BY LATE SEPTEMBER 1955, with the All Stars in top form, good news was in the offing for the many fans of Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy and Satch Plays Fats: George Avakian would oversee Armstrong’s recordings over the course of the next year. Joe Glaser was more than pleased with Avakian’s work. After Satch Plays Fats was finished in May 1955, he had written to the producer: “It’s wonderful to know the record date was a good one and assure you I appreciate your kind efforts in my behalf.”1 Avakian and Glaser spent much of the summer in friendly correspondence about music, baseball, and, of course, Armstrong. In one of his letters, dated September 19, Avakian wrote: “If possible … I would like to have Louis record the Kurt Weill ‘Moritat’ (‘Ballad of Mack the Knife’), which we were not able to record in Hollywood. I realize it will be next to impossible to do so because Louis will have so many things to do in the three days before he leaves for Europe, but I will save some time late at night in our 30th Street Studio in case one session is possible. This number is all arranged, and I have the score and complete parts in my office. It would, of course, be a hit in Europe because of its great familiarity to European audiences.”2
On September 28, 1955, two days before the All Stars departed for a three-month tour of Europe, Avakian got his wish and recorded Armstrong singing and playing a tune that would become one of the biggest hits of his career. The previous year, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera (original title: Die Dreigroschenoper) had a revival in New York. The musical play featured Brecht and Weill’s murder ballad, “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer,” which Columbia had already recorded as a honky-tonk piece replete with banjo. Marc Blitzstein’s English version retitled it “Mack the Knife,” and Avakian thought it could make a catchy pop song, but everybody he showed it to—including Erroll Garner, Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, and John Lewis—said, “George, what can I do with eight bars over and over, from a German opera yet? And how about those lyrics, man?” One of the musicians Avakian offered it to was Dixieland trombonist Turk Murphy. Murphy said he’d do it, and wanted to write an arrangement for Armstrong at no extra charge. “Brilliant me!” Avakian remembered. “I had never thought of Louis Armstrong.”3 Murphy and Avakian recorded a quick run-through and played it for Armstrong while the trumpeter was appearing in San Francisco. “So we played the acetate for Louie and showed him the arrangement,” Avakian says. “And Louie’s reaction was marvelous. He broke into a big smile as he listened to the lyrics and he said, ‘Hey, I’ll record that. I knew cats like that in New Orleans. They’d stick a knife in you as fast as say hello.’ ”4
Murphy wrote the arrangement, which was given to Armstrong’s valet, Doc Pugh, before the session. But on the day of the session, Pugh lost it, so Murphy had to be summoned to the studio with a duplicate. Armstrong sang “Mack the Knife” with gusto, and once again Avakian had Armstrong overdub himself playing a trumpet obbligato behind the vocal. At the same session, Avakian came upon the idea of pairing Armstrong with Lotte Lenya, Weill’s widow and a theater legend in her own right. There was one problem, however, as Avakian recalls: “Lenya just had no sense of jazz rhythm,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it.” Rehearsal tapes exist of Armstrong, the gutbucket crooner with the gravel voice, teaching the future Tony Award–winning performer how to phrase properly. “It’s horrible,” Avakian says of the rehearsal. “I never wanted anybody to hear it.”5 As painful as it was to Avakian, the recording is nonetheless fascinating: one hears Lenya struggling mightily with a half-note rest, as Armstrong patiently coaches her through it. Lenya herself was immortalized in the song by Armstrong when he listed her as among Mack’s victims, an inclusion to appear in future versions by Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra, among others. The day after the session, Armstrong and the band embarked on a tour of Europe, but throughout the trip, they couldn’t play “Mack the Knife” because Doc Pugh had lost the arrangement yet again!
This European tour would be different from Armstrong’s previous overseas ventures. Avakian was going to produce live recordings from across the continent; he even convinced newsman Edward R. Murrow to follow the band, filming pieces for his television program See It Now. More than before, reporters saw jazz in ambassadorial terms: its proliferation might improve relations among countries. “America’s secret weapon is a blue note in a minor key,” Felix Belair Jr. wrote in the New York Times. “Right now its most effective ambassador is Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong. A telling propaganda line is the hopped-up tempo of a Dixieland band heard on the Voice of America in far-off Tangier.”6
The tour covered ten nations including Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Italy, and (for the first time) Spain. Again, everywhere he went, Armstrong was mobbed by adoring fans. Gösta Hägglöf hoped to meet Armstrong at his hotel in Sweden for an autograph during the early Scandinavian leg of the tour. Hägglöf wasn’t alone; about fifty other people were waiting. Hägglöf marveled at how Armstrong signed autographs for everyone. “Still scribbling, he and the crowd entered the hotel, but the hotel personnel asked the gathered fans to leave,” Hägglöf remembered. “They did—together with Satchmo who saw to it that everybody got their autographs outside with the recipient’s name correctly spelled, before going back to the hotel for a well earned rest after three wonderful concerts. I have learnt that this was typical of Louis Armstrong and how he cared for his fans.”7
After Scandinavia, the All Stars flew to Germany on October 16, where they were met by fans who carried their excitement a bit too far. In Hamburg, the loudspeaker system at Ernst Merck Halle was not functioning properly, provoking the seven thousand fans in attendance to start throwing objects onstage and breaking furniture. In the riot that ensued, ten people were injured and fifteen arrested.8 Armstrong downplayed the incident: “I was supposed to play two concerts that night, but they broke up the chairs—they got tired of applaudin’ with their hands and started applaudin’ with the chairs. And they still wouldn’t go—the police tried to get them out to clear the hall for the next concert. But they refused to go. Then the police turned the fire hose on them. The hall was a mess.” It wasn’t Armstrong’s only brush with violence during the trip. “The same thing happened in Roubaix, France,” he said. “And in Lyons, too. They started throwin’ things at the local band when they came back to take over.”9
Armstrong was surprised by the number of jazz fans from Communist countries who had slipped in to hear him. “Now, them boys that slipped over the Iron Curtain to take in the concert,” he said. “In the Hot Club in Berlin these boys were there, and one of them said, ‘We slipped over the Iron Curtain to hear our Louis,’ and they said, ‘We don’t know how we gonna get back.’ And I never heard of ’em since, but that’s what they did.”10
In Paris, the trumpeter gave a lengthy interview to U.S. News & World Report. When asked if jazz was the same in Europe as it was in America, Armstrong said, “It’s the same all over the world. I always say a note’s a note in any language, if you hit it on the nose—if you hit it.”11 The interview also let Armstrong express informative views on his music. Asked why he preferred the six-piece All Stars to a big orchestra, he said, “I don’t prefer it—the public does. They feel with a small combination they will get every individual’s soul better than fifteen men sitting up there playing what one guy wrote. Probably he didn’t know nothin’ about music—he just studied it at college from a score, and you’re playing what he thinks. But six men, they play what comes out of each of them, personally.” Still averse to categorization, he bristled when questioned about playing “Dixie.” “Any kind,” he said. “I play music—you call it what you want.”12
The interview revealed that Armstrong imagined his music as important to the improvement of foreign relations. Asked if he was being paid in any way by the U.S. State Department, he said, “No sir, not a penny. They’re talking about that … Just think, if they sent this combo around to a big stadium where thousands of people could hear it—I think it would do a lot of good. But who am I to suggest things like that?” As to whether hot jazz could end the cold war, he remarked: “Well, not knowin’ about politics—but I know that hot jazz can do a whole lot for a lot of fans that don’t care so much for that. If it’s left to people that’s peaceful with music, there wouldn’t be no wars. Wouldn’t be none. It comes from people that probably don’t care so much about jazz, but, I mean, music has done a whole lot for friendships, and everything.”13
The All Stars traveled to Milan in December, where Armstrong had one of his biggest thrills of the trip. “We was playin’ up at the Odeon—that’s a concert hall about two blocks from La Scala, the opera house—and after my concert I had to get in the cab and go over to La Scala and get pictures taken standin’ beside all these great men like Verdi and Wagner and—their statues, you know—and right between ’em—that’s what the Italians requested.”14 It was also in Milan that Armstrong caught up with Avakian to record some tunes for an album to be titled Ambassador Satch. Avakian wanted to give the album the feel of a live date, but most of the recordings took place in either a studio or an abandoned movie theater in Milan. “We did three concerts that day, with intermission included,” Armstrong said of that December date. “And 1:00 that night, we begin to record that Ambassador Satch. And at 5:00 in the morning, we’re wailing ‘West End Blues.’ See what I mean? And ‘Tiger Rag,’ you ain’t never heard ‘Tiger Rag’ in your life like them cats, the longer they played it. But that’s what I’m talking about. If you didn’t feel good, you couldn’t do that. You can’t force those things.”15 Armstrong was in heroic form that evening, all the more remarkable for having already done three concerts. He was justifiably proud of the remake of “West End Blues”—the pure round sound of his horn was much in evidence—and his raw power was breathtaking. It isn’t quite revolutionary but it is a remarkably moving performance.
In addition to a free-wheeling “Tiger Rag,” the All Stars cut excellent versions of concert staples such as “Clarinet Marmalade,” “Royal Garden Blues,” and “Someday You’ll Be Sorry,” as well as three songs Armstrong hadn’t played in years: “You Can Depend on Me,” “Lonesome Road,” and “That’s a Plenty.” While all three had their moments, they were not issued on the original album. Altogether, more than seventy minutes of audio survive from the Milan session, all of it capturing the new edition of the All Stars in peak form.
As Armstrong prepared to leave Europe on December 29, Avakian planned to talk to Glaser about signing Armstrong to an exclusive contract with Columbia. On that day, Avakian wrote to Goddard Lieberson, the head of the entire record division, recounting a phone conversation he had with Glaser. “Glaser said that he appreciated the fact that we had done so much for Armstrong, but he had so many offers from all the major companies that he had to take a realistic view and he felt that it would take a $50,000 advance to land Armstrong.” It was a lot of money, but he told Lieberson, “In any case I feel that to make a large advance to get Armstrong would be a worth while investment because Armstrong is certain to emerge in the immediate as well as long-range future as one of the very few great jazz musicians of all time. I think that any money invested in him now is better spent than it would be for any other purpose that I can think of off hand.”16 Avakian’s confidence was fueled by the fact that Armstrong’s “Mack the Knife” had become an explosive hit while the trumpeter was overseas.
“Opening night at the Fontainebleau in Miami,” Avakian wrote about Armstrong’s return to the United States, “Louis fielded requests for his hit with charm and ‘come back tomorrow, folks, and we’ll lay it on you!’ That evening, he took the band down to the hotel coffee shop, armed with five dollars worth of dimes and a stack of blank music paper. They fed the jukebox over and over, copying their own parts … and that’s how Louis Armstrong got to play his multi-million seller-to-be for the first time in public.”17 The record continued to climb the charts, even if some reviews frowned on the song’s lyrics. One in Gramophone discussed “Mack’s” “unnecessarily long, and in places, revolting lyric that might easily incite impressionable teenagers to violence (and has had that effect in America, I understand).”18
As grueling as the European tour had been, the band would have no respite. As Barrett Deems remembered, “And then, after the tour is over, Joe Glaser meets us [at the airport and says], ‘Now, we’ll relax.’ I said, ‘That’s great, I’ll go home and see my wife.’ He said, ‘But you’ve got to be at MGM studios in 36 hours, seven in the morning.’ I said, ‘What’s this?’ He said, ‘You’re going to work.’ So I called my wife and told her, ‘Can’t come through.’ She said, ‘Well, let me know when you get to Chicago sometime. Wear a red flower so I can recognize you!’ ”19 Armstrong and the All Stars found themselves in Hollywood, recording their scenes for an MGM musical remake of The Philadelphia Story to be called High Society. The movie featured Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Grace Kelly in roles made famous by Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn. Armstrong played himself, getting a few chances to blow with the All Stars, and also acting as something of a one-man Greek chorus, expounding the film’s plot musically during the opening “High Society Calypso,” and appearing now and then to comment on events taking place. His musical duet with Crosby, “Now You Has Jazz,” is a classic, but perhaps the most beautiful number is Crosby’s rendition of Cole Porter’s “I Love You, Samantha,” with spine-tingling backing by Armstrong.
“It was a pleasure to be in the picture,” Bing Crosby said. “Chuck Walters’s a very fine director with great taste and sophistication. And a marvelous cast, all people I knew and people I admired, Sinatra, Louis, Celeste Holm, Grace Kelly. It was just a breeze, really.”20 Johnny Green, the film’s musical director, also had fond memories of the making of the film. “You talk about one big happy family, that’s what it was,” Green remembered. “And such a variety of personalities. You know, Sinatra and Crosby about as different as two guys can be—you know, that easygoing Crosby and the frenetic Sinatra. And then Louis, you know, is kind of the wise grandfather of the whole thing … Louis’s influence on that fun element—you know, he’s the greatest laugher in the whole world, with that laugh of his, you know, and his sense of humor and his sense of fellowship and play and so on. It was an incredible experience.”21
High Society was also notable for prominently featuring the All Stars performing and even acting a bit. On a private tape, Armstrong told a hilarious story about Trummy Young hamming it up in front of the camera for “High Society Calypso.” “That’s in the beginning of the picture,” he says, “and you talk about a bunch of cats—you know your boys, how they can ham up a thing! And they’re all trying to steal that scene. Trummy Young mugged so much, folks, I’m telling you, even when the director was explaining the scene, he was mugging listening!” Armstrong cracks himself up at the memory and says, “Oh, we had the greatest laughs, everybody trying to steal scenes.”22
While in Los Angeles filming High Society, Armstrong and the All Stars headed back into the Columbia studios to record another session for George Avakian. Avakian had a batch of recordings made during the European tour ready for release, including live performances at a Netherlands concert, as well as some from the after-hours movie-theater session in Milan. He dubbed in fake applause to make the tracks come to “life,” as it were, and would do the same for two Los Angeles performances, “Twelfth Street Rag” and “All of Me.” The latter, usually a feature for Velma Middleton, is extraordinary for Armstrong’s performance, especially his singing.
Avakian assembled a total of ten tracks from the three sessions for Ambassador Satch, arguably the definitive album featuring Armstrong as trumpeter in the mid-fifties. With the exception of “All of Me,” on which he sings, and two other tracks, on which he scats, Ambassador Satch features the trumpeter front and center, unlike previous albums on which Armstrong more or less equally divided his singing and playing. Its version of “Muskrat Ramble” might be Armstrong’s greatest and gives a clean instance of the powerhouse swing of the Armstrong-Hall-Young All Stars. The Armstrong solo had been sculpted over the years into a monument of swinging phrases and clever quotes, and on this version of “Muskrat Ramble” one climax is topped by yet another as the performance reaches its conclusion. As Arvell Shaw witnessed: “Louis Armstrong and Trummy Young, those two guys … and Edmond Hall, that band, they could play louder than a nine man brass section of big band, you know? And it wasn’t loud unpleasant, it was loud, it was just power, because those guys, they, they lived their … profession, and they trained for it.”23
When the album came out, interviewer Joe Jeru commented to Armstrong how much he had enjoyed the trumpeter’s Decca recording from the Crescendo Club. Armstrong was clear about his own preference: “Okay, but you can get a later album than that—Ambassador Satch that I made in Milano, Italy, just coming out here. It’s better than the Crescendo. Dig that.”24 Though Armstrong may have been proud of his album, the reviews were mixed. DownBeat said, “Of Louis’ three albums for Columbia in the last two years, this is the least satisfying. A large part of the reason is his band, whose weaknesses are more open-ended on stage than in a more controlled studio context. Trombonist Trummy Young’s playing has become increasingly coarsened. The rhythm section is stiff, largely because of the unremitting heaviness of drummer Barrett Deems, who has not loosened up since joining Louis.” About the All Stars, the review adds, “The unit never sustains one whole number in irresistible collective flight.”25 This would not be the last time the All Stars would get blasted in print. Once the “big” names—Teagarden, Hines, and Catlett—had departed, most critics focused on the diminished star power of the band rather than on the quality of the music produced. Armstrong, however, demurred. He told Sinclair Traill:
Oh yeah, that first group of All Stars was a good one all right, but I think the group I have now is the best of ’em all. It seems to me this band gets more appreciation now than the other All Stars. Some of the other Stars got so they was prima donnas and didn’t want to play with the other fellows. They wouldn’t play as a team but was like a basket ball side with everybody trying to make the basket. They was great musicians, but after a while they played as if their heart ain’t in what they was doin’. A fella would take a solo but no-one would pay him no attention—just gaze here, look around there. And the audience would see things like that—I don’t praise that kind of work y’ know. Then, you get cliques in a band. Want to play that way and this way, full of that New Orleans fogeyism. I was taught to watch that kind of thing as a youngster and always to give my mind to my music before anything else. The All Stars now ain’t like that and the audience appreciate the spirit in the band. As musicians they ain’t any better, but a lot of people say these boys seem like they’re real glad to be up there swingin’ with me.26
As much as Armstrong enjoyed recording pop tunes, he remained proud of his working group and wanted to record the material he was playing nightly with the All Stars. “I used to go to this company that I record with, one of them there, and I used to tell them, ‘Well, man, why don’t you turn us loose in the studio here and let us wail?’ ” Armstrong recounted in July 1956. “They’d say, ‘Well, that’s a good idea.’ And I’d say, ‘It’s a very good idea. If them people listen to our concerts and give us thunderous applause over these tunes we play, you know they would like to have it in their files. So why don’t you just record these things, the same as we’re on the stage?’ ‘That’s nice, but we’ve got a few pop tunes here I think is going to be on the Hit Parade’ blah blah blah.” Armstrong knew the pop tunes were harming his reputation: “And that’s when you look around, people are wondering, ‘What happened to Louie Armstrong?’ So here come another fellow, say, ‘Well, you just tear out, man.’ So that’s why you got Handy albums, and oh, you got Ambassador Satch, you got the Crescendo, and they’re all a-wailin’.”27
On the day Avakian had summoned the All Stars to the studio to spruce up Ambassador Satch, he had them record a new rendition of “The Faithful Hussar,” a song the All Stars had picked up in Germany and rocked mightily in Milan. The tune was a nineteenth-century German folk song, but Avakian saw the promise of another pop hit. Using the pseudonym “Dots Morrow,” Avakian wrote silly lyrics for “The Faithful Hussar,” turning it into a novelty, “Six Foot Four.” Avakian’s version never took off (though “The Faithful Hussar” remained for years in the All Stars’ repertoire); but, as it turned out, it would play a part in the beginning of the end of Armstrong’s recording relationship with Columbia. Armstrong’s career had undoubtedly been boosted by his association with the label, with all signs pointing to a long and fruitful relationship. However, nothing was ever as it seemed when it came to Joe Glaser.
In one of his letters to Avakian, Glaser bragged that Armstrong was now making between $5,000 and $6,000 a night. Considering records, films, magazine features, and all else, Louis Armstrong’s popularity was at an all-time high. As a result, Glaser was hesitant to saddle Armstrong with anything resembling a long-term contract: as popular as Armstrong was now, he might be even more so in years to come. A long-term contract would leave Glaser no recourse to demand more money.
Glaser, being Glaser, was never straight with Columbia about his thinking. Instead, he complained until Columbia threw up its hands. Glaser grew annoyed over a flap concerning “The Faithful Hussar” and “Six Foot Four.” “The Faithful Hussar” was a public-domain composition in Germany, so Avakian planned on releasing it as such. Because he wrote the lyrics to “Six Foot Four,” he intended to publish it through April Music. Glaser wanted his own ASCAP firm, International Music, to publish the two songs, listing Armstrong as composer of “Hussar” and Armstrong and Avakian as co-composers of “Six Foot Four.” “We are notifying ASCAP to this effect,” Glaser wrote, “that the Copyrights reside with International Music, and ask that you revise your records accordingly.”28
Glaser was used to getting what he wanted, but Avakian refused to let him get away with anything. According to Avakian, Glaser had already approved an agreement and changed his mind after consulting his lawyer, Oscar Cohen. “I gave Joe some mild but firm hell about how he always brags that his word is so good, and here he was not only going back on his word but also his signature,” Avakian wrote to his bosses at Columbia. “He simply repeated, ‘It’s a bad deal and Decca wouldn’t never hold me to it,’ so I told him I would cancel the record at once.” Avakian said he’d agree to give Armstrong the copyright of the instrumental, but not of “Six Foot Four,” as that was entirely his own idea. “I am glad you concur with me that we should call Joe’s bluff and withhold the record until he gets some sense,” Avakian wrote.29
The next day, Glaser repeated to Avakian his complaint that Columbia had done nothing special for Armstrong compared to Decca—even though Columbia had produced one of Armstrong’s biggest hits, Avakian had arranged for Murrow’s See It Now segment on the trumpeter, and Armstrong had earned more than $22,000 from his Columbia recordings and $13,000 in advances—and, as a result of all this, was being featured in major magazines such as Time and Newsweek.30
Avakian dared Glaser to have “his accountant break out some directly comparable figures of Decca vs. Columbia over an equal period of time, and that was how we left it.”31 Avakian wrote to tell him Columbia was withholding “Six Foot Four.” Glaser refused to give in, writing back immediately, “Under the situation that prevails, I have no alternative but to advise you and your associates that we will forget about recording Louis Armstrong in the future with Columbia Records.”32 Avakian stood firm and wrote to his higher-ups: “By now you know that Joe Glaser is running his last bluff on Louis Armstrong and I have called him in the nicest way I could, leaving him a chance to back down if he gets some sense … Unfortunately I think Joe will save face by cutting Louis’ throat; i.e., keeping Louis off Columbia, which is as ridiculous a thing as Glaser ever will have done because I think he knows perfectly well that Louis badly wants to, and should be, with Columbia.” Avakian now wanted Armstrong’s name off both “The Faithful Hussar” and “Six Foot Four.” “I hate to pull the rules on Louis, but Glaser is begging for it,” Avakian wrote. “Too bad Louis is the one who is going to get badly hurt on this.”33 Convinced that Columbia’s numbers would look better than Decca’s and that Glaser would change his mind, all Avakian could do was wait for Glaser’s accountant David Gold to report back.
As soon as the numbers came back, Glaser wrote to Avakian: “Even though you insist we received more from Columbia, the fact remains that comparatively we received considerably more from Decca, especially on our worldwide distribution. I deeply regret the fact that unless you want to give me the same terms on Louis Armstrong’s music, songs, etc. that I have obtained from Decca and Victor in the past, as I advised you in my recent letter, I am not interested in any contract with Columbia.”34
Glaser wasn’t bluffing after all. Columbia offered Armstrong a lucrative deal, the terms of which Avakian proposed to his bosses: “Length of contract: 5 years’ exclusivity for $250,000 advance (including talent cost of sessions), to be spread over 10 years. (I believe we gave in on our wish to make it 7 years, and I know we gave in on the idea of $200,000 for 5 years plus option for $50,000 for 2 more years.) … Minimum sides: 36 per year, costs deducted from advance. We also told Joe we would record as much more as was felt would be worthwhile, as we were anxious to build catalog. We said we would shoot for 48.”35
Still Glaser would not make up his mind. Avakian kept pressing forward with ideas for Armstrong, including turning Murrow’s See It Now piece into a full-blown feature-length film. Murrow and his producer Fred Friendly wanted more footage and planned to shoot Armstrong in Australia in April, but plans fell through. Armstrong, however, had another, more ambitious tour lined up: his first visit to London since the early 1930s. And Avakian planned on doing some recording during the tour, even though Glaser hadn’t signed a contract yet.
By now Avakian was confident that things would work his way: “It is sufficiently certain that we will have a deal [by May 7].”36 Meanwhile, for his part, Murrow made a proposal to Glaser, which Glaser related to Avakian in a letter: “I had a long meeting with Ed Murrow this morning and I am now in the process of trying to arrange Louis’ dates so that he can be in Africa immediately after his English tour where Ed Murrow will photograph him.”37
The idea of the African visit was a good one, but Armstrong had to get through the United Kingdom first. He was ready. “Man, Old Satch is raring to blow,” Armstrong said at the start of the tour.38 After a stroll through Soho with Lucille, Armstrong, along with the All Stars (now with Jack Lesberg on bass), was slated to play in London at the Empress Hall, a massive exhibition space no longer in use; it once could accommodate ten thousand people. Ten shows were scheduled, Armstrong sharing the bill with vocalist Ella Logan, one-legged tap dancer “Peg Leg” Bates, and Vic Lewis and his orchestra. The fans grew impatient with the opening acts. Ella Logan fared worst; as the Daily Mirror told it, they booed her seven-song set and chanted, “Where’s Louis?” The other acts shortened their sets in response, according to London newspapers.
This engagement is notable as an instance when Armstrong took criticism to heart. In the Evening Standard on May 5, 1956, Kenneth Allsop wrote a review with the headline “Genius is rationed.” “A great deal of wrapping had to be peeled off—introductory music by British Vic Lewis’s band, a one-legged tap dancer and singer Ella Logan—before the pearl in the parcel was reached. And even then, although the Armstrong All-Stars played for an hour, there seemed to be more all-stars than Armstrong,” Allsop wrote. And traditional jazz expert James Asman added in the Record Mirror, “A young enthusiast near my seat was, I could see out of the corner of my eye, gripping the side of his chair and muttering, ‘This isn’t New Orleans jazz! What’s happened to Louis?’ ” Asman concluded, “The magic of Louis remained, but it was the magic of a superb showman and personality rather than that of a top rank jazz musician.”39
Armstrong was listening. An Associated Press story later reported, “A few of Britain’s highly informed jazz fans told him very plainly that he was coasting, that he was letting the rest of the band do too much playing, that the people were dishing out their shillings to hear him. ‘That did it,’ said Louis. ‘Them cats put it to me. I couldn’t let ’em down. Maybe I’ll blow my teeth out, but I decided to blow more.’ At his next performance he included six old New Orleans classics which require a lot of effort and bruised his lips until they looked like beaten beef steak.”40
The major London newspapers covered Armstrong’s stay daily, many focusing on his use of Swiss Kriss, now an indelible part of the Satchmo persona. It was also then that Armstrong uttered what would become one of his best-known quotes. Asked, “What do you think of folk music?” Armstrong replied, “Folk music. Why, Daddy, I don’t know no other kind of music but folk music—I ain’t never heard a hoss [horse] sing a song.”41 An ado ensued when twenty-five-year-old Princess Margaret attended a show at Empress Hall. “Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong broke all rules of theatrical protocol before Princess Margaret tonight. And the princess apparently loved it,” Eddy Gilmore wrote in an Associated Press story picked up by newspapers the world over. “ ‘We’ve got one of our special fans in the house,’ growled the gravel-voiced American trumpeter, ‘and we’re really gonna lay this one on for the princess.’ A gasp went over the huge audience in Empress Hall. Professional performers are not supposed to refer to members of the royal family when playing before them. ‘Yes, sir’ said Satchmo, as the princess grinned and hugged her knees, ‘we gonna blow ’em down with one of those old good ones from New Orleans—“Mahogany Hall Stomp.” ’ The princess applauded with marked enthusiasm.”42 Another AP story in the New York Times added, “Princess Margaret began applauding with the first tune, ‘Sleepy Time Down South.’ Then she started to beat her feet up and down in full view of hundreds when an old New Orleans clarinetist, Edmond Hall, began to improvise on ‘Clarinet Marmalade.’ She applauded enthusiastically and Mr. Hall played ‘High Society’ as an encore.”43
Though he was making headlines and appearing before sold-out, screaming houses, Armstrong met criticism in London, mainly from the New Orleans revival camp but also from those of the modern school who found him hopelessly out of date. In a Sunday Times story titled “Jazz In Turmoil: The Flight from ‘Uncle Tom,’ ” Iain Lang wrote about Armstrong’s diminishing influence on young American jazz musicians in the previous fifteen years because of his Uncle Tom–isms. But British trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, always one of Armstrong’s staunchest supporters, came to his defense. During a May 13 performance, Lyttelton appeared on stage with a homemade crown, placing it on Armstrong and announcing, “On behalf of all British jazz musicians I would like to crown Louis Armstrong undisputed King of Jazz.”
After London, Armstrong traveled the British Isles, with Lyttelton’s band joining him for the Scottish leg of the tour. (Photos exist of Armstrong with a set of bagpipes.) When the tour was over, Lyttelton recounted his feelings in a column titled “Satchmo Post-Mortems.” “I heard him at Nice in 1948 and in Paris last year,” Lyttelton wrote. “And, considering the time allotted to him, I thought he did us better in London than at either of the previous places. I do not comprehend the criticisms about showmanship. For years, our local critics, professional and armchair, have derided British bands for their stolidness, their stiff, inhibited behavior onstage. Along comes an American group with an entirely appropriate brand of showmanship and up go the noses in the air!” Lyttelton grew even more emphatic: “As I sat in the audience at Birmingham, I was never more ashamed at having been associated with the New Orleans Revival,” he wrote. “If all that we have done is to nurture a generation of jazz fans who are so ignorant as to dismiss the greatest jazz when it is laid on their doorsteps, then we deserve a heretic’s fate.”44
Armstrong then embarked on what was the most important journey of his life: a two-day trip to the Gold Coast of Africa, a British colony about to become the independent nation of Ghana. This visit was the brainchild of Edward R. Murrow, who had produced separate segments on both Armstrong and the Gold Coast for his See It Now television program in 1955. Murrow had wanted to go back to the Gold Coast for a follow-up special but wanted a good reason. Since he was already filming Armstrong’s tour of Great Britain, it only made sense to combine the two subjects and send the trumpeter to the land of his ancestors.
Murrow wouldn’t visit the Gold Coast himself; instead he sent a four-man camera crew led by Gene de Poris and Charles Mack. Because of the last-minute nature of the tour and the short amount of time allotted (Louis would arrive at nine a.m. on Thursday, May 24, and depart at noon on Saturday, May 26), it promised to be a hectic fifty-one hours, with frequent tests of will between de Poris and James Moxon, the director of the Department of Information Services and the man in charge of making Armstrong’s visit a successful one. Moxon planned for Armstrong to perform an outdoor concert in the evening, but de Poris wanted it changed to the afternoon so there would be better lighting. “James said that this occasion meant too much to the people of the Gold Coast to be subordinated to purely commercial considerations,” recalled Robert Raymond, a member of the Department of Information Services in the Gold Coast, who later wrote in detail about this trip. “ ‘In Africa,’ James kept saying, ‘Armstrong is more than a band leader, he is a symbol.’ ”45 However, a threat from de Poris to cancel the whole affair led Moxon to switch the concert to the afternoon.
De Poris grew increasingly frantic as Armstrong’s arrival approached and there still weren’t any fans to welcome him at the airport. “We gotta get our welcome shots before they arrive!” he complained. “Where are these goddam fans?”46 De Poris’s frustration was for naught, as soon enough of a crowd gathered, including thirteen African bands and entertainer Ajax Bukana, dressed in tails, a top hat, and minstrel makeup. Upon his arrival, the bands joined forces to play a traditional song, “Sly Mongoose,” which they transformed into a new anthem, “All for You, Louis.” Others chanted, “Na nue, nanue akwba” (“Here is the man … yes sir, the man”).47 Armstrong, Trummy Young, and Edmond Hall picked up their instruments and soon figured out the song. “The crowd suddenly swarmed over the fence into the prohibited tarmac area, and the two cultures met with explosive zest,” Raymond wrote. “The Americans, now with the tune between their teeth, blew as hard as anyone, led by Armstrong’s swinging, driving trumpet. As the animated mass of players and singing people moved across the tarmac, gathering strength and impetus all the time, the noise and the clamour rose to the skies in the greatest paean of welcome Accra had ever known.”48
Armstrong and the All Stars had been going nonstop since their British tour and wouldn’t have much time for rest in Africa. Armstrong told the press how thrilled he was to be there. “I can stand it,” he said of the crowds of people who mobbed him at the airport. “After all, my ancestors came from here and I still have African blood in me.”49 Louis and Lucille then had lunch with Premier Kwame Nkrumah. Time magazine reported, “The conversation: almost solely Swiss Kriss, a herbal laxative that Louis discovered from reading Gayelord (yoghurt and molasses) Hauser, and recommended insistently to the Prime Minister and all his Cabinet. He dallied so long over his Benedictine and brandy that he was late for his afternoon concert.”50
This concert would prove historic. “To afford workers the opportunity of seeing and hearing Satchmo,” George Padmore reported, “the Prime Minister declared Empire Day, which Dr. Nkrumah has abolished in the Gold Coast since coming to power in 1951, a half holiday. All government departments and private firms were closed.”51 Originally, Raymond and Moxon weren’t sure of the kind of crowd Armstrong would attract, but as they reached the concert stage at the Old Polo Ground, they were shocked. “The entire area of the Old Polo Ground was covered with people,” Raymond wrote. “The police later estimated it at seventy thousand. It was an overwhelming, almost frightening sight. There they were, packed solid for hundreds of yards in every direction, pushing and talking animatedly, waiting for the show to start.” Before a note had been played, the police were worried. “My God, this is going to be a riot!” a white police superintendent was heard to exclaim. “We can’t possibly control this crowd.”52 While Armstrong was late from his lunch with Nkrumah, a barrier separating the excited fans from the bandstand collapsed. De Poris wondered if the concert could even go on in such circumstances.
Armstrong finally arrived and hopped onstage, exclaiming “Greetings, all you cats!” to the delirious fans. After the usual theme statement of “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” Armstrong lit into a roaring version of “Ole Miss.” All remained calm until Barrett Deems took an extended drum solo toward the end of the performance. “The afternoon went crazy,” Raymond wrote. “The crowd surged wildly, and hurled hats and shirts into the air. Several boys leaped the barrier in front of the stand, or what was left of it, and began to jive wildly below Armstrong. As Deems smashed and battered his drums, the noise and shouting grew deafening.” At the onset of this bedlam, the police superintendent ran onstage, telling Armstrong, “Stop! Stop! You must stop! They’ll go mad!”53 Armstrong then called a slow number, which calmed the crowd, but the trumpeter did not like some of the violent displays he witnessed. “The police stopped swinging their clubs at people’s shins, and fell back to the fence,” Raymond wrote. “James and I, standing at the side of the stage, saw that Armstrong looked grim and angry. We thought he must have been annoyed at the demonstration.”
The slow blues worked for a few minutes, but once Velma Middleton hit the stage, it was pandemonium all over again. “The police below were forced to charge the crowd again, swinging their clubs fearsomely,” Raymond wrote. “Armstrong immediately stopped playing. He looked angrily towards us. We could not have known it, but the scene was painfully reminiscent to Armstrong of an ugly and recent incident in Germany. A first-house audience had been reluctant to make way for the second house, and the German police had thrown them out with great brutality. Armstrong had been extremely upset by this. Now, it clearly seemed to him, violence was again being used, and this time by black men on black men. As the dust clouds thinned, and the police were revealed falling back again, Armstrong stood immobile at the front of the stage, looking down. His face was drawn and irresolute, a lifetime’s struggle suddenly etched on it.”54
To Raymond, the enthusiasm of the crowd was “good-natured,” not violent. “And as we watched and listened the vast concourse became one living carpet of happy faces, dusty and sweating, but fiercely proud of that black man up there playing for them and speaking for them, the famous Mr. Satchmo.” Nevertheless, the police superintendent did not trust the crowd and ordered his men to push them back. “This time the crowd was reluctant to run,” Raymond recalled. “The policemen, at first half-hearted, became rattled, and determined to show their authority. A few sickening blows were heard above the pandemonium. Armstrong stopped playing. He waved an abrupt farewell, and turned from the crowd. His face was stiff with unhappiness.” Armstrong was still upset as he headed to Moxon’s house for another party. “All my life I tried to get away from this,” he said. “Black people getting beat up. Knocked around. Always getting beat up. I saw the white folks do it, who maybe don’t know any better. Now the coloured people do it to their own folk. Worse than the Nazis.”55
Matters proceeded more smoothly as the night progressed, with Louis spending the evening with Lucille enjoying E. T. Mensah’s band at the Paramount nightclub. The rest of the All Stars barely got any sleep, jamming with local musicians and being treated like heroes. (Deems, recognized for his earlier drumming, was carried shoulder-high through the markets, causing him to exclaim, “Man, this is real drummin’ country!”) The next morning, Armstrong and the All Stars met respectful students at a university, a touching moment captured by Murrow’s camera crew. From there, it was off to the Achimota School for a display of traditional African drumming and tribal dancing, with Louis, Lucille, and the All Stars front and center. “We spend all our lives going round the world entertaining people, but this is the first time anybody ever entertained us,” Armstrong said.56 About the music he was hearing, Armstrong said, “I’ve heard it all down here. Every time I listened to these cats beat it out on them tribal drums I kept saying to myself, ‘Satch, you’re hearing the real stuff.’ ”57
It was then time for Armstrong and the All Stars to play a short set on the tribal lawn. “This was the moment that Ed Murrow must have had in mind when he set the whole affair in motion,” Raymond wrote. “Would American Negro jazz make contact with the Africa whose rhythms moved it? Would the music of the Deep South, its African origins overlaid with traces of French and Spanish melody, work songs and anguish, with the gusty flavour of street parades, make any appeal to the African people?”58
At first the audience barely reacted, but once Armstrong played “Royal Garden Blues,” a lone old man began to dance. Sensing the moment, Lucille Armstrong jumped up and joined him. “She was an odd but significant figure in her crisp New York dress, dancing with the old tribesman in his cotton robe,” wrote Raymond. According to him, “This was the turning point. As the American woman and the man of Africa danced, more and more people from around the arena got up and joined in. Soon a hundred African men and women were dancing to music and rhythms that they had never known. They danced in all kinds of ways. Some adapted the tempos of their own dances to suit the music of America. Others hopped, skipped on one leg, or just stood and shook their bodies. The unifying spirit was one of sheer enjoyment.”59
As Mack and de Poris captured the euphoria on film, something caught Armstrong’s eye and caused him to stop playing. He spotted a dancer of the Ewe tribe who he said “danced and sang like my mother.” He added, “When I went over to talk to her she even held her head like Mama used to hold hers, and before long I was calling her ‘Mama’.”60 Armstrong couldn’t hide his delight at this surprise and couldn’t wait to tell everyone about it. “Jim, now I know,” he told Moxon afterwards. “I just saw a woman out there jiving around, and she reminded me of my mother. She died twenty years ago. I know it now, Jim. I know I came from here, way back. At least my people did. Now I know this is my country, too. I’m coming back here some day.” Back in Moxon’s bungalow, Armstrong excitedly began to write the story in a series of telegrams for friends back in the United States. He was so exhilarated that, according to Raymond, “the pain and the sadness of the day before was completely blotted out.”61
That evening, Armstrong and the All Stars performed their standard show at Accra’s Opera Cinema to a packed house of two thousand people, including Nkrumah. There, Armstrong played Fats Waller and Andy Razaf’s “Black and Blue,” as a teary Nkrumah applauded enthusiastically.62 Armstrong pushed himself hard for his African fans, who responded the most to his comic duets with Velma Middleton. “Weary but beaming, Armstrong mopped his face,” Raymond remembered after Louis closed the show with “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South.” “His silk dinner suit was saturated, and his lips were swollen and raw from three and a half hours of playing.” At this point, after Louis, Lucille, and the All Stars received numerous gifts onstage, Armstrong stepped up to the microphone to deliver a speech, the only one of his two-day stay in Ghana. It was typical Armstrong:
Mr. Prime Minister, and all you good people. This evening reminds me of something that happened to me when I was a little boy. My ma sent me down the yard one day to get some water from the pond. I came back quick and said Ma, I can’t get water from that pond, there’s a big alligator in there. So Ma said, Son, you go right back and get that water. Don’t you know that old ’gator is more scared of you than you is of him? And I said Ma, if that old ’gator’s more scared of me than I is of him, that water ain’t fit to drink!
With that punchline, Armstrong smiled and left the stage. “After a moment’s startled silence, the Opera Cinema reverberated to a mighty roar of laughter,” Raymond remembered.63 But just as Armstrong thought he was through for the night, Gene de Poris stopped to tell him they needed to film “Black and Blue” one more time while the audience was still present. Louis agreed to it, but he wasn’t pleased. “When they finished they climbed wearily off the stage,” Raymond wrote. “Armstrong’s face was as grim and angry as it had been at the Old Polo Ground.” Doc Pugh was waiting for Armstrong backstage to go through his post-show ritual, which included disrobing, applying lip salve to his swollen lips, and sponging his face and neck with spirits, not saying a word to anyone. As de Poris approached him to discuss the following morning’s schedule, Armstrong cut him off with a curt “I’m finished.” “The argument was short and conclusive,” according to Raymond. “Armstrong had performed prodigies of endurance and performance for the past six months. There was no performer in the business of public entertainment who so consistently gave more of himself. But now he had no more to give. While his men listened silently, Armstrong told de Poris that the All Stars would play no more before they left. ‘Jeez, Louis, what about the street parade!’ cried de Poris. He began to rage up and down. But Armstrong, in one of his rare moments of anger, cut him down, and left the anguished little American silent.”64
A crowd of people waited for Louis outside the theater and he wearily waved and smiled at them as he left. Then it was off to Moxon’s house, where an exhausted Armstrong relaxed and spent much of the night by himself, listening to his recordings from the 1920s, which Moxon had in his collection. At lunch before departing Armstrong extolled the virtues of Swiss Kriss and gave the heavyset Moxon a lifetime supply. At the Accra airport Armstrong was met by another large crowd and with more bands playing and people singing, “All for you, Louis, all for you.” “I’m coming back here, folks,” Armstrong shouted to the crowd as he walked onto the plane. “This is my country now. Now I’m sure of it.”65
With those words, the weary All Stars left for America on Saturday, May 26. (They would have to overcome their fatigue quickly, as they were to perform in Atlantic City on Monday evening, May 28.) De Poris and Mack nervously shipped their footage back to New York, hoping that it was okay. The results were more than okay and provided the backbone of Murrow’s documentary, Satchmo the Great, released in movie theaters in 1957. It remains the definitive look at Armstrong’s “Ambassador Satch” period, though for unknown reasons it has never been issued on home video or DVD in the United States. While Armstrong’s life soon returned to normal, he was frequently reminded of his impact in the Gold Coast from the scores of fan letters he continued to receive at his Corona home in the ensuing years. He had especially made his mark on the many African musicians who followed his every step in what was to soon become Ghana. Time magazine spoke to one who summed up Armstrong’s visit as, “Man, it was just very.” Asked “Just very what?” the musician replied, “Just very great.”66