[Dixielandjazz] Louis and The Star of David

[David M Richoux]

Louis did smoke tobacco - he did ads for Camel Cigarettes, but he also  
smoked a lot of marijuana - from the 1920s through the rest of his life!

from a NPR interview with biographer Laurence Bergreen:

> SIMON: I do have to ask you about a devotion in the life of Louis  
> Armstrong, marijuana? I guess from a fairly early age he probably  
> had it every day of his life. He believed in it.
>
> BERGREEN: Yes, he did. This is one of the more difficult things  
> about him to understand. He always -- often said that he was old  
> enough to remember when booze was illegal and pot was legal because  
> of course he came of age in the Prohibition era in the 1920s. And  
> the idea was -- and he was not wholly mistaken at that time -- that  
> it was healthy. Well, it was healthier than toxic moonshine, which  
> was making other jazz musicians sick and even killing them. And he  
> felt that it relaxed him a lot. So even though he got into trouble  
> with the law a few years later for possession of marijuana, he  
> continued to use it in very heavy quantities, you know, three cigar- 
> sized joints a day, at least, throughout his life. Now, this did  
> have a long-term harmful effect. I think if you talk to a doctor,  
> they'll tell you that that amount of heavy, chronic marijuana use  
> will have a bad effect on your lungs, for starters, and Louis did  
> indeed suffer lung problems in his last -- later years, and couldn't  
> blow for a long period as a result.

http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/hotter/interview.html

Dave Richoux


On Mar 18, 2010, at 1:18 PM, M J (Mike) Logsdon wrote:

> It's funny that joint looks exactly like a filter tip cigarette.
>
> _______________________________________________