A player of both strength and generosity, Louis Armstrong’s influence as a soloist, as a pioneer who moved folk music into the realm of artistry, as a personality remains incalculable decades after his death.
There are lines you could draw: No Armstrong, no Lester Young. No Lester Young, no Charlie Parker. No Charlie Parker, no rock ‘n’ roll. Even Dizzy Gillespie, who was clearly more of Roy Eldridge acolyte in life, once said: “No him, no me.” That’s to say nothing of Billie Holiday, and then Frank Sinatra, once Armstrong began a concurrent career as a vocalist.
Yet Armstrong’s catalog is both impressively vast and incoherently organized by record company reissuers. Where to start? As good a place as any is his 1938 recording of “When the Saints Go Marching In” for the Decca label.
Louis Armstrong earlier made his name, of course, on groundbreaking sides with King Oliver and Kid Ory, and he’d later enjoy widespread fame with vocals like “Hello, Dolly” and “What A Wonderful World.” What we find with this early version of “When the Saints,” however, is a terrific early example of something that combines both – his incomparable jazz sensibility and that memorable commercial approachability.
Urgent and bright, yet rhythmic and loose, Armstrong brought the essential New Orleans conundrum to the world – and this song is the perfect vehicle. Often played, as here, with a rough exhuberence, “When the Saints Go Marching In” is actually a funeral march, first played as a dirge (on the way to the cemetery) then as a high-stepping romp (on the way home).
Hitmakers focused on the uptempo style, pushing this age-old song (sometimes wrongly attributed to writers James M. “Milton” Black and Katherine E. Purvis) into the vernacular. Subsequent versions (there are reportedly 1,000 and counting) followed by artists as diverse as Jerry Lee Lewis, Pete Seeger, The Ink Spots, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, Percy Faith, Bill Haley and Bruce Springsteen. “When the Saints,” in fact, grew into such a monolith that it’s become synonymous with Dixieland.
That started with Satch. He crashed through the convention of collective playing that defined his hometown street sound –and, even on a gospel-inspired tune, was incapable (as Gunther Schuller once rightly noted) of not swinging. “When the Saints Go Marching In” was said to have shot to No. 10 over four weeks on the national charts.
A 1962 version, recorded with Armstrong’s always-evolving All-Stars band, includes one of the more impishly inventive solos by Louis Armstrong. The truth is, Satch could turn dreck – as he did on many of his other often-maligned 1930s-era, sometimes sickly sweet Decca recordings – into high drama.
He might not have been the risk taker he once was but Armstrong’s authority and winking poise held no less power on his first recorded attempt at “When the Saints.” In 1938, he was joined in New York by an orchestra that includes trumpeter Shelton Hemphill; clarinetist/altoists Rupert Cole, Charlie Holmes (who provides an inspired, bluesy solo) and Bingie Madison; and trombone player J.C. Higginbotham (who gets a memorable introduction from Satch), among others.
Pianist Luis Russell, who did the arranging, also adds a new aside. New Orleans-born drummer Paul Barbarin keeps the song chugging along with an infectious second-line backbeat amid the happy call-and-response chorus.
There’s no getting away from some of the disasters Armstrong was saddled with by record producers of the day. (Similar fates were being fought off at the same time by Holiday and Fats Waller.) But, to me, those stumbles might just have made turns on classics like “When the Saints” all the more exhilarating.
Like many of his recordings from the period when Armstrong was principally fronting big bands, he opens with a vocal, makes way for others to take their turn, then concludes with solos so sharply brilliant as to startle. Armstrong also digs an elbow into the side of anyone who still thought of this song as a dusty hymn.
“Sisters and brothers, this is Rev. Satchmo getting ready to beat out this mellow sermon for you,” Armstrong growls, sounding even then like a guy who had washed down a mouthful of gravel with some sour mash. “My text this evening: ‘When the Saints Go Marching In!'”
There is a whole lot of fun to be had, but also a riveting intensity in the concluding trumpet blast. For me, it remains, a touchstone for everything that made Louis Armstrong.
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