For a kid with a good set of ears and a taste for swing, Chicago in the
`20s must have been heaven.
Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, King Oliver-virtually everyone defining the music that was beginning to be called jazz was playing the dance halls, barbecue houses and gin joints around town.
Today, that freewheeling era exists mostly in history books and on vintage recordings, but one of the last surviving musicians of that period still recalls it in remarkable detail. In conversation and in his new autobiography, ”Hot Man: The Life of Art Hodes” (with Chadwick Hansen, University of Illinois Press, $22.50), Hodes stands as one of our last direct links to music of that day.
”Coming to Chicago (in 1910) was a lucky break for me,” says Hodes, whose family had emigrated from Nikolaev, Russia, landing first in New York, then heading to Chicago a few years later.
”See, the neighborhood we lived in was right between the blacks and the whites. So I could go to a theater and hear the greatest jazz and blues musicians alive. If they didn`t live here, they passed through.
”It was an era. New Orleans players were coming up the river, everyone was here. Bix, Louis, (drummer) Baby Dodds, (reed player) Jimmie Noone, Chicago was the place. It probably happened because of economics.
”The musicians found out that there was a good chance to make a livelihood out of your music, and it was true.
”Nobody made a fortune, but there were plenty of laughs.”
For Hodes, who guesses he turns 88 on Nov. 14 (records did not survive his family`s journey to the U.S.), the opportunities in Chicago were nearly overwhelming. At Jane Addams` Hull House, he could take music lessons cheap and jam alongside another aspiring jazz man, Benny Goodman.
And on stages and in clubs across the city, the legends of the day were within earshot.
”I remember the day I was fortunate enough to hear singer Bessie Smith,” says Hodes, who began cutting classes at Crane High School to hear performances.
”There were 2,000 or so listeners in the theater. I had ducked inside because it was raining cats and dogs-I didn`t even know who was playing.
”I doubt if there were any other whites in the audience.
”So Bessie takes the stage, without a microphone, and she`s holding everyone in the palm of her hand. You didn`t hear a whisper.
”She had such a powerful voice, and she had a story to tell. In other words, the blues were the story of her life.
”She`d sing: `My man done left me . . . the 219 will bring him back some day.` And everybody knew then that the 219 was the train that came out of New Orleans.
”Now there were many other singers at the time, and they could sing the words. They could go over the song, but with much less meaning.
”We had imitators in those days, too. But when Bessie came to town, the lesser lights were in the audience.”
If Smith inspired Hodes with the blues-drenched spirit of her singing, Louis Armstrong opened up to him the world of South Side jazz and blues. In the `20s, Armstrong was Chicago`s reigning musical star, his sensational high notes, irrepressible swing and ebullient personality helping jazz take root here.
”If there were no Armstrong, there would be no Hodes,” says the great pianist.
”When he found out that I loved the blues, he took me to the barbecue place at 47th and State. Don`t look there now-it`s a high rise.
”And he let me find my way into this world.
”Many nights I spent listening to Louis. He talked about (bandleader)
King Oliver sending for him (from New Orleans). He said King wrote him a letter saying: `You can always come sleep in my bed with your stinking feet.` ”So Oliver took Louis into his band, and in no time he became the man to listen to.
”I remember Louis once told me, `I`ve got some of Bix`s records.` But Louis and Bix were like night and day.
”Whey they recorded Louis, they had to put the mike five feet away from him so he wouldn`t blow it out of business. With Bix, they put the mike right in front of him, because Bix had a much softer, quieter sound.
”The important thing was that each of them sounded like nobody else.”
There were other influences, as well. Earl Hines played piano with such virtuosity, says Hodes, ”that he made me want to throw my hands in the river. But I learned from that kind of playing, too, how hard you had to work.”
And a long forgotten pianist who went only by the name Jackson proved to Hodes that ”there was more to this music than just playing a lot of notes. Jackson was not a good pianist, but he knew enough to play. He had very few clothes, he looked skimpy, but the depth of feeling in the music really knocked you out.
”In fact, once I remember I went to the barbecue place, and he was really dressed up, but he wasn`t playing blues.
”So I asked him: `What happened?`
”And he said: `See the new clothes I got and the girl I`m with? I ain`t got the blues.`
”And that`s when it struck me that the blues had a deeper meaning than just 12 bars of notes.
”The blues was a music that you felt. I can only describe it by saying it was a happening, a distress call. It`s the depth of the sounds that makes the blues.”
Even to Hodes, though, it must have seemed remarkable that Chicago`s black culture was giving entre to a white teenager. For some reason, the world of black clubs and nightlife welcomed him.
”It never was a problem, and I wasn`t the only one, though I was one of a rare few,” says Hodes. ”There were (trumpeter) Wingy Manone and
(cornetist) Muggsy Spanier, too.
By the late `30s, Hodes was married and moving to New York. The big bands were pushing out the smaller ensembles that were his specialty, and he hoped to find more work on the East Coast.
Times were tough there, too, though. Be-bop was coming in during the
`40s, making Hodes` brand of blues-tinged swing seem out of date to some New Yorkers.
”At first, we musicians jammed together, lived together, drank together, ate together-we all were friends. But then the critics started rapping us. These writers decided that our music should go out with high-button shoes, and that included Louis Armstrong, too, and it caused a big rift.
”That was their right and their privilege, but at the time it was very painful. It hurt me, but I`m a survivor. A lot of other guys had to get out of the business.”
By 1950 Hodes was back home in Chicago, trying to make a living playing music that evoked the grand old days of the `20s. Since then, his reputation as a living example of a critical chapter in jazz history has grown steadily with each season, each decade.
And though he has not played publicly in recent months, due to a variety of medical problems, his spirit seems undiminished. He teaches from the ebony grand piano that dominates his living room, he speaks of his new autobiography with fire, noting ”the fullness” of the life it describes.
Of America`s reawakened interest in jazz today, he says, ”There`s no question we`re having a renaissance, but the flowering of Chicago jazz in the `20s is gone. The only thing that was even close to it was New York`s 52d Street in the `50s.
”Chicago in the `20s was an age that was here and gone. I`m lucky I heard it.”
