FEBRUARY 21, 1949, was a banner day for Armstrong. That afternoon, he appeared on a radio broadcast of the Bing Crosby Chesterfield Show done at the Marine Memorial Theatre in San Francisco. Armstrong and Crosby were old friends from the 1920s; Armstrong had profoundly influenced Crosby’s singing (though Armstrong wasn’t above stealing a few Crosbyisms from time to time himself). Crosby helped Armstrong land a major part in the 1936 film Pennies from Heaven, beginning a professional relationship that lasted through numerous other film, television, and radio appearances. The two had unbeatable chemistry when sharing a stage, and Armstrong always spoke positively about Crosby offstage. During a party at Armstrong’s house on New Year’s Eve 1952, a friend mentioned seeing Crosby. “Ah, give that buzzard my regards there! Shove him my regards, Daddy. That’s my boy, there,” Armstrong happily intoned. But when Armstrong’s friend Slim Thompson said that Crosby “didn’t do much for Negroes,” Armstrong responded, “Well, he did as much as he could. You know, sometime there’s no opening for them ofays to do something for a spade, you know? He did something in his way. He kept colored help, a spade chauffeur.” Later in the same conversation, when Thompson pressed him a bit more, Armstrong said, “Oh man, I like everybody. Oh, man, shit. There ain’t nobody in the world who can help you. Like they say, God help the poor but not the poor and lazy.”1
On this February broadcast, Armstrong and Crosby confirmed their rapport on “Lazy Bones,” a Johnny Mercer–Hoagy Carmichael composition that could have been cringe-worthy with lesser talent. Armstrong and Crosby transcend the lyrics completely, establishing the friendly, easygoing patter that was to become the hallmark of all their future duets. Armstrong sings each one of his lines with such an over-the-top delivery, the audience screams with laughter every time he opens his mouth. Later in life, Crosby called Armstrong “a genius. Never be another like him, and never was one before in so many ways—his command of the instrument, his style, the things he could do in addition to playing the trumpet, his singing, the things he sang. They were so infectious. He was probably the most infectious performer I think I’ve ever seen in addition to being a genius.”2
On the same day as the Crosby show, the new issue of Time magazine hit newsstands, featuring Armstrong on the cover with a quote of his about jazz that would go on to be one of his most famous sayings: “When you got to ask what it is, you never get to know.” It was quite a feat for a jazz musician to make the cover of such a prestigious news magazine, Armstrong being the first to do so. But Armstrong had even more exciting news which he couldn’t wait to tell Time: “There’s a thing I’ve dreamed of all my life and I’ll be damned if it don’t look like it’s about to come true—to be King of the Zulus Parade. After that I’ll be ready to die.” The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a mainstay in New Orleans for decades, had selected Armstrong to be its king at the upcoming Mardi Gras festival. Armstrong might have been thrilled by the notion, but it would be a move that would make younger blacks squirm. As Zulu king, Armstrong would be made up in blackface, except for the area around his eyes and lips, which were painted white. As Thomas Brothers has written, “The first King Zulu wore a lard-can crown, blackface makeup, ragged trousers, and carried a banana-stalk scepter. ‘Zulu’ was a common racial slur, used right alongside ‘nigger,’ ‘darky,’ ‘coon,’ and ‘monkey.’ ”3 As Time reported, “Among Negro intellectuals, the Zulus and all their doings are considered offensive vestiges of the minstrel-show, Sambo-type Negro. To Armstrong such touchiness seems absurd, and no one who knows easygoing, non-intellectual Louis will doubt his sincerity.”4 Armstrong was sincere because he knew that being King of the Zulus was wickedly double-edged. “From the start, the Zulu ritual was loaded with double-edged symbolism,” Brothers writes, adding, “King Zulu is not an African but rather a minstrel parody of an African. His true object of satire is Rex, the white Mardi Gras king. He does everything that Rex does, only upside down … Rex is protected by the city police, King Zulu by his comical Zulu police. It is a classic example of carnivalesque release of class tensions with the special twist of African-American signifying.”5 Armstrong might have known and appreciated the subtext involved in being King of the Zulus, but to anyone outside of New Orleans, the sight of Armstrong in full Zulu regalia was disturbing.
In a letter to a friend, Armstrong touted his assumption of the honor just before the actual parade: “The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club was the first colored carnival club to get together in New Orleans. The club has been together for generations and consists of the fellows in my neighborhood. The members were coal-cart drivers, bartenders, waiters, hustlers, etc.—people of all walks of life. Nobody had very much, but they loved each other … and put their best foot forward making a real fine thing of the club. I am a lifelong member and it was always my ambition to be elected King of the Zulus some day.”6
Armstrong was officially crowned King of the Zulus during the intermission of a concert at Booker T. Washington Auditorium on February 27. After playing an appropriate “Where the Blues Were Born in New Orleans,” Armstrong performed one of his old Decca big-band hits, “Shoe Shine Boy.” He probably hadn’t played it in years, but he revived it at a supremely passionate slow tempo, delivering the lyrics as a way of possibly telling his hometown fans that even though he had become so popular, appearing in movies and on the cover of Time, he would always remain a humble, hard-working “shoe shine boy.”7 The next night, Armstrong played a concert in Baton Rouge and received a plaque of honorary citizenship and a miniature key to the city from Mayor deLesseps Morrison at City Hall. Morrison asked Armstrong about a quote the trumpeter made in Time about how once named King of the Zulus, he’d be “ready to die.” Armstrong replied, “Well, I don’t want the Lord don’t take me literally!”8
On Tuesday, March 1, besides the blackface makeup, he wore black-dyed long underwear, a grass skirt, a red velvet tunic with gold sequins, gold shoes, a green velvet cape, and a red-feathered, cardboard crown for the twenty-mile parade. DownBeat estimated a crowd of more than two hundred thousand along the route of the parade, as Armstrong’s old Hot Five records blared from radios and public-address systems. Throughout his trip on the lead float, Armstrong drank one toast after another of champagne and tossed painted coconuts into the crowd (one hit a new Cadillac!). Armstrong was having a ball, but it was rough going for the other All Stars, especially for Big Sid Catlett and Velma Middleton, whose float eventually collapsed as the day went on.9 The procession didn’t end until five p.m., and as Nick Gagliano wrote, “As Louis dashed for his waiting automobile, the souvenir-hungry crowd descended upon the tinseled float and stripped it of everything.”10 With barely a chance to rest, Armstrong was whisked away to play one more concert at the Booker T. Washington Auditorium that night, though his voice was so shot from celebrating, he had to stick to playing the horn. Playback magazine dubbed the concert an “ill-timed event,” saying, “Mardi Gras night in New Orleans finds nearly everyone exhausted, or engaged in activities to which they have been committed for months. As a consequence, Louis, king of the trumpet and king of the Zulus, played to a handful of people.”11 Once the concert started, Playback reported, “he played as if there had been 5000 persons in the hall. The fast show pieces of the concert gave way to the tunes and tempos reminiscent of the Hot Five. As one spectator said: ‘It was a million dollars’ worth of music for a two-bit crowd.’ ”12
Armstrong’s turn as King of the Zulus was covered in great detail by the media, but once it was over, criticisms predictably rolled in. George C. Adams, a black attorney from Chicago, spoke with the most venom: “I can’t imagine a man who has risen to the heights as Louis Armstrong has, who would stoop to such foolishness and thus disgrace all Negroes. It is unbelievable that an internationally famous musician would insult the face which he should dignify. When I consider the depths to which he has descended in being King of the Zulus, I am reminded of a Bible phrase, ‘The dog has returned unto his vomit and the sow that was washed has returned unto her wallow.’ ”13 An unpublished note written by jazz critic George Hoefer in 1949 contained more of Adams’s criticisms. Hoefer wrote, “[Adams] declared that ‘Negroes should file an injunction against that club (the Zulus) restraining it from disgracing all intelligent Negroes, not only of New Orleans, but of the entire United States.’ Petitions to this effect are said to be circulating among New Orleans Negro intellectuals.” Hoefer added, though, that not everyone was as ashamed as Adams. “On the other hand,” he wrote, without naming names, “some Negro leaders are not at all perturbed by the Shrove Tuesday doings. They consider them a broad satire on the extremes of pageantry which afflict the New Orleans white folks at the beginning of Lent.” Armstrong himself was described by Hoefer as being “somewhat disturbed” about all the criticism he received in the black press regarding his appearance as King of the Zulus. Armstrong would always view the Zulu parade as one of the highlights of his career, but he did have to deal with some things that unsettled him on his return to New Orleans: the segregation and racism of his own hometown. Of one of the New Orleans concerts, Leonard Feather would later remember, “I went to the concert, and I saw black spectators seated on the left and the center aisles, while the whites were over on the right aisle. But on the stage I saw Louis and Jack Teagarden with their arms around each other radiating interracial brotherhood singing a duet. And I saw the white officials shaking hands with Louis on stage and congratulating him and paying tribute to his talent. I saw Louis bursting with pride when they gave him an honorary citizenship and the keys to the city. But I also knew that there were hundreds of places to which those keys would never admit him.”14
By the summer of 1949, television was slowly becoming a more common-place luxury in many Americans’ homes. After conquering films and radio, Armstrong was at home in the new medium, too, making an appearance on a June episode of Eddie Condon’s Floor Show, the first regular showcase for live jazz on television. The episode was hosted by pianist Joe Bushkin, as Condon was ill and in the hospital. Armstrong began the show by sending the guitarist his best wishes before introducing a special guest, his adopted son, Clarence Hatfield Armstrong. Clarence was the son of one of Armstrong’s cousins, who died while giving birth. Armstrong, only fourteen years old at the time, “adopted” Clarence and took care of him for the rest of his life. A nasty fall at a young age injured Clarence’s brain, leaving him mentally disabled. “That fall hindered Clarence all through his life,” Armstrong recalled. “I had some of the best doctors anyone could get examine him, and they all agreed that the fall had made him feeble minded.” Because of this, Armstrong took extra-good care of Clarence, always making sure he had, as Michael Cogswell has written, “a place to live, clothes, pocket money, and even companionship.”15 Armstrong spoke with pride as he introduced Clarence: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is really a treat for me and a thrill. I’d like for you to meet my adopted son. He’s a youngster that I raised since [he was] about one year old. My cousin died and she left him right with me. It looked like I was the only one that could scrape up a few nickels in the family to keep him moving and keep his jaws jumping! Here he is, he’s a grown man now. I want you to say hello to none other than Clarence Armstrong and he wants to say hello to Eddie Condon.” Armstrong then pridefully asked Clarence some questions about how he was enjoying New York and such. Clarence gave short yet enthusiastic answers that left no doubts about his mental disability. It’s an incredibly sweet moment and it demonstrates the kind of love Armstrong had for Clarence, who died in a Bronx nursing home in 1998.
The Condon broadcast turned out to be something of a sad occasion, though, for it would mark one of the last times Armstrong ever played with Sid Catlett. Armstrong’s favorite drummer was in poor health during his tenure with the All Stars, and DownBeat announced that he had become so gravely ill with heart and kidney trouble that he would have to leave the band on doctor’s orders. He ended up staying in Chicago, passing away backstage at the city’s Opera House on Easter Sunday, March 25, 1951. “No one ever had in mind that Sid would die,” said Arvell Shaw. “I’ll never forget: we left the hotel and got on the bus to go to the job. Louis said, ‘Big Sid died.’ He didn’t say another word; he really was feeling it. The gig that night was the quietest we ever made. Losing Sid was a shock to everybody.”16 Armstrong played with many great drummers during his long and storied career, but he never locked in with anyone else as much as he did with Catlett. All the recordings they made together, from the big-band days to the All Stars, are testaments to one of the greatest partnerships in jazz. Catlett was really the driving force of the early edition of the All Stars, and though many broadcasts exist, it’s a shame that that working band only recorded once in the studio. The greatness of the All Stars with Catlett was finally made immortal when Decca released the 1947 Symphony Hall concert later in 1951, an album that still has the ability to awe today, chiefly because of Catlett’s exceedingly creative, wonderfully swinging, and always surprising drum work.
As it turns out, Armstrong was probably itching for a change anyway when Catlett grew ill. “He got so he played everythin’ except the drums,” Armstrong said in 1956. “He played the chicks, he ran with the cats, he played the horses, played the numbers an’ when he should have been concentrating on ’proving up his drumming, he just wasn’t there. I talked to him ’cause I was very fond of Sid, but he’d come late for rehearsal time after time. He’d arrive just as we was in the middle of our opening number ‘Sleepy Time Down South’ an’ he’d start to tighten up his drums—scrnch, scronch, scraanch—just as we was playin’ real pretty.”17 In more reflective times, Armstrong would admit how much he admired Catlett. While listening to recordings of the 1947 Town Hall concert in his Corona, Queens, house, Armstrong took time to talk about Catlett on one of his homemade tape recordings. “Of course, we’re all very sad about Big Sid, we all understand that. I must say that this whole reel is dedicated to him because Sid was with us when we made all these tunes, see? And I still think he’s the greatest drummer that ever picked up a pair of sticks. And thousands, I’d say millions of people will agree with me, even to listen to these records. The man was a born genius.”18
Catlett’s long-term replacement, William “Cozy” Cole, a veteran of bands led by Benny Carter, Stuff Smith, and Cab Calloway, was no slouch himself. He had worked with Armstrong on a couple of recording sessions, including a V-Disc session of 1944 and the first Victor session after the Town Hall concert in 1947. According to Cole, Joe Glaser called him first to be the All Stars’ drummer, but he turned it down because he didn’t want to go on the road. When Catlett became ill, Cole was called again and joined this time, with Catlett’s blessing. Cole always admired Armstrong’s playing, and on his first night, he expected a rehearsal or discussion of what Armstrong wanted, but it wasn’t to be. Cole remembered:
So when I went in, the drums were sitting right up front, and Barney and Jack were standing right next to me and so we’re about to open and Louis [said], “Hey, Cozy, how you doing?” “All right, Louie,” you know, and I figured that some time during that time he’d say, “Well, Cozy, we’re going to do this, we’re going to play this, we’re going to play this.” So I asked Barney, I said, “Barney, what are we playing?” I said, “Louie hasn’t said anything to me,” and Barney said, “Man, don’t pay Louie any mind, because Louie ain’t going to tell you nothing.” So Louie just looked at me and said, “Cozy, man, we don’t have time to just say a lot of things up there. Just cock your ear and straight ahead.” And that’s what I did for about a couple of weeks until I learned all the tunes, and it was peaches from then on. It was just wonderful, we never rehearsed, and I was with him five years.19
Earl Hines was impressed by Cole. “So full of personality, and a good salesman, he was an excellent replacement. He and I soon began to run around and spend a lot of time together. We would rehearse with Arvell Shaw to get the rhythm together, and we ended up with a very good rhythm section that made us stand out.”20 Truth be told, the All Stars’ rhythm section took a hit when Catlett left the band. Cole was an exciting soloist, with the ability to build up to a more ferocious climax than Catlett on any of his recorded drum solos with Armstrong, but he didn’t have as well-stocked an arsenal of tricks. He mainly swung on the cymbals without any of the creative accents and subtle shadings Catlett provided, lending something of a drier sound to the band. And he didn’t exactly hit it off with Armstrong when he first joined the band. Arvell Shaw remembered Cole and Armstrong having great difficulty working together in Cole’s early days: “They used to argue continuously about tempo and things.”21
Armstrong was probably in no mood for disagreements with his own band members, because he was still constantly agitated by the ascendance of bebop. Perhaps working again with the famously antibop Condon again in the summer emboldened him, because soon after, Armstrong’s criticisms of the new music gathered steam. In the summer, Armstrong told a luncheon for the Anglo-American Press Association that Bebop “comes from the sticks. Those kids come to a passage they don’t dare tackle, so they play a thousand notes to get around it. It’s ju-jitsu music. Nothing but squeezing and twisting notes.”22 Armstrong now found himself nostalgically yearning for the music, not of his youth in New Orleans, but of the swing era, just a few years earlier. About swing music he said, “It was nice. It didn’t do no harm. You can say that. It didn’t do no harm.”23 He continued to make headlines with a Leonard Feather “Blindfold Test.” He was far from impressed by Bill Harris’s boppish trombone solo on Woody Herman’s “Keeper of the Flame,” saying, “This thing looks like everybody is trying to kill themselves. That kind of music is liable to start a fight!” Armstrong recognized it as Woody Herman’s band and made a telling remark: “I guess musicians would dig this more than the untrained ear.” The younger Armstrong would sometimes hit hundreds of high C’s just to impress the musicians in the house; but now, more mature, he clearly wasn’t into that anymore. He praised music that was made for the public, music made for dancing, such as Benny Goodman’s “Sometimes I’m Happy.” His highest marks went to Guy Lombardo, whom he praised to much surprise in the February 1949 Time cover story. Upon hearing Lombardo’s “Always,” he said, “Give this son of a gun eight stars! Lombardo! These people are keeping music alive—helping to fight them damn beboppers … They’re my inspirators!”24 The now legendary Birth of the Cool sessions had just taken place, featuring Miles Davis’s trumpet with arrangements by the likes of Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan. By Mulligan’s “Jeru” Armstrong was not impressed: “This is all right according to the current trend, but not for no jazz fan. The trumpet just about saved it. Two stars.”25 But Armstrong was not entirely closed minded. About Tadd Dameron’s piece “John’s Delight” he said, “You wouldn’t call this strict bebop … This is the best of the bop things I’ve heard so far; it’s more on the order of polished Dixieland. We could play a piece like that.” Holding his own generation to the highest standards, he had harsh words for his old friend Kid Ory’s recording of “Creole Bo-Bo”: “This is all right; nothing much. Two-and-a-half.”26 Armstrong commented to Feather about his younger audiences: “You know, it’s gotten to a point where our band goes into places and we find they’ve lost all respect for the musicians. We played a university date in Seattle and they had to advertise that we wouldn’t play bebop. Then we went in there and played ‘Tenderly.’ And everybody sat down and relaxed.” Later, he added, “Maybe the younger people don’t appreciate some of the things we’re doing. Okay, so we’ll play for the old-time people; they’ve got all the money anyway!”27
Armstrong spent the end of summer 1949 at the New York nightclub Bop City, an event that captured the attention of the Chicago Defender, erstwhile denouncers of bop. A Defender article stated, “Ironically, the site of his return to Broadway will be Bop City, the last existing stronghold of bop in this country. Not only will Armstrong openly defy the bop addicts there, but he is confident he will swing them to swing—and even further back to ragtime.”28 Indeed, Armstrong scored a moral victory when he brought his band into Bop City and promptly broke more box-office records. “They’re thinking of changing the name of the joint to Pops’ City since Ol’ Satchmo’s half-century-old chops blew up 30 years of ephemeral jazz memories Thursday,” Hal Webmen wrote. “He came out the winner and still king in the territory which has been ascribed to citizens of oo-bla-dee. This crowd, which was estimated at over 2,000 persons, mobbed Bop City to pay tribute to and come away enthralled by the artistry and showmanship of Louis Armstrong.”29 It was the biggest opening night in the history of Bop City and of the venue’s previous incarnations. But Armstrong had to face a new criticism: too much clowning. By Armstrong’s success at Bop City, George T. Simon, who had waxed hot and cold about Armstrong through the years, wasn’t impressed. “At Bop City, he was mugging like mad, putting on the personality, bowing, scraping and generally lowering himself as a human being in the eyes of his worshipers,” Simon wrote. “There is no need for a man as great as Louis to have to resort to such behavior.”30 Simon apparently had been blind to Armstrong’s stage presence of the past twenty-five years. Armstrong’s showmanship in the 1940s was nothing new; now it seemed perversely out of place to jazz critics newly accustomed to the straight-faced boppers (Dizzy Gillespie excluded). Armstrong never strove to change his ways; he wanted only to entertain his audience. But critics no longer expected entertainment from a true jazz musician. “The Armstrong success at Bop City was a great commercial victory for Armstrong and for Dixieland,” Simon concluded. “Too bad that it couldn’t have been an equally great triumph for music.”31
If Simon didn’t like what he saw and heard at Bop City, he probably became even more distressed when he heard Armstrong’s latest recordings. After a two-year absence from recording studios, Armstrong signed a new contract with Decca in 1949. His producer would be Milt Gabler, an old friend who originally ran the fabled Commodore Music Shop in New York City and was now producing records for the likes of Bing Crosby, Louis Jordan, and Billie Holiday. Though a true advocate of jazz, Gabler also knew how to make pop records, which made Joe Glaser happy. “Glaser never asked to see the material,” Gabler recalled. “He used to say, ‘Give him a Top Ten hit!’ That’s what he wanted … and pop music … And the Decca sales organization, they loved Louis, but they also wanted pop tunes, or a plug tune. In those days, you had more than one record of a song when a publisher really worked on it, and as soon as Louis would make a pop tune, his record would go on all the coin machines immediately. And get air play.”32 So it was decided, for popularity’s sake, that Armstrong would cover other people’s hits, a shrewd commercial gambit. Gabler then proceeded to put the All Stars on hold. Even though they were a popular live attraction, their records for Victor had made no dent on the charts. Armstrong would be backed by studio big bands or by strings, making his records more appealing to that sector of the population averse to trendy, loud, cacophonous music. With the formula in place, Gabler asked Armstrong to play three record dates in September 1949. The first would pair him with a small big band made up of old friends and former associates and conducted by fellow trumpeter Sy Oliver; the next would find him backed by popular arranger Gordon Jenkins’s choir of mixed voices; the third would be collaborative with fellow Decca star Billie Holiday. Each of the three sessions represented a kind of record Armstrong would make for Decca over the next decade.
For the September 1 session, Gabler chose two current hits, “Maybe It’s Because” and “I’ll Keep the Lovelight Burning (in My Heart),” made popular by Dick Haymes and Patti Page, respectively. Conductor Sy Oliver, who also did the arrangements, was best known for his work with the Jimmie Lunceford and Tommy Dorsey big bands. Oliver had once sat in awe in the trumpet section behind Armstrong when Zack Whyte’s band backed him in 1928, and he would become a frequent recording partner over the next decade. Armstrong got sympathetic support from Oliver’s studio band which included trumpeter Buck Clayton, tenor saxophonist Budd Johnson, and young bassist Joe Benjamin. “I always liked Louis Armstrong,” Benjamin later recalled. “You listen as a youngster and all of a sudden you’re an adult. And then one day you find yourself in a Decca recording studio with him and find he’s one of the nicest people on this earth.”33 “I’ll Keep the Lovelight Burning (in My Heart)” is something of a minor classic; it features not only a tremendous trumpet solo but a lovely vocal full of Crosbyisms and ferociously sublime scatting, leading to an “Oh yeah” that would indelibly be associated with Armstrong in the years to come.
On September 6, Armstrong returned to Decca’s studio, this time backed by a choir and a studio band of first-rate musicians, arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins. Jenkins was primarily known for his signature emotional string writing (though he didn’t use any strings for this Armstrong session) and his excellent compositions, including “Goodbye” and the very popular Manhattan Tower suite. Jenkins felt very comfortable around jazz musicians and worshipped Armstrong like an idol. Gabler saw the combination of the two men as a no-miss proposition: “Everyone wanted to work with Gordy, and as you look back, he was making history back then,” he remembered. “He’s the one who brought background vocals into combination with musicians. The Armstrong sessions really typified that.” Jenkins was overwhelmed. “I cracked up,” he said. “I walked into the studio, looked over there, saw Louis and broke down. Cried so hard I couldn’t even see him. Later that night I came home, and I was so excited I couldn’t eat my dinner. Then I started crying again. I took it pretty big.”34
After a gorgeous cover of Frankie Laine’s hit “That Lucky Old Sun,” Armstrong was presented with “Blueberry Hill,” a song originally performed by “The Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry, and recorded by Glenn Miller in 1941. Effectively backed by the choir, Armstrong sang a whole section of special lyrics created for him by Jenkins. His voice never sounded smoother—you can practically hear him smiling—and the background choir was pure sunshine. The result was one of Armstrong’s biggest sellers and a song he would perform almost every night for the rest of his life to huge ovations. “It just got played so much more than anything he’d had,” Jenkins said. “He was well known around the world, but he’d never appeared with a chorus before, or with strings, that kind of treatment.” Los Angeles disc jockey Chuck Cecil added, “It took Louis out of the jazz idiom and gave him a piece of pop music. I’ve always thought it not only changed his career but prolonged it. Made him more popular than he’d ever been in his life.”35
Armstrong now had a popular record on his hands, but jazz critics noticed something else about his session with Jenkins: there was no trumpet playing. The trend continued on his next date for Decca, on September 30, but this session had been planned as a singing date, for Armstrong and Billie Holiday. Armstrong was one of Holiday’s primary inspirations as a singer, and though they had appeared in public together before and in the film New Orleans, this would be their first—and, as it turned out, only—recording together. The studio band, again arranged and conducted by Sy Oliver, included Billy Kyle on piano, Armstrong’s first recording with a man who would play in his band for over a decade. Armstrong and Holiday’s first song, “You Can’t Lose a Broken Heart,” is a charming one, featuring the two at their vocal peaks (Armstrong’s entrance is sublime), but there’s barely any interaction between the two legends. However, on the second tune recorded that day, the cute “My Sweet Hunk o’ Trash,” the couple interacted perhaps a little too much, Holiday singing straight as Armstrong jokes around her. Holiday assumes the jocularity when Armstrong takes over. During Holiday’s closing stop-time section, she sings, “Now when you stay out very late / It sure makes me mad to wait,” and Armstrong replies, “How come, baby?” However, he spaces “how come” so closely that, with his natural rasp, he sounds as if he’s saying “Fuck ’em, baby!” Columnist Walter Winchell, for one, went apoplectic and demanded the record be pulled. Decca pulled it and issued a new version with a dubbed-in, clearer “how come,” but today, most reissues contain the original.36
In October of 1949 the All Stars embarked on their first full tour of Europe, playing forty-eight concerts in nine countries over six weeks, a very lucrative tour indeed. Variety reported, “Offers from Spain, Portugal, and Egypt had to be turned down for lack of time. Unit’s asking price varied between roughly $2,500 and $3,000 per day, depending on situations, with payment in dollars deposited in U.S.”37 Publicist Ernie Anderson went along for the tour and vividly recalled some odd advice Joe Glaser gave his star client before the tour started. “I remember Joe Glaser instructing Louis, ‘Whatever you do, don’t sing. These are all foreigners. Remember, they don’t understand English.’ Louis nodded gravely.” Armstrong might have nodded in Glaser’s presence, but Anderson added, “It should be noted that Louis completely ignored Joe Glaser’s instruction not to sing. He opened every concert [by] singing Fats Waller’s paean to the racial mood in America, ‘Black and Blue.’ It was always marvelously received. He sang a lot on every show.”38
The tour got off to a bang when the band couldn’t land in Stockholm because of a crowd estimated by Time at forty thousand, with thousands more waiting in line to get tickets for one of Armstrong’s three concerts there.39 “My trip to Europe was something that I shall never forget,” Armstrong said. “My Gawd how could I … Of course the boys in my group thought they’d be well received as far as their music is concerned but they never thought the enthusiasm and great love for their music and people thrilled to meet them in person awaited them … And for me—I felt that I’d met a lot of the good, ol hot club fans and the good, ol worshippers and stuff like that … But when they’d stand up and cheer and stand in the rain to get autographs after the concert—My My—isn’t that the Cat’s whiskers? … Tee Hee …”40
The tour continued in hectic fashion, with multiple concerts sometimes taking place in multiple cities in the course of a single day. After Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, the band headed to Italy for ten days, arriving first in Milan, where Armstrong heard a young Italian singer named Ray Martino. Impressed by him, Armstrong asked Martino to join the band for the rest of the trip, and the two men remained in touch for years after. Armstrong particularly loved Martino’s rendition of an Italian song called “Luna,” playing it for his friend the producer George Avakian when Avakian visited Armstrong’s home in 1953. At the Louis Armstrong House Museum, a private tape exists of Armstrong in his home playing along with the tune. Though the record is about as far from hot jazz as possible, Armstrong always loved a good melody, and he responds by performing a gorgeous obbligato to Martino’s Italian vocal, as well as a heartfelt solo. When Martino was played this tape years later, he cried.
From Milan, the band headed to Trieste, where they played a benefit for United States troops, the first by a U.S. group since World War II. Arvell Shaw remembered Armstrong’s problems with drummer Cole coming to a head at Trieste:
Anyway, we were in Trieste, and just before the curtain went up—you know, we were on stage, we had these white, beautiful tuxedos. And we were standing there and none of the Italian stagehands couldn’t speak a word of English and they were waiting for the signal. And all of a sudden, Louie looked back [at] Cozy, he said, “Man, for chrissakes, try to keep tempo for one time!” And then Cozy said, “What are you talking about, ‘one time’? I’m the best drummer,” you know … and the argument got hot and the Italian stagehands are waiting for the curtain to go up. And all of a sudden Louie put his trumpet down and ran, grabbed Cozy, and pulled him off the drums, and they started rolling over the stage, swinging and fighting!”41
According to Shaw, Armstrong and Cole went at it for a while until the Italian stagehands, believing this to be the start of the show, began to raise the curtain! Armstrong and Cole realized what was happening, let each other go, and managed to be at their instruments smiling as the emcee introduced them. “They went through the whole first set,” Shaw said, slapping his hands together, “and it started all over again!” Listening to the Trieste concert today, one hears no animosity on the bandstand, and indeed, the reception the band receives is overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Fortunately for the group, time heals all wounds, and soon enough Armstrong and Cole learned to put their shaky start together in the past. Armstrong always seemed to enjoy Cole’s playing, Cole never had a bad word to say about Armstrong, and the two men kept in touch cordially after Cole eventually left the band years later.
In Rome, for Armstrong and his wife Lucille, a special audience with Pope Pius XII was the high point of the European tour. “Of course our meeting the Pope—that I shall never forget,” Armstrong said. “He’s such a fine man … Speaks everybody’s language … And talk about anything you wish to talk about … He thought it real great that we played for the people of Rome and they enjoyed it well … He has a very pleasant smile. He gave us a medal each that’s blessed by him.”42 Naturally, Armstrong couldn’t resist being Armstrong. Ernie Anderson, who went along with the Armstrongs for this summit meeting, remembered Armstrong lighting a joint on his way to his papal audience. And while waiting for the Pope with Lucille and Anderson in a small room, Armstrong broke the silence by announcing, “I’ve got to shit.”43 Once the Pope arrived, he engaged Armstrong in a conversation legendary for more than sixty years. “He asked me, he said, ‘You got any children?’ I said, ‘Well, no, Daddy, but we’re still wailing!’ He said, ‘But I’m going to pray for you, I’m going to pray for you!’ ”44 Once the Pope left, Armstrong proceeded to the bathroom to do his business, but not before running out and calling to his wife, “Lucille, Lucille, come in here and see the Pope’s toilet.”45
Also while in Rome, Armstrong and the band took time to appear in an Italian film, Botta e Risposta, performing “That’s My Desire” with Middleton and “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue.” Earl Hines even got to feature “Boogie Woogie on St. Louis Blues.” Hines must have been gratified by this, for he was feeling a little bitter about all the attention Armstrong was receiving. “When we were traveling in Europe, I was a little upset that he had so little time for us,” Hines said years later. “I naturally remembered the years when we used to run around and hang out together. But later I found out that it wasn’t his fault. He was a giant of jazz, a great personality, and he set a wonderful example and did wonderful things in Europe.”46
After Italy, the band still had to play Paris, where they had been a hit in 1948, stopping at Nice along the way. Of the European concerts, Armstrong said, “They all were just too beautiful to mention with just a few words.”47 It was a remarkably successful tour, though a grueling one. Because of high demand, the number of concerts originally scheduled had to be doubled during the trip. The band had only one day off the entire six weeks. Armstrong loved Europe and said he wanted to tour there yearly, but he also made it clear that he could never permanently reside there, because “the musical times be slipping by you and then when you realized it—sure ’nuff—you’ll find you’re ten years behind the time.” That was why Armstrong kept up such a grueling pace. “That’s one reason I’m glad I am able to make those hard one night stands … And make ’em very happily I do … Then too—I get a chance to keep my chops up by blowing nightly … The more I blow the longer they’ll go,” he wrote.48 Armstrong concluded this Holiday article by saying, “To all the countries that we played or passed through … I voice the opinion of my entire group and I’ll speak for them in saying for them as well as my wife Lucille and myself … We are more than grateful to you for being so very kind to us and appreciating our music and our efforts the way you did.” But when Time asked him how this European tour compared to the one he did in 1934, he said, “I didn’t have my thermometer, but they was both a bitch.”49