298 • Lawrence Gushee

and with few of the rhythmic figures characteristic of the genre. Viewed posi-
tively, the tune has a great deal of forward, propulsive movement, signaled at
the outset by the lengthy upbeat figure, and carried through by the mid-
measure articulation of the first three phrases (mm. 2, 4, and 7) and the well-
crafted melodic shape, climaxing in measure 12. From the harmonic point of
view, there is much interest in the ingenious way Armstrong has of deriving
melody from the chords, as in measure 3, with the elaboration of the sub-
dominant E-flat triad; measures 43-44, which play around with the dominant
F seventh; and measures 45-46, functioning as a kind of turnaround, many
years before we might expect to find one. 17
We can only guess about some of the sources of Armstrong's melodic inspi-
ration. Certainly the opening of "Weather Bird Rag" sounds a lot like the very
popular "Hiawatha" of 1903, and the trio resembles the famous "Eccentric ,=rl-
Rag" of J. Russell Robinson, said to have been part of the Oliver repertory.
Such connections should be no cause for surprise; a large number of the "origi-
nal" tunes by New Orleans musicians are adaptations of well-known popular
favorites, sometimes drawing on the earlier tune more or less directly ("Ory's
Creole Trombone" and Clarence Wiley's "Car-Balick-Acid Rag-time" from
1901), sometimes simplifying and modifying the original ("At the Jazz Band
Ball" and Chris Smith's famous "Ballin' the Jack"), sometimes identifiable
only through a shared harmonic progression (as "Muskrat Ramble" may draw
on "Maple Leaf Rag").
Of the other copyright submissions, the lead sheet of "Comet Chop Suey"
(ex. 13.2) (originally designated as a comet part) is the most interesting, not
only because so much of the recorded performance is seen to have been fixed
on paper, but because of the small differences between the written version of
January 1924 and the recorded performance of February 1926. These changes
are especially noticeable in the first measures of the verse and of the chorus,
and result in improved melodies, in the first instance by smoothing out the line,
in the second by making it more angular. Also interesting are the inaccuracies
of rhythmic notation, 18 such as the incorrect quarter rest in the first measure of
the chorus, which reveal the articulation Armstrong had in mind.
The first two copyrighted tunes in which Armstrong had a hand were regis-
tered as by Louis Armstrong and Lillian Hardin. These are "New Orleans Cut-
Out" (which, ascribed to Oliver, was recorded as "New Orleans Stomp") and
"Coal Cart Blues," recorded with Clarence Williams two years after it was sent
to Washington. The two melodies have strong points of resemblance, for in-
stance the harmonic progression 1-vi underlying the first strain of "New Or-
leans Stomp" and the second strain of "Coal Cart Blues." More notable than Example 13.2. "'Comet Chop Suey." (Copyright Deposit E580818, 18 January 1924.)
that, however, is the very prominent use made of melodic outlining of the tonic
diminished seventh. In fact, it is an important feature of all of the early tunes,
and may reveal Armstrong striving for a degree of harmonic sophistication. 19
300 • Lawrence Gushee
Armstrong was producing these copyrighted tunes at the same time Sidney
Bechet was producing a substantial number in New York, where they were
published under the aegis of Clarence Williams. 20 Like Armstrong, Bechet ap-
pears to have stopped writing tunes after an initial spurt of activity. Nonethe-
less, it is remarkable that the two New Orleans musicians regarded as the most
creative improvisers also expressed their creativity in writing at the onset of
their national and international careers. 21
***
Armstrong's year-long stay in New York with Fletcher Henderson's band
(October 1924 to October 1925) exposed him to a higher technical level of
musicianship than he had previously known. 22 And despite the likelihood that
Henderson would have preferred to hire as his new third trumpet Joe Smith-
regarded by some to this day as Armstrong's artistic equal-Armstrong was
amply capable of astonishing some of the rising young cornetists of the East
Coast (for example, Rex Stewart), and doubtless other musicians (Coleman
Hawkins is often cited). The charm and the challenge wore off in a matter of
months: there is evidence that Armstrong eventually became bored with little
more than brief eight- and sixteen-measure solos, and displeased at the lack of
professional discipline in some of his fellow band members. Still, the freshness
and vitality of those short solos in the context of the often rather drab and
plodding Henderson arrangements of the time has led to the elevation of the
episode in jazz history as a climactic turning point. But we must always ask
whether the sequence of events as staked out by recordings truthfully repre-
sents an artist's development. 23
In a very detailed discussion, informed by admiration and insight, of Arm-
strong's solos with the Henderson band, Gunther Schuller ( 1968, 90-95) offers
a picture of a burgeoning and expanding talent who had already been moving
away from his New Orleans musical style. The central idea is that over a six-
year period Armstrong built his personal style around tiny phrase cells
(Schuller also hears this in every great jazz artist). One should add that Schuller
believes that in New Orleans only paraphrase or, as he terms it, "referential
improvisation" was practiced. This is in contrast to the direction of the future,
improvisation on chord progressions, in the development of which Armstrong
was to play such a major role. One should note, somewhat in anticipation, that
Schuller shares the prejudice of the majority of writers on Armstrong, namely,
that the popular songs Louis played after 1929 are sentimental trash, only re-
deemed by the transformations achieved by improvisation on chord progres-
sions.
This idea of the hegemony of paraphrase in the New Orleans style appears
to be founded on the older practice of such as Joe Oliver, not on that which
much evidence suggests was prevalent among younger players coming up after
1915. It's clear that a trumpeter of the same age as Armstrong could be conser-
vative: Tommy Ladnier is a case in point. (This may be because he came to
Improvisation of Louis Armstrong • 30 I
Chicago in 1917 as a youthful disciple of Bunk Johnson and escaped the influ-
ence of such as Rena, Petit, Armstrong.) If, however, we pay close attention to
the excellent Lee Collins (later one of the replacements for Armstrong hired
by Joe Oliver), as he sounded in 1924 in a band under Jelly Roll Morton's
direction, 24 we can hear some of the same figures and mannerisms as in Arm-
strong-chords being run, a strong and expressive vibrato, and a bold musical
imagination. An alternative to Schuller's view, then, is that Armstrong had al-
ready constructed a coherent personal style out of common-property New Or-
leans jazz trumpet playing of the post-World War I years, and was not limited
to melodic paraphrase. Indeed, when we listen to the arabesque of Sidney
Bechet's first recorded solos in 1923, we may well surmise that New Orleans
players born around 1900 had already by the early 1920s added other kinds of
variation technique to that of the most obvious, melodic paraphrase.
Schuller's detailed analyses of three Armstrong solos from recordings with
the Henderson band draw attention to his ability to recast or dislocate the
rhythmic structure of the popular song, both by upbeats and by extensions at
the end of a phrase. These Tin Pan Alley songs, just as those he began to play
after 1929, require transformation, Schuller seems to believe. My ears hear and
my eyes see, however, that all three examples-as vigorous and expressive as
they are in the Henderson context-are still paraphrases in depending for their
overall melodic progression on the pitches of the original song, embedding
them, to be sure, in figuration. If the tune is well crafted so will be the solo, all
things being equal. The surrounding of these nuclear pitches with elaborate
prefixes and suffixes or their ingenious rhythmic placement can make struc-
tural repetitions into fresh musical events, but it doesn't support the general
thesis of "cellular construction."
Perhaps a middle ground can be found in making far more emphatic the
importance of the break in the formation of Armstrong's style. As Schuller
observes, "Long a tradition in the New Orleans style, these breaks were what
every interested listener waited for" (1968, 79). Of the four phrase-cells of-
fered by Schuller as the foundation stones of Armstrong's style, three are in
fact breaks. In my view, then, the Armstrong solos with Henderson, rather than
meek but pregnant foreshadowings of a chordal improvisational style, are para-
phrases larded with ambitious and well-integrated breaks. 25
The concept of an orderly development in Armstrong's style from the Oliver
band through the stint with Henderson also receives little support from his
playing in the two other principal recorded contexts during this first New York
period. If he sounds a bit stiff and tentative in some of the Henderson re-
cordings, as Schuller would have it, this is certainly not the case in the nearly
thirty recorded appearances with Clarence Williams's Blue Five and the Red
Onion Jazz Babies. The most successful of these are the ones with Sidney
Bechet, which show a spontaneity and energy surely in large part due to the
challenge of Bechet's playing. Armstrong also goes well beyond the limits of