WHEN ARMSTRONG and the All Stars returned to the United States from their European jaunt (now with Dale Jones back on bass), the group was looking forward to a major engagement at Medinah Hall in Chicago on June 1. The theme of the evening would be “50 Years of Jazz.” Helen Hayes was to narrate a history of the music, written by DownBeat editor Jack Tracy, with special sets constructed by Domenico Mortellito.1 Produced by Barry O’Daniels, the event was a benefit for the Chicago chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.2 During the first half of the show, Armstrong and the All Stars would alternate with Hayes; during the second the band would do its normal show. Though Glaser still hadn’t signed an exclusive deal with Columbia, George Avakian stuck to his plan to record the evening’s music, which had been discussed as far back as February. Avakian had even suggested a repertoire he wanted Armstrong to perform. That night, however, Armstrong played many of his usual specialties, numbers that had been released by both Decca and Columbia, so Avakian had no fresh material and decided not to release an album. But in 1980, another producer at Columbia, Michael Brooks, happened to come across the recordings, striking gold. Brooks edited out Hayes’s contributions and released the musical portion of the evening on a double-LP set simply titled Chicago Concert, capturing Armstrong arguably at his finest in the 1950s. Its sound quality is above average—though here and there Armstrong plays off-mike—and it showcases the band to superb advantage. Here was a representative instance of the joyous entertainment the All Stars offered night after night. Armstrong’s trumpet soars on “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue,” “The Faithful Hussar,” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” to name just three of the twenty-six tracks. Perhaps the highlight is a five-minute version of “Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” an extended treatment of a staple in which Armstrong turns up the heat on successive encores. “West End Blues” was also performed, a version rivaling Ambassador Satch’s.
Summertime is of course jazz-festival season, and Armstrong played at the third American Jazz Festival at Newport, Rhode Island, in early July. Again Avakian was in tow to record for Columbia, though there still was no contract. George Wein, the festival’s impresario, had agreed to pay Armstrong $2,500 for his appearance. But Glaser was notified that Avakian had offered to reimburse the festival “and charge one-third of same to Louis’ royalty account.” Glaser announced that he would not stand for this. “George, I have no intention of allowing you or George Wein to charge Louis Armstrong one single penny of the money that Louis is receiving to play the Festival.”3 Perhaps sensing that the end might be near, Avakian told Glaser two weeks or so before the Newport engagement that “Six Foot Four” would be released, with the copyright assigned to International Music, complying with Glaser’s demand. It was too late. Five days later, Glaser’s response was to request from Avakian the list of tunes that Armstrong had issued through Columbia, for Norman Granz was interested in recording Armstrong for his new label, Verve, but only fresh material. Avakian’s dream of an extended, exclusive contract between Armstrong and Columbia Records was dead.
But Columbia still had rights to record one more session, on July 14, the occasion being the first jazz concert ever held at New York’s Lewisohn Stadium, where Armstrong and Dave Brubeck would appear. The main event of the evening would be a concert arrangement of W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” with the eighty-two-year-old Handy, now blind, in attendance. The arrangement, by Alfredo Antonini, would be performed by the Stadium Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Armstrong remembered an apprehensive Bernstein saying to him, “Now when you get to this cadenza, and you get a little nervous, well, just shorten it.” Armstrong had no idea what Bernstein meant by “nervous.” “I said, ‘Okay, daddy.’ Well, I warm up at home. I hit the stage, I’m ready. From the first rehearsal on, we wailed. Well, from then on, he got confidence; it don’t take long for a person to relax once they hear me go down with the arrangement. After that, he got himself straightened. After the performance he liked to shake my hand off.”4
The arrangement was a tad ponderous, but Armstrong rarely sounded more majestic; the performance was a rousing success, bringing tears to the eyes of Handy. Avakian released it on Satchmo the Great, Armstrong’s final Columbia album, the soundtrack of Murrow’s Armstrong documentary of the same name. Three days after the New York concert, having come to terms with the end of Armstrong’s association with Columbia, Avakian wrote an interoffice memo concerning the contracts with Glaser for the most recent live recordings: “If my assumptions are correct, I suggest that you hold on to what you’ve got in the form of one of the carbons and ask Glaser to have the other two initialed, because the situation with Armstrong and Glaser is very touchy and once we have everything nailed down, I think we are through, in capital letters and underlined thickly, with Mr. Glaser.”5 Though Avakian tried his best to play hardball with Glaser, Glaser was a man who would settle for only what he wanted, what he felt was best for his client, and nothing less. By Joe Glaser’s lights, Armstrong was now simply too popular to be saddled with a long-term contract with any label. He had been stringing Avakian along better to ascertain Armstrong’s market value. Henceforth Armstrong would be a free agent, his services going only to the highest bidders in the recording industry. (The rough-and-tumble Glaser did admire Avakian’s pluck, however, and once introduced Avakian to a friend as “the only man to have ever hung up on me—and lived!”)
The premature ending of Armstrong’s partnership with Columbia Records still stands as one of the biggest disappointments of Armstrong’s career. The music he made in his two years with the label stands among the best he ever waxed. And Avakian was only getting started; his big plan was to do an album with Armstrong’s trumpet fronting Duke Ellington’s orchestra, which returned to Columbia in early 1956 and was also represented by Glaser. Avakian had both men’s approval and even had begun selecting repertory for the album, dreaming of the sound of Armstrong’s trumpet and Ellington’s outfit swinging together on pieces such as “Stompy Jones” and “Tight Like This.” Glaser continued to play hard to get, putting a ridiculously high price tag on both clients’ services. When Glaser put an end to Armstrong’s recording for the label, he pulled the plug on this potential summit meeting. According to Avakian, it was the only time he ever saw tears in Armstrong’s eyes, but Armstrong told him there was nothing he could do if Glaser already had said no.
Stories like that easily justify the common line of thought that Joe Glaser was simply a villain in Louis Armstrong’s career, controlling him like a slave and working him too hard with only one thing in mind—gaining the maximum amount of money at all times—and with no patience for potentially landmark artistic ideas such as the ones Avakian presented if the cash wasn’t there. But, the Armstrong-Glaser relationship was a little more complex than it might seem at surface level. Glaser offered Armstrong something very important: freedom to never worry about money, to just concentrate on performing his music. As Armstrong’s popularity grew and Armstrong made Glaser more money, he wasn’t afraid to spend some of it on himself and his friends. Correspondence survives such as this telegram Armstrong sent Glaser in 1955:
HAVE BALLED AWHILE SINCE CHECKING AT THE MOULIN ROUGE AND OVER SPORTED MYSELF SO BAD UNTIL MY SALARY FOR THIS ENGAGEMENT WON’T BE HELP AT ALL. LET [ME] HAVE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN IN CASH. TAKE IT OUT DURING MY EUROPEAN TOUR. HURRY DAD. SEND FAST. LOVE—SATCHMO6
According to Ernie Anderson, who knew both men well, this was not an uncommon occurrence. “We were on the road one night in Chicago when Louis decided to prove to me once and for all that he could get a fair deal out of Joe Glaser,” Anderson wrote. “He told me that he was going to do something that he often did when he thought Joe was taking advantage of him.” Armstrong decided to call Glaser—at four o’clock in the morning. “Then I heard Joe’s voice,” Anderson wrote. “He had just been awakened from a deep sleep. When he recognized Louis’s voice on the phone he sounded terrified. ‘What’s the matter?’ He was shouting, but you could hear panic in his voice. Louis was calm as usual. ‘Nothing’s the matter, Pops. But you know we ran up such a big score over there in Europe that I thought it was time for you to send me a little taste,’ Louis was saying. Joe, who had seemed out of control at first, now was trying to placate Louis. ‘Yes, of course,’ he was saying. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’m sure we can fix that up.’ The next day Louis had a telegram for $2,500.”7
Because Armstrong let Glaser have final say over his bookings and matters such as the handling of the Columbia contract, he did so knowing that Glaser would cater to his own demands. A letter to his boss dated August 2, 1955, also spells out the nature of their working relationship vividly. In it, Armstrong agreed to a lucrative overseas tour, but only if Glaser compensated Armstrong’s mistress “Sweets” Preston, who Armstrong believed was carrying his baby (she wasn’t). Armstrong also wanted payments made on three cars, those of his secretary Velma Ford, his good friend Stuff Crouch, and Lucille’s sister and brother-in-law. He wrote slyly to Glaser in his original, rhythmic way of typing: “But Seriously Mr. Glaser there’s one thing that’s going to be a big drag—And that is these Personal bills of mine. Which runs up to $1100.00 per month. I don’t care how soon we leave—where we’re going. Just if you’ll, Personally, Pay these Bills while I am over seas, It’s alright with me.” Examining such a letter, as well as the aforementioned 1954 letter regarding marijuana, it’s clear that Armstrong was just as much in control of Glaser as vice versa. At the close of the letter, Armstrong wrote words Glaser probably knew all too well: “Now that I have made myself very Clear. Book Anywhere—Anytime.” As Thomas Brothers has written about this letter, “The anecdote allows Armstrong to say as directly as he can that he has chosen Glaser, not the other way around. No matter to what extent Armstrong may agree to give up business control as a means of coping with a racist society, he will control ultimately the hiring and firing of his manager.”8
As Armstrong’s popularity grew, the negativity of the critiques of him intensified. Reviewing the Lewisohn Stadium show, John S. Wilson, a frequent detractor of Armstrong’s in this period, savaged the trumpeter: “Saturday night’s audience at Lewisohn Stadium heard the same program that he has played several times in New York. They applauded it enthusiastically, attempted to clap in time with one number and even made a brief attempt to dance in the aisles. Unfortunately, the stimulus for all this was rather shoddy jazz, although it may have had its merits as vaudeville.”9 Wilson concluded: “There is no question of Mr. Armstrong’s merits as an entertainer. It is natural that audiences in all countries should be drawn to him, just as the one at Lewisohn Stadium was. But, except for occasional instances, it would be misleading if the antics of Mr. Armstrong and his colleagues were to be accepted as representative of well-played jazz.”10
In August, Harold Lovette of Metronome added the race factor in a scathing attack on Armstrong: “Throughout the entire history of jazz there has been a continuous struggle for acceptance and understanding in addition to the fact that the race angle has kept back its progress. Now ‘uncle’ Louis adds insult.” Lovette’s purpose was to put Armstrong’s performance history into perspective, but still he could not resist a dig at his trumpet playing: “ ‘Pops’ came along when ‘rastus’ showmanship was demanded from jazz artists and to some extent it holds true today. I definitely do not condone this type of performance but it is to be understood that Louis is a product of his time. But as trumpet players go at this point, I am of the opinion that Louis is a much better singer.” Lovette saved his most biting remark for last: “It is elementary that to understand contemporary jazz you either must be a musician of [a] certain caliber or your appreciation must be developed jazz-wise. Louis has not had the time to do either, he has been too busy being a ‘Tom.’ ”11
This came in the wake of a controversy promoted by the black press in early July 1956. A story was sent out to many black papers by the Associated Negro Press titled “Satchmo Plays, Negroes Barred in Indianapolis.” The article stated that Armstrong had recently played a public dance in Indianapolis supposedly open to all. But many blacks had been turned away at the door, the justification being, according to the venue’s white management, that they were not members of the Indiana Roof Club, which sponsored the event. The article referred to the trumpeter: “[Armstrong] stated that he ‘wouldn’t hesitate to play before Jim Crow audiences.’ Asked that if he had been informed in advance that the ballroom operated on a segregated basis, would he still have appeared, he answered, ‘Yes I would have played. I play any place my manager books me.’ ”12 Uncle Tom indeed.
But Armstrong never made those remarks, and was forced immediately to issue a rebuttal, which appeared in the black press, as well as in DownBeat. According to a Pittsburgh Courier article, “a very indignant and a very warm” Armstrong called the paper’s office personally to clear up the matter. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Armstrong said. “What are they trying to do? I don’t expect these things, so I never question owners of dance halls or my manager about the racial pattern of places I am contracted to play. I certainly didn’t expect to run into this kind of business in Indiana. The fella who wrote that story put words in my mouth I never spoke.” Armstrong continued, “I have been with Joe Glaser too many years to worry about where I play and for whom. He is as keen on the race question as I am and goes to great lengths to keep the record straight. Somehow I have always been a greater attraction among whites than my own people, a thing which has always disturbed me. I have to love them and what they stand for to love myself. After all, it’s no secret what I am. I have my own ideas about racial segregation and have spent half of my life breaking down barriers through positive action and not a lot of words. It’s high time that as a race we become more concerned with what a man does, instead of misquotes to make headlines out of what one is supposed to have said. Certainly, I am concerned about what happens to my people, but I am trying to do something about it and not talk for headlines.”13
In retrospect, it was probably road manager Frenchy Tallerie who was responsible for the contested quote, which contradicted Armstrong’s feeling about segregation, which could be viewed in a decision he had just made about performing in New Orleans. The All Stars had played a two-week engagement at the Absinthe House there in February 1955 but that would be their final trip to Armstrong’s hometown for quite some time. After the historic Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954 desegregated schools around the country, the notoriously segregated New Orleans rebelled at the end of that year by passing multiple “draconian statutes that further codified longstanding Jim Crow practices,” Jonathan Mark Souther wrote. In July 1956, according to Souther, a statute was passed “which barred interracial contact in any form of public accommodations.… The segregationist measure even forbade the longstanding practice of black and white musicians sharing the stage in bars and clubs.”14
This was too much for Armstrong, who had grown disgusted by the city’s segregationist policies. The All Stars had been an integrated band from day one, something that Armstrong had always prided himself on. “Ain’t nobody gonna call me intolerant,” he said when asked about it in May 1956.15 Now the band found itself under the heel of segregation. Bitter, Armstrong vowed never to return until the city changed its racial stance. In a 1958 interview that reunited him with his old bassist Pops Foster, the topic of segregation came up. Foster said, “I played around New Orleans in mixed bands, for years. It wasn’t like today, like it is in New Orleans now.” Asked to elaborate, Armstrong jumped in and answered, “Since [1956], in New Orleans, they don’t want white and Negro musicians playing together. All I can say is, the people who made those laws, they don’t know anything about music. Because in music, it doesn’t make any difference. I don’t run into much trouble with segregation, ’cause I don’t go where I’m not wanted. And—please don’t take this out, I’m going to tell this straight—I don’t go to New Orleans … no more.”16
Though Armstrong prided himself in his integrated band, there’s no doubt that the negative publicity about performing in front of a segregated audience in Indianapolis only served to worsen his standing in the black community. As he himself stated, Armstrong was now a bigger attraction with white audiences. So when he showed up in Indianapolis and saw no blacks in the crowd, he had no reason to assume that segregation was at fault. His audience was changing, and nothing he could do or say could stanch the diminishment of his black fan base.
A few days after the Indianapolis incident, Armstrong sat down for a series of interviews with the Voice of America. The point was to have Armstrong play his favorite records—both his own and those of other musicians—and talk about the music. Armstrong’s selections included “Shine” and “Black and Blue,” which led to a discussion not only of the titles themselves but of the racial sensitivity of the black community. “Boy, people, you know, especially our people, the Negroes, they’d probably get insulted a little for no reason at all,” Armstrong said. He even mentioned the “Sleepy Time Down South” uproar of 1951, saying that in its aftermath, “I’m so glad that my people began to dig that, because they get a little too [offended] over the smallest things and I think it’s bad.”17 Armstrong was alluding to a recent incident involving Nat “King” Cole, who had been beaten onstage by four whites during a concert in Birmingham, Alabama. The black press had not warmed to Cole’s plight. As Ingrid Monson has written: “Rather than eliciting sympathy from the African American press, Nat Cole, who was not badly hurt, was roundly denounced for having accepted an engagement in a segregated theater to begin with.” A cartoon even appeared in a black newspaper depicting “Nat Cole as a minstrel figure smiling and tossing bills and coins into the air while seated on a pile of money.” Like Armstrong, Cole claimed that his management made the bookings and he didn’t know which venues were segregated, but the Amsterdam News remained unconvinced by his explanation: “We’ve heard that one before from too many colored performers.”18 Some establishments in Harlem even started banning Cole’s records.
“Now, can you tell me why those boys up in Harlem, whoever they were that took King Cole’s records off the Piccolo just because they think they should take it off?” Armstrong asked. “Well, who are they? I mean, we’re the people who bring customers in their place and put ’em on the map and spend our good money in the place and they’re the first ones who try to push you down.” As a hard-working entertainer, Armstrong took the slight against Cole personally: “You’ve done struggled all these years to accomplish something on your instrument or something and here comes some raggedy cat, just because, you know, they’re all riding on the bandwagon of that race mess and things and he ain’t thinking about nothing but to try and pull you back where, if he just leave you alone, you’d do more for him with your instrument. You see what I’m talking about? So, if we just go on and just enjoy this good music and forget about a whole lot of malice and things—I notice the colored newspapers, the minute a little minor thing happen to a musician or one of those actors or something, why, you’d never seen such headlines, when they should take into it and stand by this man … We only have a few in our race that’s on top in this music game, and I think if we get together and stick by each other, we could have a few more.” Armstrong’s words would fall on deaf ears for now: his appearance in the Zulu Parade, the “Sleepy Time” fracas, the persistent eye rolling and mugging were not about to be forgiven by the black community or certain white critics. Armstrong’s detractors could not have felt more self-righteous when the film High Society opened in the summer of 1956, featuring the mugging, eye-rolling persona they were quick to denounce.
Vis-à-vis his denigration, Armstrong was growing testy in the summer of 1956. After a one-nighter, he agreed to do an interview in his hotel room with Joe Jeru and Maynard Johnson, an interview that survives on one of Armstrong’s private tapes housed at the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Perhaps he was getting tired of the negative reviews and the “race mess,” for when one of the interviewers asks Armstrong about “progressive” music, Armstrong grows petulant: “Well, that’s what I’m trying to find: what is progressive music? Now you explain what is progressive music. We were just taught to play good music. Now what would be progressive music? A whole lot of stiff arrangements the untrained ear can’t understand. What’s any more progressive than my ‘Blueberry Hill,’ ‘La Vie en Rose,’ ‘C’Est Si Bon,’ what’s any more progressive?”19 Even as Armstrong speaks, the interviewer sounds flustered. He tries to explain himself, but Armstrong steamrolls right over him, bristling at the notion that his music is old-fashioned.
On the evening of August 15, Armstrong and the All Stars found themselves at the Hollywood Bowl performing at a concert produced by Norman Granz. It was the first time Granz and Armstrong had worked together since the Benny Goodman debacle of 1953. Granz showed off his stable of stars: Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Roy Eldridge, Illinois Jacquet, Ray Brown, Buddy Rich, and others all performed on the same bill with Armstrong. Armstrong always thrived when competing with other legends, and he responded that night by blowing with fearsome ferocity, especially on transcendent encore versions of “Ole Miss” and “Bucket’s Got a Hole in It.”
The very next day, moved as he was by the Hollywood Bowl event, Granz found himself recording a full-length album for his Verve label, featuring Armstrong and Fitzgerald together again. The night before, these two legends of jazz singing had performed two numbers: “Undecided,” highlighted by scorching trumpet at a demanding tempo, and “You Won’t Be Satisfied,” a remake of a song from a 1946 Decca session. Granz was Fitzgerald’s manager at this time, and would oversee the “Songbook” series just beginning on Verve, which found “the First Lady of Song” tackling dozens of compositions by the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, and others. But while getting the Oscar Peterson Trio and Fitzgerald in was relatively easy, finding free time in Armstrong’s schedule was always a challenge.
“The logistics were always difficult, on almost all of Louis’s sessions with Ella, because Louis traveled so much,” Granz said. “I didn’t have that much time. I think literally I might have [had] only a day or two days to do an album, which wasn’t Joe’s [Glaser’s] problem. He simply said, ‘Well, he’s available June the tenth. You can have him June the tenth.’ ”20
With so little time to record Armstrong, there was even less to prepare. “There was no preparation whatsoever,” Granz said. “Again, those were economic arrangements with Glaser, and I didn’t have any rehearsals with Louis or certainly not with Peterson [and his group]. That was all improvised, all ‘head’ [arrangements].”21 One thing that had to be worked out was the keys the songs would be played in. Because Fitzgerald had greater range than Armstrong, most songs were played in Armstrong’s key or featured quick modulations. Armstrong plays scant trumpet on the date, perhaps from exhaustion caused by his life on the road, but what he does play is great, especially considering his unfamiliarity with the material.
Ella and Louis—featuring a hard-swinging “Can’t We Be Friends?” (arguably the best song they ever recorded), a breezy “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” touching harmonizing on “Stars Fell on Alabama,” a joyous “Cheek to Cheek,” and a tender “The Nearness of You”—appeared to tremendous éclat. DownBeat gave the record five stars, in a glowing review: “Ella and Louis is one of the very, very few albums to have been issued in this era of the LP flood that is sure to endure for decades.” The review goes on: “The exaggerated tooth-shaking of the lyrics is minimized by Louis here since the context is musically adult, and the clowning doesn’t fit. The material, moreover, is superior to much of the dross (not counting the jazz standards) he usually sings. As a result of the fact that he hasn’t sung many of these songs for years, the challenge awakens the whole musician in Louis; and because the melodies and lyrics are fresh to him, there are no pat routines for him to fall into. Hearing him here is a joy; and hearing him interweave horn and voice with Ella is often euphoria.”22
Armstrong continued to be a constant presence in the news in fall 1956. The jazz press was still at war over his persona and musicianship, even as movie critics raved about his performance in High Society, while the September issue of Look displayed a photo spread on Armstrong, calling him “Mr. Jazz.” And, yes, his fascination with laxatives continued to draw attention. Ebony reported: “Anyone who meets Satchmo cannot escape his ardent sales talk. While working on the movie, High Society, he tried to convert Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. He also sent a copy to President Eisenhower. ‘I told the President,’ he recalls, grinning, ‘to do it the Satchmo way and he’d feel ten years old. He wrote back and said as President he isn’t supposed to feel like he’s ten years old.’ ” Around the time Armstrong filmed The Glenn Miller Story in 1953, he had weighed 268 pounds, but by mid-1956 he was down to 170, thanks to his diet, based on a teaspoonful of Swiss Kriss nightly, a dose of the antacid Bisma Rex twenty minutes after every meal, and fresh orange juice. “Gas, man, that’s what’s causing the deaths today,” Armstrong was quoted as saying. “You got to get rid of the gas.”23 Soon after, Armstrong even gave a speech on the subject at an unusual venue: “I went down to the Stanford Research Institute and gave ’em a speech on my diet chart. Everybody’s been looking for a cure for cancer and nobody’s found it yet so they decided to hear about my diet.” Stroking his abdomen, Armstrong added, “You got the right diet, you’re all right down here. No ulcers, no cancer.”24 Armstrong would give his diet chart to anyone he met. When a young William Kennedy interviewed him in 1956, Armstrong gave him a copy of the chart and wrote on it, “P.S. My slogan. The more you shit, the thinner you’ll git. No shit.”25
Armstrong ended 1956 with one more trip overseas, a one-night stand in London on December 18. He was to play in a charity concert at Royal Festival Hall together with a British symphony orchestra to reprise Armstrong’s successful concert version of “St. Louis Blues” at the Lewisohn Stadium concert. Instead of the All Stars, Armstrong would be accompanied by top British jazz musicians, including drummer Jack Parnell and pianist Dill Jones. Joe Glaser wired Melody Maker to announce that Armstrong would play the charity concert for free. “Have cancelled Louis’s bookings,” Glaser wrote, “so that he, his personal valet and I can leave here on December 16 in time to rehearse for the benefit on the 18th. Louis and I accept your kind invitation and consider it an honor to appear for the Lord Mayor of London’s Hungarian Relief Fund.”26 Of course, Glaser had Armstrong working right up to the minute they left, performing for three thousand fans at the Mosque in Newark, New Jersey, on December 15.
When Armstrong met Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Norman Del Mar at a rehearsal, though, things did not get off to a good start. Dill Jones remembered:
We were a little bit self-conscious, naturally, during the rehearsal in the morning with Louis. And there was Mr. Norman Del Mar, the great conductor, a magnificent musician. A rather large, portly man. Norman Del Mar sat down at the piano and played this score of Leonard Bernstein’s [sic] “St. Louis Blues,” and Louis was playing along with him, you see? Anyway, they were halfway through this “St. Louis Blues” when suddenly Mr. Del Mar says, “Stop, please. Stop. Mr. Armstrong,” he said, “I perceive at letter H you have here forty-eight bars, and you’re playing anything but forty-eight bars, Mr. Armstrong. What’s it going to be? Forty-eight or one hundred and forty-eight?” And with that Louis came around the piano. I was sitting … right by them and [Armstrong] looked over Norman Del Mar’s shoulder and says, “We’ll play ’em both, Fats.”27
Their relationship would not improve. In addition to “St. Louis Blues,” symphonic versions of “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” “The Lonesome Road,” “Shadrack,” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” had been arranged, but regarding “Trouble” Armstrong told Del Mar, “I don’t dig you. Something ain’t right. At the end of this bar I’m supposed to go home—like this.” He blew a quarter-note G loud and clear. “Right? Well, these other cats, why, they’re going bom-bom,” he said, probably referring to two eighth-notes. “They’re a bom behind, or I’m a bom ahead.” Del Mar replied, “I’m sorry. That’s the way it’s written here. There’s no time to reorchestrate it.” “Reorchestrate nothin’!” Armstrong came back. “Let’s roll it that way—grab it, boys, we’re off!” After playing the song, Del Mar complained, “You finished before we did.” Armstrong simply smiled and replied, “Don’t matter at all, at all.”28
The night of the concert ran no smoother. The evening began with a speech delivered by Sir Laurence Olivier in which he condescended: “Now listen to this noble character—for that’s what he is—play you some rather basic music.”29 Del Mar started the concert by conducting the Royal Philharmonic through Brahms’s Tragic Overture and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Armstrong then came onstage to do “St. Louis Blues” and a few more numbers. Robert Musel wrote: “After each number the crew-cut college crowd and the rock-’n’-rollers roared their approval. The mink-and-tails set joined in and soon the joint was jumping.”30
Decades later, recordings of the evening’s performance have turned up, and though the sound quality is far from perfect, Armstrong’s brilliance shines. His trumpet never sounded at once more fragile and triumphant than it does on “Lonesome Road.” He swings mightily with the British musicians on “Royal Garden Blues” and “Mahogany Hall Stomp,” among others. But there is confusion now and then because the band in lieu of the All Stars was unaccustomed to the repertoire. Armstrong is adept at covering up imperfections, as when the drummer forgets to play a four-bar drum tag on “St. Louis Blues.” Silence ensues until Armstrong, waiting for the appropriate four bars, storms in with a concluding trumpet phrase that calls everybody home, ending on a sky-high concert F.
While the surviving tapes reveal Armstrong in peak form, playing for an adoring crowd, contemporaneous reports focused on the combustible relationship between Armstrong and a visibly annoyed Del Mar, who eventually began trying to sabotage Armstrong. As Armstrong finished singing “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” Del Mar continued to hold the final note so long as to make it seem that Armstrong had stopped singing prematurely. And toward the end of a short All Stars–like set with the British small group, Armstrong told Del Mar he was not allowed to resume the classical portion of the program “until we finish.”31 As the applause grew louder and longer, Armstrong played a chilling version of “West End Blues,” a piece he pulled out only for special occasions. In all, according to one report, “Armstrong did five encores while the Duke of Kent, the Earl and Countess of Harewood, the Hon. Gerald Lascelles and hundreds of others applauded for more.” Olivier said, “If anyone came into this Royal Festival Hall with any anti-American feeling, then, Louis, you’ve blown it away.”32 Indeed, thirty seconds survive of the crowd, in bedlam, chanting, “We want Louis!”
After his five encores, Armstrong’s concert segment ended before the concluding items on the program: Del Mar’s interpretation of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, and remarks by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Cullum Welch. “In the event,” Max Jones wrote, “neither of these performances took place. The majority of the people there had come to hear Armstrong. They had heard a lot of him, but not enough. They clapped and stamped and shouted. Minute after minute the uproar continued. At first conductor Del Mar smiled tolerantly. The smile gave way to a pained expression.”33 Del Mar waited a good five minutes for the cheers and applause to die down before giving up and storming off the stage. Afterward, he said, “I terminated the concert because it had ceased to be a concert and had become a shambles.” Always the professional, Armstrong was put off by Del Mar’s behavior: “The thing the professor should have done was to stop the cats shoutin’ and play ‘God Save the Queen’ or something.”
In an effort to calm the crowd, Armstrong returned to the stage for another encore, but was stopped by impresario S. A. Gorlinsky. “He tore the horn out of my hand and said it was too late,” Armstrong said.34 Nevertheless, Armstrong was immensely proud of his achievement that night. According to Max Jones, “Armstrong felt it as a kind of climax to his career. He worked magnificently, quickly gaining in confidence and allowing his natural manner [to] intrude on what had been, up to then, a ‘serious’ musical evening. The clash was felt more in the matters of showmanship, approach and audience response than in the music itself. Louis with strings has always sounded delightful, and though there were times when he and the orchestra got away from each other, they managed to finish together—more or less. It was a triumph for Louis and he should have been brought back as the customers insisted.”35
When Armstrong returned to the United States, he had a massive recording project awaiting him: a musical “autobiography” he had started before the London trip and one that would last into the New Year. Producer Milt Gabler, who hadn’t worked with Armstrong in more than a year, set about re-recording for Decca classic Armstrong from Okeh, Columbia, and Victor. Gabler’s thought was that if a motion picture on Armstrong’s life were ever produced, its soundtrack would require new, clean recordings. Having sold Joe Glaser on the idea, he aimed for ideal recording circumstances for Armstrong. Gabler made sure Armstrong was well rested. “I told Joe Glaser that I wanted him to book Louis in New York exclusively for the sessions, and not at Basin Street East (which then was the Armstrong performance venue in New York),” said Gabler. “I wanted the All Stars off in the evening, not from two to five in the afternoon, as customary, with them having to work at night. This way I could book them from seven to ten, when it was a natural thing, giving the guys time enough to have had dinner and get to the studio and be relaxed and not having to think about going to work later.”36
Still, the idea for Satchmo: A Musical Autobiography was a risky one from the start. It found Armstrong re-creating more than forty songs he had originally recorded in the twenties and thirties. Nearly every time Armstrong waxed a record in his youth, it had been greeted as a “masterpiece.” But it was now 1956, and although he was still blowing powerful trumpet and singing better than ever to sold-out audiences, it seemed virtually impossible that he would be able to improve upon or even match his earlier achievements.
It was Gabler who chose the songs to be performed. Sy Oliver was brought in to arrange the re-creations of Armstrong’s big-band work. The arrangements of the original recordings were copied, as were Louis’s original solos, but as Gabler recalled, “Sy was funny; he put the solo notation down on the lead sheet that was in front of Louis on the music stand, and wrote on it, ‘Go for yourself.’ ”37 Bob Haggart, bassist and arranger for the Bob Crosby big band, handled the new arrangements of the celebrated Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings. Studio musicians were added to Armstrong’s All Stars, which now featured a new bass player, Squire Girsback. Girsback became better known as Squire Gersh when, as Dan Morgenstern points out, “Louis shortened his name to something easier to pronounce!”38 Gersh was born in San Francisco and worked with Lu Watters’s band, which specialized in New Orleans revival music, including original arrangements by Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver, among others. He joined the All Stars in October 1956 and would remain for fifteen months.
With the material in place, the arrangements written, and the musicians picked, recording started in Decca’s New York City studios on December 11 with a big-band date arranged by Oliver. The six songs recorded that day are taken mainly at a slow-to-medium tempo, but Armstrong turns each into a classic performance. It was inevitable that critics would compare these versions to their originals to the disadvantage of the former, but to my ears many of the new versions are superior. Highlights of the first day included the trumpet solos on “If I Could Be with You” and “Lazy River” and the vocals on “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me.” An extended version of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” is arguably Armstrong’s greatest since his 1934 original recording. From the passionate two-chorus vocal (Oliver’s reed writing sounds like a choir of angels) through the climactic-high-note trumpet solo, the performance is astounding. All six songs are classic late-period Armstrong, harbingers of what was to come. One would be remiss not to mention, among the explosion of highlights, Armstrong’s stunning slow version of “When You’re Smiling.” As Dan Morgenstern wrote, “To swing at this almost static pace takes some doing.”39 Yet after an ebullient vocal (you can hear him smile) he takes off on a trumpet solo that surely ranks as among the very best of his career. He doesn’t deviate far from the melody, but the pure sound of his tone in the upper register is breathtaking. “If you compare the 1950’s recording of ‘When You’re Smiling’ with the famous one from [1929], I think there’s no comparison. They’re both magnificent, but that second one is mind-blowing,” says critic Gary Giddins in the documentary The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong. “It’s the most gorgeous sound on the trumpet I’ve ever heard.” “I don’t know who can play that now,” says Stanley Crouch in the same documentary. “I mean right now, forty years later, I don’t know anybody who can play that. But the sound he got and the intensity and he plays way in the upper register for a long time with great expressiveness, not just high notes … it’s staggering.”
And of course there are: the trumpet work on “That’s My Home”; the pleading vocal on “I Surrender Dear”; the wild scatting on “Song of the Islands” and “Hotter Than That”; the powerful blues playing on “Gully Low Blues” and “Knockin’ a Jug”; the joyous “You Rascal You”; the daring, almost modernized “Wild Man Blues”; the dazzling, sure-footed closing cadenza on “Exactly Like You”; the trumpet obbligatos behind Velma Middleton’s blues songs; the soulful, operatic “Dear Old Southland”; and the scintillating “King of the Zulus,” comparable to the sublimity of “When You’re Smiling.” This part of the Autobiography contained some of Armstrong’s most inspired blowing of the decade.
Needless to say, not every one of the forty-three songs recorded in little more than a month’s time is a masterpiece. Middleton’s four vocals were meant to re-create Armstrong’s classic recordings with blues singers such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, but her joyful voice did not fit the material. Some of the small-band song recreations are too Dixielandish here and there; and the remake of “Potato Head Blues” fares badly in comparison with the original. What is more, Deems sticks mainly to playing closed hi-hat cymbals and snare drums, most likely at Gabler’s suggestion, as many of the early tunes did not feature drums. This imprisons Deems, and as a result, rhythm occasionally suffers (some of Haggart’s arrangements survive at the Louis Armstrong House Museum and they clearly state “closed hi-hat” on Deems’s part). But these are minor complaints in relation to the overall greatness of the project, an astonishing document of Louis Armstrong’s artistry in the 1950s.
When the boxed set was released, while some carped about the insufficiency of the new versions in relation to their originals, for the most part reviews were enthusiastic. “There are mediocre pieces, but the album also contains some of his most durable work,” wrote Whitney Balliett. “On tunes like ‘Lazy River,’ ‘Song of the Islands,’ ‘If I Could Be with You,’ and ‘I Surrender Dear,’ Armstrong plays and sings with a life and ease that at times remind one of his greatest period.”40
The Autobiography is a definitive document of Armstrong’s powers as a trumpet player in the 1950s. Armstrong’s style had changed over the years. He had played quicker runs in his youth, and his love of opera always had led him to the dramatic glisses and suspended high notes that started creeping into his playing by the 1930s. As he got older, the change in his style can be compared to that of a young baseball pitcher who starts out by throwing nothing but fastballs, but, as he matures and loses a couple of miles off his velocity, begins mixing in curveballs and changeups to get the job done, perhaps to even greater effect. Armstrong was always among the most uninhibited jazz musicians, especially at quick tempos, where his almost free-floating sense of time was preternatural. He had begun practicing this skill in the 1920s, and it would remain constant for the rest of his career. Never one to just tear through eighth-note patterns, Armstrong played with a complete rhythmic freedom over the beat that most of today’s jazz musicians would be hard pressed to match. He taught jazz musicians to swing, and even had the rare ability to swing quarter-notes directly on the beat without making it sound stiff.
Also, as he got older, Armstrong became a better technical trumpeter, something pointed out to me by esteemed trumpeter Randy Sandke after listening to some examples from A Musical Autobiography.41 His tone got bigger as he got older, which is clear from a comparison of his 1929 and 1956 versions of “When You’re Smiling.” His range also improved. On his famous 1929 recording of “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” Armstrong cracks the final high concert E-flat on both takes, barely even producing the pitch. But on the 1956 remake, he hits the high E-flat and holds it dramatically. In discussing Autobiography, trumpeter Dave Whitney has written, “The years had given Louis more power and maturity to his playing. His work in the upper register was more impressive. (The earlier solos were daring and revolutionary, but sometimes he just skated by).”42 Wynton Marsalis has called Armstrong’s later solos “virtually impossible to learn.”43
The high form of his trumpet playing and voice on Autobiography carried over into Armstrong’s next project, Louis and the Angels, recorded immediately after the Autobiography sessions. Armstrong and Sy Oliver waxed twelve more tracks featuring the trumpeter on a variety of songs with a common theme: angels. A listener gets the opportunity to hear the great man improvise on “Angela Mia” and “I Married an Angel” and charmingly sing tunes like “When Did You Leave Heaven?” and “A Sinner Kissed an Angel.” As trumpeter, he takes flight on “Angel” and “The Prisoner’s Song.” Oliver’s studio band for these sessions was augmented by strings, harp, and a choir. The resulting album—not one George Avakian would likely have made at Columbia—was brimming with the kind of material that had most jazz critics at the time (and probably some of today’s crop) scratching their heads. But even with younger musicians calling him “Uncle Tom” and older critics deriding his live performances, Armstrong simply shrugged it all off. “As long as they spell my name right and keep it before the public,” he would tell his friends. He would often clip negative articles for his scrapbooks, but he rarely complained publicly. But three events the following year, 1957, would provide evidence that Louis Armstrong was not a person to be messed with.