IN EARLY 1953, Barney Bigard received a phone call. “I had been resting for a period of six or seven months,” he remembered, “working the Hollywood studio scene, when the phone rang one day and it was Glaser’s office. They wanted to know if I would consider coming back with Louis. I guess by then I had had my share of sitting around, so I told them yes.” When Bigard returned in mid-February, he found Armstrong still playing “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” as his theme and “Indiana” as his opener. “Nothing had changed,” he said, but added, “In a way I was glad to be back with the old gang. One thing was that I noticed we had made a whole lot of new fans.”1 Armstrong’s steadily growing fan base was partly attributable to his popular recordings for Decca. So it came as no surprise that his first two Decca sessions in 1953 stuck to the winning formula: covering hits of the day, including Hank Williams’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” Much of the credit for the success of that record must go to Sy Oliver’s arrangement, which, in contrast to the stiff, countrified two-beat of the original, struts and nods to Jimmie Lunceford–style swing and to “Yes Indeed” for churchlike soul. As pianist Marty Napoleon described the session: “[Joe Glaser] gave me a lead sheet on ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ … and … said, ‘Run this over with Louie, ’cause we’re going to record it with Sy Oliver.’ So I played it over myself and I said, ‘My God, what kind of song is this?’ It was like a flat, hillbilly song, you know what I mean? And then Sy came in with this arrangement, and that thing was swinging like crazy. It was magnificent, man! It was wonderful.”2
That session proved to be Napoleon’s last for a while; he was replaced by Armstrong’s old friend Joe Bushkin just in time for one of the biggest debacles of Armstrong’s career: an All Stars tour of the United States paired with Benny Goodman. The idea for the tour came from concert promoter, record producer, and jazz impresario Norman Granz, who was working with famed record producer John Hammond at Mercury Records at the time. Hammond, Goodman’s brother-in-law, had asked Granz to consider a Goodman engagement. Granz had responded, “Well, if the conditions are right, sure, that’s my business.” Granz met Goodman at the Colony, an upscale restaurant in New York City, wearing tennis shoes and carrying a Jazz at the Philharmonic program featuring some of the musicians he represented, among them Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Lester Young, Ella Fitzgerald, and Coleman Hawkins. Goodman looked at the program and said, “You expect me to play with this circus?” Insulted, Granz responded, “Benny, Lester Young plays better saxophone than you play clarinet. Coleman Hawkins would blow you out of the room. Ella sings better than anything you can play. So, go fuck yourself, and forget the tour.”3
Hammond was not deterred, insisting that Granz work things out with Goodman, though he told him, “Listen, I talked to Benny, and he doesn’t like you.” Goodman was willing to do a tour, but not by himself. Granz proposed Louis Armstrong and Goodman approved. Granz, however, would not stay on Goodman’s good side. For a Goodman and Armstrong concert at Carnegie Hall, Granz raised the usual two-dollar ticket price to five. An irate Goodman called Hammond, who told Granz, “Benny is furious. He doesn’t want to play, because he thinks you’re trying to destroy him by charging high prices.” Granz replied, “Look, I got a contract. He’s getting paid even if not a single person comes in. And if I want to charge a hundred dollars a ticket, that’s my business. So he’s going to have to accept it.” “Well,” Granz recalled, “the concert sold out, like, in two minutes. And that bugged Benny because now he felt he didn’t need Louis.”4
What Goodman didn’t know was that Armstrong had his own bones to pick with him. The concert tour had been arranged by New Year’s Eve 1952, when Armstrong threw a party for his friends that was recorded. Three days earlier, Armstrong’s former bandleader Fletcher Henderson had died at age fifty-five. In the 1930s, Henderson’s arrangements had provided the sound that propelled the Goodman band to unprecedented heights of popularity and led to Goodman’s being crowned “the King of Swing.” When Henderson died, Armstrong had sent a floral arrangement in the shape of a piano and attended the funeral, though he was late. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said at the New Year’s Eve party. “Fletcher’s my man. He did have me for the first time in the big band era. You’ve got to appreciate.” Minutes later, someone mentioned Benny Goodman’s presence at Henderson’s funeral. Apparently, Goodman had read a few telegrams of condolence before vanishing. Armstrong didn’t think that was right, and was amazed when Hammond told him at the funeral that Goodman had said he had no idea if Trummy Young was any good even though Young had played and recorded with Goodman in 1945. “I mean, [Goodman] just don’t know nobody, he’s overrated all his life. The man’s been spoiled all his life.” Venting some more, he continued: “Shit, he didn’t remember, we got a goddamn tour. I don’t care if I ever play with the sonofabitch.”5
With both camps bitter, the tour was set to commence in April 1953. Goodman scheduled a rehearsal for his big band, which included many of the musicians who had played with him in the 1930s—Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Ziggy Elman, Helen Ward, Georgie Auld—two days before the first concert in New Haven, Connecticut, on April 15. During the rehearsal, Armstrong and the All Stars showed up blowing “When the Saints Go Marching In,” accompanied by a large entourage. Goodman didn’t take kindly to Armstrong’s appearance. “Louis was, of course, a gregarious man, so everybody greeted him and there was bedlam for about twenty minutes,” Hammond wrote. “Benny took it as long as he could, then asked Louis if he would mind sending his entourage out so the rehearsal could continue. Louis took offense. He considered himself a co-star, although actually Goodman was the boss.”6
Goodman was determined to prove as much, prima donna that he was. “That character kept us sitting around there for three hours while he carried on rehearsing his own band,” Barney Bigard remembered. According to Goodman’s guitarist Steve Jordan, “Louis’s feelings were so hurt he actually started to cry. Georgie Auld went over and patted him on the back, and Louis said, ‘That son of a bitch! When he was a little boy in short pants, I used to let him sit in with my band to learn how to play, and now he lets me hang around and wait like I’m nobody.’ ”7 Armstrong wasn’t about to wait much longer. Barney Bigard recalled the occasion:
I went to Louis and said, “What’s with this guy? When is he going to get to our bit so we can get out of here?” “You know, Pops,” said Louis, “I’m thinking the same damned thing that you’re thinking.” So Louis went up on the stage and got a hold of Benny not physically speaking though, and started calling him everything but “the child of God.” He was cussing him up and down, but good. It tickled me when Louis told him, “I remember you in Chicago when you were sitting under Jimmie Noone, trying to learn something. Now your head’s got fat.” So Louis just stormed out of there in a big hurry and we went right along with him.”8
According to Goodman trumpeter Al Stewart, Goodman ended the rehearsal by saying, “OK boys, tomorrow morning at Carnegie Hall, 9 o’clock.” Armstrong grumbled, “Only place I’m gonna be tomorrow at 9 o’clock is bed.” The following day, Armstrong and the All Stars refused to show up at Goodman’s next rehearsal. When Armstrong eventually showed up later in the day, he told Goodman outright that he wasn’t going to play with the clarinetist’s band. A frustrated Goodman complained, “Jesus Christ, let’s get this goddamn show on the road.” Armstrong sat down, looked at Goodman, and said, “Man, I been trying to get this show on the road for two days now. But it seem like some asshole done snuck in here somewhere.”9
Armstrong and Goodman also fought over who would go on first. “So, Benny insisted that he close the show, and Louis open the show,” Granz said, but he knew this wasn’t the right format. “You have to turn it around,” he said. “The big band, and then Louis does what he does, and then Benny might want to jam a number with Louis. That would have been the format. But Benny refused to play.”10 Armstrong opened their first joint show in New Haven, but he stayed onstage for fully an hour and twenty minutes instead of the forty he had agreed to play. When it was Goodman’s turn on, there was nothing he could do to win the audience back. “When he put Louis on first he could hardly get on afterwards,” Trummy Young said.11 Upon concluding his set, Goodman called out to Armstrong to join him in a duet. Armstrong did not comply.
The next night, Goodman and Armstrong were scheduled to play at the Newark Mosque. In an effort to make peace, Goodman invited Armstrong to meet him at the venue a little early so they could settle their differences. Armstrong didn’t, and as showtime neared, he still was nowhere in sight. “Benny was backstage, fuming,” Granz remembered. “ ‘What’s going on?’ I said, ‘Listen, I don’t know what happened to Louis, but you’re going to have to go on.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to open the show.’ I said, ‘There is no show. You’re going to have to go out there.’ You know, he took a big bottle of scotch, and … if you’ve ever been backstage … there are usually body-length mirrors before you go out, so the singer can fix her hair or whatever. He took that bottle and threw it against the mirror, and shattered the glass everywhere. And he went on.” It turned out that Armstrong had been hiding in his car outside the whole time. He asked Granz, “Is he on?” When Granz replied in the affirmative, Armstrong prepared to close the show. Meanwhile, “Benny was so angry, he lost himself,” Granz remembered. “He was taking all the choruses, calling numbers wrong. Everything was a disaster.”12 Armstrong may have pulled a fast one by forcing Goodman to open for him, but he was still unhappy enough to complain to Joe Glaser about how Goodman was treating him. That was all Glaser needed to hear. According to Georgie Auld, Glaser “laced into Benny the next night at the Mosque Theater. ‘Where do you come off? Who the fuck do you think you are? When this man lands in Europe there are 35,000 people waiting for him. Can you do that? How dare you tell him what to do! He’s a legend! He’s bigger than you!’ He screamed and screamed at him.”13
Next on the schedule were two dates at Carnegie Hall. Backstage, Armstrong and Goodman went at it again, this time about Armstrong’s showmanship. Goodman had been confounded by audience reaction to Armstrong’s clowning with Middleton; they loved it. “That guy ain’t doing nothing but clowning out there,” Goodman fumed. “That’s not music, you know!” Goodman was not amused by Middleton’s splits, and asked Armstrong to remove it from the act. Armstrong would do nothing of the kind and instead encouraged Middleton: “You go ahead and do it, honey.”14 She performed her routine at both concerts. The reviews of Armstrong’s playing and of some of his comedic turns, so despised by Goodman, were glowing. The New York Times intoned: “He also had his strut, his wonderful hoarse voice and his usual high spirits. He and his crew put on a show that was as much comedy act as music: some of it, between us, is cornball showmanship. But he can still blow that horn, and his All Stars have the know-how to keep up with him.”15 Goodman and Armstrong had finally agreed to take turns at Carnegie Hall: Goodman played the first half of the 8:30 show; at the midnight show, Armstrong opened with eleven straight numbers. He would return for another long set after Goodman’s. Howard Taubman of the Times reported that the audience was rapturous: “Clapping, stamping and roaring with joy, there were moments when it seemed as though the sound barrier would be broken.”16 According to Hammond, “In both [concerts], Benny played atrociously … According to the Saturday papers it appeared that Goodman had returned in all his glory. Those of us in the audience who knew better … recognized that his performance was less than glorious.”17
One such person was Bobby Hackett. “Oh, did he sound terrible!” Hackett said of Goodman. “Just couldn’t do anything. It was embarrassing. Jesus, if I’d been able to do so I’d have stopped the show already. He sounded like someone first learning the instrument—you know, practicing.” Armstrong knew Goodman was flailing so he went in for the kill. “And then Pops came on and shook that place,” Hackett continued. “Oh, I never heard him play like that.… Was he angry? He was out to get Benny Goodman.” This was even true backstage. When a dazed Goodman brushed off fellow clarinetist Peanuts Hucko, Armstrong saw the slight and called Goodman on it. “You no-good mother, who do you think you are, to hurt a kid like that?” Armstrong shouted. “You’re nothin’!”18
Though the following evening’s performance in Providence, Rhode Island, was his smoothest so far, Goodman started looking for a way out. Before a performance at Boston’s Symphony Hall, Granz received a phone call from Joe Glaser telling him Goodman was canceling the tour because of a bad back. A disbelieving Granz rounded up a few members of Goodman’s band. “I said, ‘Tell me what happened.’ ” As one of the musicians would have it, Goodman had called a meeting of the band and said, “Listen, I’m going to feign that I’ve got a bad back. The tour will be cancelled, and we’ll go out alone in another tour.”19 Other rumors quickly swirled: Goodman had suffered a nervous breakdown; DownBeat reported that he had had two heart attacks in Boston. “Pops came close to killing him without touching him, just playing,” Hackett remembered.20 Goodman abandoned the tour and fired Hammond. Granz refused to panic. “I went to Glaser and I said, ‘Look, I’m going to keep the tour. I’m going to keep the band. It will be a big band, and it will be Gene Krupa’s band. It’s going to be a Gene Krupa tour.’ Gene was happy. He got paid. And I said, ‘Don’t cancel any of the halls that we got.’ And we made the whole tour.”21
Through the years, different accounts of the Armstrong-Goodman debacle have been proposed, but perhaps the most scathing can be heard on an undated private tape held at the Louis Armstrong House Museum. It records a conversation among Armstrong, his wife Lucille, and an unknown friend. The subject of Goodman comes up and Armstrong pulls no punches. Armstrong begins by relating how Joe Glaser once suggested that Armstrong join Goodman for a finale. “Joe Glaser said to me, ‘Go on out there, Benny Goodman might need you’ … Need who? Kiss my ass. Shit. I thought you knew show business. Scared to hurt Benny Goodman’s feelings. Hurt my feelings—I’m there, too.” Armstrong recalled a conversation with Goodman: “This sonbitch tells me, ‘Well, you know, I’m so forgetful, I forget that you’re on the bill with me.’ I say, ‘Goddamn! How forgetful can a cocksucker get? All that horn I’m playing, you kidding?’ I say, ‘Hell with me, respect that trumpet, that’s all.’ Right, motherfucker, never bothered me, just respect the horn. The world does, right? So you respect it.”
Vis-à-vis a finale, Armstrong had once had an idea: he and the All Stars would play their set; the curtain would then rise to reveal the Goodman orchestra, and Armstrong would join them for two or three of his hits. That was how Armstrong and Gordon Jenkins ended their joint appearances at New York’s Paramount Theatre in 1952, and it always electrified the audience. When he told this to Goodman, Goodman replied, according to Armstrong, “I have contracts to do all the staging here.” In his retelling, Armstrong vents exasperation, “Oh, man, shit.” When his friend asks, “Benny Goodman said that to you?” Armstrong responds, “Yeah, that cocksucker! I said, ‘Well, that’s nice, Daddy. You take those contracts and shove them right up your ass.’ ”22
Armstrong never fully forgave Goodman for his impertinence. “The best that can be said is that Benny believed he was the boss,” Hackett said. “And Pops didn’t take that, as you know. Benny tried it on him, and Pops was so mad at that guy, man. I don’t remember all the details but Lucille told me when Benny was up in New Jersey he wanted Louis to come and have dinner with him, wanted them to try and make contact of some kind with each other. Louis wouldn’t go, said to her: ‘Are you crazy? I don’t want to have dinner with that motherfucker.’ ”23
During the summer of 1953, after the aborted tour, Armstrong found time to appear in the film The Glenn Miller Story, a bowdlerized Hollywood dramatization of the bandleader’s life, starring Jimmy Stewart, who would say that “during the shoot, I had the best jazz teacher in all America: Louis Armstrong. That incredible man really is jazz personified.”24 In the film, Armstrong appeared in a nightclub scene, performing “Basin Street Blues.” Marty Napoleon was back on piano, though he appeared not to have had much say in the matter. “In 1953, I saw Joe Glaser in New York City. I met him on the street and he said, ‘You’re coming back to the band.’ I said, ‘What!?’ He says, ‘Yes, and we’re going to go to California and we’re going to make a movie.’ I said, ‘Really? That’s great!’ He said, ‘Well, they wanted just Louie, Teddy Wilson, and Gene Krupa, and Teddy Wilson wanted one thousand dollars day and I said forget about him, we’re getting Marty Napoleon.’ I said, ‘Am I getting a thousand?’ He says, ‘No, no!’ I said, ‘Hey, if I’m going to replace him, you can give me some part of that, right?’ Of course, I didn’t get that.”25
Arvell Shaw remembered the fun the band had on the set. “We did our part in three days,” he said. “On the set with Gene Krupa and Louie and … Ben Pollack, it was like a circus on the stage. And the director said, ‘My goodness, I didn’t know Louie was this type of guy!’ ’Cause Louie was sharp, man—the jokes were coming a mile a minute. The band was on the stage—you know, it takes time to set up the sets and get the smoke in for the nightclub scene—we were supposed to be in Connie’s Inn. And man, the jugs were flying and Gene Krupa was telling jokes and by the time they shot the scene, man, the band was stoned out of their skull and all the cast, the cameraman was stoned, Louie got everybody stoned!”26 “Basin Street Blues” is notable because it had been a trombone feature for the All Stars since their inception, though Armstrong always managed to take a brilliant short solo. “Basin Street Blues” would soon become an Armstrong feature, as well as one of his most popular live performances.
The Glenn Miller Story reveals an Armstrong who had by then ballooned. He addressed his weight with a new product he had begun to take: a laxative called Swiss Kriss. Armstrong always had a laxative fixation. His mother had instilled in her kids that they be “physic-minded.” Armstrong was a fan of Pluto Water, which came in big glass bottles—difficult for travel. Still, this didn’t stop him from drinking three bottles a day and encouraging his friends to try it. Napoleon, who was given Pluto Water early in his tenure with the All Stars, could only say, “Thank God I had the day off!” But in 1952, Lucille Armstrong read two books written by a self-proclaimed food scientist, Gayelord Hauser, that changed her husband’s life forever. One was titled Be Happier, Be Healthier, and the other was Diet Does It: Incorporating the Gayelord Hauser Cook Book. With his lack of medical credentials, some dismissed Hauser’s works as bogus. But he did have followers galore, so his books were best-sellers. Hauser championed the wonders of wheat germ and yogurt, among other foods, but also of laxatives. Soon he was promoting a product from Switzerland, Swiss Kriss. As Armstrong recalled, “Then here come this book—a health book written by Gayelord Hauser. When I read down to the part where he recommended some ‘herbs’—herbal laxatives—I said to myself, ‘Herbs—hmmm, these herbs reminds me of the same as what my mother picked down by the tracks in New Orleans.’ Right away I went to the health store and bought myself a box of Swiss Kriss and took a big table-spoonful—make sure it worked me the same as other laxatives. Yes it did. Wow! I said to myself, yes indeed, this is what I need from now on—and forsake all others.”27
Armstrong would recommend Swiss Kriss to anyone and everyone he met. “Joey Bushkin took my place once in the band and Louie gave him this packet of Swiss Kriss,” Napoleon said. “And it looks just like marijuana, you know, they’re like tea leaves. Joey thought it was marijuana so he smoked it! And he was two days in the toilet. He said, ‘He almost killed me! I didn’t know what it was, he didn’t tell me what it was’ … So he thought he was helping him; he almost killed him!”28
In October 1953, Armstrong entered the Decca studios yet again, but now with Tutti Camarata and his powerhouse big band, the Commanders. His chops in outstanding condition, the session featured some of Armstrong’s best trumpet work of the decade, energized as he was by Camarata’s tight and strong unit, powered by the drums of the band’s co-leader, Ed Grady. Two Christmas songs started things off, “Zat You, Santa Claus” and “Cool Yule,” each more or less a novelty, but Armstrong imbued them with tremendous enthusiasm and good humor. From there, the session went from strength to strength. There was the extraordinary remake of an Armstrong composition, “Someday (You’ll Be Sorry).” Originally recorded as a ballad in 1947 and played at a relaxed pace in concerts through the years, the new version swings hard. Camarata wrote a brassy chart, completely obliterating the song’s gentility. Armstrong’s muted opening trumpet reading of the melody is fairly straight, but after the vocal he comes back to improvise and plays out the rest of the track, playing the melody an octave higher and hitting high C’s with ease.
The next song recorded was Billy Reid’s “The Gypsy,” made famous by the Ink Spots and well known in jazz circles as a tune recorded by Charlie Parker, strung out on drugs, at the “breakdown session” of July 29, 1946. It would become one of Armstrong’s favorite showpieces. He had featured the song with his big band; a July 2, 1946, live version survives, with a vocal by Leslie Scott, and even though Armstrong didn’t play on it, he clearly liked the melody, quoting it on “Save It, Pretty Mama” at the historic Town Hall concert of 1947 as well as on some versions of “Basin Street Blues” from the same period. Of “The Gypsy,” Milt Gabler recalled: “Louis loved the song … He loved the lyric content, and he loved the tune of it, and he just loved to play it. And he came in; he said he wanted to record it. So we recorded it. That’s all. It … was good for him wherever he worked, but it wasn’t a hit single record for him. And Louis liked to make hits because it makes anybody feel good when you get on stage and people yell for a song, you know. You know … you’ve done something. But he knew—he loved to sing and he loved to do ballads, and the sadder the song the better.” Armstrong’s solo on the Decca record is yet another stirring improvisation, rich with invention. Armstrong assessed his performance: “Well, you know, that record I think is one of my finest.”29
The session closed with “I Can’t Afford to Miss This Dream”—taken at a relatively slow pace—a piece Armstrong recorded as a favor to a friend, Lillian Friedlander. On one of Armstrong’s private home recordings made on December 31, 1952, Armstrong can be heard asking Friedlander to sing her composition, and tells her that he plans to record it. “You really like it that much?” Friedlander gushes, “I love you!”30 The session’s arrangement features a charming Armstrong vocal and a trumpet solo that, in only twelve bars, tells a passionate, dramatic story as it builds to a climax.
By the fall of 1953, the All Stars began fielding an entirely new rhythm section as Arvell Shaw, Marty Napoleon, and Cozy Cole each left the band. Shaw had left again in July, replaced this time by “the Judge,” Milt Hinton, one of the most beloved figures in jazz history. After a fifteen-year stint with Cab Calloway, Hinton became one of the top studio musicians in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, recording with everyone from Billie Holiday and Woody Herman to Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra to Bobby Darin and Barbra Streisand. It is estimated that Hinton has appeared on more records than anyone else in history, yet, sadly, he never did a studio recording with the All Stars. On live broadcasts from Hinton’s tenure in the band, his big sound, sense of humor and powerful swing proved ideal.31 Cole was replaced by the relatively unknown Kenny John, then performing with Marty Napoleon’s trumpeter uncle, Phil Napoleon (who was booked by Joe Glaser). John had first performed at the age of three and was touring by ten. “Well, Kenny’s been around,” Armstrong told an interviewer. “He’s just a kid. About twenty-five, he looks like he’s sixteen. He’s played with Raymond Scott. You know, he plays some hard music.”32 Milt Hinton described him as “a short, thin, pale, blond kid who’d been fairly successful as an actor in Hollywood and was also a good drummer. But he had some serious problems. He’d gotten his way most of his life and that’s probably why he’d fallen into some bad habits which were destroying him.”33 Barney Bigard summed him up as “a real young guy who drank plenty, but could play good drums.”34
Napoleon’s replacement was Billy Kyle, who had worked on a number of Armstrong’s Decca sessions. Kyle was best known for his stint in bassist John Kirby’s small group in the 1930s, but he became primarily a studio musician in the late 1940s and even spent three years in the early fifties as the pianist for Broadway’s Guys and Dolls.35 Kyle’s piano style was extremely elegant and nimble, of the Earl Hines school; his solos swung and his accompanying skills were perfect for the band. A talented arranger, Kyle also sketched many of the informal arrangements the band played and soon after joining became the band’s official music director. And on stage, Kyle was a valuable asset. Not possessed of Hines’s ego, he never tried to show anyone up on the bandstand. “In my opinion, Billy Kyle was the best piano player Louis ever had,” wrote Bigard. “I think he was perfectly suited to the All Stars.”36
With the new personnel in place, the reconstituted group made a hugely successful tour of Japan at the end of 1953. DownBeat wrote, “Initial reports on Louis Armstrong’s tour of Japan indicate that Pops is getting his biggest reception ever from the jubilant Japanese. Joe Glaser cabled back that it was the most fabulous greeting Louis has ever received—even exceeding the European one. Receiving the largest guarantee of anyone who had ever visited Japan, Louis earned an average of $2,500 a night against 50 percent of the gross.”37 Of the tour, Armstrong himself said, “Japan—how many people would think the Japanese would dig our music the way they did? Why, all the trumpet players in Japan gave a dinner for me. Took my shoes off, you know, and sit down at this funny table and have a big meal—nothin’ but the trumpets.”38
According to George Pitts in the Pittsburgh Courier, Armstrong had to work hard at first to win the Japanese public over. “Louis and his combo were playing before an extremely non-emotional Japanese audience on his recent tour of Japan,” Pitts wrote. “Noticing no response from the listeners, Satchmo asked why. When informed that the Japanese were naturally a passive people, Satch really began to blow. One Japanese began patting his foot; another clapped his hands. Soon practically everyone in the auditorium joined beats with the rhythmical rovings of the jazz-time group. To which Louis coyly remarked, ‘Cats is cats anywhere.’ ”39
Such a line might have been good for a few laughs, but upon his return to the United States, the laughter in Armstrong’s life came to a crashing halt. Within a few weeks, he would be contemplating his desire to ever pick up his trumpet in public again.