[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong, father?

[Robert Ringwald]

Was Louis Armstrong a Father After All?
In private letters to his mistress, he expresses belief that he is the father of
her child
by Keith Spera
New Orleans Times-Picayune, December 9, 2012
Louis Armstrong loved children, but despite four marriages and many affairs, he did
not father any of his own. Or did he?
In letters to Lucille "Sweets" Preston, a performer with whom he maintained a years-long
affair, Armstrong made clear that he believed himself to be the father of her daughter,
Sharon, who was born in 1955.
Those 13 historic letters and postcards to Preston are being sold during a Dec. 15
online and phone auction by California-based memorabilia dealer Profiles in History.
The same day, Sweets Preston's daughter, Sharon Preston-Folta, releases her self-published
memoir, "Little Satchmo: Living in the Shadow of My Father Louis Daniel Armstrong,"
via Amazon.com.
If Preston-Folta, 57, is indeed Armstrong's child, it would not be the first major
biographical revision concerning the iconic entertainer, the most important cultural
figure to ever emerge from New Orleans.
For most of his life, Armstrong cited July 4, 1900 as his birthday. But in 1988,
researcher Tad Jones discovered Armstrong's baptismal certificate at Sacred Heart
of Jesus Church in New Orleans. It indicated Armstrong was born on Aug. 4, 1901.
That Armstrong possibly produced one -- if not more -- children is a tantalizing
prospect. Officially, the Armstrong estate does not recognize any living heirs. Since
the death of his widow, the former Lucille Wilson, in 1983, the Louis Armstrong House
Museum, which occupies his former home in Queens, N.Y., has functioned as the caretaker
of his legacy. The "frequently asked questions" page of the Museum's website addresses
the query "Did Louis have any children?" with an artful dodge: "Louis was married
four times, but his marriages never produced any children."
Which, of course, leaves open the possibility that he produced children outside of
marriage.
Preston-Folta has no doubts about who her father was, and not just because of such
circumstantial evidence as his letters, her mother's sworn account and her own childhood
memories. The physical resemblance between her and Armstrong is striking. Her forehead,
nose, brow line and mouth, especially, all recall Armstrong's.
"When you look at me," Preston-Folta said in a recent interview, "it's not that hard
to see."
__________
As a young man, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong left his native New Orleans for Chicago
and then New York, developing into the consensus greatest jazz trumpeter of all time.
Late in his career, he also sang hugely popular pop hits, including "Hello Dolly"
and "What a Wonderful World," among the most beloved and instantly recognizable recordings
of all time.
His personal life, meanwhile, was especially colorful and complex. In his voluminous
letters and home recordings, Armstrong extolled the virtues of marijuana, Swiss Kriss
laxative, lewd jokes and erotica. He also enjoyed writing, and reading aloud, pornographic
stories.
His extramarital dalliances were legion. While Lucille, his fourth and final wife,
maintained the family home in Queens, he logged up to 50 weeks a year on tour with
his All Stars. He did not lack female company on the road.
In the 1940s, Lucille "Sweets" Preston and her husband, Luther "Slim" Preston, toured
as a dance team called Slim and Sweets. They were managed by Associated Booking,
the same firm that handled Armstrong. Along the way, they performed with and befriended
the star trumpeter. He wrote fond letters to the couple.
Turns out, he was especially fond of Sweets. After Luther Preston's death in 1950,
Armstrong and Sweets Preston embarked on an affair that would endure for the rest
of his life.
In the fall of 1954, Armstrong learned that she was pregnant. He was ecstatic. On
Nov. 11, 1954, he typed a letter to her on stationery from a hotel in Winnipeg, Canada.
He pronounced himself "so proud" over the news of his "little Satchmo." He asked
Preston to marry him, even though he was already married. He also discouraged Preston
from joining him on the road, for fear travel might harm the unborn child: "You must
remember, I never had a baby before."
Most of Armstrong's biographers have since concluded that the absence of any known
children from such a prolific Lothario suggests he was sterile.
The account of Lucille Preston's pregnancy in Laurence Bergreen's 1997 biography
"Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life" was taken from All Stars clarinetist Barney
Bigard's autobiography, "With Louis and the Duke." Wall Street Journal critic Terry
Teachout's 2009 biography "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong" drew on the same source.
As quoted by Bergreen, Bigard tells of Armstrong's girlfriend "Sweetie" -- her stage
nickname was actually Sweets -- who claimed to be pregnant with Armstrong's child.
Bigard recalled that when Armstrong bragged to his wife about impregnating Preston,
Lucille Armstrong replied, "You couldn't make a baby with a pencil... She done fool
you, and she's got a boyfriend. He must have done it."
Based on Bigard's account, Bergreen concluded that Lucille Armstrong "shattered the
elaborate delusion (Louis) had devised about his girlfriend's child."
As the archivist of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, Ricky Riccardi is among the
world's foremost Armstrong experts. In his exhaustively researched 2011 biography
"What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years," Riccardi mentions
an Aug. 24, 1955 letter Armstrong sent to his manager, Joe Glaser. The letter directs
Glaser to pay an allowance to Sweets Preston, "who," Riccardi writes, "Armstrong
believed was carrying his baby (she wasn't)."
Riccardi's parenthetical dismissal of Armstrong's paternity comes across as unambiguous.
When asked recently about the Sweets Preston letters now up for auction, however,
Riccardi conceded that his paternity can't be definitively established.
"There's no way to really prove that Sharon is Louis' daughter," Riccardi said. "Could
she really be the only one after four marriages and countless flings? I still have
my doubts.
"That said, whether or not Sharon was really Louis' baby, HE believed it."
In the Aug. 24, 1955 letter to Glaser -- housed at the Library of Congress, it is
reproduced in editor Thomas Brothers' 1999 compilation "Louis Armstrong in his Own
Words" -- Armstrong recounted how the torrid affair with Preston began in Montreal.
He also graphically described the baby's conception during an extended engagement
at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.
Sweets Preston, now 91, has always insisted that she was not intimate with anyone
else around the time Sharon was conceived.
"If you know my mother, you would know that there was no other possibility," Preston-Folta
said. "She would not have left that out. Her admiration, love and loyalty for him
is, to this day, as strong as it was in the beginning."
__________
Sharon Preston was born on June 24, 1955 in Harlem. As a child, she played seven
instruments in school, including trumpet and accordion. Armstrong would occasionally
visit her and her mother in Harlem at their Lenox Terrace apartment, and at a home
they briefly shared with Preston-Folta's uncle and aunt in New Jersey.
He treated her like his daughter, even though he remained something of a remote figure.
"He was the star, and the star in our lives," Preston-Folta said. "When he came to
visit, it was really special. It wasn't like, 'Dad is home.' It was like we had a
special guest."
During summers, Sweets and Sharon would join Armstrong on the road. They traveled
aboard his bus with him and his band.
"Everybody knew, and everybody accepted us," Preston-Folta said.
When Sharon was 7, she and her mother moved to house in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., that Armstrong
purchased for them. The summer road trips with Armstrong stopped, but he maintained
his long-distance relationship with them.
Sweets Preston never had any other children, and never remarried following Slim's
death in 1950 -- in part, Preston-Folta said, because she believed Armstrong would
eventually leave his wife for her.
In a Nov. 27, 1965 letter hand-written on stationery from a hotel at New York's LaGuardia
Airport, Armstrong assured Sweets Preston that Lucille Armstrong would "rather be
bit by a leppard (sic) than to hear your name.... If I ever get rid of that evil
selfish Bitch, whether you want me or not you will have to marry me. I prey (sic)
to God every day for that moment."
He signed off with, "From your next husband, Louis Armstrong."
"My mother believed what he said," Preston-Folta said. "He said he would take care
of her and provide for her, that he loved her. She believed that some day, he was
going to do the right thing for both of us.
"It never occurred to her, in the beginning at least, that they were never going
to get married or that I was not going to be recognized."
Armstrong never left his wife. By the mid-1960s, he was seeing less and less of Sweets
and Sharon, which caused some tension. But he still promised to take care of them.
In the November 1965 letter, he referred to himself as Sharon's "daddy Satchmo" and
vowed to fund her education: "Whatever college she wishes to go to I've got her covered.
All she have to do is finish high school and that's where I step in... As long as
Ol' Satchmo lives, her happiness is assured. P.S. If I die, she will be straight
just the same."
Sharon was 16 when Armstrong died in 1971. She and her mother hadn't seen him in
two years. They learned of his death on the TV news.
For a while, they still received a monthly savings bond from Glaser's office, drawn
from the college fund Armstrong had set aside. They used the money for living expenses
instead. "I ended up paying my own college tuition," Preston-Folta said.
Lucille Armstrong was aware of Sweets and Sharon's existence. But after Louis' death,
she made sure that they had no claim on her late husband's estate.
"She signed an affidavit stating that Louis died without any children," Preston-Folta
said. "She tried to legally eliminate me.
"After Louis was gone, because my mother didn't step up and insist that I be recognized,
the estate didn't have to. My mother has a saying, 'Those that know, know, and those
that don't know, don't need to know.' She felt that I was recognized in (Armstrong's)
eyes."
Preston-Folta went on to have a son, get married, earn a college degree in marketing
and advertising, and eventually settle in Sarasota, Fla. She's spent 25 years working
in advertising sales, mostly selling radio advertising. She is currently a marketing/media
planner for a Florida department store chain.
The Armstrong estate still generates a small fortune every year from the sale and
licensing of his recordings and image. Preston-Folta has no claim to that money,
as she was never legally established as Armstrong's child and heir.
Presale estimates for the batch of letters to Sweets Preston to be auctioned Dec.
15 range into the tens of thousands of dollars. By putting these letters up for public
auction, and writing a memoir, Preston-Folta hopes to convince the world that she
is, in fact, the daughter of Louis Armstrong.
"I have every right to declare myself, to make myself known. And to make it known
that my father was well aware of me, and took care of me. It's all there, in his
own words."
-30



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

"Jesus loves you."
A nice gesture in church but a terrible thing to hear in a Mexican prison.