by Kirk Woodward
[As ROTters will know, my friend Kirk Woodward is a
long-time jazz enthusiast. (See “Some Of
That Jazz,” posted on 7 June 2015.) Kirk’s
not only a fan, but as a musician and composer himself, has the musical
knowledge to know what the instrumentalists are doing and analyze his own
responses. That makes his discussion
below of the contrasts and similarities between two jazz greats, Louis Armstrong
(“Pops”) and Dizzie Gillespie (“Diz”), whose styles varied but who played
together occasionally and respected each other’s art, all that more revealing. I don’t have the background to write cogently
about music (among other topics),so I’m always on the look-out for contributors
who can cover what I can’t. Kirk, in
addition to being my friend for more than 50 years, has been my go-to guy on
music, not limited to jazz, since I launched Rick On
Theater over eight years ago (at his
suggestion, as it happens). In “Pops and
Diz,” I think you’ll see why. Even if
you’re not a jazz fan, I’m sure you’ll find his descriptions of the playing of
Armstrong and Gillespie, two of America’s greatest musical artists, enlightening. (Pay particular attention to his analysis of
the two musicians playing together on “The Umbrella Man”: you can almost hear them riffing!)]
In
a sense a work of art is a capsulated form of the time in which it was created
– but the “capsule” often omits important information, such as the author’s
intentions in the piece, the circumstances in which it was created, the events
that motivated the piece, and so on. For example, we have Shakespeare’s plays
but essentially no information about his writing process except what little we
can deduce from the plays.
In
our electronic age, such artifacts don’t have to be literary – they can also be
visual and auditory. One example is a scratchy kinetoscope of a duet, on a TV
jazz special called the Timex All-Star
Show broadcast 7 January 1959, between the
jazz trumpeters Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) and Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993).
The video can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqkoKIEESBs.
Louis,
often nicknamed Pops, and Dizzy or Diz, whose
real name was John Birks Gillespie, represent two eras in jazz, and actually
there is a third era between them – all in a space of about thirty or forty years,
which demonstrates how quickly changes can take place in music.
Armstrong
played magnificently melodic improvised music, and brought out the role of the
soloist in jazz – ironically, considering that much of Dixieland is ensemble
jazz. Armstrong influenced the great trumpeter Roy Eldridge (1911-1989), who in
turn was Dizzy Gillespie’s primary early stylistic influence. In his
autobiography, To Be, or not . . . To Bop
(1979, Doubleday Books), Gillespie confirms this:
. . . at
one time, every trumpet player in the world, everybody who wasn’t in a
classical band, had to be influenced by Louis Armstrong. Louis not only influenced
trumpet players, he changed the modus operandi of
music by inventing the solo. He came from King Oliver, and then he went out,
and Roy Eldridge came from Louis Armstrong. I came from Roy Eldridge.
Armstrong’s
musical approach is often called “Dixieland” and Gillespie’s, “bebop,” with
“swing” coming between the two styles. The terms, of course, can’t help being somewhat
reductive; both men were greater than their styles.
I
never heard Louis Armstrong in person; many of his performances can be seen on
YouTube. I saw Roy Eldridge once at a jazz festival, and once at the old Jimmy
Ryan’s jazz bar in midtown on Manhattan’s west
side (now closed), where I asked him to play his famous specialty song “I Can’t
Get Started,” and he did.
As
for the jazz style known as bebop, Wikipedia
says:
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States,
which features songs characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisations based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references
to the melody.
Bebop, pioneered by
musicians including Gillespie on trumpet, the brilliant Charlie Parker
(1920-1955) on alto saxophone, and the highly individualistic Thelonious Monk
(1917-1982) on piano, had a rough time gaining popular acceptance, and
Gillespie’s outgoing, boisterous personality helped the music overcome
resistance – for example, Armstrong’s, as we shall see – and enter into and
influence the mainstream of American music.
I
was fortunate to see Dizzy Gillespie in person three times. I saw him at an
outdoor concert in 1969, on the bill with another great trumpet player of the next generation of jazz, Miles Davis
(1926-1991), although they didn’t play together that night. I also saw him,
along with Thelonious Monk, at one of the Giants of Jazz concerts in Lincoln
Center’s Philharmonic Hall, and at an evening of Latin-influenced jazz, one of
Gillespie’s specialties.
Armstrong
and Gillespie had much in common. They were both African American, both born in
conditions of poverty; both had flamboyant personalities, both found the
trumpet a perfect instrument of expression, both mastered their crafts to an
extent previously unknown, both influenced untold numbers of musicians, both
became enormous popular favorites.
But
Armstrong could not reconcile himself to the complex bebop style of jazz, and
said so, including in his act for a while a song that made fun of bebop musicians
as “poor little lambs who have lost their way” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWjBZ8ZmI4s). Gillespie and
others fired back, not just on musical elements but on Armstrong’s performing
style. (More on that below.)
So
when I found the “Umbrella Man” duet between Armstrong and Gillespie, I
wondered what kind of personal relationship it represented. Had they met
before? Were rehearsals tense? Was it actually evidence of a battle?
The
song “The Umbrella Man” was originally a mawkish English ballad written by
James Cavanaugh, Larry Stock, and Vincent Rose in 1924. The 1959 broadcast
version is anything but mawkish. The
band, with Gillespie on trumpet, is also made up of: Les Spann (1932-1989),
guitar; Sam Jones (1924-1981), bass; Lex Humphries (1936-1994), drums; and Junior
Mance (b. 1928, and still with us, although he has now retired), piano. The three
minute number goes like this:
(First
chorus) Gillespie kicks off a fast waltz tempo with three quick stomps of his
heel, and plays a fluid, straightforward introduction. He sings the song in a
relaxed, offhand style, interrupted four times by Junior Mance screeching the
umbrella man’s cry. Each time Dizzy looks askance. A transition to 4/4 time
leads to:
(Second
chorus) Gillespie begins a sprightly improvisation on the melody, looking over
briefly to see if Armstrong has entered, which he does, playing fluid fills in
response to Gillespie’s first two phrases. Armstrong plays four measures in his
classic style, and Gillespie four in his, using at least twice as many notes as
Armstrong. They finish the chorus with Armstrong playing second trumpet to
Gillespie’s lead, Gillespie playing in a light-hearted Dixieland style, and
Armstrong accompanying him flawlessly.
(Third
chorus) Gillespie and Armstrong “trade eights,” alternating eight measures
each. Armstrong gives Gillespie a long “Yeah – h – h – h – h!” during Gillespie’s
first solo. Each plays in his own characteristic style, Gillespie dazzling, Armstrong
majestic.
(Fourth
chorus) Gillespie sings the song and Armstrong scats responses to each line,
practically bouncing with pleasure. Gillespie inadvertently spits slightly on
Armstrong at the line “He’ll fix your parasol” and Armstrong responds, “Your
parasol is juicy, boy!” turns and wipes his face, scats again, and says, “Oh,
turn that way.” Gillespie wipes his mouth just before he sings “It looks like
rain” – “Yeah, man!” Armstrong says.
They
continue the song-and-scat through the rest of the chorus. (The “Swiss Kriss!” Armstrong
includes in his scat is the name of his favorite laxative!) Armstrong demonstrates again in this piece, as
he so often did, that his scat singing is as memorable an aspect of jazz as his
trumpet playing. At the end of the number Gillespie returns to the trumpet
while Armstrong continues to scat. Jackie Gleason (1916-1987), the host of the
TV special and a jazz fan and occasional orchestra leader as well as a comedian
and actor, looms in the background as Gillespie and Armstrong slap palms.
This
video artifact is a joyous celebration, a remarkable achievement, and a sure
cure for a gloomy mood. So what was in fact the relationship between the two
men? The answer, it appears, is that they knew each other well and were
friendly. In fact, Gillespie’s autobiography includes a lovely photograph of
Armstrong, Gillespie, Bobby Hackett (1915-1976), and Jimmy McPartland
(1907-1991), the latter two also outstanding horn players, together at a party
at Gillespie’s house.
Gillespie,
a serious student of music, was always respectful of musicians from other
“schools.” In his autobiography he maintains:
when [Armstrong]
started talking about bebop, “Aww, that’s slop! No melody.” Louis Armstrong
couldn’t hear what we were doing. Pops wasn’t schooled enough musically to hear
the changes and harmonies we played.
Pops’ beauty as a melodic player and a “blower” caused all of us to play
the way we did, especially trumpet players, but his age wasn’t equipped to go
as far, musically, as we did. Chronologically, I knew that Louis Armstrong was
our progenitor as King Oliver and Buddy Bolden had been his progenitors. I knew
how their styles developed and had been knowing it all the time; so Louis’
statements about bebop didn’t bother me. I knew that I came through Roy
Eldridge, a follower of Louis Armstrong. I wouldn’t say anything. I wouldn’t
make any statement about the older guys’ playing because I respected them too
much.
And
Gillespie prided himself that
Louis
Armstrong criticized us but not me personally, not for paying the trumpet,
never. He always said bad things about the guys who copied me, but I never read
where he said that I wasn’t a good trumpet player, that I couldn’t play my
instrument.
However,
Gillespie did criticize Armstrong’s performance style, as did others who
thought Armstrong was “playing up” in a humiliating way to white audiences.
Gillespie writes that
I criticized
Louis for other things, such as his “plantation image.” We didn’t appreciate
that about Louis Armstrong, and if anybody asked me about a certain public
image of him, handkerchief over his head, grinning in the face of white racism,
I never hesitated to say I didn’t like it. I didn’t want the white man to
expect me to allow the same things Louis Armstrong did.
But Gillespie acknowledged that in some ways he
did the same sort of thing:
Hell, I had my
own way of “Tomming.” Every generation of blacks since slavery has had to
develop its own way of Tomming, of accommodating itself to a basically unjust
situation.
And
he ultimately came to a different understanding of Armstrong’s behavior:
Later on, I
began to recognize what I had considered Pops’ grinning in the face of racism
as his absolute refusal to let anything, even anger about racism, steal the joy
from his life and erase his fantastic smile. Coming from a younger generation,
I misjudged him.
This understanding made it possible for Gillespie to admire Armstrong’s great talent despite the differences in period styles:
Nowadays in
jazz we know more about chords, progressions – and we try to work out different
rhythms and things that they didn’t think about when Louis Armstrong blew. In his
day all he did was play strictly from the soul, just strictly from his heart he
just played. He didn’t think about no chords – he didn’t know nothing about no
chords. Now, what we in the younger generation take from Louis Armstrong . . . is
the soul.
So the two men’s TV appearance was in a sense a
logical event:
Pops and I
played together publicly for the first time on January 7, 1959 on the Timex
All-Star Jazz Show, televised on CBS. Pops’ acceptance of this engagement sort
of showed he accepted the olive branch we “boppers” had held out, and it showed
he recognized that there didn’t have to be any competition between Dixieland
and modern jazz. But to let it be known
that neither of us had given up his own brand of jazz, Pops and I played “The
Umbrella Man” and battled it out, “Dixieland” versus “modern.” It was much more
fun arguing with music than with words.
Gillespie says their appearance was “the first
time” they played together publicly. I haven’t found references to other times.
However, Gillespie writes that he and Armstrong intended to record an album
together – Gillespie hoped there would be more than one, actually – but that
the manager they shared at the time, Joe Glazer (1896-1969), refused to let it
happen.
That would have been an album to cherish.
Another event one wishes had been recorded was an evening in New York in which
Armstrong became sick and was unable to finish a night club appearance.
Gillespie wrapped up his own gig, went to the other club, and played
Armstrong’s set in Armstrong’s style.
What an event that would have been to see and hear.
In any case, we fortunately have the grainy kinescope of “The
Umbrella Man” to thrill us over and over with a moment when two musical giants
came together, with deep affection for their craft and for each other, and
created a few moments of great art and even greater joy.
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