variations in length, placement, and intensity—a single note. What would have been monotonous in the hands of any other band member comes to life under the sway of Armstrong’s sure mastery of syncopation. On “Shanghai Shuffle” and many of his other features with the Henderson band—“Copenhagen” from October 1924, “Mandy Make Up Your Mind” from early December, “I’ll See You in My Dreams” recorded a month later—Armstrong was pointing the way to a more modern conception of improvisation. In the end, his impact was decisive—for the Henderson band, for the New York scene, for the jazz world.
Armstrong’s stiffest challenge during these months leading up to the Hot Five recordings came in a different setting. As a sideman in the Clarence Williams Blue Five, Armstrong faced off with Sidney Bechet—“the only man who,” in the words of critic Gary Giddins, “for a short while, seemed [Armstrong’s] equal as an improviser during those transitional years.” 3 Bechet, born May 14, 1897, in New Orleans, may have been only four years older than Armstrong, but he already had accumulated a world of experience since first leaving New Orleans in his late teens. In 1919, he had traveled to Europe with Will Marion Cook’s Southern Syncopated Orchestra, where he dazzled audiences and won the praise of noted Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet. In a prescient piece published in Revue Romande in 1919, Ansermet declared Bechet to be “an artist of genius” and suggested that his clarinet playing was “perhaps the highway the whole world will swing along tomorrow.” 4 Other memorable performances by this early ambassador for hot music included a garden party at Buckingham Palace for the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII) and an Armistice Ball at the Royal Albert Hall. Bechet returned to the United States with an enhanced reputation, but also—and perhaps more importantly—with a soprano saxophone, which he had spotted in a shop window during a stroll through London’s West End.
Up until this point, Bechet’s work had been restricted to clarinet, an instrument he had learned under the influence of three New Orleans pioneers of the instrument: George Baquet, “Big Eye” Louis Nelson, and Lorenzo Tio. The tradition Bechet inherited from these musicians was anything but primitive; indeed, the clarinet was, in certain respects, the most advanced of the jazz instruments during these early years. Clarinetists in the New Orleans tradition worked assiduously to develop great finger flexibility and, as a result, were often assigned the most intricate parts in performance. This fluid approach to the clarinet grew out of a tradition of melodic embellishment, rather than the freer linear development we associate with later jazz horn players, as demonstrated by the well-known obbligato section in the piece “High Society,” which served as a technical showpiece for many New Orleans clarinetists. Melodic complexity, however, was far from the only distinguishing characteristic of the New Orleans clarinet sound. Figured patterns built from arpeggiated chords were often employed as the building blocks for New Orleans clarinet solos; because of this, these players needed to have a reasonably sophisticated understanding of chord structures. Years later, Coleman Hawkins would develop this penchant into a probing, harmonically adept saxophone style, but even with the first generation of jazz reed players, the chordal implications of their playing were prominent.
Yet the clarinet tradition that Bechet inherited was not without its limitations. The figured patterns that served as the foundation for many early clarinet solos soon came to represent a stylistic dead end. Caught up in the static vocabulary, these first-generation players tended to leave the rhythmic potential of their instrument largely untapped. Syncopations played a modest role in their efforts and, when employed, rarely moved beyond restatements of the
Armstrong’s stiffest challenge during these months leading up to the Hot Five recordings came in a different setting. As a sideman in the Clarence Williams Blue Five, Armstrong faced off with Sidney Bechet—“the only man who,” in the words of critic Gary Giddins, “for a short while, seemed [Armstrong’s] equal as an improviser during those transitional years.” 3 Bechet, born May 14, 1897, in New Orleans, may have been only four years older than Armstrong, but he already had accumulated a world of experience since first leaving New Orleans in his late teens. In 1919, he had traveled to Europe with Will Marion Cook’s Southern Syncopated Orchestra, where he dazzled audiences and won the praise of noted Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet. In a prescient piece published in Revue Romande in 1919, Ansermet declared Bechet to be “an artist of genius” and suggested that his clarinet playing was “perhaps the highway the whole world will swing along tomorrow.” 4 Other memorable performances by this early ambassador for hot music included a garden party at Buckingham Palace for the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII) and an Armistice Ball at the Royal Albert Hall. Bechet returned to the United States with an enhanced reputation, but also—and perhaps more importantly—with a soprano saxophone, which he had spotted in a shop window during a stroll through London’s West End.
Up until this point, Bechet’s work had been restricted to clarinet, an instrument he had learned under the influence of three New Orleans pioneers of the instrument: George Baquet, “Big Eye” Louis Nelson, and Lorenzo Tio. The tradition Bechet inherited from these musicians was anything but primitive; indeed, the clarinet was, in certain respects, the most advanced of the jazz instruments during these early years. Clarinetists in the New Orleans tradition worked assiduously to develop great finger flexibility and, as a result, were often assigned the most intricate parts in performance. This fluid approach to the clarinet grew out of a tradition of melodic embellishment, rather than the freer linear development we associate with later jazz horn players, as demonstrated by the well-known obbligato section in the piece “High Society,” which served as a technical showpiece for many New Orleans clarinetists. Melodic complexity, however, was far from the only distinguishing characteristic of the New Orleans clarinet sound. Figured patterns built from arpeggiated chords were often employed as the building blocks for New Orleans clarinet solos; because of this, these players needed to have a reasonably sophisticated understanding of chord structures. Years later, Coleman Hawkins would develop this penchant into a probing, harmonically adept saxophone style, but even with the first generation of jazz reed players, the chordal implications of their playing were prominent.
Yet the clarinet tradition that Bechet inherited was not without its limitations. The figured patterns that served as the foundation for many early clarinet solos soon came to represent a stylistic dead end. Caught up in the static vocabulary, these first-generation players tended to leave the rhythmic potential of their instrument largely untapped. Syncopations played a modest role in their efforts and, when employed, rarely moved beyond restatements of the
Similar Books
