Louis+Armstrong+Brings+Blues+and+Jazz+to+the+QCA

Original Author: Caressa Clearman, FL12 Revision Author:
 * Louis Armstrong Brings Blues and Jazz to the QCA **

There is a reason that cities like Memphis, Tennessee, St. Louis, Missouri and even the Quad Cities’ own Davenport, Iowa are famous for unique blends of blues and jazz music, and that reason is the Mississippi river. More than just a waterway for transporting goods, supplies, food, etc., the Mississippi river also transported culture and music. One of the best examples of this phenomenon can be seen in the career of renowned jazz and blues musician, Louis Armstrong.

Born in 1901 in New Orleans, Louis grew up in a time and place where several musical styles were converging. Before New Orleans was an official U.S. territory, it belonged first to France and then to Spain, and then to France again (Bergreen 8). In addition to the separate French and Spanish influences, there was also a combination of the two now known as Creole. Add to that, “Acadians seeking refuge from the British presence in Nova Scotia,” whose descendants would become known as Cajuns, as well as the musical influence brought over from Africa and the Caribbean Islands with slaves, and this massive merging of music at the mouth of the Mississippi river from places all over the globe is clearly evident (Bergreen 8).

Growing up in New Orleans at the turn of the century, Louis Armstrong was at the center of all this and even as a youth he had an ear for music. That was all he had however; Louis could not read music, and everything he learned to play, he learned by listening and imitating (Terkel 22). That is until he was approached by a man named Fate Marable. Fate was “//the// band leader on the Mississippi riverboats… [he conducted] a crackerjack orchestra that entertained passengers on daylong excursions on the majestic vessels” (Bergreen 144). Fate’s band was made up of musicians who could read music “which excluded an astonishing number of gifted, even brilliant musicians from joining” (Bergreen 144). However, Fate was quite impressed with the young Louis Armstrong and offered him a job on the riverboat with his orchestra. It was on the riverboat that Louis learned to read music. Joe Howard, a seventy-four year old tuba player “taught sight reading to Louis Armstrong when he joined the band on the s/s //Sidney//” (Blesh 166). On the swells of the Mississippi river, Louis began to blend his audio style of playing with a visual style of reading sheet music.

As Louis developed his style, the riverboat chugged its way up the Mississippi. “During his first summer, most of Louis’s time… consisted of tramping along the Mississippi as far north as St. Paul, Minnesota. “Tramping” meant that Louis and the orchestra spent just a night or two in a town, played a few dances, and in the morning, as the mist rose from the placid river, steamed off to the next stop” (Bergreen 156). It was Louis and these riverboats that brought blues and jazz music to the Quad Cities. “New Orleans music steamed up the Mississippi to Memphis and St. Louis, even as far north as Davenport and St. Paul, in the river-boats—floating dance halls. At the larger towns the boats would stop over for two nights, putting out on a cruise for white dancers on the first night and for Negroes on the second” (Lang 39). Although the U.S was still a segregated country with Jim Crow laws in effect, one could find a blend of ethnicities in these riverboat orchestras. “White musicians, as well as coloured, formed river-boat bands” (Lang 39). The riverboats brought new ideas to the Quad Cities, musically and culturally.

At the time, the Quad Cities, and Davenport in particular, hosted a large population of Western Europeans, diverse in their own respects, but with few Creoles or Cajuns or African Americans. “Davenport possessed no such history as the older towns down the river; as Mark Twain saw it in the… [1880’s], it was a young, bustling, clean, prosperous, and characterless manufacturing settlement with nothing to distinguish it from scores of other townships which industrious Germans and Scandinavians were building up through the Middle West” (Lang 69). This is significant because it points to the fact that the Quad Cities may not have had such a rich, musical history had it not been for the riverboats and musicians like Louis Armstrong. Their stays were brief, but their influence was evident. “The boats seldom stayed long in any of the cities they touched, nor did the bands penetrate them to any great extent. The music [they brought] was… a strange language on unaccustomed ears” (Blesh 218). This music could be heard, not just on the riverboats themselves, but also from the banks and the bluffs of the Mississippi valley.

As the boats cruised up the river, any town that banked the Mississippi held a potential audience for Louis and the band. “Crowds came in droves to watch the black men in their fancy ties and shirts play. From Hannibal the riverboat worked its way north past Quincy, Keokuk, entered Iowa, cruised along the Iowa-Illinois border, past Rock Island, playing one-nighters at every town that would have them” (Bergreen 157). In this way, Louis and the riverboat spread their unique New Orleans sound throughout the Mississippi valley. “When Louis’s riverboat reached Davenport, Iowa, he met a seventeen-year-old cornet player from that town. His name was Bix Beiderbecke” (Bergreen 157). A young musician himself, he was growing up in Davenport and attending Davenport High School when Louis and his unique brand of music came floating up the river. Bix would eventually become known as the most notable jazz musician from the Quad Cities.

When Bix got a chance to board the //Sydney//, he took it. He “listened to the orchestra, and especially its cornetist, Louis Armstrong” (Bergreen 158). The boys in the band didn’t mingle with the guests, usually, but “Bix was the exception; he managed to ingratiate himself with the orchestra, especially his new idol, Louis, whose confidence he quickly gained” (Bergreen 158). One of the band members reported that Bix even bought Louis a horn (Bergreen 158). “This spontaneous act of generosity, so typical of Bix, sealed a friendship that would become increasingly important to the two young men who had nothing in common except musical genius and a spirit of generosity” (Bergreen 158). Louis and the riverboat orchestra had a significant influence on Bix, and it wasn’t long before the young Davenport High student began playing all around the Quad City area. “The sweet, biting sound of his cornet was heard everywhere. At high school proms. At University of Iowa dances. At Poppie Gardens, near Geneseo, Illinois, where he’d hop out of his touring car—a Ford—and onto the stand to sit in with the pros…” (Terkel 47). The music and the party atmosphere spread from Louis and the riverboat to Bix to the Quad Cities proper and beyond.

However, life on the riverboats was not always a party, especially during the hot and humid Midwest summers. Louis and his band mates lived on the riverboats full time and had to use the small space for anything and everything they needed. “The vessel served as a floating dormitory, mess hall, rehearsal space, and nightclub in the heat of the summer” (Bergreen 161). Louis remembers how hot it was and the risks he and the others took to find some relief. “You couldn’t get cool anywhere; it was just as hot inside the boat as it was up on deck,’ Louis recalled. ‘We boys and some of the deck-hands got half a dozen long ropes and fixed big loops on the ends and threw them out over the stern, making the other ends fast along the rail. Then we took hold of the ropes and let ourselves out into the water until we got down to the loops, which we would slip around our arms, and lay back and let the boat pull us along” (Bergreen 161-162). They came up with their own unique way of tubing, without the inner tubes of course, just the ropes, but it seemed to produce the required effect, offering them some relief from the intense heat and humidity which many people in the Quad Cities experience still to this day.

From about 1919 to 1921, Louis Armstrong spent his summers on the riverboats and had many great experiences. As he learned how to read music, “Others were learning from Louis, too... People in Memphis, St. Louis, Davenport, all along the river wherever Armstrong was heard, were learning something: What is written on paper is not all there is to jazz music. A man must feel it, deep down inside... He must feel free. From Louis Armstrong they were learning the true meaning of jazz” (Terkel 24). The Quad Cities’ own Bix Beiderbecke was one of many students, and like many musicians, he took what he learned from Louis and the riverboats and fused it with his own style, thus developing another sound, unique to the Quad City area. Without Louis Armstrong and his summers on the Mississippi river, the Quad Cities would be very different place in regards to its musical heritage.

For pictures of the riverboats and of Louis Armstrong and the Fate Marable band, please click here: []

**Works Cited ** Bergreen, Laurence. //Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life//. New York: Broadway  Books, 1997. Print.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Blesh, Rudi. //Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz.// New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> 1946. Print.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Lang, Rudi. //Jazz in Perspective: The Background of the Blues.// New York: Da Capo <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Press. 1976. Print.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Terkel, Studs. //Giants of Jazz.// New York: Harper Collins, 1957. Print.

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