Last time out, we told the story of George Avakian, who, while still a 21-year-old student at Yale, was hired by Columbia Records oversee a series of jazz reissue albums. Louis Armstrong’s 1920s sides had become coveted collector’s items in the years following their release and Avakian had grown frustrated with how difficult they were to find. Now, working for Columbia, Avakian went to work in assembling a compilation of Armstrong recordings from the 1920s, discovering some previously unissued performances along the way. He kicked off the “Hot Jazz Classics” series with King Louis, released in the fall of 1940 and featuring one number by the original Hot Five, two previously unissued Hot Seven sides, three 1928 classics with Earl “Fatha” Hines, and the integrated blues “Knockin’ a Jug” from 1929.
Critical reception was (mostly) raptuous and one can argue that the reputation of Armstrong’s 1920s records as pioneering works of innovation really begins here.
Fortunately, the team of Columbia and Avakian were not through. By utilizing all of their marketing resources, Columbia insured that the Hot Jazz Classics series of albums and singles received incredible publicity in late 1940, ranging from major music trades to small-town newspapers. Columbia wanted more and Avakian was ready.
First up was a single. Avakian was still floating from the unissued takes he discovered in Columbia’s Bridgeport, Connecticut vaults so he kicked off 1941 with two more, “The Last Time” and “Ory’s Creole Trombone,” both recorded by the original Hot Five in September 1927. In his excitement to get the disc out, Avakian made a couple of rare errors on the label, crediting the sides to the “Hot Seven” and listing Baby Dodds on drums when he wasn’t present; for visual’s sake, here’s the label for “The Last Time”:
Once again, reviews came flooding in from all corners in early 1941. Over in Armstrong’s hometown, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported on January 5, “The biggest news so far has been the discovery of old masters by Louis Armstrong never before released….Since these are of the same fine material it is a wonder that they were not released along with all the others of 1927, but better late than never.” And over in the Hot Record Society Rag, an unidentified reviewer (most likely one of the editors, Heywood Hale Broun or Charles Edward Smith) wrote of “Ory’s Creole Trombone,” “This fine side recently discovered was recorded in 1927 which was near the peak of the Armstrong small bands bands and is a record that you will not want to be without.” Of “The Last Time,” they said it was “a valuable addition to jazz history.”
Not everyone felt that way. Also released and reviewed in January 1941? Duke Ellington’s “Chlo-e” and “Across the Track Blues,” Benny Goodman’s “Royal Garden Blues” and “Wholly Cats” (with Charlie Christian), Artie Shaw’s Star Dust,” Tommy Dorsey’s “Star Dust” (with Frank Sinatra), Benny Carter’s “All of Me,” Bob Crosby’s “Cow Cow Blues,” a Victor album of Rachmaninoff playing his own compositions, and more. Hence a review of the 1927 Armstrong sides like this one from The Tampa Tribune: “Hot disc collectors will count this a valuable addition to jazzmania, but it comes out as rather corny stuff compared to conemporary recordings, in spit of the efforts of Trumpeter Armstrong and Kid Opry [sic], slip horn master.”
Even in Down Beat, reviewer “Barrelhouse Dan,” who praised the King Louis album, wrote of “Ory’s Creole Trombone,” “The ‘B’ side shows some of the corniest Barnum & Bailey sliphorn ever put on wax, and is laughably bad.” He did add, though, “But ‘Time’ is grade-A Satchmo with Louie singing and playing fine horn.” Meanwhile, over in the San Francisco Chronicle, jazz columnist “Jive” wrote, “In those days Louis did not stand head-and-shoulders above his fellow musicians, and so the pattern is not that of the virtuoso-soloist as in his later disks, but of alternating solos by the members of the melody section, reverting to hard improvised New Orleans ensembles. You will also note that in those days Louis had not the Olympian calm and the mellow quality either in his singing or his horn, which were so characteristic of his work later.” To these listeners, Armstrong improved as he got older and these sides were valued as important snapshots of his early style, but they didn’t quite hold up as totally fulfilling listening experiences in 1941.
A week or two later, Avakian tried again with another single, a straight reissue of an OKeh single that released in 1929, pairing two sides originally credited to the “Savoy Ballroom Five,” though they featured completely different personnel: “Beau Koo Jack” from December 1928 with the Earl Hines-Zutty Singleton-Don Redman edition of the “Hot Five,” and “Mahogany Hall Stomp” from March 1929, made with Luis Russell’s Orchestra, a fact that escaped Avakian’s updated label, which offered some personnel listings:
The jazz press applauded this release, Dave Dexter Jr. calling it “excellent 1929 examples of Satchmo’s genius” while Metronome praised Armstrong’s “wonderful horn.” However, this side didn’t make a big splash in the press, nor did Avakian’s other Armstrong-related single of the period, a straight reissue of Clarence Williams’s Blue Five doing “Mandy, Make Up Your Mind” and “I’m a Little Blackbird” from the pre-Hot Five days. “Dubbed from the original Okeh recordings of December, 1924, this is one of the most significant of the Columbia reissues,” Robert Quinlisk wrote in the March 21, 1941 issue of Jazz Information. “Significant because it’s one of the dreaded ‘collectors’ items’–fine and important jazz which is likely to sound ‘dated’ to swing-accustomed ears today.” Quinlisk didn’t feel that way, calling these sides “exciting and beautiful records,” but they barely rated any attention elsewhere.
Avakian then decided to leave the singles aside and focus his attention back on creating albums of Armstrong’s reissues. He came up with two ideas that he saw through to completion in 1941, almost single-handedly ensuring that this music would become part of the canon.
Up first was the main reason for all of these celebratory posts: an album of four records, eight sides, released in June 1941 dedicated to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five. Here’s the brilliant cover art, like King Louis, designed by 24-year-old art director Alex Steinweiss:
As discussed in Part 3 of this series, when the records the Hot Five made became collector’s items in the mid-1930s, most writers pointed towards two especially coveted sides: “Gut Bucket Blues” and “Cornet Chop Suey.” And with this release, both were magically back in print on a major label!
In addition to those two landmark sides, Avakian eschewed any unissued rarities and stuck to the best of the band’s early sessions: “Gut Bucket Blues,” “Yes! I’m in the Barrel,” and “My Heart” came from the inaugural Hot Five session of November 12, 1925, “Muskrat Ramble,” “Cornet Chop Suey,” “You’re Next,” and “Oriental Strut” came from a monumental follow-up session from February 26, 1926, and “Skid-Dat-De-Dat” was from November 16, 1926, one of the group’s final acoustic sessions.
Avakian’s sleeve notes (he personally told me that he had to keep John Hammond’s name on all these releases because Hammond was a better-know, well-respected entity, but George did the writing and the tune selections) lauded these recordings as “perhaps the most important [Armstrong] ever made”; here’s the essay on the back of the album cover:
And the real reason we’re celebrating–here’s a Spotify playlist with the music!
This time, the press sat up and took notice. “The most uniformly exciting records yet to appear under one cover are the eight reissues in the album of Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five,” R. M. B. wrote in the Buffalo Courier Express. “Good jazz does not betray its age and so this New Orleans playing of 1925 and 1926 is, by inference, some of the best jazz ever.” Ray Geraldo, writing in his item-heavy “After Seven” column in the San Francisco News, inserted a quick plug, “By all means get Louis Armstrong’s hot jazz classic Columbia album,” on June 20, 1941.
“Four records in Columbia’s album of reissues by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (C-57) demonstrate, I think, the simplicity and strength of improvistory folk music, and also its absence of calculated academic form,” M. O. wrote in The Herald Sun. “On the more typical Armstrong sides, ‘Gut Bucket Blues,’ ‘Muskrat Ramble,’ or ‘Skid-Dat-De-Dat,’ the straight-forward exuberance of an untutored institnctive nature is apparent. The nearest things to subtle music Louis does on the album are the rarified inventions of ‘Cornet Chop Suey’ and ‘Oriental Strut,’ and even here, the sense of vigor is never lost.”
A rave by Walter Graham in The Des Moines Register began, “This is truly the album that all hot jazz addicts have been waiting for. These records are an absolute must for anyone who wants to have any understanding of jazz. For here are the real beginnings of jazz as we know it today.” Graham continued with the argument that these 1920s small group recordings represented Armstrong’s peak. “And these records are proof that then, as now, the best jazz was produced by small, informal bands playing with the inspiration of the moment,” he wrote. “Much of today’s jazz music is shallow and meaningless when compared to these records. Armstrong here plays simply, with great feeling. He is at his best when his cornet is driving the ensemble. Here are none of the pyrotechnics which have marred many of his later records.”
Over in Metronome, Gordon (DISCussions) Wright wrote, “If you want to get a pretty good idea of what made Louis Armstrong tick in the old days and why connoisseurs like to turn back the clock, listen to some of the sides in the Armstrong Hot Five album, just issued in re-issue form by Columbia. Louis is stupendous on all eight sides, with Johnny Dodds’ clarinet inspiring, not only for its own self, but also for the influence it has had on modern reedists.”
Tasked with reviewing the set for the Associated Negro Press, Franklyn Marshall Davis wrote, “I must admit that absence of drums and bass is a handicap and that some of the work sounds off the cob [i.e. “corny”] judged by 1941 standards. But I can also say that this is some of the most potent, brilliant and breathtaking Armstrong trumpet ever caught on wax. From both a historical standpoint and through appreciation for Satchmo’s unrivalled genius, this anthology should be in your record library.”
Dave Dexter Jr. agreed with Davis’s assessment in his Down Beat review. “The Columbia product, conceived by George Avakian and John Hammond, is dated and poorly transcribed, but each side has really sensational samples of the Louis horn,” Dexter said. “His accompaniment is 100 per cent golden bantam, with Kid Ory, Lil Hardin, Johnny St. Cyr and Johnny Dodds sounding feeble behind his gut-filled horn.”
As shared last time, Paul Eduard Miller of Chicago was lukewarm about the King Louis set before savaging Louis’s reputation in a “Jazz Blasphemies” column in Music and Rhythm. He was a little nicer about the Hot Five set, but his praise, like Dexter, was at the expense of the other musicians in the group. “As for the musicians who accompany Armstrong, none measure up to the master trumpeter himself,” he wrote. “That is the essential weakness of these records: they are all Armstrong, and it takes more than one musician to make great records. Jazz fans have labored too long under the delusion that the presence of one great soloist on a record makes it ‘classic.’ A great recording, one that can be played over and over, one that will gain the admiration of every type of jazz lover-such recordings must hold the attention of the listener from beginning to end, and not just when this or that soloist has the spotlight.”
It was the summer of 1941 when Louis’s manager Joe Glaser hired Leonard Feather to serve as Armstrong’s publicity agent for the rest of the year. Part of Feather’s duties was to sign up with a newspaper clippings service and make sure that Armstrong and Glaser received a copy of every article that mentioned the trumpeter. Louis assembled them into an oversized scrapbook that we’re going to be pulling a lot from later on in this post, but for now, here’s a fantastic appreciation of the Hot Five album that appeared in the New Masses on Augsut 12, 1941, written by Martin Mack. “No book on modern music, so far as I know, lists Louis Armstrong, the great Negro trumpeter, as a composer,” Mack begins. “Yet some day the records he made ten and fifteen years ago will be placed among the highly important contributions to American music.” That is not how these sides with Ory and Dodds and St. Cyr and Lil were described in the late 1920s and througout the 1930s! Something had changed. “Not available for many years, these records are now being reissued, and I envy those who will hear them for the first time,” Mack continues. Here’s the complete article, which really does a great job conveying the importance contained in the grooves of these Columbia albums:
Coincidentally, Decca, Armstrong’s label at the time, was paying close attention to what Columbia was doing. Their first plan of attack was to record Armstrong with a small group made up of his musicians in his big band, recording four sides on March 10 and four more on April 11, 1941. What name did Decca choose for this endeavor? Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven, of course. The Black press praised these sides mightily (“Truly King Louis has hit his stride again with these,” Frank Marshall Davis wrote), but the jazz press was horrified, with Metronome calling the results “insults to the great one.” “It was a smart idea to put Louis Armstrong back in front of a small band for his recording dates, but the titles chosen for the first session were not so fortunate,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote on May 16, 1941, adding, “While the famed old New Orleans trumpeter rolls the melodies around quite successfully in his solos, the total effect is somewhat less exciting than any of the Armstrong Hot Fives of a decade ago.”
Decca next saw the success Avakian was having at Columbia with reissue albums so in June 1941, they put out one of their own, releasing it the same week as Columbia’s Hot Five set. The title was Louis Armstrong Classics and featured 10 sides Armstrong made for the label spanning 1935-1939. (Not only did it have an extra record, but it was sold for 25 cents cheaper than the Columbia products.) Here’s the cover:
We might be drifting away from the Hot Five theme, but just to put this music in the context of how it sounded when it was reissued, here’s a Spotify playlist with the ten tracks on Louis Armstrong Classics:
Many in the press covered both the Decca Classics and the Columbia Hot Five albums together. “Armstrong is Armstrong, no matter what the period, and his legions of followers will find kicks in both,” Dave Dexter Jr. wrote, not mentioning that he wrote the liner note booklet that accompanied the Decca set. “Both Decca and Columbia are to be commended for issuing jazz of this calibre.”
Some critics even preferred the more up-to-date Decca set. “Louis Armstrong (who could be called the trumpet king’ with no argument from me) showed in two albums this month, one of ‘Louis Armstrong–Classics’ and one of ‘Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five,’ with the nod very definitely going to the first one–which my wife bought for me,” B. F. Henry Jr. wrote in The Knoxville News-Sentinel. Then there was good old Paul Eduard Miller, who found a way to gripe about both: “Both albums are re-issues, one covering the early Armstrong, the other the current and more recent. Armstrong’s middle period–and his best–is not included. Nevertheless, these recordings offer a broad cross section of Armstrong’s growth and decay.”
Even in a positive review of the Decca set, Armstrong’s younger self was now hovering in the background, if not outright taking his place in the foreground. In this review from The St. Louis Globe, saved in Louis’s 1941 scrapbook, the author asks their readers to “take a record made by Louis in 1925. To be sure, the band backing him up might not be the best int he world; it may even be downright sloppy. But when Louis takes his solos, they will sound just as modern as the solos you hear today. His trumpet improvisations of 1925 were as clever, as isnpired, as syncopated as those played by the best of horn-tooters of 1941.” Here’s the complete article, on the left side of this page:
Over in the Black press, Frank Marshall Davis praised the Decca set for featuring “Satchmo’s stupendous horn and rasping voice,” but he did knock “I’m in the Mood for Love” as a “weak spot” and opined, “‘West End Blues,’ despite its excellence, cannot compare with Louis’ earlier waxing on Okeh.”
Davis could not have known it but Avakian was already planning his next Armstrong reissue, one that would firmly cement the reputation of the OKeh “West End Blues” and many other classics made with Earl “Fatha” Hines. The album would simply be named Louis and Earl and it would be released in September 1941.
Once again, the cover by Alex Steinweiss:
Avakian’s notes:
For the music, Avakian again dipped into the stash of previously unissed sides he discovered and added “Chicago Breakdown” and “Don’t Jive Me” to the mix. Here’s another Spotify playlist, containing, as Avakian called them, “the greatest jazz records ever produced”:
The release of Louis and Earl coincided with Leonard Feather turning up the heat in his role as Louis’s publicity representative. Thus, instead of me just typing up reviews from obscure sources (there’ll still be some of that), I can now share more pages from Louis’s 1941 scrapbook, opening with the news of the release in Down Beat:
Frank Marshall Davis’s review is featured on this next page; he called Louis and Earl “easily the best of Armstrong albums thus far released and that’s saying something”:
More reviews from around the country:
More short reviews, with one story in the upper right saying that with Louis and Earl being his fourth album release in a less than a year, Armstrong had set a record in the recording industry!
More from the New York Times, Billboard, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Glamour, and other outlets:
An appreciative review by Bill Gottlieb, who later became better known for his photographs:
A short, but positive review by Gordon Wright in Metronome:
And finally, Feather got into the act himself, naming Louis and Earl as “The Album of the Month” in Swing magazine, though using one of his psedeonyms, Geoffrey Marne (Feather typed his real name in parentheses in red to let Louis and I guess, Glaser, know that this was his handiwork):
Armstrong’s scrapbook doesn’t contain Paul Eduard Miller’s review, but don’t worry, he spotlighted it, too. Actually, it’s worth going back to April 1941, when Miller’s “Classics of Jazz” column compared Armstrong’s version of “West End Blues” with King Oliver’s remake from the following January. Of Armstrong’s groundbreaking cadenza, Miller wrote, “The Armstrong version opens with a trumpet introduction which, although executed in the most dexterous Armstrong fashion, appears to be the main defect of the record, since its pungency is at variance with the more tranquil mood of the remainder of the piece.” Here’s that column for posterity’s sake:
When September rolled around, Miller reviewed Louis and Earl in Music and Rhythm, writing, “More re-issues, records waxed in the twenties and featuring trumpeter Louis Armstrong and pianist Earl Hines. ‘Breakdown’ and ‘Jive’ have not been previously issued, however, although they too were recorded in the same period. Only the first two titles are A-1. ‘West End’ is a ‘classic of jazz,’ and was discussed at length in the April 1941 Music and Rhythm. Louis and Earl have combined their fine talents on really good musical material in this case. The melody of ‘Muggles’ tends toward the more commonplace, but still is far and above average. The balance of the tunes carry solos of merit (see box) but lack the other ingredients which make good jazz.” The “box” Miller refers to was his listing of “Best Solos of the Month,” in which he did rate both Armstrong and Hines’s efforts on “West End Blues” and “Muggles,” even if he felt those records lacked “the other ingredients which make good jazz.”
In the November 1941 issue of Jazz Information, Robert Quinlisk did a deep dive on both the Columbia Hot Five and Louis and Earl albums. As hinted at in our previous post–and underlined heavily here–Quinlisk did not buy the line of thinking that the sides made with Hines were better than those made by the original Hot Five. “So, by implication, the older Hot Fives and Sevens are out-dated!” Quinlisk exclaimed after quoting a passage of Avakian’s notes. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly Louis, when he dropped the Ory-Dodds band in favor of Hines, Redman and Zutty, was moving forward in the inexorable advance of jazz. But advance is not necessarily improvement.”
I can’t find much information about Quinlisk, but because he really put the time in, writing a paragraph on each and every song featured in both albums. I think it’s worth sharing his article in full as an early example of analysis of this music–enjoy!
The same November 1941 issue of Jazz Information contained another update on the Columbia Hot Jazz Classics series (yes, Louis was featured on another Avakian production from the summer of 1941, Hot Trumpets, but that only included two sides, both big band tracks from 1930 so post-Hot Five era and not detailed here)–but more importantly, the blurb also broke some news: George Avakian left Columbia Records to join the military!
If you know your American history, Avakian entered the army in August 1941–and Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. The United States was drawn into World War II and Avakian saw major combat in the years that followed. Courtesy of the New York Public Library’s digital collection, here is Avakian’s army portrait:
And here he is in the Philippines in 1944:
Avakian was out at Columbia Records but continued to write letters to the jazz press and even contributed some more articles and reviews during the War. In this photo from the NYPL, he is seen interviewing bandleader Fletcher Henderson in 1944:
The other thing to point out about World War II that’s relevant to this tale is the role shellac played. Because shellac was vital for explosives and military eqipment, there were restrictions placed on its use for records; old records were turned into scrap, meaning that Armstrong’s original jazz classics from the 1920s really became collector’s items after World War II, because countless old recordings were destroyed. Columbia, too, halted production of the Hot Jazz Classics series, turning them out-of-print overnight. Just like that, Avakian’s efforts to get the world to listen and appreciate Armstrong’s 1920s recordings were wiped out.
However, in October 1944, with the War taking a turn in the United States’s favor, Columbia made an announcement. Here’s how it was reported in that month’s issue of The Jazz Record: “Best news of the year is Columbia’s announcement that they are reissuing all of the famous jazz albums of the past four years, most of which had become totally unavailable. Most of them are already in dealer’s stocks and will be supplied in quantity throughout the Fall.”
That page is worth sharing because after breaking the news about Columbia reissuing the reissues, the same page featured a letter from M/SGT. George Avakian from New Guinea, hoping to resume record reviews soon (and in between, a totally disturbing letter from Australia that contains some shocking language, but is an important snapshot of racism still prevalent around the world):
The same issue of The Jazz Record also featured a Columbia ad with the full list of “new” Hot Jazz Classics reissues:
To give an idea of Avakian’s impact on the Armstrong discography, Metronome did a big cover story on Louis in 1945, which included a full page listing of “Louis on Records.” “What follows is a listing of everything now carried by the record company catalogues of Louis Armstrong on records,” the editors wrote. Every single item that followed was from a Columbia reissue overseen by Avakian, plus the aforementioned Decca Louis Armstrong Classics set from 1941–and that was it! Here’s the page:
1945 was also the year World War II came to an end and Avakian returned full-time to Columbia Records, now able to produce new sessions featuring pioneers such as Kid Ory and Sidney Bechet. From the NYPL, here’s a Columbia Records publicity photo taken by William Gottlieb in 1946–Avakian was 27:
In addition to the new sessions he was overseeing, Avakian also convinced Columbia to revive the Hot Jazz Classics series. Columbia’s announcement appeared in the July 2, 1947 issue of Down Beat (coincidentally placed under an article, “Louis Center Of New Commotion” about Armstrong’s success at Town Hall in May). “Gentleman in charge of blowing the dust off the discs is George Avakian, eminent Armenian aardvark player,” the magazine reported. Avakian ended up producing four new albums of reissues dedicated to Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, and a second volume of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five. Here’s what it looked like, with a cover design by the legendary Jim Flora:
(Though keeping in line with Flora’s style, it should be pointed out that even at the time of its release, some commentators found the caricature objectionable, with James Higgins writing in The Record Changer, “It is in the worst of color taste, the worst of caricature taste, the worst of theatrical taste, the kind of advertising normally presented to sell something pretty on top and all water below. Of course, it’s it an insult to Armstrong. But of itself it’s a most interesting acknowledgement by the big Columbia shots that it ain’t the music but the selling of the music and the return in cash that actually concern them. Otherwise an alsbum cover would be influenced by what’s in the album rather than by standards of commercial art. The more I look at the damn cover the more I wonder how Armstrong stands it. All of it.”)
And the liner notes, now solely credited to Avakian:
Avakian stuck to sides recorded by the original Hot Five in 1927–which were now celebrating a 20th anniversary–getting another excuse to reissue the two sides he discovered (“Ory’s Creole Trombone” and “The Last Time”) alongside classics like “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” “I’m Not Rough,” “Once in a While,” “Got No Blues,” “Savoy Blues,” and “Put ‘Em Down Blues.” Just typing those titles makes me want to listen to those sides right now–join me with another Spotify playlist!
Reviews were not only impressed by the music on the set, they were at a loss for words. “There is certianly difficulty finding adjectives to cover the debt musicians owe Armstrong,” Down Beat wrote, adding, “You listen to hundreds of jazz records a week and you forget what a giant Armstrong was and still can be.” “I don’t feel I can say anything which would cast more light on the value of this album,” James Higgins wrote in The Record Changer, calling it “by far the best of Columbia’s hot jazz re-issues since the close of World War II.”
With this release, the reputation of the Hot Five was now complete. When Avakian first began reissuing Armstrong’s 1920s output in 1940, many writers thought they were interesting for collector’s only. But by 1947, a columnist in the Witchita Eagle could write, “Louis Armstrong has been given credit by many erudite commentators for influencing the instrumental and vocal styles of almost all top-flight moedern dance bands. Recent release of an album of Armstrong’s records more than 20 years ago adds merit to the claim. Armstrong is represented here with a group knkown as the Hot Five. The music will sound strange to ears accustomed to welll-padded, semi-symphonic organizsations currently making dance music. Everything in this album is improvised, the musicians play as the mood affects them and although some results are weak, everything Armstrong plays seems absolutely right, played with consummate skill and feeling.”
At the time of the release of this Hot Five set in September 1947, Armstrong had broken up his big band and formed a small group. Before settling on the “All Stars,” many early press reports of this new group referred to it as “Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five.” Many commentators who felt that Armstrong had hit his peak with the Hot Five and “went commercial” after celebrated his return to his roots. Those celebrations came to an end when it became clear that Armstrong was not going to be content just jamming on “Muskrat Ramble” and “West End Blues” with his new group, but instead was still singing novelties and love songs and doing comedic numbers–as he had done back in the days of the Hot Five!
Part of the confusion could have been caused by the numbers Avakian chose to reissue. Between King Louis, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, Louis and Earl, and Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five Vol. 2, Avakian had reissued a total of 32 songs. Only seven–“S. O. L. Blues,” Save It, Pretty Mama,” “No One Else But You,” “The Last Time,” “A Monday Date,” “I’m Not Rough,” and “Put ‘Em Down Blues”–had Armstrong singing lyrics, and two of them were blues. Five–“Heebie Jeebies,” “Squeeze Me,” “Skid-Dat-De-Dat,” “West End Blues,” and “Basin Street Blues”–spotlighted his scat singing, while two–“Gut Bucket Blues” and “Tight Like This”–featured his spoken voice. That left 18 instrumentals, creating an impression of Armstrong the serious folk artist, dedicated to creating real art with his horn.
But what about “King of the Zulus” with its “chittlin’ rag” sketch? “Big Fat Ma and Skinny Pa,” which OKeh marketed for its humor back in 1926? The fun vocals of “Don’t Forget to Mess Around,” “Irish Black Bottom,” “Big Butter and Egg Man,” “I’m Gonna Gitcha,” and more? The slide whistle solo on “Who’sit”? Those remained collector’s items–and would remain that way for some time.
Though Columbia announced plans for “an authentic and comprehensive history of jazz development, pressed from original matricies” and James Higgins felt that “George Avakian is getting in high gear” after the release of a Bessie Smith album in December 1947, Columbia pulled the plug on the Hot Jazz Classics series at the end of the year. Avakian managed to squeeze out an Armstrong single on Columbia in 1947, reissuing two 1931 sides, “Star Dust” and “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” and another in 1948 with a coupling from 1929, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue.” In 1948, he was put in charge of a new subsidiary label from Columbia to be called “Special Editions,” aimed at collectors. The first release? Armstrong’s Hot Seven doing “Wild Man Blues” and “Gully Low Blues” from 1948. We have a copy in Jack Bradley’s collection in our Archives; here’s the label:
However, The Jazzfinder reported that “these records hereafter will go direct to dealers and will not pass throught he regular Columbia distributor channels. The pressings also will be a ‘one-shot’ deal, with no reorders to be filled, so that really limited editions are in prospect.” Thus, without the usual Columbia distribution and media push, the sides put out on the Special Editions label were truly underground collector’s items.
So why were there no more Hot Jazz Classics albums? The answer was a simple one: Columbia Records, thanks to the innovations of Peter Carl Goldmark, was about to unveil a new invention in 1948: the long-playing album. In due time, Avakian would become head of Columbia’s Pop Album department and the music Armstrong made in the 1920s would reach new audiences on a series of influential LPs that would be released in the 1950s–a story we will pick up next time. Thanks for reading!