ARMSTRONG CLOSED OUT his triumphant tour of Japan with a typically jovial broadcast on New Year’s Eve. Hours later, Armstrong, Lucille, and the All Stars would be on a flight back to the United States, stopping in Honolulu for a nightclub engagement that would culminate in a benefit for the March of Dimes. The return from Japan on January 1, however, was anything but joyous. “Mrs. Lucille Armstrong, wife of jazz musician Louis Armstrong, was arrested at her Waikiki Beach hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, by Federal narcotics agents on charges of smuggling marijuana cigarettes into the island from Japan,” read a Jet magazine dispatch.1 Customs inspector Walter McKinney found one cigarette and two cigarette stubs, totaling 14.8 grams of the drug—approximately five dollars’ worth—wrapped in a piece of paper, hidden inside Lucille’s eyeglasses case. Lucille immediately posted a $300 bail, though she’d be forced to appear at a hearing on Tuesday, January 5.
The story was picked by various news services around the country in addition to Jet. A blurb about the case appeared in Time magazine, which added, “Charged with trying to smuggle marijuana, Lucille contended that the whole case was crazy because she doesn’t even wear glasses.”2 According to another article, “She was arrested on a warrant signed by John R. Kent, U.S. customs agent. The warrant charged her with ‘fraudulently or knowingly’ importing narcotics in violation of a section of the code dealing with smuggling.”3
Though the incident made national news, its coverage was reduced to small items in a number of newspapers and magazines, probably because it dealt with Armstrong’s wife instead of the trumpeter himself. If Louis had been busted, it probably would have been front-page news, but anyone who followed Armstrong’s career closely could have guessed the marijuana in question belonged not to Lucille but rather to her husband. Armstrong had been smoking marijuana almost daily since the 1920s and occasionally celebrated it in song titles such as “Muggles” in 1928 and “Song of the Vipers” in 1934. In 1930, Armstrong was busted for smoking it in California, but he escaped from that controversy relatively unscathed. “From that time until this, my public and I haven’t had anything but the greatest love and respect for each other,” Armstrong said in 1954.4
But in 1930, Armstrong’s reputation was still on the rise with the general public. At the start of 1954, he was at the peak of his popularity and was already being touted as an “Ambassador of Goodwill” due to his tremendous popularity overseas. His arrest for possession of narcotics could have had quite a damning effect on his career. In fact, it had an almost immediate negative effect on the remainder of his stay in Hawaii. According to Milt Hinton, Armstrong and the other All Stars were searched thoroughly after Lucille was arrested. “Even though Louis and the guys were clean, they got held for hours,” Hinton later wrote. “I saw Louis the next day and he was absolutely furious, ranting and raving about being stopped and how badly he’d been treated. ‘I spread good will for my country all over the world and they want to put me in jail,’ he yelled.”5 Armstrong spent his evenings in Honolulu performing at the Brown Derby, a nightclub run by Lee E. Sartain and his wife, Joann. When news spread about Lucille’s arrest, the Sartains tried to cancel the rest of Armstrong’s engagement as well as the March of Dimes benefit. Armstrong personally fought to be allowed to perform at the event, as is clear in a letter he wrote soon afterward to Joe Glaser. “Joann Sartain actually refused to let us play the March of Dimes benefit. The day before the benefit, I got Joann in the corner and I demanded that she call those people up and give them the go sign for us to appear. She said she’d talk it over with Frenchy. I said, ‘No! You okay the benefit and then talk it over with Frenchy.’ Because Frenchy might have agreed with her.”6 Armstrong was allowed to play the benefit, telling the press, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Four thousand people showed up, and according to writer Richard Gima, “Perhaps the biggest hit with the audience was the King of Jazz Louis Armstrong and his band. Introduced by Jimmy Walker, master of ceremonies, Ol’ Satchmo, who said he possesses a ‘sawmill voice,’ sang and played for almost an hour.”7
Meanwhile, Lucille had to spend the entire next day in court, which was not easy for Louis to watch. “While his wife faced the court, her husband sat in the front row of the spectators’ section, looking glum,” a local report read. Lucille, on the advice of her lawyer, Hiram L. Fong, pleaded guilty. “Mrs. Armstrong did not have conscious possession of the marijuana,” Fong told the press. “I advised her she had a chance for an acquittal in a trial, but she agreed it would be better for herself and the Government in the matter of expense if she pleaded guilty to a technical violation.”8 In the end, Judge Jon Wiig only fined Lucille $200, but he also gave her a break, which Armstrong was eager to report to Glaser: “Anyway … he told her he’d take one hundred dollars from her two-hundred-dollar fine because her husband was so kind to play such a real wonderful concert for those kids, who were all so very happy over the whole affair, you dig?”9
Lucille Armstrong’s ordeal was over, but the drama in Louis’s life hadn’t quite finished. The Sartains still claimed their business was hurt by the negative publicity over Lucille’s arrest and they wanted Armstrong barred from playing in Hawaii.10 As the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported, “Lee E. Sartain, owner of the Brown Derby, where Armstrong and his group appeared, said the argument originated between himself and Armstrong over a dispute involving money payments under their contract and ‘bad publicity’ caused by the arrest of Mrs. Armstrong for smuggling $5 worth of marihuana into Hawaii. ‘We went to the union more or less as a mediator,’ Mr. Sartain explained. ‘And he [Armstrong] flipped his lid.’ ”11
Sartain wasn’t kidding. The blurb in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin didn’t go into any details, but Armstrong was happy to share the specifics five days later in a letter to Joe Glaser. “This woman [Joann Sartain] threatened Lucille something terrible the night before we went to the union, even all during the trial.” Armstrong was upset because while Lucille’s case was over, Sartain wouldn’t let it go, even though, according to Louis, it “didn’t have any bearings on the [new] case whatsoever. I made this point very clear to the [union] president, which he absolutely ignored … I asked him to have Mr. and Mrs. Sartain produce the nightly receipts from the night we opened since he claims he lost money, which everybody ignored.” Tired of being mistreated, Armstrong’s temper flared up. “The president kept on slinging mud at Lucille ’cause she’s colored, I’m sure, until I got so mad, I stood up and asked Mrs. Sartain, ‘Have you ever been a prostitute?’ And before she realized it, she said, ‘Yes!’ ” Armstrong couldn’t contain his laughter when he read this portion of his letter into his reel-to-reel tape recorder, adding, “And that did settle it.”12
This was too much for union president I. B. Peterson to handle. The local papers reported: “During the meeting, the association’s officials ‘asked for’ Louie’s card denoting him an honorary member of the local union, and got it.”13 Once again, Armstrong fills in the details: “Pres flew up and told me to turn in my Honolulu card. I threw it at him and told him to wipe his ass with it. P.S. His ego was more hurt when he saw the card I threw at him was not theirs, it was an honorary card from the Japanese local and union!”
At that point, Armstrong had had enough. “That’s when I took Lucille by the hand and said, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ As we were leaving, I could hear the president apologizing to Mrs. Sartain. When they passed their decision I told them, including Frenchy—who was as yellow and scared as a rat—the decision is unfair and Frenchy lied on you just like a scared lackey-dog. I said, ‘To hell with all you bastards!’ Mrs. Sartain, her husband and Frenchy sitting there like three crackers. When I passed that fast one on Mrs. Sartain by quickly making her admit she’s a whore, I immediately turned to the president and said, ‘You see, she is no better than my wife,’ and walked out on all of them.”
With the ordeal over, Armstrong was upset about being barred from playing in Hawaii, because his fans had showed him nothing but support during his week there, which included receiving an honor from the Honolulu Hot Jazz Society on his final night in town. “My fans, look how nice they were to Lucille and I,” Armstrong told Glaser. “Even the gent, the narcotic agent who arrested her, he acted like he didn’t want to make a statement the day of her trial. There she was standing there in front of the judge along with her lawyer, the D.A. and all the rest. She looking like a million dollars to me. I’m very proud of her, most much. More so now than I’ve ever been during our 11 years of marriage.”14
When Armstrong left Hawaii, he was grateful that Lucille was exonerated and that his Hawaiian fans stuck by him. But this brush with the law had been a little too close for comfort. On January 10, Louis and the All Stars arrived in San Francisco, where they played a week-long engagement at the Club Hangover. On the evening of January 16, Louis, alone in his hotel room, composed a letter to Joe Glaser. When he was finished typing the letter, Armstrong read its contents out loud into his reel-to-reel tape recorder, making sure to have a copy of his words for his private record. In the letter, whose contents have never been published till now, Armstrong told Glaser his side of Lucille’s arrest, as well as the ensuing trial, as quoted above. He also vented about Frenchy Tallerie, who was quick to side against him in his turmoil. “What a man. What a man you trust,” Armstrong said of Tallerie disgustedly. With the preliminaries out of the way, Armstrong’s tone turned gravely serious as he made an important request to his manager:
Now, if there is one thing you must realize, and it’s very important—and I’m going to get serious with you for one moment—I don’t know how long do I have to go through this shit, being around deceitful, connivin’ and dogass people such as Frenchy and all the shit that you just think I can’t live without. But I feel that’s the way you want it, and since I have to tough it out, I will, even if I die trying. But I will tell you this—and from here on down to the end of this letter, you must read very careful—I have never been as serious with you, Mr. Glaser, as I am about to get right now. You must immediately gather all the friends that you know of, just—whatever you got to do about it, I mean, I’m going to leave it up to you, you know who to get. I don’t care who you get, I mean, you have your way about things. But there’s one thing I ask of you and that is, Mr. Glaser, you must see to it that I have special permission to smoke all the reefers that I want to when I want or I will just have to put this horn down, that’s all. It can be done. Nothing impossible, man.
Armstrong threatening to put his horn down for good is the ultimate example of his using his leverage against Glaser. His devotion to Glaser knew no bounds, but he also knew that without him, Glaser’s business would take a serious blow, so he wasn’t afraid to remind him that he was a pretty special performer, one that Glaser couldn’t live without. “Do you ever stop to think what I have to go through to keep that note—which thrills millions all over the world—right up there where it belongs? Do you ever stop to realize that? No one else boasts it. No one in the universe. They don’t have the courage, they don’t have—well, I don’t know, they just don’t do it. Now, there’s not another man in the whole world can boast it. Do you realize that?” Armstrong wasn’t kidding; he was going through a period of particularly strong blowing, as evidenced by a broadcast from the Club Hangover from the very same evening Armstrong composed this letter. On that broadcast, the All Stars swung like never before on “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Armstrong even felt good enough to call “West End Blues,” a song that in its landmark 1928 performance, to some, epitomized young Armstrong. But more than just music, Armstrong also knew about the happiness he brought his fans all over the world. Later in the letter, Armstrong added, “What colored or white, if only a few, are doing as much for humanity’s sake as I am?”
Armstrong then made it clear that marijuana—or any other drug—didn’t have anything to do with his greatness as a musician. “Of course, it’s not the reefers in the manner, but since I do like to have a little drag or so—I don’t drink and have never once thought of using a needle, freezing my nose, as the users express it. To each his own, quite naturally. Not even have I ever smoked hop. None of that crap. But I can gladly vouch for a nice, fat stick of gage, which relaxes my nerves, if I have any. When I am through my work, I’m no clown, I’m no criminal. I tend to my own business.” To Armstrong, life as a black musician in the United States wasn’t easy; the marijuana was a way to take the edge off, to relax and let all of his troubles drift away. To Armstrong, it was a medicine, and he didn’t understand why it was illegal. Incidents like what happened in Hawaii only made the dangers of smoking it that much clearer. He told Glaser, “A hard-working salary man such as myself, I have to go through the whole world with this horn, making millions happy, and at the same time ducking and dodging cops, dicks, immigration, stool pigeons, so forth—why? ’Cause they say it’s against the law?” Armstrong added, “Why shouldn’t I have something with me that relaxes my nerves, concentrate on ideas of importance for my horn, my happiness, yours, Lucille’s, the public, there’s a lot more reasons … I can’t afford to be … tense, fearing that any minute I’m going to be arrested, brought to jail for a silly little minor thing like marijuana.”
Armstrong was particularly upset over what Lucille had to go through in Hawaii. “Can you imagine anyone giving Lucille all of those headaches and grief over a mere small pittance such as gage, something that grows out in the backyard among the chickens and so forth? I just won’t carry on with such fear over nothing and I don’t intend to ever stop smoking it, not as long as it grows. And there is no one on this earth that can ever stop it all from growing. No one but Jesus—and he wouldn’t dare. Because he feels the same way that I do about it.” As long as it remained illegal, Armstrong feared that scenes like what happened in Hawaii would continue to repeat themselves. “I’m telling you just like the fellow who told his wife, when she caught him in bed naked with another woman,” Armstrong continued. “He told her, ‘Honey, when you set a trap for me and bait it with cunt, you will catch me every time.’ Just like this incident; it happened once or twice, it will happen again. And that, my friend, is what you shouldn’t want to happen.”
Armstrong once again felt the need to remind Glaser of his talent. “Just a little freshen-up in your memory: you have within Louis Armstrong a million-dollar attraction. Whether you [and] Frenchy think so or not, I should always be vain enough, if you want to put it thataway, I should always believe that I am. I came from a long ways and I notice through my travels the love and warmth of a million people can’t be wrong.” Armstrong then reiterated his threat to retire. “I think it a better idea to put the horn down and pitch shit with the chickens after all. It’s just Lucille and I. It just isn’t worth being kicked in the ass by jerks, especially because we’re colored people.” As he continued, Armstrong made it clear to Glaser that many who smoke marijuana could go “forever” without thinking about lighting up, but he just wanted insurance against any future “pressure.” If Glaser could use his connections to get Armstrong a permit to smoke it—“Nothing impossible where you’re concerned, you know that”—Armstrong would be forever grateful and continue performing.
“So get me that paper, man!” Armstrong insisted. “And stipulate all over the world, I must not be humiliated again, ever, as long as I’m blowing trumpet for you. Europe should be easier because they always call me the ‘Ambassador of Goodwill.’ Most of these guys who are giving us musicians a hard way fail to realize that their teenage children, straight on down to the little babies, like Satchmo’s horn. Not only like it, they love Satchmo’s horn and respect it. They don’t give a damn what I smoke.” Armstrong then lightened the mood, saying, “I really don’t feel like I’m asking too much. I’m not asking y’all to buy marijuana for me. Just keep it straight so I can buy it.” Armstrong then jokingly quoted what he figured Glaser’s reaction to be: “No, no, not that!” he said with a laugh, “I’ve given you heart failure enough just talking about it! If I should feel that I’d like a few drags, it’s just got to be all right, that’s all. Because gage ain’t nothing but medicine. Everyone that’s in [J. Edgar] Hoover’s regiment knows gage is not habit-forming, or dope. It’s a damn shame as much as I try to live just to make the whole world happy, they have never been able to prove marijuana as a narcotic.”
Nearing the close of his missive, Armstrong brought up the issue of guns. “I’m not so particular about having a permit to carry a gun. All I want is a permit to carry that good shit. But if all of those bullshittin’ guys such as some of the cats around New York are permitted to carry guns, why in the hell the law should not only let me have a permit, but they should buy my gage for me! That’s a joke, son. One can die quickly from a gun. A man carry a gun, he’ll shoot it; yes he will, especially if he gets mad enough. Gage, just the opposite, you dig? You’ll stay present, no one could make you mad. So dig that. Regards to the staff. As ever, your boy, Louis Satchmo Armstrong.”
This letter to Glaser is one of the most stunning documents Armstrong ever composed. Not only is it fascinating because it allows Armstrong to discuss why marijuana means so much to him, but it’s also important in illustrating how Armstrong could manipulate Glaser into getting whatever he wanted, something that should surprise those who believe Armstrong to be the subservient one in his relationship with the man he always called “Mr. Glaser.” Armstrong was confident in his talents and knew what he brought to the table and wasn’t afraid to use that as ammunition to get what he needed from his manager.
Of course, the aftermath of this letter is unknown; Armstrong never referenced it again, and there is no record of how Glaser reacted. Whether or not he was able to use his connections to get Armstrong a “permit” to smoke marijuana is unknown, but the fact remains that Armstrong continued to smoke it until near the end of his life, and there was never another incident of him getting in trouble because of it. Glaser might have pulled some strings, but that doesn’t mean he ever learned to live with Armstrong’s marijuana use. “Joe, all those years he managed Louie, was scared to death Louie would get busted and he’d lose the goose that lay the golden egg,” recalled Jack Bradley. “Oh, that was the only thing Louie stood up against Joe Glaser: smoking pot. He said, ‘Joe, I’ll do anything for you … I’ll work anywhere and do anything but I won’t give that up ’cause that’s too important.’ ” To Bradley, Swiss Kriss and marijuana were “very definitely tied in. They both looked the same and both are natural herbs and Louie loved them both probably equally. He took them both daily before he’d go to bed at night no matter how much he was drinking or smoking or eating. He’d take a double dose of Swiss Kriss … and that way, when he got up in the morning, first thing he’d do is go to the bathroom and spend a half-hour there. And he’d usually light up a bomber, which is a joint about the size of a pencil, and sit on the toilet … and get high and leave it all behind him. This was his motto for Swiss Kriss: ‘Leave it all behind you.’ ”15
With the smoke cleared around Louis and Lucille’s marijuana incident, it was business as usual for the All Stars. Bassist Hinton was astounded by the band’s schedule, which he found “unbelievable. We were on the move constantly. We never seemed to play any single place more than once or twice … There were always places for Pops to play.”16 Hinton, along with Young’s brash trombone and John’s powerful drumming, had helped drive the band to new heights of swing. After somewhat of a rebuilding phase, the All Stars were starting really to lock in again, but only a week after the Club Hangover broadcasts, Hinton left the band, realizing there was more money to be made, as well as far less traveling to do, by staying in New York and working as a studio musician. Arvell Shaw would be called back yet again.
During a Basin Street engagement in early 1954, Armstrong’s old pal Zutty Singleton sat in with the All Stars, the first time he had played with his old friend since the 1946 Victor session of tunes from the film New Orleans. Singleton was hardly in prime form. Armstrong summed up Singleton’s performance in a privately recorded conversation with his secretary/mistress Lucille “Sweets” Preston. “Wasn’t that terrible?” Armstrong asked. Singleton apparently had asked to join the All Stars, but Armstrong told Preston, “Time has marched on. He’ll never get in that thing.” Proof of Armstrong as his own boss is confirmed by his telling Preston, “There are two restrictions on musicians and two musicians that I ain’t never supposed to play with again. And I made that very clear to Joe Glaser. And I don’t think he’ll go over my will or my demand when he sees that I’m serious. And that’s Earl Hines and Zutty Singleton.”17 Backward-looking jazz fans might have been thrilled by a reunion of Armstrong and two mainstays of the 1920s, but those days were long gone.
On April 5, 1954, Decca reteamed Armstrong with Gordon Jenkins, who now went all out with a studio big band, strings and a choir. Milt Gabler remembered some of the vicissitudes of the session:
I remember a session in ’54 with Gordon Jenkins, a normal call to do four songs with orchestra and chorus in three hours at our Pythian Temple studio in New York. Everyone was on time except no Louis Armstrong. Louis had never been late before, so we rehearsed the orchestra and chorus. We rehearsed all of the songs, and still no Louis. I called Joe Glaser, and he was out. Two and a half hours late and straight from the dentist, Louis comes to the studio, full of remorse and with jaws full of Novocain. He could hardly talk. I asked him if he could work the next day, but Pops had other commitments. I told Gordon to start running the songs down with Louis. Maybe his jaws would loosen up.18
Not only did Armstrong’s jaws loosen, but as Gabler recalled, “We finished the four sides with only an hour of overtime.”19 “Trees” is insipid material, a Joyce Kilmer poem set to a banal melody, but the Armstrong-Jenkins team pulls it off, with Armstrong infusing the vocal with much more emotion than the material deserves, while Jenkins’s arrangement allows the strings to humorously quote a series of licks associated with Armstrong’s trumpet playing. Armstrong blew with tremendous force on “Bye and Bye,” a New Orleans gospel-cum-jazz tune Jenkins saddled with a very good big-band arrangement that opens with arguably Armstrong’s greatest trumpet cadenza of the 1950s. The final recording, though, would prove to be one of Armstrong’s most controversial. For a few years there had been a cease-fire in the war between Armstrong and the boppers. In 1950, Armstrong wrote, “I have been quoted as saying this and that about Bop, etc, and they’ve given me hell to boot … But any time we would run across each other, there would always be a lot of warmth amongst us … Ya Dig? … And the public, they’d think,—My Gawd those guys pan each other so bad—they really must be enemies … Shucks, Pay it no mind … We musicians have always loved each other.”20
But on July 18, 1952, Dizzy Gillespie had recorded a piece for Dee Gee titled “Pops’ Confessin’.” The song featured singer Joe Carroll performing in a devastating impersonation of Armstrong’s vocal style while Gillespie parodied Armstrong’s glissando-filled trumpet work. By now Gillespie was a friend of Armstrong’s, and the piece was intended as affectionate satire. Armstrong responded by having Jenkins rewrite “The Whiffenpoof Song,” an old Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby hit, and the result was called “The Boppenpoof Song.” “I wrote some parody lyrics and the original publishers just went to pieces, they were so unhappy with it,” Jenkins recalled. “At the time I was doing real well; otherwise I couldn’t have gotten away with it. They insisted on not paying me, which was fine; I just wanted to make the record, get it played, and not get sued. They finally agreed to it. The song was an absolute standout, the kind you hit maybe once in fifty years. Louis wasn’t that crazy about the bop scene, nor was I, and we had a little fun with it.”21
At one point, Armstrong sings, “Dixieland music, they condemn / But every wrong note that they play is a gem!” Armstrong closes with some wild scatting before punctuating the end with a triumphant “Bebop!” Reviews were mixed, but Ralph J. Gleason, for one, put the song’s humor in perspective. “There’s been too little humor in jazz in recent years,” he wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “The young musicians have been so busy dedicating their talents to finding new paths and shaking off tradition, they have neglected to laugh. Louis Armstrong, by all odds the greatest individual musician produced by the traditional jazz culture, is a comic too and that’s one of his strongest assets. Decca has just released a single disc of Louis singing a parody of ‘The Whiffenpoof Song’ which I urge everybody who loves jazz and loves Louis and wants a good laugh to buy immediately. ”22 Armstrong began playing it during his live performances, donning a red beret and sunglasses, lampooning bop fashion.
The All Stars continued touring the United States in the spring of 195423 but without Kenny John. Armstrong could no longer tolerate his drinking nor his intrusive drumming, badmouthing John in private conversation, especially after an offstage altercation with the young drummer. On the aforementioned 1954 private tape on which Armstrong bashed Zutty Singleton, Armstrong can be heard to say about John: “I told him, ‘You’re playing too fast, man … I caught up with him, still salty about what I said. I said, ‘Well, fuck you. I’m the leader, man.’ Shit, and all backstage, we was getting ready to tie asses. I said, ‘I’m the leader and I’ll go down with this fucking ship ’cause I’m playing right and you got to play it right.’ And everybody told him he was too fast. He’s got a nervous foot. He can’t play a slow tempo to save his life. I haven’t seen one tempo yet that he didn’t finish up faster. I dig all them drummers. They’re all nuts motherfuckers. All of them nuts.”24 John was out before the end of May. As Dan Morgenstern put it, John “was a bit of a jerk, you know—it was a personality thing … In order to be a functioning member of that group you had to have a certain attitude. You had to be a good team player, and I don’t think Kenny worked out that way.”25
About to embark on a tour of forty one-night stands, Armstrong needed a drummer, and he chose Barrett Deems. Once billed as the “World’s Fastest Drummer,” Deems—or “Deemus,” as friends called him—had played with Paul Whiteman, Clyde McCoy, and jazz greats such as Joe Venuti, Red Norvo, Charlie Barnet, and Muggsy Spanier before joining the All Stars.
While he had many critics, he was a favorite of many musicians, including drummer Tony Williams, Louis himself, and Barney Bigard, who in 1980 wrote, “[Deems] was a little crazy. Crazy in a nice way. He was really a real nervous guy. He stayed with the band for a good while, and he’s still a hell of a drummer.”26 For Armstrong, better a crazy drummer than an erratic alcoholic. As with the rest of the band, the ceaseless traveling could wear Deems down, but he could still joke about it on a 1954 radio show: “Traveling with Louie is a lot of fun. I get my kicks. It’s better to play with Louie than anyone else, but I’m afraid I’m going to be the richest corpse in the cemetery!”27 His eccentric style and powerful beat suited the band, and as Morgenstern remarks, he “never deserved the flack he got from critics eager to pick on the only ofay in the All Stars—he did a fine job for Louis, who didn’t want any namby-pamby drumming.”28 With Deems onboard, Armstrong said, “My current aggregation … is about the greatest. Without them, I don’t know what I’d do.”29 With them, he was about to record arguably the greatest album of his career.