Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong

Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong
Ricky Riccardi
466 Pages
ISBN: # 978-0-19-761448-8
Oxford University Press
2025

Louis Armstrong's undeniable influence on jazz and popular culture has been the subject of many books, essays, and articles throughout the years, so one wonders will another biography add substantially to the Armstrong body of knowledge? After reading Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong the answer is a resounding yes. The third installment in Armstrong biographer Ricky Riccardi's trilogy covers Armstrong's first 28 years providing insight and a wealth of detail about the trumpeter's formative years. What emerges is the most complete picture of Armstrong's development as a multi-talented musician, a devoted son and brother, and a young hustler, who started work at age six selling newspapers on a streetcorner to help feed his family. Drawing on published news accounts, census records, and past interviews of Armstrong's peers, Riccardi paints a vivid picture of the rough and tumble New Orleans neighborhoods where young Armstrong lived and learned to take care of himself. Riccardi relates that by the age of 16, Armstrong had tried pimping, been stabbed, been arrested at least two times, and spent 18 months in confinement at the Colored Waif's Home for Boys all while gradually building his reputation as a young cornet player to keep an eye on.

The storyline in Stomp Off, Let's Go unfolds informed by a wealth of primary sources, some of which have never been drawn on including chapters from Lil Hardin Armstrong's unpublished autobiography, Armstrong's own unedited first manuscript of his 1949 autobiography, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, an extensive unpublished 1973 interview with his sister, Beatrice, "Mama Lucy" Armstrong, and previously unknown 1950s taped Armstrong interviews by producer George Avakian among them. The author also weaves together dozens of different first-person accounts by musicians, mostly drawn from Tulane's Hogan Jazz Archive, who played with young Armstrong at nearly every stop along his musical journey: the 12-year-old Armstrong first learning cornet at the Colored Waif's Home, the 17-year-old young man invited to play with Papa Celestin's famed New Orleans brass band, to members of Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra, who recalled the raw talent displayed by a 23-year-old Armstrong, newly moved to New York City after rising to prominence through his playing with Joe Oliver in Chicago.

Riccardi does an excellent job explaining the influence that the women in Armstrong's life had on him throughout his early years. First, his mother and grandmother, who nurtured him through frequent household moves, introduced him to singing at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Sundays and filled the gap left by his absent father. His sister Mama Lucy who always looked out for her brother, as he frequently was out late at night delivering coal to the prostitutes of Storyville or singing, dancing, and doing comedy bits on streetcorners with his vocal quartet. His first wife, Daisy Parker, was a prostitute with a penchant for fighting that was in and out of trouble with the law. Their tumultuous four-year relationship is documented clearly with Armstrong eventually moving out of their home to avoid the increasingly violent Parker throughout the latter stages of the marriage. Once Armstrong moved to Chicago, he managed to get a divorce, joined Joe Oliver's band, and began a friendship, and then a romance with the band's talented pianist, Lil Hardin, who would not only become the second Mrs. Louis Armstrong, but turned out to be the architect of the first major phase of Louis's career. It was Hardin who coached him in business, music, and helped to build up his self-confidence to the point where after impressing Chicago's jazz community, he mustered the courage to quit the highly successful King Oliver Jazz Band because as Lil proclaimed, he was going to be second trumpet to no one. Hardin's voice is an essential element throughout Stomp Off, Let's Go. She got to know Armstrong better than anyone else at the time and learned how to motivate, console, and support him when he hit rough patches. She demonstrated time and again her ability to help steer his career in a constant upward arc. While their musical collaborations would become legendary as part of the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings that redefined the direction of jazz when they were released, by 1926, after just two years of marriage, Hardin and Armstrong had grown apart romantically and the future Mrs. Armstrong number three, Alpha Smith, became Armstrong's new paramour. No matter, because Armstrong and Hardin came to an understanding, and she continued to offer advice to him.

As he did in his two previous Armstrong biographies, Riccardi makes liberal use of the actual recordings on which Armstrong played, starting with the first records from 1923 for Gennett Records with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and on which Armstrong's first recorded solo, on "Chimes Blues" and then his outstanding chorus on "Froggie Moore" stand out. Subsequent recordings from 1924 analyzed by Riccardi show how the young trumpeter was musically growing in leaps and bounds. For example, on "Shanghai Shuffle" Armstrong's solo powerfully affects the rhythm section mid-song kicking the band into overdrive, while his work on "Meanest Kind of Blues," which was recorded just a few months before Armstrong joined Henderson's band, and then again, a few months post-Armstrong. Riccardi explains that by comparing these two records, which basically used the same arrangement, one hears a clear indicator of Armstrong's influence on Henderson's sound. Armstrong took every opportunity to record as he accepted gigs as a sideman appearing on recordings by the top artists of the day including Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Sidney Bechet. When he returned to Chicago from New York late in 1925 at the insistence of Lil Hardin, it was she who secured steady work for Armstrong at the Dreamland Café, the top South Side black and tan club as a member of her band, dubbed Mme. L. Armstrong's Dreamland Syncopators. She even secured a raise in his weekly salary over what Henderson had paid him. Armstrong continued to stretch his musical horizons by jumping between the Dreamland Café and the Vendome Theater daily to play in Erskine Tate's Orchestra, where he had to read scores and follow a conductor to accompany silent movies, sight read a different daily classical overture, and between film screenings, play the latest hot jazz numbers, affording him the opportunity to blow solos over an 18-piece orchestra. Armstrong played everything from Mendelssohn, Gershwin, Puccini, Wagner, Verdi, and Stravinsky and loved it all. Riccardi explains that Armstrong was finally living the boyhood dream he had first had at the Waif's home of becoming an all-around musician.

Stomp Off, Let's Go abundantly documents Armstrong's early years in music and helps the reader to understand how the universally known figure of Louis Armstrong remembered today actually evolved. One aspect of Armstrong's persona that Riccardi sheds light on was his insatiable musical curiosity. For example, while appearing at the many ballrooms in Chicago and New York that the Oliver and Henderson bands played, when his band was on a break, the rest of the group would go to the musicians' room to drink and play cards while another band played. Not Louis. He would sit on the bandstand every moment he was off to soak up the other bands' music, borrowing ideas he liked to blend into his musical memory. Readers may take for granted that Armstrong's vocal performances were a standard part of his performance routine, but Riccardi details the twisted path the trumpeter took before he was eventually allowed to sing professionally. Even though he had been singing successfully in public since boyhood, neither Joe Oliver nor Fletcher Henderson would acquiesce to Armstrong's requests to sing on stage or records. It took the manager of the Roseland Ballroom, who overhead Armstrong as he wordlessly improvised vocalizations over the band when he wasn't playing, to push him to step up to the microphone and take a vocal chorus in front of Henderson's band. It was an instant hit with the audience. Riccardi explains how in that moment, an unnamed club manager helped launch one of the most recognizable voices in all of music.

Similarly, a great deal of misinformation has grown over the years since the famous Hot Five record, "Heebie Jeebies," was recorded in 1926. The author clarifies that Armstrong's ability to come up with improvised vocal licks heard on this recording was a skill he had developed in his vocal quartets in New Orleans as a young boy and now put to good use. When the hastily scribbled lyrics he came up with for the recording fell to the floor after the master take had started, Armstrong simply fell back on his street corner chops to scat sing his way through the rest of the tune. Riccardi busts myths that had grown up about this recording by sorting through the various first person accounts reported by the musicians who were there, correcting the record on one of the most significant early jazz vocal records of the 1920s. Another important point that the author makes is that even though the recordings made by the Hot Five and Hot Seven became seminal works in the founding canon of jazz, when the records first came out, they were only heard in African American communities across America, due to the segregated marketing and distribution system which only offered Race records to Black Americans.

Stomp Off, Let's Go ends in 1929, when Armstrong, working closely with producer Tommy Rockwell, was featured on the double-sided release, "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," b/w "No One Else But You." The author makes the case that this record combined the palatable sweet jazz styles then widely popular, with Armstrong's soulful singing and scatting, and signature trumpet-playing, resulting in a totally new sound in the pop record marketplace. It crossed over to the mainstream pop charts and launched Armstrong into the national spotlight for the first time. Simultaneously, he landed a new residency at Harlem's Connie's Inn, one of New York City's premiere jazz clubs, now billed as Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra. He also rushed nightly down to Broadway between sets at Connie's Inn to appear in Fats Waller's hit musical Connie's Hot Chocolates where he belted out the show-stopping number, "Ain't Misbehavin'" to rave reviews from the mainstream press. By the end of 1929, Louis Armstrong had become what Riccardi describes at the first Black pop star.

Riccardi makes a convincing case that the improbable journey from street urchin to pop star was in large part fueled by Armstrong's inquisitive mind, as he hungered to learn more about music, life, and human relationships. The author argues that what truly separates Louis Armstrong from every other musician at the time was Armstrong's tremendous heart. It was the engine that fueled his own inimitable style, one that still resonates with new listeners who may first encounter Armstrong's music today. Stomp Off, Let's Go represents one of the most impeccably researched jazz biographies of any musician from this era. Taken with his other two Armstrong biographies, Riccardi's three volumes represent the definitive story of one of the most renowned musicians of all time.

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