accepted standards in jazz, such as the King Oliver sole of three choruses in a row on Dippermouth Blues, or the still older Picou solo on High Society. Each is a model solo which has yet to be improved upon, so that from the point of view of quality as well as tradition, neither should be appreciably altered. The fine British trumpet player, Humphrey Lyttelton, concluded that "When Armstrong has achieved such perfectly constructed and powerfully expressive variation on Indiana and The Gypsy as those we heard at his concerts" (Lyttelton became keenly interested in this question of improvisation in the course of hearing twenty-two Armstrong concerts during Louis's 1956 tour — more hours of Louis on-stage than most of us have taken in a lifetime) "only a lunatic would suggest that, having achieved perfection, he should rub out and start again."

Another aspect of this matter, as Lyttelton also points out, is that of showmanship. Louis maintains — as do Gillespie and many other jazzmen — a rigorous standard for himself. He'll get up there for the high one in his patterned routine every time, no matter how beat the chops may be, rather than fake a chorus without it which also has a chance of being of lesser quality. "I'll bet," Lyttelton concludes, "that the lesson was learnt, not from any agent or manager, but from Joe Oliver and the other New Orleans masters."

There is a definite implication here that Louis has a primary interest in pleasing his audiences [entertaining them?]. No artist can make a living without doing that, but there are ways and other ways of accomplishing this necessary end. Certainly it would seem that after a few years of performing essentially the same program, Louis would feel that his fans would like to hear something else. Why, then, is it that year after year, his programs almost never change (including the solos, in many instances) — and yet his audiences increase?

The answer is so simple that few people seem to realize what it is. Louis just keeps reaching out to more people all the time. And unfortunately, most of the new fans are ignorant and undiscriminating.

Speaking for many of Louis's staunchest fans as well as myself, I would like to hear Louis do more "fresh" repertoire like Mack the Knife and West End Blues, both of which are becoming staples in his present concert repertoire, but were definitely not until the beginning of 1956. (The latter revival still appears only occasionally.) But until Louis feels a need to change repertoire, there is little reason to expect that this will happen. On the artistic level, Louis obviously prefers the comfortable, old-slippers feel of running through the same routines to having to work on new tunes. How long he can feel he is sharpening his talent "in depth" is something only he can answer.

Meanwhile only a small minority of his older fans and a few members of the trade press seem to be aware that the Old Master is opening every show with two full choruses of When It's Sleepy Time Down South, followed by Indiana, The Gypsy, and so on through Tin Roof Blues, Bucket's Got a Hole in It, and the various solo specialty numbers, including the inevitable same four songs with Velma Middleton. Only clarinetist Edmond Hall, a relatively recent entrant in the band, has shown real effort to vary his choruses, while Trummy Young and especially Billy Kyle continue to take the easy path behind Louis.

The changes will take place only when the cash customers stop turning out in droves to hear this same show. It is not likely to happen in Louis's lifetime. Meanwhile, jazz has benefited by this paradoxical situation, so it would seem best to accept anything Louis and anyone else can get for jazz in the way of broader appreciation, and if, along the way, greater sympathy to the country of its origin is generated, we are all the luckier and should be that much more grateful. It probably will be a long time before the United States will again have a Secretary of State of the intelligence and integrity of Dean Acheson, so it behooves us all to take delight in the accomplishments of Ambassador Satch.

In the long view of jazz history (if a history so brief can be termed long in any way), it would seem clear that any spread in the appreciation and even understanding of jazz has been on the basis of compromise. Today, everyone speaks of Benny Goodman as a potent force in popularizing jazz in the 'thirties. Yet I remember with uncomfortable clarity that in those years the jazz fans like myself — and certainly the public — regarded Benny primarily as a dance-band leader. True, he played "swing," and was considered acceptable on the fringe of the inner circle, but it was not merely semantics that persuaded us to reserve the word "jazz" for Duke Ellington and Muggsy Spanier and Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong — especially the out-of-print Armstrong on records.

But no matter. Every time the cause of jazz is advanced, in whatever guise, another deserving jazz musician gets a week's work. That's enough to satisfy this observer that Louis has done his job in making the world jazz-conscious, late in a career which has also included the almost-forgotten detail of having been the greatest internal influence for its own healthy development that jazz has ever known. Let audiences all over the world applaud Louis the great showman; our tight little crowd will be grateful that, whether they know it or not, they also honor Louis the great pioneer, Louis the great teacher, and Louis the great artist.”