The main Jazz currents - #Part 2 - Hot Jazz

The second part of Jazz currents

Part 2 : Hot-Jazz

1925: Louis Armstrong's first recording with his group "Hot Five". It was the first time he had recorded under his own name.
Louis Armstrong's recording with his bands "Hot Five" and "Hot Seven" are considered absolute jazz classics and unveil Armstrong's creative powers. These bands never played in public, but continued to record until 1928.

The music was characterized by improvised solos, dominating the melodic structure, which ideally led to a "climax", a musical ecstasy. The rhythm section (drums, bass, banjo or guitar) supported this crescendo, often on a walking pace.
Shortly afterwards, helped by the progress of recording, larger groups and orchestras popularized this new "hot" sound across the country.

Louis Armstrong - Dinah

Musiciens Hot-Jazz

group Hot Five :

It was with the first "Hot Five" (1925 - 1926) that Louis Armstrong made his first recordings as a bandleader.

Besides Louis Armstrong on the cornet, it consists of Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Kid Ory (trombone), Lilian Armstrong (piano) and Johnny Saint-Cyr (banjo). The first faces are recorded without bass and drums: My Heart, Gut Bucket Blues, Suey Cornet Shop, Muskrat Ramble, The King Of The Zulus .... Louis redraws the contours of traditional jazz orchestration, including putting the soloist in the foreground. It was also during this period that he invented the "scat" (vocal improvisation technique based on onomatopoeia).

To form the Hot Seven (1927), Kid Ory gives way to John Thomas, and two new ones make their entry: Peter Briggs (tuba) and Baby Dodds (drums). Hot Seven's hits include Twelfth Street rag, Potato Head Blues, Wild Man Blues, Weary Blues and Gully Low Blues.

The second Hot Five (1927 - 1928) marks the return of Kid Ory. Other masterpieces are emerging: Struttin 'With Some Barbecue, Hotter Than That, Savoy Blues, etc.
From June 1928, the quintet counts Earl Hines (piano), Jimmy Strong (clarinet), Mancy Cara (banjo) and Zutty Singleton (drums), plus Don Redman (alto saxophone, clarinet) on the last beaches.
With the second Hot Five, Armstrong, trumpet, recorded his finest songs: West End Blues, Weather Bird (splendid duet with Earl Hines' piano), No Papa No, Skip The Gutter, St James Infirmary, Tight Like This, etc.

violinist : Joe Venuti

Giuseppe (Joe) Venuti (16/09/1903 - 17/08/1978) was an American violinist, considered the first violinist in jazz history.

Son of Italian immigrants, he was born during the boat trip to Philadelphia.

The 1920s and early 1930s were particularly prolific for Joe Venuti. He then works with Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, as well as many white jazz figures.

From his collaboration with his childhood friend, the great guitarist Eddie Lang, come several flagship albums of the OKeh label.
The premature death of Eddie Lang (1933) will have a lasting impact on the violinist's career.

The return of Venuti in the spotlight is from the 1960s, when he met the saxophonist Zoot Sims. The albums they record together in the 1970s are particularly successful ("Joe & Zoot & More", 1973, "Joe Venuti and Zoot Sims", 1975, etc.)

Also listen to the album "S'Wonderful: 4 Giants Of Swing" (1976), with guitarists Eldon Shamblin and Curley Chalker, and the mandolinist Jethro Burns (original interpretations of compositions George Gershwin and Duke Ellington).

Joe Venuti dies of lung cancer at the age of 74, Seattle, August 1978.

**cornettist : King Oliver **

Joseph Oliver, known as King Oliver (19/12/1885, Abend, Louisiana - 10/04/1938, Savannah, Georgia), was an American jazz cornetist. He is one of the great pioneers of jazz, and personalizes the "Hot Jazz", where the collective improvisation still prevailed over the solos.

Arrived in New Orleans around 1908, he played in several orchestras (including Storyville, the neighborhood hot), before co-directing that of trombonist Kid Ory, one of the most famous in the city. It is Kid Ory who gives him in 1917 his famous nickname "King".

In 1919, he moved to Chicago and played with Bill Johnson's orchestra, "The Original Creole Orchestra". Then, in 1922, he created his famous Creole Jazz Band, with among others cornetist Louis Armstrong and pianist Lil Hardin (future wife of Armstrong).
The recordings of the group of 1923 are emblematic of the first forms of jazz, which did not yet put the soloist in the honor (the Armstrong revolution has not yet taken place!).

In 1925, the Creole Jazz Band separated and Joseph Oliver took over the orchestra of Dave Peyton, which he renamed "the Dixie Syncopators".
In 1927, he moved to New York with his group, and followed a series of events prejudicial to his career. He first made the mistake of canceling a series of concerts at the Cotton Club, leaving Duke Ellington to replace him and take the limelight. Then, suffering from problems of back and teeth, he must leave the direction of his orchestra to Luis Russell in 1929.

Despite new quality recordings in the early 1930s, then tours in the south, King Oliver falls into oblivion.
Over the course of resources, he is hired as a janitor in a billiard room in Savannah, Georgia. It is there that he dies, April 10, 1938, aged 52 years.