[Dixielandjazz] Buddy Bolden Eldridge Armstrong

Thu Apr 13 18:49:58 EDT 2017

My own theory about Louis and Red Allen begins with them as very young players who worked in the band of Red's father, Henry Allen Sr., beside Bechet, whose playing of cornet (sic!) Louis praised very highly.  
It continues with Texas Moaner Blues, in which Bechet leaves off a couple of bars before the end of a phrase, and Louis completes it. As the performance proceeds, Bechet delivers himself of some work beyond anybody else at the time, even Louis, although when for some reason I sent Ken Mathieson a Red Onion Jazz Babies track he was startled because only one cornetist was capable of that. It had to be Louis, as indeed it was. 
I would also think that Louis was somewhat influenced by Nick LaRocca, based on my experience of classical opera singing, a matter simply of phrasing, dramatic delivery, the change in technique from lyric to dramatic, Fernando di Lucia to Caruso. How to time a phrase. Bechet is documented as having performed operatic arias as solo features when touring Europe in 1919, and I would think some model of phrasing very important. 
>From there he started work on the harmonic framework of the music starting from not a low level but what was already a peak of achievement. 
Jan Evensmo's solography of Red Allen refers to a recording of "After You've Gone" on which Red claimed he had taken over a passage from Louis perfectly seamlessly, to an extent where there could be some contention regarding which phrase where, whether on the longtime well-known issue with vocal, and the sheerly instrumental take recorded within the same session. 

I think the influence of Louis on Red and so many jazzmen can be taken for granted from then, although of course Louis and Henry, as colleagues speak of him, did have a great deal of background in common. With Jabbo Smith, the question isn't a matter simply of being influenced by Louis, it's one of being a serious expressive musician and taking up expressive possibilities impossible to resist. Roy as I remember wasn't so impressed by Louis when he first heard him, probably because Roy was so much more than most trumpeters, and couldn't assimilate a direct Louis influence without interfering with what was his own -- though he might have been influenced for example by Jabbo, heard in person, and by a Jabbo who had already learned something from Louis. 

A very long time ago John Postgate wrote a lengthy article for JAZZ MONTHLY on what he regarded as a St. Louis trumpet style, extending from Dewey Jackson and Baby James through Joe Thomas and Clark Terry and indeed Miles Dewey Davis. It amuses me that in the same New York record store stacked out with bankrupt stock from Riverside Records it was possible to buy for a couple of dollars a Clark Terry album, as the LP was called there, and another with a selection of 1920s recordings in which the conjectural identification "Baby Jay" was given on the basis of an encouraging call from the lady singer. In reminiscences much later Clark gave the proper name of Baby James, remembering also Jackson.
Jackson's band was recorded in St. Louis in the 1920s, but most recorded examples of his playing derive from a visit to a gig made by Bob Koester in St. Louis more than thirty years later, carrying a tape machine borrowed from his university (on one number there is the problem that somebody says 'hello, nice to see you...'!).Lee Collins, noted at one time as the nearest to Louis, maybe the pre-Weather Bird near-genius, was suffering from the lack of tuition which finally did his chest, and on the gig with Don Ewell's band was replaced by the sometime bandleader Jackson (born 1899), then working as a hotel clerk. Jackson's Peacock Orchestra differs from the Hot Five model of trumpet/ trombone/ reeds by not having a lead. The players/ sections alternate, and as a sub. in the Ewell band the same sort of thing happens, Frank Chace's clarinet (he wasn't from St. Louis but has a sourish edge like PeeWee when playing straighter, or indeed Gene Sedric) sometimes does take a kind of lead. Like Jabbo or maybe Rueben Reeves, Jackson tries to build up tension by virtuosity and lots of notes. It would seem that his townsman and contemporary Baby James made accents with a mute (I'm not going to discuss King Oliver) whereas playing open Jackson makes no use of space or the possibilities of timing opened up by Caruso Armstrong. He's less expressive than exciting, and probably holds the record for the number of times the Alphonse Picou flowery section has been delivered in a recorded performance of "High Society" on any instrument. 
He just doesn't deliver a lead, and quite possibly this registers his having reached a dead end for a certain approach, whereas with the harmonic input of songwriters from east of where the Iron Curtain later existed, and more, as well as more trumpet models to stimulate, Roy Eldridge could play rather more notes without them meaning nothing much. 

I hardly think Bix wasn't influenced by Louis, maybe he was considerably influenced by Louis, and maybe there was so much of his own that there was no Copyin' Louis by him as a mature performer.  Jack Purvis was a mighty player, whose biography got him into the "Dictionary of Alternative Biography" when I suggested him to its compiler, Angus Calder (no relation) -- Angus had already singled out Joe "Tricky Sam"  Nanton and the Nanton pride in being of West Indian origins. Try playing a Purvis recording beside the Hawkins recordings with Stanley Black or Buck Washington. A tenorist as well as a trumpeter definitely following Louis. 

Of course the biggest influence of Louis' playing on Miles is inaudible -- it occurs as the silences between notes played. 
Time was the essence, said Milt Hinton, who incidentally had an unusual preference for Jabbo over Louis.If you have the time (timing) it's just a matter of knowing where to put your fingers 

and it's time to blow,all the best,
Robert R. Calder 

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