Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five - The 1928 Hot Five

The 1928 Hot Five

In 1928 Armstrong revamped the recording band, replacing everyone but himself with his band-members in the Carrol Dickerson Orchestra which Armstrong was playing with Fred Robinson, trombone, Jimmy Strong, clarinet and tenor saxophone, Earl Hines, piano, Mancy Carr (not "Cara" as has often been misprinted) on banjo, and Zutty Singleton on drums.

This second Hot Five played music that was specifically arranged as opposed to the more free-wheeling improvised passages in the earlier Hot Five structures. A tentative movement toward the kind of fully arranged horn sections that would dominate swing music a decade later was starting to become fashionable, and this second Armstrong group embaced a rudimentary version of it, with Don Redmon as arranger providing some written-out section parts. Jimmy Strong on clarinet and Fred Robinson on trombone were not as strong soloists as Dodds and Ory had been with the earlier band, but with pianist Earl Hines Armstrong here met a musician who was more nearly his equal technically and creatively than any other in either band. Thus these sessions resulted in some of the most important masterpieces of early jazz, of which West End Blues is arguably the best known. Other important recordings include Basin Street Blues, Tight Like This, Saint James Infirmary, and Weather Bird. In the last named, only Armstrong and Hines are present, turning an old rag number into a tour-de-force of inspired musical runs as the trumpet and piano playfully come together, draw apart to compete, and come together again, over several cycles.