Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 8: Louis Spins Records for the Voice of America, July 1956

Happy Holidays, folks! Here’s a bit of a surprise installment of our Hot Five series, something to sit back, relax, and listen to while hopefully taking some time off at the end of this crazy year. (By the way, if you’d like to catch up, all of our Hot Five posts can now be accessed at this link.)

Our previous post focused on the long-playing Louis Armstrong Story albums George Avakian produced for Columbia Records in 1951. In 1956, while trying to sign Armstrong to a long-term contract, Avakian, repackaged the series with new jackets; because not everyone makes it to the end of these gigantic posts, here are of four 1956 releases, along with Spotify playlists if you’d like to listen to them in Avakian’s original sequences:

Now for the main event: in July 1956, Armstrong traveled to Washington D. C. to perform for four nights at the Carter Barron Amphitheater. While in town, he was approached by his good friend Willis Conover of the Voice of America. Conover’s jazz program had been influential in Armstrong’s reputation overseas as “Ambassador Satch” so he came with an idea to take advantage of the popularity: have Armstrong serve as disc jockey for FIVE hours of programs. Conover would be there to guide Armstrong when necessary, but his voice wouldn’t be heard; it would not an interview. Instead, it would just be the voice of Louis Armstrong, spinning records and telling stories for five hours.

The finished broadcasts aired multiple times overseas, but they were forgotten about in the United States–until George Avakian stumbled upon some mislabled tapes in his basement in the early 1990s. He brought them to Michael Cogswell at the Louis Armstrong Archives, who transferred them and quickly realized this was pure gold. Avakian donated the tapes and eventually even got the BBC to do a radio documentary, “Louis’ Lost Tapes.”

Since then, other copies of the Voice of America tapes have been uncovered, including Willis Conover’s own set; those have been digitized and made available on the University of North Texas’s Digital Collections website (click here to hear the first hour).

But today, instead of sharing the full five hours, we’re going to focus on the Hot Five recordings Armstrong spun during his stint as VOA DJ. We know that Conover came armed with all of the new Columbia reissues, as well as the brand new album Ambassador Satch; that LP and the “Favorites” album in the Louis Armstrong Story series can be glimpsed in this photo taken during the July 1956 sessions:

Conover broke the five hours into episodes with the first episode leaning heavily on Armstrong’s early days in New Orleans before touching on Armstrong in the 1920s and concluding with “Royal Garden Blues” from Ambassador Satch. During the 1920s segment, Armstrong played one Hot Five side, “Muskrat Ramble.” In this case, Armstrong’s context is fascinating as he makes the claim (for the first time, not the last) that he wrote the song, but Kid Ory named it and got the credit, plus he explains the bed-wetting connection to the title–here’s the segment!

Because we’re including the audio of the original recordings in these excerpts, this might be the time to quickly discuss the one drawback of the Avakian-produced reissues: the pitch. Though the original recordings were meant to be played back at 78rpm, for whatever reason, OKeh records of the mid-20s played flat at 78rpm. If you had the right equipment–and a good set of ears–you could goose each side to around 80rpm, which would get them in the right key.

Unfortunately, Avakian was not a professional musician and assumed that he didn’t need to adjust the speed or pitch, thus causing his reissues of the 1925 and 1926 sides to be in the wrong key (OKeh fixed the issue and sides from 1927 and 1928 and afterwards don’t suffer from this problem). This lead to some feeling the Hot Five had a loose, relaxed feel to their playing, but truthfully, the Columbia LPs were just running slow; once played at the proper speed, the band’s energy snapped into place.

This also led to debates about keys; Avakian’s “Cornet Chop Suey” played back in the key of E, not a common one for jazz, especially for a cornet feature. Other reissues of “Big Butter and Egg Man” played back in F#; same issue. Because of this “relaxed” reputation, many musicians who continued to play these songs in the years to come dropped them down, playing “Cornet Chop Suey” in Eb and “Butter and Egg Man” in F. The truth? They should have been raised up a half step, putting “Cornet Chop Suey” in F and “Butter and Egg Man” in G! Unfortunately, as will be discussed in a future post, Columbia Records (and later owner, Sony) didn’t get the message and the early Hot Fives continued to be reissued in the wrong key into the 1980s and 1990s (not to mention a Sony-produced box from 2012 and some items that are still available on streaming platforms!).

With that digression out of the way, we can turn to the second Voice of America, which is one full hour of Armstrong playing and talking about the Hot Five recordings! Ever want to know what it might have felt like to just hang with Louis, listening to his records, and hearing his stories? You’ve come to the right place!

The broadcast begins with the sounds of the first Hot Five recording to be issued, “Gut Bucket Blues.” After it plays, Louis tells his favorite story about the making of that selection, when Johnny Dodds was supposed to verbally introduce Armstrong’s solo, but got too tongue-tied during the first attempt and had to be replaced by Kid Ory:

In our previous post, we shared the entire text of the December 1951 Esquire magazine article “Jazz on a High Note,” when Armstrong was asked to write his memories of 18 selections featured on The Louis Armstrong Story LPs. As I mentioned, Armstrong went all in with favorite anecdotes on “Gut Bucket Blues” and “Heebie Jeebies,” but when it came to certain other songs, he clearly had no memories and/or nothing to say.

That plays out in this next clip as Louis bounces from “Gut Bucket Blues” to telling the saga of “Heebie Jeebies”–however, Conover had “Yes! I’m in the Barrel” cued up next! My hunch is he must have motioned to Armstrong because he quickly ends the “Heebie Jeebies” story, mentions how he wrote a lot of tunes, including “Yes! I’m in the Barrel”–and plays the record without any preamble. Thus, there’s not much meat here, but don’t worry, it will get better soon:

While that side was playing, Conover must have expressed some confusion over the “Gut Bucket Blues” story with Johnny Dodds. When Armstrong came back on the air, he repeated the story one more time, making sure it was clear:

Next up was “Cornet Chop Suey,” which Armstrong talks about writing. After the record plays (in the wrong key of E), Armstrong enters into a very interesting discussion about the cornet vs. the trumpet, explaining how and why he made the switch while a member of Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra–this is good stuff!

Now Armstrong is in his comfort zone and offers maybe my favorite telling of the “Heebie Jeebies” scat singing story–enjoy!

Louis continues on the subject of scat singing in his introduction of the next Hot Five number up, “Skid-Dat-De-Dat.” After playing the original recording, he engages in a little venting (mild by his standards) about bop and the young generation scatting but they “lost sight of these records….Here’s where all this stuff started, in these tunes here.” At the end, Armstrong impersonates bop scatting, laughs, and says, “I found out they don’t even do that in Africa”; indeed, his historic first trip to the Gold Coast occurred in late May 1956, less than two months before this was recorded:

Next up, the moment everyone has been waiting for, “West End Blues.” Armstrong stops short of offering any analysis of his groundbreaking cadenza, writing it off as just the “introduction” he put on it, but he does mention that King Oliver had sent him the lead sheet, which is a nice detail. He also tells the story about Earl Hines bringing the record to him after it came out because they forgot they had made it! But after the record plays, Louis reminisces about Hines and laments that when Hines was with the All Stars from 1948-1951, they would play “West End Blues,” but Hines would never play his original solo. To Armstrong, this was a bad thing as he considered it Hines’s best solo and argued that the world knew him by it, but Hines thought it was old-fashioned and was continuously searching for something new. Hines’s approach was more in line with the direction jazz was heading, so it’s an interesting look at the differing schools of thought in the jazz world, with Hines going for something fresh and Armstrong treating his solos as almost classical works, not to be changed:

Now firmly with the 1928 band, Armstrong sets up “Squeeze Me” with more insight into harmonizing and singing like instruments. At the end, he gives the personnel and compliments Jimmy Strong, wondering what became of him:

At the end of the “Squeeze Me” clip, Armstrong talks about the difference between the Hot Five and the Hot Seven and how the band with Hines was really the Hot Six…before joking that the next number up was by the “Hot Two”! Indeed it is, as what follows is the immortal “Weather Bird” duet with Hines. There was always debate about who wrote the song as the 1923 King Oliver version was credited to Armstrong but this 1928 recording was credited to Oliver. Armstrong adds a bit to the confusion here, saying that it was written by Fate Marable, the leader of the riverboat band Armstrong performed on betweeen 1919 and 1921, but I think what he means is Marable wrote an arrangement of it, but it was actually Armstrong’s tune–at least that’s what I think he meant. Here’s the audio:

“Basin Street Blues” follows and finds Armstrong in a chatty mood, talking about all the different recordings he made of the tune. After the record finishes (at 4:07), Armstrong talks about how jazz could also be pretty. He describes the 1928 version, sings a few lines, but then refers to the 1933 version he made for RCA Victor, even replicating the original scat coda from that one. Armstrong also defends “sweet” music like “La Vie En Rose” and the use of a mute and also mentions the wild recording of “Tiger Rag” on Ambassador Satch–great stuff:

With “Tight Like This” up next, Armstrong pays tribute to Don Redman and talks a little about their time with Fletcher Henderson. He mentions that “Tight Like This” was arranged by Redman and recreates some of the humorous dialogue that appears on the record:

“St. James Infirmary” follows and inspires a touching reflection on how much Armstrong used to like to hear Jack Teagarden perform this number when he was with the All Stars (a bit different than his invocation of Hines earlier):

Finally, with only a couple of minutes to spare, Louis introduces “Sugar Foot Strut” and interrupts the recording to close the show and previews the next hour. The recording fades and that’s the end of this portion.

Louis still had three more hours to go, but was through with the Hot Five recordings so we’re going to end this post here. We hope everyone enjoyed this little “hang” with Louis, listening to him tell stories about some of his greatest records. We’ll be back soon to take the reissue saga to the current day and then we might have a final bonus post. Thanks for reading–happy holidays!