It was on this date in 1928 that Louis Armstrong and his band, the Hot Five, recorded West End Blues. Armstrong was 26 years old at the time, and living in Chicago, where hed been for six years. Hed moved there from New Orleans as part of Joe King Olivers band; Oliver had been a friend and mentor to the young singer and trumpeter since Armstrong was a teenager. They parted ways in 1925. Oliver composed West End Blues and had just recorded his own version a few weeks earlier, but Armstrongs cover, recorded in Chicagos OKeh studio, is legendary. It features Earl Fatha Hines on piano, and its one of the first recorded examples of Armstrongs trademark scat singing. The recording took the jazz world by storm. An ecstatic audience carried Armstrong off the stage when he performed the song live one night. Billie Holliday mentioned the record in her autobiography: Sometimes the record would make me so sad, Id cry up a storm. Other times, the same damn record would make me so happy. Armstrongs playing inspired Hollidays vocal technique, too; she told a music critic, It sounded like he was making love to me. Thats how I wanted to sing. And jazz composer Gunther Schuller wrote that the record made it clear jazz could never again revert to being entertainment or folk music. The clarion call of West End Blues served notice that jazz could compete with the highest order of musical expression. Like any profoundly creative innovation, [it] summarized the past and predicted the future. The man who appears to have been the critical link between Louis Armstrong and Okeh records: Ralph Peer. The man who carried the camellia gospel around with him from Pensacola to London to points east--and whose widow presented us with Tomorrow ParkHill was part of the group that brought Louis Armstrong (and a lot of other great jazz and blues artists) to the world......
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 05:52:22 +0000
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