It was a typical New Orleans jazz band in instrumentation, consisting of trumpet, clarinet, and trombone backed by a rhythm section. The original New Orleans jazz style leaned heavily on collective improvisation, in which the three horns together played the lead: the trumpet played the main melody, and the clarinet and trombone played improvised accompaniments to the melody. This tradition was continued in the Hot Five, but because of Armstrong's creative gifts as a trumpet player, solo passages by the trumpet alone began to appear more frequently. In these solos, Armstrong laid down the basic vocabulary of jazz improvisation and became its founding and most influential exponent.
The Hot Five was organized at the suggestion of Richard M. Jones for Okeh Records. All their records were made in Okeh's recording studio in Chicago, Illinois. The same personnel recorded a session made under the pseudonym "Lil's Hot Shots" for Vocalion/Brunswick (their first electrically recorded session). While the musicians in the Hot Five played together in other contexts, as the Hot Five they were a recording studio band that performed live only for two parties organized by Okeh.
There were two different groups called "Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five", the first recording from 1925 through 1927 and the second in 1928; Armstrong was the only musician in both groups. After 1925, the Hot Five maintained a recording schedule of about three sessions per year.[1]
The first Hot Five
The original Hot Five were Armstrong's wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, as well as New Orleans musicians who Armstrong had worked with in that city in the 1910s: Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, and Johnny St. Cyr on guitar and banjo. For some or all of the Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven sides, Ory was in New York City working with King Oliver's band, and was replaced, probably by John Thomas. The first Hot Five sides, "Yes! I'm in the Barrel" composed by Armstrong, "My Heart" composed by Hardin Armstrong, and "Gut Bucket Blues" attributed to Armstrong, were recorded on November 12, 1925, with little rehearsal.[2] The next session occurred on February 22, 1926, with the recording of "Come Back, Sweet Papa," composed by New Orleanian Paul Barbarin and Panamanian Luis Russell .[1] The Hot Five's success was solidified as a result of the third session on February 26, 1926, which produced "Oriental Strut," "Georgia Grind," "Cornet Chop Suey," "Muskrat Ramble," "Heebie Jeebies," and "You're Next."[3] In particular, "Heebie Jeebies," featuring Armstrong's famous scat chorus, made Armstrong a local celebrity in Chicago; it also became featured and advertised for Chicago's white market.[4] As a result of the Hot Five's new fame, Okeh offered a five-year contract and brought them back into the studio on June 16, 1926, and June 23, 1926.[5] The next highly successful session occurred in December 1927, producing the famous "Struttin' With Some Barbeque."[6] In this session, Lonnie Johnson was added on guitar and vocals for the songs "I'm Not Rough," "Savoy Blues," and "Hotter Than That."[6] "Hotter Than That," in the words of Thomas Brothers, is a piece turned "into a vehicle for their hometown bag of heartfelt musical tricks — a stunning passage of polymetric tension, rigorous commitment to the fixed and variable model, microphone-aided scat, vehement attack, vocal inflections on the guitar, plaintive dialogue, timbral diversity, and ... collective improvisation."[7]
The ensemble passages are frequently effective, and the genius of Armstrong's cornet or trumpet playing touch virtually every recording. Some of the more important examples are "Cornet Chop Suey", "Muskrat Ramble", "Hotter Than That" and "Struttin' with Some Barbecue".
The 1928 Hot Five played music that was specifically arranged as opposed to the more freewheeling improvised passages of the earlier Hot Five. A tentative movement toward the kind of fully arranged horn sections that would dominate swing music a decade later was starting to become fashionable, and this second Armstrong group embraced a rudimentary version of it, with Don Redman as arranger providing some written-out section parts. Strong on clarinet and Robinson on trombone were not as strong soloists as Dodds and Ory had been with the earlier band, but Hines was more nearly Armstong's equal technically and creatively than any other in either band.
Thus, these sessions resulted in some of the most important masterpieces of early jazz, of which "West End Blues" is arguably the best known. Other important recordings include "Basin Street Blues", "Tight Like This", "Saint James Infirmary", and "Weather Bird". In the last named, only Armstrong and Hines are present, turning an old rag number into a tour-de-force duet.
Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Also a notable composer, he wrote many tunes still played today, including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. His influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today."
William Manuel "Bill" Johnson was an American jazz musician who played banjo and double bass; he is considered the father of the "slap" style of double bass playing.
Clarence Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher.
Edward "Kid" Ory was an American jazz composer, trombonist and bandleader. One of the early users of the glissando technique, he helped establish it as a central element of New Orleans jazz.
Johnny Dodds was an American jazz clarinetist and alto saxophonist based in New Orleans, best known for his recordings under his own name and with bands such as those of Joe "King" Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Lovie Austin and Louis Armstrong. Dodds was the older brother of the drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds, one of the first important jazz drummers. They worked together in the New Orleans Bootblacks in 1926. Dodds is an important figure in jazz history. He was the premier clarinetist of his era and, in recognition of his artistic contributions, he was posthumously inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame. He has been described as "a prime architect in the creation of the Jazz Age."
Okeh Records is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name was spelled "OkeH" from the initials of Otto K. E. Heinemann but later changed to "OKeh". Since 1926, Okeh has been a subsidiary of Columbia Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Okeh is a jazz imprint, distributed by Sony Masterworks, a specialty label of Columbia.
Albert Edwin Condon was an American jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in Chicago jazz, he also played piano and sang.
"Potato Head Blues" is a Louis Armstrong composition regarded as one of his finest recordings. It was made by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven for Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois on May 10, 1927. It was recorded during a remarkably productive week in which Armstrong's usual Hot Five was temporarily expanded to seven players by the addition of tuba and drums. Some scholars have suggested that a key melodic figure in "Potato Head Blues" was picked up by Hoagy Carmichael for "Stardust."
Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven was a jazz studio group organized to make a series of recordings for Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois, in May 1927. Some of the personnel also recorded with Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, including Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Lil Armstrong (piano), and Johnny St. Cyr. These musicians were augmented by Dodds's brother, Baby Dodds (drums), Pete Briggs (tuba), and John Thomas. Briggs and Thomas were at the time working with Armstrong's performing group, the Sunset Stompers.
"West End Blues" is a multi-strain twelve-bar blues composition by Joe "King" Oliver. It is most commonly performed as an instrumental, although it has lyrics added by Clarence Williams.
"If I Could Be with You " is a popular song. The music was written by James P. Johnson, the lyrics by Henry Creamer. The song was published in 1926 and first recorded by Clarence Williams' Blue Five with vocalist Eva Taylor in 1927. It was popularized by the 1930 recording by McKinney's Cotton Pickers, who used it as their theme song and by Louis Armstrong's record for Okeh Records, both of which featured in the charts of 1930. Armstrong's recording of "If I Could Be with You" is defined by his sparse vocal style and ornamental virtuosic trumpet-playing.
Erskine Tate was an American jazz violinist and bandleader.
Reuben "River" Reeves was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader.
"Heebie Jeebies" is a composition written by Boyd Atkins which achieved fame when it was recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1926. Armstrong also performed "Heebie Jeebies" as a number at the Vendome Theatre. The recording on Okeh Records by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five includes a famous example of scat singing by Armstrong. After the success of the recording, an accompanying dance was choreographed and advertised by Okeh.
"Muskrat Ramble" is a jazz composition written by Kid Ory in 1926. It was first recorded on February 26, 1926, by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, and became the group's most frequently recorded piece. It was paired on the flip side with another one of Armstrong's hits, "Heebie Jeebies." It was a prominent part of the Dixieland revival repertoire in the 1930s and 1940s, and was recorded by Bob Crosby, Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Muggsy Spanier, Chet Atkins, Lu Watters, the Andrews Sisters, Harry James, and Al Hirt, among others. It is considered a part of the jazz standard repertoire.
The Louis Armstrong Hot Five and Hot Seven Sessions were recorded between 1925 and 1928 by Louis Armstrong with his Hot Five and Hot Seven groups. According to the National Recording Registry, "Louis Armstrong was jazz's first great soloist and is among American music's most important and influential figures. These sessions, his solos in particular, set a standard musicians still strive to equal in their beauty and innovation." These recordings were added to the National Recording Registry in 2002, the first year of the institution's existence.
"Dippermouth Blues" is a song first recorded by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band for Gennett Records in April 1923 and for Okeh Records in June of that same year. It is most often attributed to Joe "King" Oliver, though some have argued that Louis Armstrong was in fact the composer. This is partly because "Dippermouth", in the song's title, was a nickname of Armstrong's. Also, the phonograph recordings from 1922 gave credit to Armstrong and Oliver jointly. The song is a strong example of the influence of the blues on early jazz. There is a twelve-bar blues harmonic progression, with frequent bent notes and slides into notes.
Ollie Powers was an American jazz drummer and vocalist.
"Georgia Grind" is a jazz and dirty blues tune, written by Spencer Williams and copyrighted by him in 1926. The lyrics were added by Bud Allen. A recording was released by Louis Armstrong with his Hot Five by Okeh Records on a 78 rpm, mono 10" shellac single record in April 1926. The melody was the same as used in the song, "Shake That Thing", written in 1925 by Papa Charlie Jackson.
"Weather Bird" is a musical composition by Joe Oliver. However Thomas Brothers has suggested that it was composed by Louis Armstrong, because Armstrong sent a lead sheet of "Weather Bird Rag" to Washington, D.C. for copyright in April 1923 and that, despite its 1923 copyright date, it was composed by Armstrong during his time on the Mississippi river boats.
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