[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong documentary previewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Satchmo: Hilarious, Reflective, Vindictive
The audio diaries of Louis Armstrong give riveting insights into the mind of the
great jazzman.
by Paul Sexton
London Telegraph, July 23, 2011
The rhapsodic trumpet, the dabbing handkerchief, the Grand Canyon grin across the
"satchel-mouth" that gave him his nickname. To anyone that grew up in the 20th century,
Louis Armstrong is as familiar as Father Christmas.
But over recent months, I've been getting to know a side of Satchmo that's rarely
been heard beyond the four walls of his longtime home in Queens, New York. For a
Radio 2 documentary I have made that airs next week, ahead of the 110th anniversary
of his birth on August 4, the Louis Armstrong House Museum allowed me access to the
great man's cache of reel-to-reel private recordings.
>From around 1950 -- by which time Armstrong was a huge star and had already been
a working musician for more than a quarter-century -- he was what we'd now call an
"early adopter" of home tape technology. That didn't amount to anything more than
a small, portable machine and a microphone, but on it he loved to record his thoughts,
copies of his radio interviews, favourite discs, jokes and anecdotes. It makes for
a random but riveting audio diary.
Sifting through material in the vast vault, Satchmo became, to me, not just a founding
father of jazz, but a man of simple pleasures, a real human being and husband: irrepressible,
hilarious, reflective, and even vindictive.
He continued to make his tapes until only a few months before his death in 1971,
and they illustrate an extraordinary career that stretched for generations, from
Bessie Smith to the Beatles. Along the way, Armstrong talks about a journey that
took him from humble beginnings in New Orleans to an audience with the Pope.
The very idea of being able to document his life for posterity was exciting for Satchmo.
At one point he describes the concept to a friend. "I'd have a library, all around
the walls, a thousand reels, and probably about a year from now I'll have all of
my recordings," he enthuses.
Always with that infectious chuckle in his voice, he continues: "When I get to the
age where I have a beard, [I'll] just sit at the typewriter and listen to records
and send out stories to the cats, what happened on different sessions and everything
like that."
Then he pokes playful fun at fellow musicians who did not embrace the "new" technology
as he did. "Like that time [his clarinet and saxophone player] Johnny Dodds had to
say something into the mic, when we was playing Gut Bucket Blues [at the first session
by Armstrong's Hot Five, in Chicago in 1925]. Every time they shoved him to the mic,
he'd do nothin' but work his chops, he said, 'I can't talk into that thing there!'"
The sheer longevity of Satchmo's working life is much emphasised by the tapes, which
are also often startlingly candid for their time. "[Someone] asked me one time, don't
you think a person has to love the idea of sex to appreciate music?" he says. "I
said, 'yes, you're right.' Bessie Smith, everything she sang was, 'My man did this,
my man did that.' Everything she sang was about her man, and the girl was right."
Armstrong had recorded Empress of the Blues with Smith in New York, also in 1925.
Smith died of injuries sustained in a car accident in 1937, aged just 43.
"I think she's one of the greatest, the madam of the blues that we're gonna get for
generations to come," Armstrong says later. "It's too bad she didn't live a little
longer, so the younger generation could've at least have heard her in person."
For all his larger-than-life bonhomie, and his ability to look as much at home on
films and television as in his own house, Satchmo comes across as a serious student
of his music. "We was taught to play lead and tonation, and they evidently ain't
teachin' that nowadays," he complains. "[They] slide up and slide down, and we was
taught to hit a mark, right on the nose."
Never is his punctiliousness for music history more evident on these recordings than
when he chastises his fellow jazz notable Jelly Roll Morton for comments Morton had
earlier made about the origins of scat singing. "Mr Jelly Roll," he starts up, "I
just had to take time out and kind of let you pause a minute, while I explain this
situation about scat. I don't think I'll let you get away with this.
"You're my boy, and I know you like to brag a lot about yourself, 'I, me, this, that.'
But you must remember that... that day at the Okeh Recording Company in Chicago during
the recording of Heebie Jeebies [an Armstrong track of 1926], I didn't even know
you.
"If I did try and copy scat, as you try and rudely put it... I still say that it
was a coincidence. I've never heard anyone say, in New Orleans, even the word 'scat'.
I didn't think they used that word, scat wasn't even mentioned until after that recording
was made. The president of [the Okeh label] said, 'Louis Armstrong, this is where
scat was born.' And when you got to Chicago, young man, everything had been done
before."
At this point in the admonishment, one realises quite how bizarre it is, and how
the subject must have been playing on Armstrong's mind -- because at the time he
is speaking, Morton is already dead. "So I just want to make a little correction
there because after all, I'm still in the business and you six feet under the ground,
young man. So don't hand me that." Helpfully, he finishes: "OK. Carry on." Carry
on being dead, presumably.
Another gem is Armstrong's description of his and his fourth wife Lucille's 1949
meeting with Pope Pius XII.
"The Pope was such a fine little ol' fellow, you know. Oh, he welcomes you so nice.
My wife had to put on a veil, she sure was cute.
"So the Pope said, 'Have you any children?' I said, 'No, daddy, but we're workin'
on it!' He said, 'I'm going to pray for you,' and he blessed us. I went right out
and got his picture and autograph, and it's right on my dresser."
History does not confirm whether Satchmo really called Pius "daddy" or asked for
the autograph. But his irresistible ebullience was undimmed to the end, as in a Sixties
recording when he and his friends are discussing the new sensation of the day. "They
said, 'What you think about the Beatles?' I said, 'They're great, they got a little
beat there and it's all right!'"
In the last excerpt in the documentary, in 1970, Satchmo sounds tired, and aware
that his time is approaching. But even then, his philosophy shines through, and encapsulates
the man as poignantly as any of his timeless recordings.
"That's my story, folks," he says softly. "I guess I'm stuck with it. I never want
to be any more than I am, and what I don't have, I don't need it anyhoo. That was
my life, and I enjoyed all of it. Yes, I did. I don't feel ashamed. My life has been
an open book, so I have nothing to hide."
__________
Satchmo by Satchmo: The Louis Armstrong Tapes is on Radio 2 on Wed at 10pm. The 10-CD
box set Ambassador of Jazz is released on August 1 by Decca, with the two-disc Louis
Armstrong Collection to follow in September.
http://www.louisarmstronghouse.org/


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

"My doctor recently told me that jogging could add years to my life.  I think he was right. I feel ten years older already."  -- Milton Berle, B7/12/1908 - D3/27/2002