TT 321: Louis Armstrong Lists Some Records in 1934

"What would you take to the South Pole?"

(This is the first of three more posts in the wake of my article “Louis Armstrong’s Last Word” in The Nation.)

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In Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong, Ricky Riccardi describes an interesting scene where journalist Leonard Feather, writing for the British journal The Melody Maker, asks Louis Armstrong and several English musicians what four records they would bring to the South Pole.

Riccardi shared a scan of the original piece, dated 17 February 1934:

Armstrong’s comment:

Out came Louis with this remarkable list:--

Ellington’s “Ducky Wucky”
Henderson’s “Queer Notions”
Redman’s “Nagasaki” and--
Hylton’s “Ellingtonia!”

If you knew what Jack Hylton has meant to him as a friend and adviser, you would realize how glad Louis might be, in Antarctic regions, of a musical reminder of his famous mentor. But as the other choices were somewhat bizarre, I asked Louis if he were positive that these would be his final decision.

“Boy,” he answered, “I never let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.”

Feather calls Armstrong’s choices “somewhat bizarre.” While I am not eager to side with Leonard Feather (who might have done more harm than good, especially in the early years), it is true that I have never seen any of these selections on any other list.

It was fun to listen and speculate as to why Pops made these specific choices.

The four tracks divide neatly into pairs. Two tracks are in the Duke Ellington tradition and two tracks are in the Fletcher Henderson tradition.

Context: At the top of 1934, Ellington and Henderson would have been considered dominant big bands. Benny Goodman was starting to chart, but the triumph of the Fletcher Henderson-arranged “King Porter Stomp” wouldn’t land for Goodman until the following year. Count Basie wouldn’t make a national impact until a residency in Chicago in 1936.

In other words, Armstrong is choosing tracks that belong to two major contemporary big band idioms. Not so “bizarre,” really, but Feather probably wanted Armstrong to cite more freewheeling and improvisatory tracks in the smaller group New Orleans style.

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“Ducky Wucky” by Duke Ellington.

Several long-term Ducal stars are in evidence: Trumpeter Cootie Williams, trombonist Lawrence Brown, and clarinetist Barney Bigard, who also gets co-composer credit with Ellington.

Perhaps Armstrong liked the way “Ducky Wucky” feels. The shuffle is more evident than on many jazz records from the early ‘30s. Duke’s upbeat piano stabs fall like dominoes but still manage to land in just the right place against bassist Wellman Braud’s strong beat. Indeed, the overall relaxed sway of the track prefigures the way Armstrong’s own small group All-Stars would play the time after the big band era shut up shop.

In addition, Bigard was from New Orleans, and this kind of tasty “licorice stick” NOLA clarinet would always get a nod of respect from Armstrong.

I really like this track, and am happy that Pops pointed it out. (I don't remember hearing it before.)

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“Ellingtonia” by Jack Hylton.

If you read the Wikipedia entry you’ll know as much about Jack Hylton as I do. Riccardi explains further: “Hylton also took over temporarily as Armstrong’s manager and booked him on the Scandinavian tour after Johnny Collins left him stranded in Europe.”

“Ellingtonia” is a straightforward medley of some of Duke’s early hits. The English band plays well (drummer Max Bacon is killing it) and whoever did the arrangement is to be heartily congratulated. It was no joke to try to figure out Ellington’s music from whatever sources they had (probably just a few scratchy 78s).

In this era there weren’t reissue programs. There were no libraries of music. If you wanted to hear something of this American composer Duke Ellington, you went to your corner shop and bought whatever happened to be in stock from recent releases. It can be argued that Hylton is doing a public service for his English audience.

Armstrong had traveled to England on tour as a solo (without a band) and made a national sensation. By including Hylton in the South Pole stash, Armstrong must be making a social and political point.

Albert Ayler said, “Music is the Healing Force of the Universe.” John Coltrane said, “A Love Supreme.” Ornette Coleman said, “Friends and Neighbors, That’s Where It’s At.”

In Roses for Satchmo, Sun Ra concludes,

Once, while I was traveling on the road with a band someplace in Kentucky or thereabouts, I heard a recording by Louis in a tavern. The name of it was “Sittin’ In the Dark,” I haven’t heard it since, but I still remember the sound-image impression it gave me. He was singing and playing in the same natural way he always projects. He is one of the natural greats of music. I am glad that the world did as much for him as it did. For my part, I wish to say to him: Greetings Intergalactic.

“Greetings Intergalactic” to Jack Hylton from Louis Armstrong!

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“Queer Notions” by Fletcher Henderson.

The “queer notions” described by the title are the augmented chord and the accompanying whole tone scale. These devices are a way to get outside tonality. It’s not quite atonal, but nonetheless a bit “queer.”

The piece was composed by Coleman Hawkins and orchestrated by Fletcher Henderson’s younger brother Horace Henderson. In addition to Hawkins, the great trumpeter Henry “Red” Allen is featured.

Thelonious Monk and other avant-gardists are foreshadowed by these modernist sounds. According to Chris Calhoun, Randy Weston would talk about “Queer Notions,” and, late in life, Sun Ra recorded a cover with his Arkestra.

Armstrong himself generally played music intended to reach a large audience, but, away from the gig, Pops kept up with all sorts of experimental sounds. At the South Pole, “Queer Notions” checks the “radical” box.

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“Nagasaki” by Don Redman.

The source song is a novelty number written by Harry Warren and Mort Dixon in 1928. The nonsense lyrics might actually be utterly ribald (I don’t know for sure).

Hot gingerbread and dynamite
Drink nothing, folks, but that at night
Back in Nagasaki where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky-woo

Pre-bebop jazzers played “Nagasaki” a lot but the tune didn’t stay relevant for the modernists. Perhaps the atomic bomb landing on the real city at the end of WWII took some of the charm away from the song.

Don Redman is someone who deserves a lot more credit than he usually gets. Redman was a key arranger for Fletcher Henderson and this solidly swinging presentation of “Nagasaki” is right in that lineage. (According to a few YouTube comments, Horace Henderson may have arranged “Nagasaki,” just as he arranged “Queer Notions” above. Horace Henderson is somebody else who deserves a lot more credit than he usually gets.)

After reading a preview of this piece, Ricky Riccardi shared something that Armstrong told Melody Maker writer Bettie Edwards a month before the South Pole article:

I’m strong for Don Redman because he has individuality; his music has a story of his own imagining, not a medley of assimilated ideas. That “Shaking the African,” now--I can see right into that dive he speaks of where it’s ‘just too bad.’ He’s not appreciated now, but presently people will say, “This boy’s good; how come we’ve missed him?"

As is well known, Armstrong was a excellent colleague, and three of the four South Pole tracks feature hot licks from great trumpeters, in this case the forgotten Shirley Clay.

Towards the end, the full band sings/shouts the silly lyric with Redman in the lead. That’s showbiz — and that was Louis Armstrong, too, who loved to make an audience laugh with some goofy antics.

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Coda: As can be seen in the scan, most of the other musicians interrogated by Leonard Feather included something by Pops. Feather himself would bring along Armstrong’s “Tiger Rag” to the South Pole.