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, in which 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 by the trumpet alone began to appear more frequently. In these solos, Armstrong laid down the basic vocabulary of jazz improvisation and became its founding and most influential exponent.The Hot Five was organized at the suggestion of Richard M. Jones for Okeh Records. All their records were made in Okeh's recording studio in Chicago, Illinois. The same personnel recorded a session made under the pseudonym "Lil's Hot Shots" for Vocalion/Brunswick (their first electrically recorded session). While the musicians in the Hot Five played together in other contexts, as the Hot Five they were a recording studio band that performed live only for two parties organized by Okeh.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. After 1925, the Hot Five maintained a recording schedule of about three clusters of sessions per year.The original Hot Five were Armstrong's wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, as well as New Orleans musicians who Armstrong had worked with in that city in the 1910s: Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, and Johnny St. Cyr on guitar and banjo. For some or all of the Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven sides, Ory was in New York City working with King Oliver's band, and was replaced, probably by John Thomas. The first Hot Five sides, "Yes! I'm in the Barrel", composed by Armstrong, "My Heart" composed by Hardin Armstrong, and "Gut Bucket Blues" attributed to Armstrong, were recorded on November 12, 1925, with little rehearsal. The next session occurred on February 22, 1926, with the recording of "Come Back, Sweet Papa," composed by New Orleanian Paul Barbarin and Panamanian Luis Russell. The Hot Five's success was solidified as a result of the third session on February 26, 1926, which produced "Oriental Strut," "Georgia Grind," "Cornet Chop Suey," "Muskrat Ramble," "Heebie Jeebies," and "You're Next." In particular, "Heebie Jeebies," featuring Armstrong's famous scat chorus, made Armstrong a local celebrity in Chicago; it also became featured and advertised for Chicago's white market.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.