Armstrong and Handy - An Unbeatable Combination

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“THE PRIMITIVE SOUTHERN NEGRO, AS HE SANG, WAS SURE TO BEAR DOWN ON THE THIRD AND SEVENTH TONE OF THE SCALE, SLURRING BETWEEN MAJOR AND MINOR. WHETHER IN THE COTTON FIELD OF THE DELTA OR ON THE LEVEE UP ST. LOUIS WAY, IT WAS ALWAYS THE SAME. TILL THEN, HOWEVER, I HAD NEVER HEARD THIS SLUR USED BY A MORE SOPHISTICATED NEGRO, OR BY ANY WHITE MAN. I TRIED TO CONVEY THIS EFFECT... BY INTRODUCING FLAT THIRDS AND SEVENTHS (NOW CALLED BLUE NOTES) INTO MY SONG, ALTHOUGH ITS PREVAILING KEY WAS MAJOR..., AND I CARRIED THIS DEVICE INTO MY MELODY AS WELL... THIS WAS A DISTINCT DEPARTURE, BUT AS IT TURNED OUT, IT TOUCHED THE SPOT."

- W.C. HANDY

“Up on the lop floor of the Columbia Records building on upper Times Square, in a studio converted to an editing room, a handsome old gentleman sat listening to the tape of this record, tears streaming from his sightless eyes. "I never thought I'd hear my blues like this," W. C. Handy said again and again. "Truly wonderful! Truly wonderful! Nobody could have done it but my boy Louis!"

Louis Armstrong sat at his side, doing quite a job of looking proud and modest at the same time. He kept saying what fun the sessions had been. "Ain't no work, making records like this! Them old time good ones, they play themselves, Mr. Handy. You get to blowing those beautiful changes right, and you have to play good. We was just having a ball, that's all."

- George Avakian, original liner notes to Louis Amstrong Plays W.C. Handy, recorded July 12-14, 1954

“... Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy, arguably the greatest album Armstrong ever recorded.”

- Ricky Riccardi, What A Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years [2011]

I’m not an alternate take or partial take kinda guy.

Generally, the reason it's an alternate take is because the artist who made the recording didn’t prefer it and the usual reason a take is partial - aka - incomplete - is that something happened to stop the recording [although there are exceptions to this generalization as is explained later in the excerpts from Robert Goodrich’s book; in other words, there are times when bonus tracks really are - a bonus!].

So most often when I’m offered “ the complete” anything that includes lots of alternate and partial takes - usually labeled “bonus tracks” -  I usually pass.

However, I did take a flyer on Elemental Jazz Classic Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy Complete Edition [EJC55628] subtitled “The Father of the Blues” Interpreted by The Master of Jazz Trumpet and Singing” - and boy am I glad I did. It’s two CD set made up of the original eleven tracks on Columbia CL 591 Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy recorded in Chicago, July 12-14 and produced by George Avakian plus - we have added all of the alternate, rehearsal, and partially alternate tracks ever issued, many of which have been long unavailable. Louis is backed here by one of the best formations of his AM Stars, with such outstanding musicians as Trummy Young, Barney Bigard and Billy Kyle. As a further bonus, we have added Louis' earliest readings of W. C. Handy tunes (backing Bessie Smith in 1925], as well as alternative: studio recordings of "SL Louis Blues" and "Ole Miss", and his wonderful 1956 live recording of 'St. Louis Blues" with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

“But that’s not all folks,” as the two-fer also comes with a 20-page booklet that offers an overview on W.C. Handy’s career in music, background on both the evolution of the tribute recording and the Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars up to the time time recording was made in 1954 and the original LP liner notes by George Avakian.

Writing in the December 4, 1954 edition of Down Beat, the esteemed critic Nat Hentoff gave the album 5 stars and remarked: “This LP is one of the greatest recordings not only of the year, but of Jazz history.”

Scott Yanow writing in the All Music Guide also gave it 5 stars and commented: “This recording was not only Louis Armstrong’s finest record of the 1950s but one of the truly classic Jazz sets. Essential music for all serious Jazz collections.”

Here’s more information about W.C., Pops, the All-Stars and the Sessions that make up the double disc set from the 2013 booklet notes written by Robert Goodrich.

HANDY

“W.C. Handy remains among the most influential of American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American form of music known as the blues, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music. Handy was an educated musician who used folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers.

William Christopher Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, on November 16,1873. His father was the pastor of a small church in Guntersville. another small town in Northeast central Alabama. Handy was a deeply religious man, whose influences in his musical style were found in the church music he sang and played as a youth, and in the natural world. Handy's father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents' permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a local shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries, nuts and making lye soap. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?" Ordering Handy to "Take it back where it came from", his father quickly enrolled him in organ lessons. Handy's days as an organ student were short lived, and he moved on to learn the cornet. Handy joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.

In September 1892, Handy traveled to Birmingham to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily, and gained a teaching job in the city. Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found industrial work at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer. During his off-time, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read notes. Later, Handy organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World's Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. To pay their way, group members performed at odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year [until 1893]. Next they headed to St. Louis but found working conditions very bad. After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Evansville, Indiana, where he helped introduce the blues. He played cornet in the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. 

In Evansville, Handy joined a successful band that performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist and trumpeter.

His enthusiasm for the distinctive style of uniquely American music, then often considered inferior to European classical music, was part of his development. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be "classical.” Handy felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group, In 1902 Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, where he listened to the various black popular musical styles. The state was mostly rural, and music was part of the culture, especially of the Mississippi Delta cotton plantation areas. Musicians usually played the guitar, banjo and to a much lesser extent, the piano. Handy's remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music heard in his travels.

In 1909 Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they started playing at clubs on Beale Street, The genesis of his "Memphis Blues" was as a campaign tune written for Edward Crump, a successful Memphis mayoral candidate in 1909 (and future "boss"). Handy later rewrote the tune and changed its name from "Mr. Crump" to "Memphis Blues."The 1912 publication of his "Memphis Blues" sheet music introduced his style of 12-bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot dance step by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York-based dance team. Some consider it to be the first blues song. Handy sold the rights to the song for US $100. By 1914, when Handy was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity increased significantly, and he composed prolifically,

In 1917, he and his publishing business moved to New York City, where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. By the end of that year, his most successful songs: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "Saint Louis Blues", had been published. That year the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first jazz record, introducing the style to a wide segment of the American public. Handy initially had little fondness for this new "jazz", but bands dove into his repertoire with enthusiasm, making many of them jazz standards,

In 1926 Handy authored and edited a work entitled Blues: An Anthology — Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is probably the first work that attempted to record, analyze and describe the blues as an integral part of the U.S. South and the history of the United States. Following the publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians entitled Unsung Americans Singers. He wrote a total of five books. During this time, he lived on Strivers' Row in Harlem. He became blind following an accidental fall from a subway platform in 1943, In 1955, Handy suffered a stroke, following which he began to use a wheelchair. More than eight hundred attended his 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He died on March 28,1958 of bronchial pneumonia at Sydenham Hospital in New York. Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harle,s Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects.

LOUIS AND HANDY

Louis Armstrong’s [1901-1971] tribute LP to Handy's music was made in 1954, when the composer was still alive. Louis hadn't previously recorded most of the songs on the album. One notable exception was "St. Louis Blues", first recorded by Louis backing Bessie Smith in 1925, and later under his own name in 1929 (for Okeh) and 1933 (for Victor), among many other posterior readings, for this jazz anthem never left Satchmo's repertoire. The other Handy piece which became a part of his concert sets was "Ole Miss", but Louis didn't record it in the studio until 1950, with his All Stars, in a medley with a non-Handy tune, "Bugle Call Rag" [a live version of "Ole Miss" captured from an Eddie Condon radio show in 1949 also exists], Louis' only other version of "Loveless Love" was his 1925 reading backing Bessie Smith (under the title of "Careless Love"). The other songs were new to Satchmo's recorded output, and would only rarely appear afterwards in his concert sets (one short version of "The Memphis Blues" exists from a 1956 show and a 1958 reading of "Long Gone" was performed -and taped -during a concert in Ontario, Canada).

THE ALL STARS

In the late Forties Louis Armstrong disbanded his orchestra and returned to the small group lineup, forming the "All Stars". The first incarnation of the group was a true all-star unit, featuring Earl Hines - his partner from the late-Twenties Hot Seven bands - on the piano; Jack Teagarden on trombone and sharing vocals with the leader; Ellington's Barney Bigard on clarinet and Sidney Catlett (soon replaced by Cozy Cole) on drums. The group's least-known musician was a young bassist named Arvell Shaw, who had been with Louis since the big band days. By the mid-Fifties, all of the aforementioned band members (with the exception of Shaw) would leave the All Stars to be replaced by good professional musicians (although never again with renowned stars). 

Sustaining a group that included so many former leaders was not easy, and although the name remained, the components changed. Around the mid-Fifties, the group would include pianist Billy Kyle, who garnered a reputation while playing and arranging for the legendary John Kirby Sextet; trombonist and singer Trummy Young had been a modern jazz player in the early Forties, recording with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie before joining Louis; bassist Arvell Shaw, who after a brief hiatus from Louis' band would remain with the All Stars for many years; and singer Velma Middleton, Louis' personal friend and also an ex-big band member. The clarinet seat would be the subject of many changes of personnel, with Bigard leaving the band and then coming back, being replaced during brief periods by the great Edmond Hall, and later by Joe Darensbourg and other players. Cozy Cole's more lasting replacements at the drums were Barrett Deems (heard here) and Danny Barcelona.

THE SESSIONS

Armstrong and Columbia Records executive George Avakian had been friends for a long time prior to the LP featured here, It was Avakian who convinced Louis' agent Joe Glaser to make the album, "Working with Louis' group was a joy and a pleasure", Avakian said, "See, they were all nice people. They were fun to work with, they were very responsive, cooperative with everything. Especially Trummy, because he was like Louis' other half, you might say. I never saw two musicians lock into each other the way those two did. I never realized how important Billy Kyle was until I worked with him in the studio. Kyle was the one who knew what everybody else was going to do. He would be the first one to suggest things like a key change, which I like because I'm always suggesting key changes. He was like an assistant arranger, and he was very quick with any problems Velma had. Apparently they had a very good rapport. 

Velma was a good singer. People would say to me, 'Gee, why did you use her?' I finally came up with the right answer. I said, 'Because Velma was family' Louis hired her, he loved her, she was an asset to the group, so she was family. She was not a bad singer, either. I mean, she's perfectly adequate. And Louis never had a better singer with the group anyway". "Listening to how this masterpiece of an album was put together in the studio is an illuminating experience," wrote Armstrong's biographer Ricky Riccardi in his book What a Wonderful World "Armstrong is very serious about his playing and very humble about compliments, but he's also quick with a joke to strike the right ambience." One such joke is his "Alligator Story", heard here on CD2. "Middleton is clearly in awe of Louis", continues Riccardi, "and Kyle's importance to the arrangements and sketches cannot be underestimated. For the most part Bigard sounds bored, which, unfortunately, was not about to change soon. Avakian did a masterful job in the control room, and with the final editing he crafted an album that led Armstrong to remark to his new producer, I can't remember when I felt this good about making a record.' Years later Trummy Young said about the sessions, 'Yes, I'll never forget that. That stands out more than any other recording session. Louis was so inspired on the date, and he inspired all of us. I'm sure the band played better than they ever had before or ever after. All you have to do is listen to that album'. A few months later, after Armstrong listened to some playbacks with Handy himself and did some overdubbing on 'Atlanta Blues', he remarked to Leonard Feather, 'Man, a cat came in from Columbia and said we gotta make some more of these. It was an album of W. C. Handy's blues. Mr. Handy came in too and listened to all the records. They're perfect  - they're my tops, I think'."

The mid-Fifties saw the beginning of the LP era,

Recording with tape became standard practice during that period. Unlike the old mastering systems, tape allowed editing, and thus the creation of a complete master take out of various incomplete or defective takes. It also allowed easy experimentations which were very complicated in previous decades, such as recording an artist in a duet with himself, playing over his own taped performance (Sidney Bechet had attempted multi-track recording in 1941, with his celebrated "One Man Band", but that was a rare practice). Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy also made a few multi-track attempts. That's why we sometimes find Louis backing his own singing on the trumpet (or singing duets with himself, as on "Atlanta Blues"). According to Ricky Riccardi, "Avakian took his job as a record producer very seriously; he was always passionate about making the best possible album, even if he had to resort to heavy editing and tape splicing - anathema to some producers who decry these practices as violations of the supposed natural spontaneity and authenticity ol jazz as improvised music. Avakian says he had approval from all of his artists to edit and splice because they themselves concurred that he had their best interests in mind." "I hate it when people get into the files at Columbia as they do now", declared Avakian in 2007, "and come up with the terrific discovery that there were three takes used in something. That doesn't matter! What matters is you've got to get the right performance that's right for the artist".

The previous explanation is necessary to understand the nature of various of the "alternate" takes added here. While some of them are actually completely different performances (for instance "Long Gone" and "Ole Miss"), others are composed takes made from two or more incomplete alternates, and even complete alternate takes from which portions were taken for the making of the original master takes. For in many cases, the original master takes issued on the LP (tracks 1 -11 of CD1), are themselves the result of the editing of various takes. We have included on CD2 (tracks 1 -11) all of the versions ever issued on which there was at least a segment of different music [a so-called "unspliced" version of "Chantez Les Bas" is not included here as it is identical to the originally issued master]. As a bonus, we have added four very different alternative versions of "St. Louis Blues" by Louis: the 1925 earliest take of the song with Bessie Smith, his subsequent 1929 and 1933 studio readings, and his superb 1957 live version with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein, which originally appeared on the LP Satchmo the Great. Also included here are his only other version of "Careless Love" [aka "Loveless Love"] with Bessie Smith, and his earliest studio version of "Ole Miss" from 1950.”