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The Twenties and Louis Armstrong a Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Atlanta University in Partial Fulfillment of The

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The Twenties and Louis Armstrong a Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Atlanta University in Partial Fulfillment of The JAZZ: THE TWENTIES AND LOUIS ARMSTRONG A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF ATLANTA UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS BY LETA HENDRICKS DEPARTMENT OF AFRO-AMERICAN STUDIES ATLANTA, GEORGIA MAY, 1979 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter I. THE TWENTIES 3 II. JAZZ BACKGROUND 17 III. LOUIS ARMSTRONG 54 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 83 SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY 93 INTRODUCTION Louis Armstrong has been one of the most important figures in jazz history. Armstrong helped change the sound and form of jazz. Traditionally the rugged and mordant cor¬ net had been the number one horn in jazz. In the late twenties, Louis changed to the fuller and brilliant sounding trumpet. The trumpet soon became the number one horn in jazz. He played his horn like no other musician before him. Armstrong's voicing and rhythm was almost flawless. He used a vocal technique for his horn and an instrumental technique for his singing. Armstrong's lung power and extraordinary lip muscles made him the King of Jazz. Louis Armstrong became the culture hero of Blacks during the twenties and thirties. Musicians and fans alike copied his speech, dress, and mannerisms. Arm¬ strong had as much impact on his culture as did White society on him. To understand the growth of Louis Armstrong there must be an understanding of the forces and events that shaped him and jazz during the twenties. Jazz, more than any other music, has been influenced by non-musical forces and events. Two of the main influences on jazz have been race and business. Those two forces deter¬ mined the development of jazz. During the twenties the Black 1 2 community was experiencing a period of race consciousness. The Harlem Renaissance was a time of cultural awareness. Un¬ fortunately this awareness did not include jazz. The mentors of the Black Renaissance movement were more involved in attain¬ ing White acceptance than in accepting one of the most impor¬ tant Black cultural contributions to America. When jazz be¬ came a popular art form critics of the music soon manipulated it into an acceptable uniform art. This idea of "assembly line music" was the product of the age. Business was the business of America during the twenties. The twenties was a time of social and economic change. This was the period of bootlegging and the stock market. Many diverse personalities were brought to the fore from gangster Al Capone to aviator Charles Lindberg to capitalist Henry Ford to novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. The entire country was changing. America was moving, at rapid speed, from a rural to an urban setting. This change brought about new problems to the American society. Blacks were a part of this change. The Black community had the same problems as well as problems unique to it. This thesis is a study of some of those problems and how they affected jazz and the jazz musician. CHAPTER I THE TWENTIES Just as no man is an island, jazz is not an isolated art. Jazz has been greatly influenced by its surroundings. In the twenties jazz had revolved from a southern to a north¬ ern Black art form. In this chapter a historical context will be provided for jazz in the twenties. The twenties, in American history, was a time of tre¬ mendous upsurge. According to the U. S. Census of 1930 there were 122,775,046 people in the United States. Out of this total there were 11,891,143 Black folk (9.7 percent of the population). The nation had grown by over seventeen million people since 1920.^ During this time over nineteen million people had moved from country to city.2 From 1920 through 1930 the rate of urban increase was 45 percent for Blacks and only 32.6 percent for Whites.3 As a result of this urban movement there occurred several moral clashes. One of the most widespread moral questions was that of corruption. ^U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States, 1920-1932. (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1935), pi T. Hereafter: U. S., D.C., Negroes. 2John A. Garraty, A Short History of an American Nation, 2nd. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 400. 3 U. S., D. C Negroes, p. 48. 3 4 It had been said that there were three types of crooks during the twenties: gangsters, politicians, and businessmen. Corruption had spread all through the country, from the Harding White House to the rural still. Many have felt that the Eighteenth Amendment was the key to this corruption. In 1919 the Volstead Act, implementing the Eighteenth Amendment, made it illegal for anyone to manufacture and consume any drink with an alcohol content over one-half percent.^ Some histor¬ ians have felt that this law was aimed at the Southern European and the Irish immigrant, who were often depicted as being drunk and unruly. The "drys" (i.e., those who supported Pro¬ hibition) felt that this law would lower crime, but it actually did the opposite. The title, "The Roaring Twenties," was annointed by this law. This law, often disregarded by the "wets" (i.e., those who opposed Prohibition), was unpopular throughout the country. Within a year one gallon home liquor stills sold for six and seven dollars.^ The "big business" of the era included speculation and "bootlegging." "The Roaring Twenties" begat bath-tub-gin, speakeasies, jazz, and flappers. The people who organized these business ventures carried "handles" like Scareface, Diamond Legs, and Bugsie. Max Lerner, a former Prohibition gangster, reminisced that, "The gangster of the Prohibition Era was almost invariably ^Alan Jenkins, The Twenties (New York: Universe Books, 1974), p. 128. 5Ibid. 5 a Sicilian, an Irishman or a Jew."^ These ethnic groups con¬ trolled mobs throughout the nation. Their business interest lay in bootlegging, protection rackets, gambling, and prosti¬ tution. Graft money poured from gangster to politician in order to prevent investigations, arrests, and police raids. In 1923 over sixty percent of the Chicago police force were on the take; one Chicago hood, Johnny Torrio, said that he owned the police.7 Many cities and towns had public officials accepting graft from the underworld, men like Tom Pendegast of Kansas City, Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York City, and Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson of Chicago.^ Big Bill's closest associate was "Scareface" A1 Capone. In Capone's office there were only three portraits hung on the wall: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and "Big Bill" Thompson. During "The Roaring Twenties" life was cheap. Accord¬ ing to John Gunther there were 753 bombings in Chicago between 1920 and 1928.9 A rate scale for murder existed, depending on who and how; the rate started at $50 and went up to $100,000.10 6Ibid., p. 132. 7Ibid., p. 130. ® For more information on "Big Bill" Thompson read: Charles Edward Merriam, Chicago : A More Intimate View of Urban Politics (New York: Macmillan Co., 1929). Q John Gunther, "The High Cost of Hoodlums," Harper's Monthly, October 1929 in The Twenties: Fords, Flappers, and Fanatics, ed. George E. Mowry (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), p. 118. 10Ibid. 6 One of the best known killings occurred in Chicago in 1929 on St. Valentines Day. The "St. Valentines Day Massacre" signalled a crack down on mob rule. Though the public had read of other murders, this killing, because of wide publicity, enraged them. Many gangsters owned speaks. In New York City many of these speaks were situated in Harlem. During the twenties F. Scott Fitzgerald called this era "The Jazz Age." Many Whites flocked uptown to Harlem to enjoy the exotic urban Black. A majority of these clubs, like the Cotton Club, had Black entertainment but an exclusive White clientele. These clubs were in Chicago, Kansas City, and in other urban areas, but Harlem was the mecca for the White pleasure seeker. Some Black owned clubs, like Small's Paradise, were open to Blacks and Whites. These clubs provided bootleg liquor, entertain¬ ment, and atmosphere. In Harlem the biggest racket next to bootlegging was "the numbers." This racket was purely Black owned and oper¬ ated. Some numbers bankers were respectable members of the Harlem community; one such banker was Casper Holstein. Hol¬ stein subsidized the annual Opportunity (a Black journal) literary awards.^ The numbers had been described as the Black man's stock market. Claude McKay, in Harlem: Negro Metropolis, stated that, "One ingenious Harlemite actually •^Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1940; reprinted, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., 1968), p. 102. 7 rigged up an office in the Wall Street district and was highly regarded as 'the Negro with an office in Wall Street.' He organized a syndicate to play his tips."^^ Soon after the repeal of Prohibition, Dutch Schultz and other White mobsters, "muscled in" on this Black racket. With the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment (i.e., repealing Prohibition) gangster rule was coming to a close. During the twenties America enjoyed a "new prosperity" in business. Business became a new religion. Business had such deities as advertising, consumer credit, and speculation. The "high god" was the stock market and the Wailing Wall was Wall Street. Many investors actually believed that one million dollars could be made in six months. This idol was destroyed in October of 1929 when Nirvana transformed into Shiva. According to Abram L. Harris, the most important Black economic institutions had been financial.Most Blacks tended to own funeral homes, insurance companies, and barber and beauty shops. Madame C. J.
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