The meteoric rise of Louis Armstrong [playlist]

In the five years between his first recording session as a sideman with King Oliver in April 1923 to his final date as a leader in Chicago in December 1928, Louis Armstrong changed the sound of American popular music, with both his trumpet and with his voice. He perfected the art of the improvised solo, expanded the range of the trumpet, popularized scat singing, rewrote the rules of pop singing, and perhaps most importantly, infused everything he did with the irresistible feeling of swing. In surveying the landscape on Spotify alone, one can find 269 sides with Armstrong from this period, totaling 13 hours and 30 minutes of music. Trying to boil that output down to 12 representative tracks is not an easy task, but hopefully this playlist conveys a taste of just what made Armstrong so special in this decade—and every decade.

1. “Tears” – King Oliver’s Jazz Band – Chicago, 5-15 October 1923

For Armstrong, the sun rose and set on cornetist Joe “King” Oliver, who served as a mentor/father figure during his formative years in New Orleans. Armstrong made his first records with Oliver but rarely got the opportunity to “tear out,” as he put it. He made the most of one such opportunity, taking a series of scintillating breaks on “Tears,” co-written by Louis and then-girlfriend Lillian Hardin. After Louis and Lil married in 1924, she convinced Louis that Oliver was holding him back and insisted that her husband quit the band. It was a difficult decision, but it ended up being Armstrong’s first major step towards stardom.

2. “Shanghai Shuffle” – Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra – New York City, 10-13 October 1924

Armstrong moved to New York City in the fall of 1924 to join one of the top Black dance bands in the nation, Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra. Though members of Henderson’s group initially looked down on Armstrong’s southern fried disposition, that all changed when they heard him play. “Shanghai Shuffle” is a perfect example of what Armstrong brought to New York, taking a short, explosive solo in the middle of a dated, quasi-exotic arrangement, much like a burst of sunshine emerging from the clouds. Henderson reedman Don Redman was paying attention and began transforming the orchestra into a pioneering swing band–using Armstrong’s improvisations as an inspiration.

3. “St. Louis Blues” – Bessie Smith – New York City, 14 January 1925

Armstrong became quite adept at blowing obligatos behind various blues singers during his time in New York, climaxing with this iconic meeting with “The Empress of the Blues,” Bessie Smith. Calling what Armstrong does on “St. Louis Blues” an “obligato” is rather limiting; it’s really a duet, as his responses to Smith’s powerful vocal are note perfect, establishing the rules of how to properly accompany a singer, rules that are still adhered to this day.

4. “Gut Bucket Blues” – Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five – Chicago, 12 November 1925

In the fall of 1925, Armstrong moved back to Chicago, where OKeh Records finally gave him the opportunity to make records under his own name. In addition to Lil on piano, Armstrong hired three of his elders from New Orleans and formed a studio group, the Hot Five. After feeling stifled by Oliver and Henderson, Armstrong unleashed his infectious personality on the very first Hot Five side to be released, “Gut Bucket Blues,” confidently introducing the members of the band and establishing the template for what would become one of the most influential series of recordings in the history of American popular music.

5. “Heebie Jeebies” – Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five – Chicago, 26 February 1926

OKeh’s E. A. Fearn encouraged Armstrong to sing on “Heebie Jeebies,” which was originally conceived as an instrumental by Boyd Atkins. Armstrong wrote down some rudimentary lines but during the actual recording of the tune, he claimed to have dropped the lyric sheet. Instead of spoiling the take, Armstrong began using his voice like an instrument, something he did back when he was a kid singing on the streets of New Orleans, singing nonsense syllables, but phrasing them like one of his swinging trumpet solos. This type of singing didn’t have a name but Fearn began marketing it as “skat” and the result was Armstrong’s first legitimate hit record.

6. “Cornet Chop Suey” – Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five – Chicago, 26 February 1926

After already impacting the course of pop singing with “Heebie Jeebies,” Armstrong next turned his attention towards writing the rules on how to take an effective solo with “Cornet Chop Suey,” recorded on the same day. This is Armstrong’s show from start to finish, opening with a dazzling unaccompanied intro before moving into the forward-looking melody, composed by Armstrong two years earlier. But it was the stop-time interlude in the middle of the record that made trumpeters, trombonists, pianists, and other instrumentalists around the country sit up and take notes on how to create a memorable solo.

7. “Stomp Off, Let’s Go” – Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra – Chicago, 28 May 1926

The Hot Five, as important as they are, was only a studio group and rarely performed in public. During this period, Armstrong performed nightly with Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra, where he accompanied silent movies, did comedy routines, and was featured on classical numbers like the “Intermezzo” from Cavalleria Rusticana. Armstrong’s only recording session with Tate resulted in one of the decade’s hottest records, “Stomp Off, Let’s Go,” which showcases the piano work of Teddy Weatherford, in addition to offering a taste of Armstrong’s flashy style of the time.

8. “Big Butter and Egg Man” – Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five – Chicago, 16 November 1926

Armstrong doubled for much of 1926, working with Erskine Tate at the Vendome Theater before heading to the Sunset Cafe, where he was featured trumpeter in Carroll Dickerson’s Orchestra. “Big Butter and Egg Man” was a Sunset Cafe specialty before being adapted by the Hot Five in what became known as a legendary recording. Armstrong’s solo is a marvel of storytelling, but he also gets to display his good humor and showmanship in his vocal spot, hallmarks of his later career that were already firmly in place in the 1920s.

9. “Hotter Than That” – Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five – Chicago, 13 December 1927

By the end 1927, Armstrong was beginning to outpace the original members of the Hot Five. The records began featuring more and more of his solos, which were of a higher caliber than the work of his New Orleans elders. Armstrong needed new musicians to inspire him, such as guitar pioneer Lonnie Johnson, who made his presence felt on “Hotter Than That.” Armstrong solos over the rhythm section for a full chorus at the start, eschewing the group’s usual New Orleans polyphonic style, and embarks on a scat episode that is positively thrilling, his mastery of rhythm on full display. Towards the end, he even uncorks a two-note riff that would become a staple during the big band era. As a farewell to the original Hot Five, it doesn’t get any hotter.

10. “West End Blues” – Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five – Chicago, 28 June 1928

In June 1928, Armstrong returned to the studio with a retooled Hot Five, made up of members of Carroll Dickerson’s Orchestra and the man known as the “Father of Modern Jazz Piano,” Earl “Fatha” Hines. On King Oliver’s composition “West End Blues,” Armstrong opened with an unaccompanied trumpet cadenza in which he utilized everything he had learned about the instrument since first picking it up 15 years earlier. The entire record, from the cadenza to Armstrong’s mournful scatting to Hines’s dazzling piano solo, is simply a masterpiece of twentieth century recorded music, one that is still being studied in the twenty-first (a #westendblueschallenge was all the rage on social media a few years ago).

11. “Beau Koo Jack” – Louis Armstrong and His Savoy Ballroom Five – Chicago, 5 December 1928

By December 1928, OKeh Records realized the old trumpet-trombone-clarinet-banjo-piano sound was a thing of the past and began pushing Armstrong to record with slightly larger ensembles. On “Beau Koo Jack,” the addition of Don Redman’s alto saxophone and an arrangement by the song’s composer, Alex Hill, completely modernized the sound of Armstrong’s “Savoy Ballroom Five,” paving the way towards the Swing Era of the next decade. Armstrong shines in his setting, showing off every tool in his toolbox in a solo that still has the ability to astound in 2025.

12. “Tight Like This” – Chicago, 12 December 1928

The final song recorded at Armstrong’s final Chicago session before relocating to New York, “Tight Like This” can be viewed as a summary of Armstrong’s entire life up to this point. There’s comedy in the discussion about whether or not “it” is “tight like that”; there’s a minor-key mood that allows Armstrong to tap into the music he learned from the Jewish Karnofsky family; and there’s hints of the “Spanish tinge” as Jelly Roll Morton called it, incorporating a different, but no less important, flavor from his hometown. But most importantly, Armstrong’s three-chorus solo tells a story, taking its time and building to a roof-shaking climax that would be the blueprint for future soloists ranging from B. B. King to Jimi Hendrix to Eddie Van Halen (and those are just the guitarists). Full pop star stardom awaited Armstrong in New York in 1929 but the records he made in the 1920s established him once and for all as one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century—and beyond.

_{Featured Image From “Stomp Off, Let’s Go” Figure 27.1  1926 publicity photo of the original Hot Five. From left to right: Johnny Dodds, Louis Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr, Kid Ory, Lillian Hardin Armstrong. Credit: Courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Photo restoration by Nick Dellow.}