The Red-Hot Jazz Scene of the 1920s Expertease

Ladies and gentlemen, our audience tonight is composed mostly of jazz cats. And Clare, since you specialize in the red hot jazz scene of the 1920s, I thought we could probe your area. Pardon? Of expertise. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, Dixieland lovers, all the way to bebop swingers. Welcome to the Expertise podcast, today labeled the Expertise Jazzcast, because I'm talking with an expert of the 1920s red hot jazz scene.

Clare Sera, welcome to the program. Scoobily boop bop doobity pay. Hi, Danno, great to be here. Thank you so much for showing a little interest in what I like to call the epoch of all epics. Epoch is big, epic is also big, and nothing is bigger than a big thing that is also big. Clare, you, for my listeners at home, Clare is a youthful wee thing, and I'm sure you were not around in the 1920s to experience it yourself. Well, maybe not physically, Danno, but I like to think that I was around in spirit, because I certainly resonate, and I mean resonate like a trombone's spittle through the tube with everything jazz.

That's one of the things I do love about that whole 1920s scene is, you know, the slang that those jazzers would use. I thought you were going to say the spittle, because so much of it. That's another thing I love about the 1920s. You know, for our collectors in the audience, and I'm sure everyone tuning in tonight will be a jazz aficionado or a collector of the memorabilia of the era, and your spittle collection, Clare, is the object of envy from spittle collectors around the globe, but it's not just any spit. This is the spittle of top jazz musicians.

We got Louis Armstrong, we got buckets of Louis Armstrong's gobs. And even his nickname, you know, he was called Louis Gob Bucket Armstrong. Yeah, yeah. You know, he projectile spat, and not a lot of people know this, but the comedian that would put out blankets of plastic over his front two rows. Tarpolins. Tarpolins. Right, right, tarpolins. It's just my ear, you know, everything is about syncopation, and if I hear a word syllabalized incorrectly, I just... I guess I was swinging to a 2-4-4 beat, and you were grooving on the 4-6. Yeah, jazz is always on the 4-6.

So a lot of people I know are interested in the music, but let's go back to your specialty for just a minute. I think what you're saying was that Louis Armstrong was responsible for the audience covered by tarpolin for safety and cleanliness, right? Yeah, cleanliness, there's a lot of feathers, a lot of feathers in the fashion, and they would really get clogged down. Josephine Baker, not a lot of people know that she really, she was a waterfall when she sang. Well, I know that she was a very scantily clad singer, dancer, chanteuse, performatrix. You're talking about, of course, her famous banana skirt.

Yes, and I heard a rumor, you can tell me yes, true, maybe don't know, that she had special glands implanted to actually increase her saliva flow. It was a procedure that was done by a lot of the hot jazz artists of the 20s and 30s. That sort of accounts for that distinctive sound, I guess. Mm-hmm, yeah. That sort of strangled, gargling sound, people calling out, it seems like, as if they can just barely breathe through their own throat filled with saliva. Yeah, sure, we called it the death rattle on the 2-4. It really kind of pre-shades the unfortunate death of Jimi Hendrix on his own vomit all those years later.

You know, that's a poor imitation of a red hot jazz death rattle. You know, I was felt a little bit insulted by that. And that's what a lot of people say about rock and roll compared to that red hot jazz of the 1920s. I mean, you just think about being in a club, right, and you've got Louis on the horn, you've got Josephine or... On the banana. Ella, any of them, and they are just spraying the entire club with the juices of the music. A lot of the clubs were even named. There was the Raincoat Club in Chicago. There was Chez Galosh in New York. Oh, Chez Galosh.

Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up. That was the scene of what they called the tsunami of jazz. I was hoping you would bring this up. Yeah, folks on the inside know that this happened. A lot of folks on the outside have heard that it might have happened. And let's get the truth today, the jazz tsunami. Yeah, it had all the tops of the day. I think I've mentioned a few. And if I could think of some more, I would mention them. But it was a night of nights. And it was filled with celebrities. I mean, Charlie Chaplin was there. Alistair, the famous British guy that loved jazz.

What a glorious night that must have been. The stars studded. The stars studded. And so few people of Britain really loved jazz. But Alistair McAllister. Famously. Yeah, he just loved jazz so much. Well, he was right in the front row. I mean, a lot of people later said, you know, I mean, he jazzed himself to death. But it wasn't himself, was it? I mean, he was there getting jazzed to death. And what a better way to go. There was no better way to go. And I did want to just quickly address, too. You know, there was, of course, a reason the silent stars were attracted to jazz, which at the time was the loudest, brashest of all the music.

And, you know, silent movies were also known as dry movies because they didn't have the technology to photograph liquids. Yes, exactly. With the earliest cinema. So to be able to go from a silent, dry movie to a loud, brash, and moisture-filled music club. Famously, Clara Bow walked in on this night at Glosh Kalosh. Shea Galosh? Yes, at Shea Galosh. I was just jazzing up the name a little bit for fun. You'll find I do that. So improvisatory. So Clara Bow walks in. The It Girl for our listeners at home. In her sequins with her hair did. And with just the moisture that was in the air already from the opening song.

Her hair was flattened against her face, which later became her signature look. But it was almost like you could see her and her people come to life. They were like dry skeletons that would walk into this jazz club, and they would just be blown, hydrated. Like a sponge, soaking up the moisture around them. Moisture and syncopated rhythm. But on this night, unfortunately, it did go awry, of course. That's right, the great tsunami at Shea Galosh. You know, it's so interesting to me, Claire, that the earliest instruments that were being used this night at Shea Galosh did not have a spit valve in place.

That they were just great collecting receptacles. And also Josephine Baker with her enhanced spit glands. Oh, gosh. She got overexcited. And they were, again, just absolutely, they were rockets. They were projectile. She could just cover the whole first two rows. She was like a rattlesnake in that way, wasn't she? A rattlesnake, yes. A lovely, lovely rattlesnake with a Parisian accent. Beautiful. And when she stopped spitting and sang, her voice was lovely. But at this time, the spittle was more in vogue than the melodies. Yeah, that was the death rattle of jazz you were telling us about.

Yeah. We lost so many celebrities that night. We think of American Pie as the day the music died. Right. But this tragic night at the club in Chicago, we lost several top movie stars, several top jazz musicians whose music we never got to hear. Well, it was the night that the celebrities died, but it was the night that they started playing melodies instead of just spitting at the audience. And it was Louis Gobb-Bucket Armstrong, whose great propulsion of air pierced a hole through the slide in his trombone, allowing the spittle to escape to what later became the spit valve.

For the first time, that music was able to come through. So instead of that gargling spit sound, the lavorus of music. And they'd never had that many musicians on stage that night, too. They had the great buck-toothed Bob Balaban. He's one we don't hear much about these days. Well, his career was cut short. That night. That night. There was also Django. Django and the Reinhards? He survived, but barely. Yeah, it was a big night. And unfortunately, this was when Louis was trying to bring a little more musicality to jazz, a little less propulsion of spittle. And so he had worked out the third song, which is always the biggest song of the night.

And it had such a climactic moment. The volcano, they used to call it, right? Yes. It's illegal to perform it anymore. It's not hygienic, that's for sure. Well, sometimes, Dano, if I may, I have a fantasy of like, let's get the right conditions, let's recreate that song. Yeah, if we could just go back to that night with protective sheathing of some kind. Yes, exactly. So there they were that night, the stars of Hollywood, the stars of what was going to become jazz music. The origins of jazz. And so the band is playing. The band has to talk to each other. That's what jazz is.

It's a conversation. It's communication. It's improvisation. It's communication. They do not interrupt each other when they are playing. I'm sorry. They really listen. I was going to say that they don't. They actually listen to each other. To each other. They do not interrupt each other. And then they respond. Yeah. So it's like a musical conversation. Conversation. Where they do not interrupt each other. But you can imagine, they're all covered in spittle at this time. Each other's and their own? Yeah. Well, I mean, Bucktooth Bob Balaban, he was the one that liked to spit on himself the most.

And that was really more of a dental problem than a musical choice. Right, right. Where's it going to go? So I know that in the earliest days, they had what they called cutting contests, right? Right. The cutting contests, of course. And that was kind of what led to the tsunami. Yeah. The cutting contests, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was, let me do my thing and then you try to top it. Yeah. And we pass it around and we pass it around. Right. So folks are just working up their mouthfuls of saliva. The competition was high. They don't like to call it a competition, but it is.

And I know Jack Teagarden had a cold that night. Oh my God. And his cold, his sinuses were unusually large, which is... Yeah, he was a big man. Yes. Yeah, with great cavities in his facial structure. And, you know, there's a little talk that he may have had some surgery done and sort of prepared for the night, knowing that Louis Armstrong's Verse 3 volcano was coming down the pike. Yeah, yeah. How was Teagarden going to top that? But he did. Whether or not it was surgically enhanced, I don't know. I don't think anyone is to blame for the moment. The final cut was going to Louis.

And when they all turned out towards the audience to just create this blast of, you know, I was going to say sound, but it wasn't sound. Yeah. The hype was so high. The audience was on their feet and screaming. Clarabelle's dress was being whipped over her head. And not just by Clarabelle. Charlie Chaplin was screaming at the top of his voice. I have a voice. I have a voice. He was just screaming over and over. Sounds like he had some issues of his own to work through. And I'm glad there was a place for that. And music does, that brings it out in people. It does.

It does bring it out. Ironically, the doctor, the surgeon that had actually... Oh, Teagarden's doctor? Yeah. And Josephine Baker's. He had done procedures on both of them. Oh, her glands. Yeah. He was an OSD, an officer of saliva doctor. They called him Dr. Love because the musicians loved him and the audience loved the musicians. And so he was standing front and center. This is my masterpiece. This is my masterpiece. Getting a little taste of his own medicine. Well, he was about to. So there we are. First of all, talk us through that glorious moment. Folks had heard that Louis Armstrong had prepared himself both mentally and physically.

That he had been sucking on lozenges all night long just to work up those great gobs of spattering Armstrong spit for verse three, the volcano. But something went horribly wrong. Danno, for myself, I don't like to think of this as it having gone wrong. I like to think of it as the gods of jazz having orchestrated a moment that could never be repeated. I mean, yes, lives were lost. People drowned. Yeah. And a lot of people blame Louis Armstrong for this, but the reason he was never charged is because within the audience, not jazz players, but their own salivas had been so awakened.

The adrenaline was going high. People were screaming their personal issues out as loud as they could from the audience. Charlie Chaplin started it, and everyone followed along. It was like the personal expression of jazz. That's it. So what the musicians were doing on stage, the people were getting out of their own psychic demons in the audience. But the spit is flying. It was coming already from the audience. It was building up when Louis turned out to face them and give what was known as the elephant blow of the third verse of the third song of Volcano. I mean, we think about climate change today.

We think about icebergs melting. But we don't think about Jack Teagarden's surgically altered, saliva-filled cavity head exploding on stage that night before that audience. If Dr. Love had considered that the skull has a vibration point. We know this now, Claire. We know this now. I mean, it became a gag, you know, opera singers shattering a glass. But at the time, Louis reached such a pitch on that trombone, everybody who'd had work done on that stage, their skulls shattered. We lost Jack Teagarden, whose head full of saliva alone was responsible for the sad death of Carol Lombard in the front row.

Josephine Baker, whose projectile glands, I mean. Yeah, could not withstand the pressure. And it was a painful death for Claraboe. I mean, the force of those jets. I mean, she got a nice micropeel before the last layer was gone, but not a pretty sight. So Louis Armstrong probably is the name that everybody knows of the real early days of death rattle jazz, even if they're not a jazz aficionado. My real question is, for the modern-day listener, if we listen to some of his earliest music, what will we hear? Will we hear music or will we hear bubbling and gurgling?

You'll hear bubbling and gurgling, which were also two of the ones that were killed on the night of the tsunami. They were not actually jazz players, they were tap dancers. Oh, bubs and gurgs. Yes, yeah, yeah, just magnificent. And they did not actually drown. They slipped so hard on the stage when the tsunami erupted. Yeah, but they danced their way out. It was like the band on the Titanic. Bubs and gurgs were known for just go, go, going. And I thought it was quite lovely in the same way that music of the time was based on saliva, that their tap dancing featured a lot of water on the knee.

Yeah, and they wore pumps, of course. Well, folks, I did not dream that we would be releasing the floodwaters through the dam of musical history. I do want to thank my very special guest, Claire Sarah, for illuminating this little, little-known corner of the red-hot jazz scene of the 1920s. Yeah, keep it cool, keep it wet. The Expertise Spelled Wrong podcast is free and, like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.co and follow us in your favourite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener we know you are.

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