LOUIS ARMSTRONG AKA SATCHMO: extract from “A Jazz Supreme”

The best introduction to Armstrong’s music came out in 2020: Satchmo: The Decca and Verve Years 1924-1967. It begins with Shanghai Shuffle with the Fletcher Henderson Band- even though it has not transferred well from its crackly ‘78’ manifestation, it remains essential, a joyous romp with sublime syncopation. Solos follow solos on New Orleans Stomp while Black Bottom Stomp has some fast-paced tooting and may well be the ‘rave’ music of the day- although you’d need more space to dance in! There is humour on Old Man Moses, part-spoken, part-scat, the cowbell impersonating the rat-a-tat on Moses’ door; and on Skeleton in the Closet, part-spoken, Louis winning out again in the soloing department. On a Coconut Island takes the audience away to an exotic, faraway place where the sun always shines and there is nothing to do except to gaze into lovely blue eyes- it’s a perfect example of music as escapism with vocal backing by The Polynesians. The Old Folks at Home, which I always call Swanee River, is done with The Mills Brothers in tow; Louis unleashes another great solo on Jubilee; Louis is carried away loving every minute, introducing himself as ‘The Reverend Satchmo’ as When The Saints Go Marching In appears triumphantly. Nobody Knows De Trouble I’ve Seen is melodramatic, and it needs to be. Incongruously it’s by The Decca Mixed Choir. I’ve got all my notes mixed up now. Spending a day in the company of Louis’ music is a pleasurable but exhausting experience. Jeepers Creepers is there, as is Heebie Jeebies, the story going that Louis dropped the lyric sheet and was forced to improvise which was how he learned to scat so well- or it could be an urban myth. The Ella Fitzgerald- Louis Armstrong combination on You Won’t Be Satisfied Until You Break My Heart is glorious.

On Perdido Street Blues there is a guitar solo! It’s the live stuff I love the best: Muskrat Rumble is from the Symphony Hall, Boston in 1941, and the virtuosity of the musicians is astonishing, the warmth of the applause at the end of a thrilling bass solo well earned, although the drummer must take credit as well for his empathic fills. And on and on it goes. Louis forgets his words during That’s My Desire, probably deliberately and the scat and ad-libbing with singer Velma Middleton live in Boston draw many laughs, the ‘reverend’ becomes irreverent when he sings, “The touch of your chops.”  The funniest of the lot is when he sings Baby It’s Cold Outside with Velma Middleton for over five minutes: it’s like listening to a stage play where the actors have forgotten half their lines. He sings You Can’t Lose a Broken Heart with Billie Holiday, he sings Dream a Little Dream of Me with Ella Fitzgerald where Ella ‘out-scats’ him; he sings Blueberry Hill; he even sings in French; he sings with Bing Crosby after a little repartee in which Louis proclaims he is not lazy but is blessed with a lack of ambition which is why he has Gone Fishin’. But it’s not just about that gravelly voice; most of all Louis plays that trumpet. It’s all there right down to Hello Dolly which knocked The Beatles off the top of the charts and What aWonderful World, also a posthumous chart-topper in the sixties. It is not hyperbolic to suggest that Louis Armstrong may have been the greatest all-round entertainer of the century.

Armstrong would go on to a leading role in the 1947 film ‘New Orleans’ and to charm Carnegie Hall in with his wit and charisma (and his music, both combo and big band). Collaborations followed with Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington and Barbara Streisand to name but a few. Armstrong might have come across as easy going but he also had principle and cancelled a government sponsored tour of the Soviet Union in 1957 not because of anything the USSR had done, but because of President Eisenhower’s perceived indifference to the exclusion of black students from Little Rock High School in Arkansas.