Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 1: Birth of the Hot

The annals of music are filled with iconic band names. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Metallica. It happens less frequently in the jazz world, which tends to favor the individual, but even then, some phrases have had lasting power: The Blanton-Webster Band. The Old Testament. The Jazz Messengers.

But it all started 100 years ago today with the Hot Five.

If you’re on this site, you’re most likely familiar with the reputation of the Hot Five. I can share almost any of the countless superlatives used to describe the music Louis Armstrong recorded as a leader between 1925 and 1928, but perhaps my favorite appreciation comes from a 2012 blog by multi-instrumentalist (and Savior of Archaic Pop) Nicholas Payton, who wrote, “I’m not one for superlatives, but Armstrong’s Hot Five recordings are the most influential records in Pop music. More influential than the Beatles or Michael Jackson put together. On those sides, he developed the whole idea of the virtuoso vocal and instrumental soloist in the Pop idiom. It was his voice that shaped what would become the Popular song.”

I can’t argue with that–but it took some time for that opinion to crystallize. Wanting to do something special for this once-in-a-lifetime centennial anniversary, I’ve decided to use this “That’s My Home” space to put together a series of virtual exhibit posts about, well….everything: The birth of the Hot Five, the first session of November 12, 1925, the role of Lil Hardin Armstrong in the Hot Five and in Armstrong’s career, contents from Louis and Lil’s scrapbook from this period, initial reactions and reviews to the music of the Hot Five in the late 1920s and 1930s, and the story of their eventual 1940s reissues that led to their reappraisal as some of jazz’s most influential recordings. Sound good? Buckle up!

For this first part, you must forgive me as I include some excerpts from my 2025 book, Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong (order a signed copy and support the Louis Armstrong House Museum here). A little backstory: Louis Armstrong came to New York City in October 1924 and joined Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra. While in New York, he made dozens of a recordings as a sideman, often for OKeh Records and as a member of Clarence Williams’s Blue Five, a cornet-clarinet-trombone-piano-banjo combination. By the summer of 1925, Louis was becoming disillusioned in New York, so second wife Lil devised a plan to bring him back to Chicago. The first step was to convince Bill Bottoms, proprietor of the Dreamland Cafe, to pay Louis $75 a week (he was making $55 with Henderson) and to bill him as “The World’s Greatest Jazz Cornetist”). Bottoms reluctantly agreed. Lil then hit the Black press in Chicago to let them know that Louis was coming back. Here’s Stomp Off, Let’s Go:

Lil opened at the Dreamland Cafe on October 24, billed as “Mme. L. Armstrong’s Dreamland Syncopators” with George Mitchell holding down the cornet chair until Louis finished his final weeks with Henderson.
“For a small unit they can’t be beat, and they play a whole lot better than some of the ‘star’ cabaret bands,” the Chicago Defender stated in a review. Lil cut this clipping out and affixed it to a page in a brand- new scrapbook that would eventually document her husband’s success over the next five years.

The next step of Lil’s plan was to let Ralph Peer, OKeh’s director of production, know that Louis was coming back to Chicago. Peer had still been recording Louis in September and October 1925, when he had taken part in three more Clarence Williams Blue Five sessions, leading thrilling ensemble passages on “Livin’ High Sometimes” and “Santa Claus Blues” and once again foreshadowing his later dramatic high note style on “You Can’t Shush Katie.” Armstrong had even finally got to record “Coal Cart Blues,” which he remembered writing while working for C. A. Andrews down in New Orleans during World War I— though co-composer credit on the label had been given to
“Lillian Harding.”

“[Louis] can’t stand it in New York,” Lil told Peer.
“Well, now if he goes back to Chicago, I will do this for you,” Peer said. “We will create an Armstrong orchestra so that we can give you some work.”
Peer, who would leave OKeh in December 1925, turned the project over to E. A. Fearn of the Consolidated Talking Machine Company and pianist and composer Richard M. Jones, OKeh’s Race Division manager. The idea was a simple one: if Clarence Williams had success with a Blue Five, perhaps Armstrong would be willing to front a Hot Five? The answer was a resounding yes.
Louis would now have to choose the members of this recording group. Lil would be the pianist, but after a year in New York, Louis missed the special spark of playing with musicians from New Orleans. “The minute Mr. Fern (the President [sic] of the OKeh Company) gave me the go sign, I hit the phone and called the Musician’s Union, and asked permission to hire Edward ‘Kid’ Ory, Johnny St. Cyr, and Johnny Dodds,” he wrote.
St. Cyr and Dodds were both still based in Chicago and were happy to accept Armstrong’s offer to record with him, but Ory had been in California since 1919. “Louis said he had the offer of a job for a band at the Dreamland in Chicago, and also the offer to record for Okeh [sic],” Ory said. “He said we’d both make some money, so I decided to give up my own band, and go back East to Chicago. That was the end of 1925. I thought the world of Louis, so I was glad to go with him.” Thus, everything was in place by late October: Lil was at Dreamland, Ory arrived in town from Chicago, Dodds and St. Cyr were on board, and E. A. Fearn offered the date November 12 to record Armstrong’s
new group, the Hot Five.
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For this next section, I’ll continue to draw from Stomp Off, Let’s Go, but with some added visual–and audio–bonuses, opening with a photo of E. A. Fearn himself, donated to the Louis Armstrong House Museum by Fearn’s descendents in 1998:

Back to Stomp Off, Let’s Go:

Once in the studio, Lil took her spot at the piano while Johnny St. Cyr took a seat on a stack of boxes near the recording horn. Louis, Kid Ory, and Johnny Dodds would stand but Fearn immediately spotted a problem when the band was rehearsing. “Johnny Dodds couldn’t play without patting his foot,” St Cyr said. “Fearn had to go out and get a pillow! Fearn got a pillow so he could pat on the pillow and it wouldn’t make no noise, you know, it wouldn’t record.”
Louis and Lil each brought an original composition to the date and sold both of them to Fearn for a $50 flat fee instead of arranging for any future royalties. Louis would come to regret this choice, especially when the Hot Five recordings were reissued by Columbia Records in the 1940s and 1950s. “Yeah, we wasn’t paying no attention to the royalties and all that,” he said in 1952. “All we wanted was money then and forget it! I wish I had held about a halfcent interest in ’em, I’d be all right. . . . They tell me Columbia bought all them tunes. [I] don’t get a nickel from that. They’re selling like hotcakes, too. It’s one of them things, you know.”
For their first number, the Hot Five recorded Lil’s “My Heart,” which she originally wrote as a waltz titled “My Heart Will Lead Me Back to You” back in 1920.

[Breaking in here to share one of the pages of Lil’s original copyrighted manuscript, now held at the Library of Congress]

[Back to Stomp Off, Let’s Go}

In later years, Louis liked to later claim that the group “would just make up those things” in the studio, but the group was actually a well- rehearsed outfit. “When we’d get in the studio, if we were going to do a new number, we’d run over it a couple of times before we recorded it” Kid Ory said. “We were a very fast recording band, in fact the records I made with the Hot Fives were the easiest I ever made.” “At that time, we was just cutting masters,” Johnny St. Cyr added. “Fearn wouldn’t make us cut tests. Just cut masters. We used to rehearse our numbers very well, you know, time them the best we
could.”
The rehearsal paid off on “My Heart,” which included a two- bar arranged introduction, a 32- bar chorus followed by a 16- bar verse, multiple breaks, and a clarinet solo over stop- time “Charleston” rhythm. The performance also highlights the ensemble playing of Armstrong, Ory, and Dodds. Though the Hot Five would later garner a reputation for helping transition jazz from an ensemble- based music to a soloist’s art form, they also represent perhaps the pinnacle of the polyphonic style due to the familiarity between the principals.“The Hot Five was actually very much like my band in New Orleans,” Ory said. “Four of the five, Louis, Johnny Dodds, Johnny St. Cyr and I, played together for a long time in my band and we all knew each other’s styles inside out.” Thus, the Hot Five recordings provide a precious glimpse of how Ory’s band might have sounded back home.

In fact, Louis seemed content to defer to his elders on “My Heart,” sticking to tasty lead playing and a couple of closing breaks while eschewing any trumpet fireworks. “I didn’t just take the band over to be a big shot or nothing like that,” Louis said. “We just played music the same as we did in New Orleans.” This spirit was appreciated by his bandmates. “Louis was a wonderful band leader,” St. Cyr said. “One felt so relaxed working with him, and he was very broad minded. He always did his best to feature each individual in his combo. It was not Louis Armstrong, it was the Hot Five, if you get what I mean.” Louis did make up for it on “Yes! I’m in the Barrel,” which he had originally copyrighted back in 1923 as “I Am in the Barrel, Who Don’t Like It?,” a reference to losing all of one’s clothes while gambling.

[Once again, from the Library of Congress, here’s Louis’s handwritten lead sheet from December 8, 1923]

This time, he commands attention from the outset, soloing over a minor- vamp with a plunger mute, perhaps as a nod to Oliver. But even after this dramatic introduction, Louis reverts to playing lead, helping to guide the band through the tune’s tricky form, and throwing it over to Dodds for his second full-chorus solo of the day.

The two planned sides were a success, but there was only one problem—E. A. Fearn wasn’t completely satisfied. OKeh made its reputation with the blues and Fearn requested that they make one up in the studio. According to St. Cyr, Armstrong’s response was, “Man, we have made so many blues and they all sound mostly alike!” Armstrong had been playing the blues regularly for about a decade, especially during his honky- tonk days, but beginning with his tenure with Fate Marable and continuing through the Fletcher Henderson period, he had been exposed to popular songs, waltzes, ballads, novelty numbers, exotic specialties, and much more. He had already backed multiple singers on multiple blues earlier that week and the notion of simply
churning out more 12- bar blues for OKeh with his own group was not exactly
an enticing one.
St. Cyr came up with a suggestion. “Well, look, I’ll start off with the bass on the banjo,” he said, illustrating the sound. “The banjo starting off will make it a little different than the average blues.”
“All right, go ahead, try that, it might work,” Fearn said.
With the introduction worked out, Armstrong decided this piece could use something of a nonmusical nature: his personality. Armstrong’s extroverted demeanor had been a big part of his live performances going back to the days of his vocal quartet, but it had had been kept under wraps on the dozens of recordings he had made since April 1923. Those days were now over.
While St. Cyr played his introduction, Armstrong took over: “Oh, play that thing, Mr. St. Cyr, lawd! You know you can do it— everybody from New Orleans can really do that thing! Heeeey, hey!” This was also something new; Armstrong had become used to contributing immortal solos in session after session, only to never receive credit on a record label. Now, he would utter each musician’s name, introducing an entire generation to St. Cyr, Lil (“Whip that thing, Miss Lil!”), Ory (“Blow it, Kid Ory, blow it kid!”), and Dodds (“Blow that thing, Mr. Johnny Dodds!”). The Hot Five would become a brand and from the beginning, Louis ensured that listeners would get to know the entire cast by name.
Dodds was then chosen to introduce Armstrong, but froze during an early attempt at talking into the recording horn. “You know what that son- of-a-bitch did?” Armstrong asked in 1970. “Went right to that mike and [stutters] ‘I- I- I- I- uh.’ I said, ‘Speak, motherfucker!’ He said, ‘Shit, I’m scared of that fucking mike!’ And Ory had to take his place!” Ory updated his friend’s old “Dippermouth” nickname, urging him to “Blow it, Papa Dip!”
Without any time to prepare something new, Armstrong fell back on one of his set solos, in this case reprising and updating the blues chorus he had taken on Bessie Smith’s “Cold in Hand Blues” earlier in the year. In the final chorus, instead of a New Orleans free- for- all, Armstrong set an earthy riff and was quickly joined by Ory and Dodds for a rocking finish.
“What shall we name it?” Fearn asked upon its conclusion.
“Call it ‘The Gut Bucket,’ ” Louis responded. When Fearn asked what that meant, Louis brushed him off, saying it just came to him. St. Cyr later explained, “In the fish markets in New Orleans, the fish cleaners keep a large bucket under the table where they clean the fish, and as they do this they rake the guts in this bucket. Hence ‘The Gut Bucket,’ which makes it a low- down blues.”
Fearn knew he had a winner and arranged for “Gut Bucket Blues” to be the first Hot Five side to be issued, with “Yes! I’m in the Barrel” on the flip side.
********************************

That’s enough from Stomp Off, Let’s Go (thanks for reading!). According to Fearn’s papers, “Gut Bucket Blues” was released in December 1925 and is first mentioned in a newspaper, the Baltimore Afro-American on January 2, 1926. It must have been a popular seller from the outset as Fearn set up a number of sessions for February 1926 and even had photos taken of Armstrong and of the Hot Five. “Gut Bucket Blues” finally got an ad in the Chicago Defender on March 6, 1926, complete with a reproduction of Louis’s new publicity photo:

Here’s a copy of the original OKeh 78 from our Museum’s Jack Bradley Collection!

For copyright purposes, a lead sheet had to be submitted after-the-fact for “Gut Bucket Blues”; here it is, dated April 30, 1926 (it’s basically Johnny St. Cyr’s banjo introduction; St. Cyr remained a bit salty in his late 1950s oral history interviews for Tulane, feeling that he should have gotten a composer credit):

And here’s the audio of “Gut Bucket Blues”:

That concludes the third and final song recorded 100 years ago today–but we’re not done yet. In fact, if you’re still reading, this will most likely prove to be the most controversial of the series.

Earlier this summer, San Francisco Bay-based pianist Charles Chen wrote me to see I could explain a bit more about Lil Hardin Armstrong’s comping style on the Hot Five recordings. I did my best, but mentioned that’s really buried in the mix on the acoustic sides; you can feel her pounding away, but it’s tough to really get a feel for exactly what she was doing.

That answer wasn’t enough for Charles. He proceeded to use AI to isolate Lil’s piano parts, had them transcribed, then inserted Lil back in the mix and boosted her part up between 8 and 20 db. The results, to my ears, are stunning. And just to get my old man caveat out of the way, I’m not an AI guy, have never used ChatGPT, and I’m worried about the “fake” music AI is pumping out at the expense of real artists. But to me, Charles is using AI for the power of good. Lil, maligned for so many years as the weakest link in the Hot Five, is an absolute beast back there, swinging like mad and really holding it down with her constantly shifting left-hand patterns (she really internalized–and externalized, I suppose–the style of her hero, Jelly Roll Morton). When Lil does get credit for her role in the Armstrong saga, it’s usually just as the architect of his stardom, but I’m hoping that Charles’s work will lead to more appreciation of her talents as a pianist.

Thus, with tremendous gratitude to Charles Chen, here are those first three Hot Five songs recorded 100 years ago this week–with a lot more Lil in the mix.

“My Heart”:

Here’s “Yes, I’m In the Barrel”:

And finally, “Gut Bucket Blues”:

What do you think? As stated at the beginning, I’m sure this will stir up some feelings. I personally wouldn’t want to hear a “fake” Hot Five, sounding shiny or like Kind of Blue; these were acoustic records and they should sound like it. But there’s nothing fake about what Lil played and by bringing her out, transcribing her work, and giving it a boost in the mix, I think it really shines a much-needed light on her role in the band.

The comment section is open–let us know what you think and come back soon for much more on this historic anniversary. Long live the Hot Five!