I slept in Kewp’s bed that afternoon. Once I thought I heard a man’s gruff voice, angry, and Kewp laughing and saying, “Go to hell,” but it went away as bad dreams do. I awoke to the smell of cooking, the faint sound of streaming folksy guitar and the pleasant clitter-clatter of a woman working in her kitchen.
The pain was gone, except when I turned and put pressure on my right leg, then I felt it.
Kewp came into the room and stood jauntily over me. Barefoot, in black silk pants buckled over a form-fitting pink lambswool sweater, she looked like a million bucks.
“Feeling better?”
“Much, thank you.”
“Okay then. The big question is: Dylan or Van Morrison?”
“I thought it was Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.”
“Another time, another race.”
“I think your question is, too. But if you put it to me I’d have to say Van. The voice carries the day.”
Kewp seemed to accept that. She pointed to an open closet. “Your clothes are all clean and hanging up. I shampooed your front seats and rolled down your windows. Should be dry by morning. I made a seafood lasagna that’ll be ready whenever you are.”
She kissed me on the forehead and left the room.
She was a good cook; the pasta and sauce were from scratch. There was a tasty artichoke salad, homemade garlic bread, cold white wine.
Later we had coffee on the deck, and Kewp smoked a joint. I declined.
“I thought I heard you arguing with someone today. A guy with a big voice.”
“You heard right. That was Big Bill. He’s an old friend, a last wave draft dodger. We were seeing each other for a while, but that was a long time ago. Big Bill’s never let go. He still wants to own me. He saw your car and tried to make an issue out of it. I told him to get the hell out.”
She insisted I walk the leg. We took a trail through the bush, crossed Lower Road and took another trail that led to a high bluff over the sea. It was a great spot; the only building we passed was an abandoned shack. The wind was blowing hard, so we sat between two big rocks in a patch of moss and dogwoods. Kewp smoked another joint. Again, I declined.
We sat there and watched the sun go down over the great leviathan of Vancouver Island.
“You know,” I said. “It was originally named Quadra and Vancouver Island, giving top billing to the Spaniard who saw it first. Then the Brits conveniently shortened it. Clever, huh?”
“Typical,” Kewp said. “When I took history at Ryerson, I realized that the British Empire was not much different from the Third Reich, except that they pulled it off and did it with panache.”
“I’m sure all my Irish ancestors would agree with that.”
“Mine, too.”
“But my English forebears would probably balk.”
“Mine, too.”
Night comes down fast under those mountains. I led the way back.
“You’re moving better,” Kewp said.
Back at the house, I rolled up my car windows and felt the front seats; they were still damp. I went inside the house, where candles illuminated every room. Kewp insisted on again icing the leg. Then she gave me a glass of brandy to drink and sent me to bed.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“Then read me the list. There’s a reading lamp next to the bed. Go up, climb in and get toasty, and I’ll join you in a minute.”
Five minutes later, she came into the room and handed me the framed article. Then she undressed-it was the third time today I would see her stitchless-and climbed in beside me. She blinked and smiled up at me like a little girl.
“Okay. I’m ready,” she said.
I started reading from where I’d left off.
Armstrong’s experience with marijuana warrants public exposure, because it counters so many clinical stereotypes.
Armstrong was well on his way to being a recognized musical giant before he took his first regular toke—his scrappy, soulful and downright demonic-paced Hot Five and Hot Seven “race records” of the 1920s had established him among musicians as the preeminent jazz soloist of his generation and a brilliant original singer.
After starting his forty-three-year association with marijuana in 1928, the mature Armstrong
• Entered his “classic” phase, teaming up with a young Earl Hines on piano to record the body of work that jazz critics consider Armstrong’s—and therefore jazz’s—finest. Among the jewels were “ West End Blues”, which some rate the best jazz record ever made, and a dreamy number called “Muggles”, which just so happened to be slang for marijuana.
• Radically and permanently expanded the jazz songbook to include pop standards, endearing himself to a largely white audience with songs like “When You’re Smiling”, “Ain’t Misbehaving “Rocking Chair” “Body and Soul” and “All of Me”
• Transcended the record industry’s segregated label system, opening the door for other black artists.
• Wowed New York and then Hollywood, appearing in dozens of films including Pennies From Heaven (1936), A Song is Born (1948) and High Society (1956), for which Cole Porter wrote two Armstrong numbers. He also made a handful of three-minute music videos called “soundies” in 1942.
• Worked with such diverse talents as Billie Holiday, Danny Kaye, Duke Ellington and Bing Crosby, who once said: “Rev. Satchelmouth is the beginning and the end of music in America.”
• Reinvented the New Orleans sound with his All-Stars at landmark 1947 concerts, standing pat in the face of bop and other “fancy” musical trends.
• Travelled the world with the All-Stars, performing more than 300 nights a year and planting jazz and its offshoots in the U.K. and beyond, doing what he called “my day’s work, pleasing the people and enjoying my horn.”
• Became, in February 1949, the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time.
• Recorded some of his best albums, including classic duets with Ella Fitzgerald, in the ‘50s and enjoyed his first million-selling hit, “Mack the Knife”, in 1955.
• Knocked the Beatles from their 14-week hold on No. 1 with “Hello, Dolly” in May 1964—more than four decades after his first recordings were cut with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.
Worshipped by musicians, adored by the public and loved by the people who knew him (including ex-wives), the mature Armstrong’s career was dazzling, his life positively storybook.
And through it all, he smoked his gage.
I stopped there, and Kewp ran her fingers adoringly through my hair. “‘He smoked his gage.’ I love that. ‘He smoked his gage.’ And I love how he took out the Beatles when he was in his sixties, and they were at their peak of popularity. Finish it,” she said.
I sighed but continued.
Despite his habit, he was always a meticulous professional, dependable, emotionally stable and universally cherished for his folksy wit and wisdom.
The only time the pot ever had overt negative consequences was in November 1930, when Armstrong was busted smoking a joint in the parking lot of the New Cotton Club in Los Angeles. He spent nine days in the city jail awaiting trial, and his record company sent an eastern gangster named Johnny Collins to L.A. to “fix” the problem.
“Whether he used sweet reason or hard cash, Collins did the job,” wrote Jasen and Jones.‘Louis received a suspended sentence and went back to work and back to pot. He never smoked it in a public place again, but he would smoke it every day for the rest of his life.”
Even in jail, Armstrong encountered some fellow vipers.
“We reminisced about the good ol’ beautiful moments we used to have during those miniature golf days,” he said. “We’d go walking around, hit the ball, take a drag, have lots of laughs and cut out.”
You can say Armstrong did it to feel good—call it recreational if you like.
Or you can point to the unimaginable poverty of his childhood, the racism of his time, and say he used it as a crutch to take the edge off life’s pain.
You can risk ridicule and say he did it because it helped connect him to the truth as a man and an artist.
You can definitely say it’s too bad he smoked so much—he died of heart failure and, like the late Israel Asper, might have lived on for another decade if he hadn’t smoked like a chimney.
But no one can say the mature Armstrong should have been denied his daily muggles—any more than you could have denied Asper his daily packs.
They came and went in clouds of smoke.
End of jazz story.