Louis Armstrong & Alberta Hunter

Life-and-Death Jazz

When her accompanist was shot and killed right next to her onstage, Alberta Hunter decided to leave Chicago.

Chicago hadn’t changed much when, several years later, Louis Armstrong and his two band members found themselves looking into the barrel of a .45. The drunken gunman had walked in on their break and headed right to the bandstand. "we were so scared that Earl Hines tried to go straight through his upright piano, and heaven knows where Zutty and I went, but I know we came off that bandstand right away."

Hunter and Armstrong never appeared in Chicago at the same time, but both careers were launched from its jazz-age chaos. Gangster influence made for a lot of open violence, but it also created a place where musicians could thrive.

Chicago jazz and blues would not have been the same without mob funding. Clubs, ballrooms, and the management of musicians were places for gangsters to launder money, and to make more of it: With the cooperation of city government, clubs openly served illegal liquor to thousands. They catered to the black southern workers who had migrated north, trading sharecropping serfdom for better-paid industrial jobs. Some of the clubs were "black-and-tans," a Chicago innovation: black clubs in which whites were welcome.

Outside the black-and-tans, Chicago was segregated, like all US cities of the era. But in spite of that, in spite of having one of the worst race riots of the century in 1919, an entire musical world was bursting forth on State Street, a world in which black musicians were admired and well-paid. That was new in the United States - and it made Chicago a magnet for musicians.

When Armstrong walked into the Dreamland for the first time late one night, he was awed by the place. The outside didn’t look like much, but the inside was like no building he’d ever been in. "The thing that hit your eye once you got into the hall was a big crystal ball that was made of small pieces of reflecting glass and hung over the center of the dance floor. A couple of spotlights shone on the big ball as it turned and threw reflected spots of light all over the room and the dancers."

Alberta Hunter had gone before, showing what was possible for even a raw recruit. At twelve, Hunter had left Memphis for Chicago. She went door to door promoting herself, got singing jobs in whorehouses, and began to get noticed. By her early twenties, she was billed as “The Sweetheart of Dreamland,” singing on the same bill with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, arguably the hottest act in town. She just missed Armstrong, though; by the time he joined the band, Hunter had moved on to New York. They would meet up shortly thereafter.

The dangers of Chicago and the burgeoning Harlem Renaissance brought many Chicago musicians to New York. In 1921, Alberta Hunter left Chicago to record with Black Swan records in New York, accompanied by Fletcher Henderson and his Novelty Orchestra. Three years later, Armstrong and Lil Hardin joined Hunter in the studio to make their groundbreaking recordings with the Red Onion Jazz Babies.

It was a pickup group, but it’s unlikely that there were any rehearsals; the New Orleans jazz idiom was familiar to all. Most of the band members knew each other. Tetchy genius Sidney Bechet was new to the mix, but not the tradition. It was a chance for Armstrong to let loose, free of the confines of a big band, back with musicians who understood spontaneous jazz.

Hunter recorded the Red Onion sessions under the name of Josephine Beatty. This avoided any problems about her contract with another company, a tactic Armstrong would soon adopt. Armstrong and Hunter also shared the dubious honor of being bilked by recording companies for songs they had written. Black people had no chance of being heard in court. Record companies knew that.

Though she never recorded with Armstrong again, Hunter followed a similar path of recording and touring until the near end of her life - not the usual story for jazz musicians. (Unlike Armstrong, she lied about her age, went back to school, and had a 20-year nursing career before her comeback in her eighties.) Like Armstrong, Hunter had a career in a large cross-section of musical genres. They both were strongly involved in the show-business side of music, and performed musical theater and popular songs as well as blues and jazz.

Armstrong made a lasting impression on Alberta Hunter, as he did on so many people. "Louis Armstrong played with all the love he had," she said. "Everybody loved him."