[Dixielandjazz] "Satchmo at the Waldorf"

[Robert Ringwald]

Peering Behind Louis Armstrong's Smile
by Joel Brown
Boston Globe, August 19, 2012
John Douglas Thompson was "just a kid" the first time he saw Louis Armstrong, on
TV.
"To be honest, I kind of discounted him, in that I just didn't think he was important.
He sang 'Hello, Dolly' or something like that, and his music wasn't the music that
I was listening to," the actor, 49, said the other day. "I just saw him as, like,
this old man on television, kind of a throwback, if you will, from another time and
another era, who didn't really have any impact on me and wasn't important to me."
Now, of course, Thompson knows that Armstrong (1901-71) was a colossal figure in
jazz and American popular culture. His public persona was much criticized during
the civil rights era, but Armstrong was vastly more complex than the beaming, crowd-pleasing
figure on TV.
And it's Thompson's task to bring the private Armstrong to life at Shakespeare and
Company in "Satchmo at the Waldorf," a new play by Armstrong biographer and Wall
Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout. The one-man show, Teachout's first play,
will have its New England premiere Wednesday through Sept. 16, then move to Long
Wharf Theatre in New Haven in October. Long Wharf artistic director Gordon Edelstein
directs.
Both Teachout, in writing the play, and Thompson, in interpreting it, have drawn
on the many hours of tapes, now held at Queens College in New York, that the trumpeter
made during the last years of his life.
"The audiotapes were the most revealing, because what you hear on the tapes is a
very different person than what we know of him publicly. And that's what was so fascinating
about the play, and that's what made me really want to participate in this project,"
Thompson said. "You're kind of peeling back the veil. It's the man behind the smile."
The lean, tallish Thompson bears little resemblance to Armstrong, a smaller, rounder
man who is old and sick when we meet him in "Satchmo at the Waldorf." But performance
can triumph over physique, and Teachout described a moment like that from rehearsal.
"John puts on the Armstrong-in-street-clothes outfit, and he gets into position onstage,
and then he smiles Armstrong's smile," the playwright recalled. "I usually keep my
mouth shut in rehearsal, but I just couldn't help it. I said, 'My God, you look like
him.' And we all started laughing and went back to work. But it was quite eerie,
because John does not resemble Armstrong in any way. But he did then, and that's
the mark of a real actor."
The play begins as Armstrong -- whose nicknames were Satchmo and Pops -- returns
to his dressing room after a set at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. It's March
1971, and he's playing his last public gigs, just months before his death. Looking
ill, he puts down his trumpet and grabs for an oxygen mask, then launches into a
sometimes profane lament about the trials of old age. As he slowly recovers from
the exertion of performing, he turns on a tape recorder and begins to reminisce.
"There's probably only half a dozen sentences that are verbatim or close," said Teachout,
who wrote the 2009 autobiography "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong." "But he doesn't
say anything in the play that I don't think he would have said."
A central thread in the piece is Armstrong's relationship with Joe Glaser, a nightclub
owner in Chicago with mob connections who became Armstrong's longtime manager, protecting,
promoting, and exploiting him, sometimes all at once. Thompson plays Glaser, too.
"The story is really about this performer and manager and this symbiotic relationship
they had," Thompson said, "and how they both needed each other. It's a relationship
that can become combustible at times, but you see that there was a true affection
and a true love from one man to the other."
Armstrong's music was criticized as behind the times when artists such as Miles Davis
and John Coltrane were turning jazz on its head in the 1950s. But amid the civil
rights and black power movements, the criticism targeted Armstrong's image. Just
in the last week or so, at Edelstein's suggestion, Teach­out added Davis to the play,
giving Thompson a third persona to master.
"Terry is relatively inexperienced, but he's got a great ear for the voice of the
character he's writing," said Edelstein. "I don't know how to compliment him enough
for how open he has been."
Teachout, 56, grew up in Missouri, was a jazz musician as a young man, and began
his journalism career writing about jazz and classical music for The Kansas City
Star.
His interest in the intersection of race and music started early. He remembers that
the nicest restaurant in town had a separate entrance for blacks, marked with a red
neon "colored" sign. "Flash-forward a decade, the restaurant had turned into an Elks
club, and the band I was in was playing there. Now that was the entrance the musicians
were expected to go in," he said with a laugh.
Teachout has written librettos for two operas, but he said he'd never considered
writing a play until after "Pops" came out, and he was doing a residency at Rollins
College in Florida. A "Pops" reader who was a theatrical producer sent an e-mail
asking if Teachout had thought of adapting it for the stage.
"I had some time on my hands," Teachout said, "so I sat down, and four days later
I had a first draft."
The following year, in January 2011, the college hired actor Dennis Neal for a staged
reading of the play's first 45 minutes. Neal and a partner produced the world premiere
of a two-act version in Orlando that fall. At Edelstein's suggestion, the play is
now a one-act and runs about 80 minutes.
Edelstein, who had given Teachout feedback on early versions, was interested in producing
at Long Wharf, and Shakespeare and Company was also eyeing the play. Eventually they
decided on a joint production, with Thompson as the star.
"I'd call it a dream come true, except I never would have had the nerve to dream
any of this," Teachout said, shaking his head.
He won't be able to review plays at either theater for a while, by agreement with
his editors at the Journal. "You don't have to write a play to be a good critic,"
he said, but "becoming involved in the process has taught me things that I don't
think I could have learned any other way," especially about the role of the director.
Thompson is well known to New England audiences for his performances at Shakespeare
and Company, the American Repertory Theater, and Trinity Repertory Company. He also
recently finished a run in "The Iceman Cometh" at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, with
Brian Dennehy and Nathan Lane.
The most important thing "Satchmo" offers him, he said, is the chance to do right
by Armstrong.
"I gained an appreciation for this man that grew exponentially," Thompson said. "I
want to go deep with the character and explore these issues, because it's like a
moral obligation to do the best I can to represent Louis Armstrong."


-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
916/ 806-9551

The crime of taxation is not in the taking of it. It's in the way it's spent.
--Will Rogers March 20, 1932