Black And Blue

It was in 1929 that Louis Armstrong became a pop star, breaking through to white audiences.  Over the prior five years he'd been recognized by jazz aficionados and fellow musicians as a unique talent with such pioneering recordings as West End Blues, but his records were released and marketed in the "race music" category.  It was with the release of Ain't Misbehavin', marketed as popular music, that he begin to reach a larger audience.

That same year, the Broadway musical Hot Chocolates premiered.  The musical included Black and Blue, with music by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks and lyrics by Andy Razaf, a song about race and discrimination.  Allegedly it was at the insistence of the play's financier, mobster Dutch Schultz, that the song was composed.

Armstrong recorded Black and Blue later that year and it was a standard part of his concerts for many years thereafter.  With an Armstrong solo in the intro and his affecting vocal.

I'm in the middle of reading Ricky Riccardi's recent three volume biography of Armstrong.  Coming from a truly terrible upbringing in a very rough New Orleans neighborhood it is not only his musical genius that is remarkable but the positive and open attitude he had towards life and humanity.

How will it end? Ain't got a friend 

My only sin is in my skin

What did I do to be so black and blue?

Trouble Will Soon Be Over

Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945) recorded in 1927, several years before other blues pioneers like Skip James and Robert Johnson. Blind Willie's Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground is one of 27 songs selected to be on a music sampler aboard the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 and which is now somewhere in interstellar space.

This is Trouble Will Soon Be Over.  The information on the video does not indicate any details, but the person playing guitar and singing is not Blind Willie Johnson.  It is the original recording, synced with a 21st century film recreation designed to look like it is one hundred years old.  I believe the individual portraying Johnson is actually Chris Thomas King, the talented guitarist featured in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, where he played a haunting version of Skip James' Hard Time Killing Floor Blues..

Going Up The Country

In the late 1960s, Canned Heat became popular playing blues based songs - I saw them at Woodstock.  Their most popular was Going Up The Country.  Other hits were On The Road Again and Let's Work Together.  Like so many bands of that era they could not resist the temptation of drugs and the two founders, Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, both died of overdoses.

Though I knew their songs were based on older blues, until recently I'd not heard the song that inspired Going Up The Country.  It was Bull Doze Blues by Henry Thomas and Canned Heat closely followed the original musically, though Wilson rewrote the lyrics.  Thomas, born in 1874 to parents who were formerly slaves, was a hobo and itinerant singer who recorded 24 songs between 1927 and 1929.  Along with Bull Doze Blues, Thomas also recorded Honey Won't You Allow Me One More Chance (later adapted and recorded by Bob Dylan; this is Declan O'Connell performing the Dylan version) and Fishin' Blues, which THC featured in a post on Taj Mahal last fall, though I didn't know Thomas was the composer at the time.

Thomas is believed to have died in 1930 though no one knows for certain.

 

Ain't Misbehavin'

From 1929.  Written for the Broadway show Connie's Hot Chocolates.  Lyrics by Andy Razaf, music by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks.  Razaf and Waller were later to collaborate on Honeysuckle Rose.

This version by Louis Armstrong, featuring Louis on vocals and trumpet (starting at 2:02).  The horn solo includes a riff from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue at 2:12.  Armstrong sat in with the orchestra during the run of the show and played the song between acts so he helped popularize it even before this recording.

Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground

In 1927 Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris and Babe Ruth swatted sixty home runs.  On December 3, 1927 Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945) recorded Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground at a studio in Dallas, Texas for Columbia Records.

The title comes from a 1792 hymn by an English clergyman.  Johnson's version does not use lyrics and he plays a slide guitar in a style that inspired generations of future musicians.  Dark Was The  Night is one of 27 musical samples chosen for the Golden Record placed on the Voyager space vehicle launched in 1977 and now somewhere in interstellar space.  If Voyager encounters aliens this is what they'll hear.  Wonder what they will think.

Blind Willie recorded 30 songs in five recording sessions between 1927 and 1930 and enjoyed some commercial success.  However, with the advent of the Depression the market for this music collapsed. Jefferson was one of many Negro musicians promoted by the Reverend Gary Davis in the late 50s and early 60s as part of the American folk revival.

Here's another Blind Willie tune, Nobody's Fault But Mine.

West End Blues

Recorded by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five on June 28, 1928, it's considered the first modern jazz recording.  What was particularly revolutionary was Armstrong's horn solo at the beginning.  Until this time, most jazz bands would play a melody and then improvise together in a middle section.  West End Blues was the birth of the jazz soloist.  Also innovative is Armstrong's scat singing in the middle of the song.

Composed a few weeks earlier by King Oliver, the song was named for New Orleans' West End, a picnic and entertainment area.  Early in his career Armstrong had played in Oliver's band and King was a great influence on him.

The Hot Five consisted of Fred Robinson (trombone), Jimmy Strong (clarinet), Earl Hines (piano), Mancy Cara (banjo) and Zutty Singleton (drums).

For more on the wonderful Louis Armstrong read Pops.

The Love Parade

THC stumbled across this scene from the 1929 musical comedy, The Love Parade, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in her first film role.  The movie was made early in the "talkie" era.  The Jazz Singer, considered the first talking film, and released in October 1927, had become a smash hit, but the first all-talkie film from a Hollywood studio, Lights Of New York, wasn't released until July 1928 and one of the largest studios, Columbia Pictures, didn't release its first sound film until February 1929.

The Love Parade was German-born director Ernest Lubitsch's first talkie and the film hit it big at the box office.  Later in his career, Lubitsch was to make classics like The Shop Around The Corner, a charming film set in Budapest and starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan; Heaven Can Wait with Don Ameche and Gene Tierney; and the very funny To Be Or Not To Be, starring Carole Lombard and Jack Benny (and later remade by Mel Brooks), proving how unique the Lubitsch touch was as he's the only director who could have made a hit comedy involving Nazis in Occupied Poland during World War II.

The song is Anything To Please The Queen and it's enjoyable to watch and focus on the actor's reactions, particularly MacDonald's, while Chevalier has a very funny bit around 1:25.

St James Infirmary

Louis Armstrong from 1928.

I went down to St. James Infirmary, saw my baby there
Stretched out on the long white table,
So sweet, so cold, so fair

Let her go, let her go, God bless her
Wherever she may be
She can look this wide world over
She'll never find a sweet man like me

When I die want you to dress me in straight lace shoes
Box-back coat and a Stetson hat
Put a twenty dollar gold piece on my watch chain
So the boys'll know that I died standing pat

You can read a discussion about what a "Box-back" coat refers to here. 

Pops: The Louis Armstrong Story

Louis Armstrong always said he was born on July 4, 1900, the date he used when he registered for the draft in 1918.  In 1988, seventeen years after Armstrong's death, a researcher discovered his actual birth date was August 4, 1901.  But we're sticking with the July 4 birth date in accordance with the official policy of this blog and because Louis Armstrong is a quintessentially American figure - if he thought he was born on the 4th of July as far as this blog is concerned that's when he was born - July 4th is a great day for a birthday for a great American.

I rediscovered Armstrong a couple of years ago by reading Pops by Terry Teachout .  Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and worked as a jazz bassist before becoming a writer, giving him a unique perspective for his biography of Armstrong.

Pops is a wonderful book about a man who, as Teachout says, "lived life in a major key".