Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five
The Hot Five was Louis Armstrong's first jazz recording band led under his own name.
It was a typical New Orleans jazz band in instrumentation, consisting of trumpet, clarinet, and trombone backed by a rhythm section. The original New Orleans jazz style leaned heavily on collective improvisation, where the three horns together played the lead: the trumpet played the main melody, and the clarinet and trombone played improvised accompaniments to the melody. This tradition was continued in the Hot Five, but because of Armstrong's creative gifts as a trumpet player, solo passages where the trumpet played alone began to appear more frequently. In these brilliant solos, Armstrong laid down the basic vocabulary of jazz improvising, and became its founding and most influential exponent.
The Hot Five was a recording group organized at the suggestion of Richard M. Jones for Okeh Records. All their records were made in Okeh's Chicago, Illinois recording studio. The exact same personnel recorded a session made under the pseudonym "Lil's Hotshots" for Vocalion/Brunswick. While the musicians in the Hot 5 played together in other contexts, as the Hot 5 they were a recording studio band that performed live only for two parties organized by Okeh Records.
There were two different groups called "Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five", the first recording from 1925 through 1927 and the second in 1928; Armstrong was the only musician in both groups.
Read more about Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five: The First Hot Five, The 1928 Hot Five
Famous quotes containing the words louis armstrong, louis, armstrong and/or hot:
“You ask: What is it that philosophers have called qualitative states? I answer, only half in jest: As Louis Armstrong is said to have said when asked what jazz is, ‘If you got to ask, you ain’t never gonna get to know.’”
—Ned Block (b. 1942)
“The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every ‘longshore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)
“A boy not beautiful, nor good, nor clever,
A black cloud full of storms too hot for keeping,
A sword beneath his mother’s heart— yet never
Woman bewept her babe as this is weeping.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)