Photo courtesy Louisiana State Digital Archives.
The ballroom of the Streckfus Steamers “Capitol” based in New Orleans. The boat ferried Louis Armstrong’s to his first documented appearance in Baton Rouge. In 1920, young Louis was merely the trumpet player in a tightly regimented steamboat band called the Palmetto Jazzerites led by the legendary Fate Marable. Marable often taught talented musicians like Louis Armstrong to read music in between performances in his riverboat “conservatory.” (Left to right) Henry Kimball, bass; Boyd Atkins, Johnny St. Cyr, David Jones, Norman Ma son,Louis Armstrong, Norman Brashear, Baby Dodds, Fate Marable. Circa-1920.
Louis “Satchmo” “Pops” Armstrong, who grew up in “back o’ town” New Orleans, was certainly the greatest jazz musician to come out of the Crescent City. But when he made his first appearance in Baton Rouge in 1920, he was just a trumpet player in a riverboat band.
It's likely that young Louis had already paid a visit to the Red Stick before 1920. Clarinetist Joe Darensbourg of the well-known (and still-in-business) shoemaking family of Baton Rouge, remembered the distinctive sound of the cornet player when Papa Celestin’s Tuxedo Band would come to town.
“(Papa Celestin) was in Baton Rouge all the time,” Darensbourg said in his autobiography Jazz Odyssey. “Anytime they had a big parade, he’d bring the Tuxedo Band here. The first time I seen Louis, he was with the Tuxedo band. This was before I knew who he was. You could hear that damn cornet two blocks away – I never heard a cornet like it. I’ll never forget it. That’s one of the things that really made me want to be a musician. Hearing a sound like that. What a man!”
Many consider Armstrong’s biggest break to be the 1922 telegram that Joe “King” Oliver sent, convincing the young musician to leave New Orleans for Chicago. But, there is an argument to be made that the most important influence in the talented trumpet player’s life was actually Fate Marable, the best orchestra leader on the Streckfus line of entertainment excursion steamboats, which sailed the Mississippi River. Marable had been watching young Armstrong for some time, and in the spring of 1919 asked the trumpet player to join the Jazz Maniacs on the Dixie Belle steamboat.
"I never heard a cornet like it. I’ll never forget it. That’s one of the things that really made me want to be a musician. Hearing a sound like that. What a man!” —Joe Darensbourg on Louis Armstrong
Armstrong biographer Laurence Bergreen noted that Marable was a “legend” to the New Orleans musicians in his book, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life.
“Everyone knew who Fate Marable was. He was the band leader on the Mississippi riverboats, conducting a crackerjack orchestra that entertained passengers on daylong excursions on the majestic vessels. And, as everyone knew, Fate’s orchestra was a reading group, which excluded an astonishing number of gifted, even brilliant musicians from joining,” Bergreeen wrote.
Though musically self-taught, the mixed-race Marable had an impeccable reputation as a professional musician, especially in the Crescent City. Hired by Captain Joe Streckfus when he was just seventeen, Marable was the man on the steamboat’s top deck who played the waterproof calliope keyboards, attracting paying customers to ride the river. It was a wet and enormously loud job. The keyboard was so hot to touch that Marable wore gloves and a heavy oilskin raincoat to protect his body from the scalding steam. He stuffed cotton in his ears to quiet the pipe organ’s volume. After that strenuous workout, Marable would don a tuxedo to lead the Black musicians in the ballroom, performing six days a week for white audiences and one day for Black customers.
His musicianship qualified him to lead the Streckfus Line orchestra, but he had honed his jazz performance skills during the heyday of New Orleans’ Storyville red-light district. He nabbed jam sessions with the leading piano professors of the day like Jelly Roll Morton, Tony Jackson, Calvin Jackson, Udell Wilson, and Wilhemia Bart Wynn.
Armstrong was a raw talent but could only play by ear. Despite the musical handicap, Marable took on the trumpeter and started him on a crash course in music theory.
Zutty Singleton, Armstrong’s New Orleans pal and a renowned early jazz drummer, mentioned the informal riverboat school of music in the book Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya. He said, “There was a saying in New Orleans. When some musician would get a job on the riverboats with Fate Marable, they’d say, ‘Well, you’re going to the conservatory.’ That’s because Fate was such a fine musician, and the men who worked with him had to be really good.”
“There was a saying in New Orleans. When some musician would get a job on the riverboats with Fate Marable, they’d say, ‘Well, you’re going to the conservatory.’ That’s because Fate was such a fine musician, and the men who worked with him had to be really good.” —Zutty Singleton
Marable taught Armstrong the rudiments of reading music during intermissions from rehearsing with the orchestra. He also taught professionalism and how to dress and act in the larger world beyond New Orleans. Armstrong played excursion trips only in New Orleans on the Dixie Belle (a swank gig), but in the spring of 1920, Marable offered him a chance to play the summer season. That meant the trumpeter would have to leave the comfort zone of his beloved red-beans-and-rice-on-Monday New Orleans for months. Pops took the job and traveled by train to St. Louis, where he boarded the Capitol, a rebuild of the old Dubuque boat.
Though inexperienced with the ways of the world and travel, he possessed the confidence of youth and packed a good Crescent City lunch for the trip. “I’ll never forget the day I left New Orleans by train for St. Louis,” Armstrong said in his autobiography, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. “It was the first time in my life I had ever made a long trip by railroad. I had no idea what I should take, and my wife and mother did not either. For my lunch, Mayann went to Prat’s Creole Restaurant and bought me a great big fish sandwich and a bottle of green olives.”
[Read about how early New Orleans Jazz musicians invented the early drum kit here.]
The Capitol made its way down the Mississippi to Baton Rouge on October 5 and Louis Armstrong, a largely unknown talent at this point, prepared to perform his first documented professional appearance in the Red Stick with Marable’s Palmetto Jazzerites. The boat docked at the old Florida Street wharf two blocks away from the castle-like State Capitol (Huey Long’s new building was still a dream in 1920).
"I had no idea what I should take, and my wife and mother did not either. For my lunch, Mayann went to Prat’s Creole Restaurant and bought me a great big fish sandwich and a bottle of green olives.” —Louis Armstrong, in his autobiography Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans
Baton Rouge folks were probably excited to visit the boat, as the Palmetto Jazzerites had been touted as the “best bunch of syncopators in the business” by Baton Rouge’s State Times.
“Dance fans of this community will be given a real treat Tuesday October 5. For rhythm and melody the Palmetto Jazzerites are beyond compare for they are in a class by themselves and everybody that hears them play is loud in acclaiming it the best bunch of syncopators in the business (sic). Real jazz music is often imitated by white musicians who think that sloppy, noisy music is jazz, but that is a mistaken idea—for real jazz originated in the southland with the strumming of the banjos on the plantation and it is a peculiar sort of melody that is very pleasing when properly played by real artists. It is next to impossible to keep your feet quiet when you hear the Palmetto Jazzerites play the popular dance numbers.”
In addition to the nineteen-year-old Louis Armstrong, the Palmetto Jazzerites also included Boyd Adkins on clarinet, saxophone, and violin; Norman Brashear on trombone; “Baby” Dodds on drums; David Jones on saxophone; Henry Kimball on string bass; and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo.
Fate Marable and the experience he provided prepared Armstrong for a long professional career. Marable had an eye and ear for real talent as evidenced by the “graduates” of his “conservatory,” include Red Allen, Pops Foster, Earle Carruthers, Tab Smith, Jimmy Blanton, and Clarke Terry, who went on to perform with the likes of Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Fats Waller, and Chick Webb.
When Fate Marable died at age fifty-six in St. Louis in 1947, the Pittsburgh Courier eulogized the Professor as “One of the Nation’s foremost and best-loved musicians.” Amen to that.
Bonus History
In the early decades of the 20th century, Baton Rouge’s best known jazz musician was guitarist Mose “Toots” Johnson. He’s hardly a modern household jazz name today, but as early as 1904, he was performing for LSU dances, riverside parks and social clubs. On November 11, 1918, by request of the “soldiers and sailors stationed in this city and also at the request of a large part of the younger set,” Johnson was hired to perform at a large street party on Third Street between Florida and Laurel streets to celebrate the end of World War I.
Johnson was so beloved a musician that when he died at age fifty-four in 1928 of an apparent heart attack, the State Times ran a two-paragraph story of his death on page two. Remember, this was the time when Black people were rarely mentioned in the newspaper. The Toots Johnson name was so big, the band continued to perform under his banner until 1947. Jazz luminaries such as Joe Darensbourg and Zutty Singleton knew Johnson and praised his band. Despite his local fame, there is no monument or historic marker today commemorating Toots Johnson.
Sam Irwin is a public relations professional, a freelance writer and the author of several books on Louisiana culture, notably the critically acclaimed Louisiana Crawfish: A Succulent History of the Cajun Crustacean from History Press. He is also a jazz trumpet player and fronts the Florida Street Blowhards, a Baton Rouge-based traditional jazz band.
