Fate Marable, Louis Armstrong, and the Big River

Red Allen, Tommy Ladnier, Baby and Johnny Dodds, Pops Foster and many others giged with bandleader Fate Marable, who ran the bands for the Streckfus excursion boats that plied the Mississippi. Not the least of them was Louis Armstrong, who played with Marable on-and-off for three years. William Howland Kenney's excellent Jazz on the River (University of Chicago Press) and Dennis Owsley's City of Gabriels, The History of jazz in St. Louis, 1895-1983, (Reedy Press) both make it clear that music played on the riverboats during their heyday(c. 1910s-1930s) was arranged dance music of a medium tempo, with apparently little chance for a musician to "get off." So, for New Orleans jazz musicians, playing in a Marable band on a Streckfus steamboat was not a chance to hone his hot chops, but it was nonetheless a desirable gig. Especially after the closure of Storyville in 1917, even those in the upper end of the New Orleans jazz hierarchy were struggling. The boats provided a steady paycheck–$35 per week with room and board, $45 without. They also provided a heavy dose of discipline; some of it arbitrary and racist and some of it seen as useful, i.e., the discipline of reading music. Louis Armstrong first played on a Streckfus steamer in 1918