“Joe Oliver Is Still King” (1950)

Abstract Armstrong never tired of recounting his debt to Joe Oliver. In this article, abridged from The Record Changer, he makes the case succinctly. Some biographers have suggested that this debt was more personal than musical, that Oliver provided a fatherly presence otherwise lacking during Armstrong’s teenage years. In his recordings from the 1920s, Oliver’s range is narrow, in contrast to Armstrong’s exploitation of a wide range, and Oliver specialized in the use of plungers and mutes to achieve vocal effects on his cornet techniques that hardly interested Armstrong. But Armstrong makes clear that Oliver was his main musical mentor. He explains that in even the first recordings from 1923, Oliver was much weaker than he had been in New Orleans, where he was an exciting high-note player. Armstrong’s main musical debt to Oliver must have been in details of improvisational style, especially in up-tempo “ragtime.” “[Bunk] didn’t have the get-up-and-go that Oliver did; he didn’t create a phrase that stays with you.” These attributes that Armstrong credits to Oliver would also sum up Armstrong’s own special stylistic qualities. Most of all, Armstrong admires Oliver’s inventiveness, in which he would surpass not only his mentor but all other players from the 1920s.