Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

by Thomas Brothers

  The Depression was especially hard on musicians from New Orleans who had been enjoying so much splashing success outside of their home city for some 15 years. Armstrong was one of the few who successfully transitioned into the swing era. The early 1930s were scrambling years for Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory, and, most tragically, King Oliver, who lost a lot of money in failed banks. Like Morton, Oliver was reluctant to hire a manager, which put him at even greater disadvantage. “King was no business man,” lamented one of his sidemen, who saw him turn down good offers and get stuck with inferior ones. Armstrong apparently approached Oliver with an offer to colead a band, but his proud teacher turned him down.

  On a street corner in Harlem, Morton explained to anyone who would listen how he had invented jazz. Bechet opened up a tailor shop, Ory raised chickens in Los Angeles, and Johnny Dodds was rewarded for his cautious investments in real estate. Touring Savannah, Georgia, in September 1937, Armstrong discovered Oliver sweeping floors in a poolroom; seven months later the King was dead. “I watched all that and I profit by those people’s mistakes,” Armstrong said. (He was speaking of the benefits of good dentistry, but the remark could be extended in any number of directions.) His ability to adapt was far greater than most men’s, and not just the musicians from New Orleans.

  It was under these distressed economic conditions—and also under threats of gangster violence—that Armstrong headed south in 1931 for the first time since he left home nine years earlier. Collins booked him into a large and pricey whites-only venue called Suburban Gardens, just outside the city limits of New Orleans, in Jefferson Parish, near the river. He performed there six nights per week for nearly three months.

  He and his band arrived on June 5 at the Louisville–Nashville Railway Station in a private railroad car. Sherman Cook, a home boy who was now Armstrong’s personal attendant, had been sent in advance along with Lillian to orchestrate a triumphal entrance. Eight bands, including one sponsored by the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, escorted this “magnet of dark town adulation” (as a white newspaper put it) on a parade through South Rampart Street. A crowd numbering in the thousands carried him while he comically kicked his legs into the air. He was taken to Astoria Gardens, the ballroom of the (colored) Astoria Hotel, on Rampart Street. Capt. Joseph Jones and Peter Davis from the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys were waiting for him, and so was Dave Jones, who had taught him to read music on the riverboats. A band led by Kid Rena, a childhood friend and competitor, played his tunes as they had learned them from recordings. After that the crowd followed him to the Patterson Hotel, 759 South Rampart Street, at Julia Street, where he lodged for his three-month stay.

  Collins and Armstrong were hoping that the long train ride would put some distance between them and the manager’s mess they now found themselves in, but the intimidation continued. On their midwestern tour they had been tracked by three thugs, and now they were getting the same treatment in New Orleans. While Armstrong was playing Detroit at the end of May, the president of the American Federation of Musicians union telegrammed from New York City to demand that he fulfill his prior contract with Connie’s Inn, and Rockwell was now working the New Orleans scene in a similar way. This didn’t take much prodding, since the white musicians’ union was painfully aware that Armstrong’s immense popularity would drain business from their own members. Cornetist and union president Johnny De Droit called a meeting of the local board of directors, and the decision was made to take up the matter of Suburban Gardens hiring a Negro orchestra with Governor Huey Long.

  Rampart Street (The Frank Driggs Collection)

  But Suburban Gardens fought back. They hired bodyguards and the band opened on June 8. As was now normal for Armstrong’s extended gigs, a radio broadcast was set up, on station WSMB. Opening night was marred by a bracing insult. The announcer walked up to the microphone, hesitated, explained to his audience, “I can’t announce that nigger man,” and left the building. Armstrong was alerted behind the curtain, and he immediately walked out to the mike, asked the band for an introductory chord, and introduced himself. He did that for the rest of the gig and believed that it was the first time an African American even spoke on the radio in New Orleans.

  The band was the only entertainment, six hours per night, with 40-minute sets and 20-minute breaks. The place was routinely full. On the first night they played High Society, a number strongly associated with his hometown, three clarinets playing the famous piccolo solo in unison. For another feature Armstrong stepped out to the center of the dance floor for 20 choruses of Tiger Rag, another piece with strong local connections.

  “Virtually all of New Orleans was represented,” claimed a white newspaper, and in a twisted way there was some truth to that. The newspaper was not thinking of African Americans, who could not enter the door. But thousands gathered outside the building on opening night, perched on the levee that kept the Mississippi River from overflowing its banks. They spread out picnic suppers and settled in for the evening, hoping to hear the music through the open windows. Accustomed to “nosebleed” balcony seats in segregated theaters, they satisfied themselves with a patch of dirt along the riverbank. “I’ll never forget that sight,” Armstrong confessed.

  Did he play over and beyond the crowded white ballroom to the community he had grown up with, now assembled on the levee? Perhaps the scene reminded him of Lincoln Gardens, where the little white boys sat at ringside tables around the bandstand, while hundreds of African-American dancers filled the hall behind them—except now white enthusiasm for his music had multiplied a thousand times, pushing his African-American fans out of the building completely.

  Radio was a much easier way for African Americans to hear him, and his visit caused a huge upsurge in unit sales during the summer of 1931. Networks carried the nightly broadcasts as far as Minneapolis. Telephone lines were set up so that people could call Suburban Gardens with requests. In response to one, Armstrong eagerly announced that the band was going to “take that baby like Grant took Richmond!” It’s hard to know if he was being mischievous, but contemporary Confederates were so insulted that they clogged up the phone lines with complaints. He quickly issued an apology in the same set.

  Colored Waif’s Home for Boys (The William Russell Photographic Collection, MSS 520 F. 2531, Williams Research Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection)

  In late June he visited the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, where he was greeted by the boys’ band playing their version of Auld Lang Syne. He sat in with them for one number and also played a solo version, “hot and high,” of When You’re Smiling. His first cornet was brought out for display and he fondly looked it over. He bought a radio for the home so the boys could listen to him that evening, when he dedicated a tune to them from the bandstand.

  Zilner Randolph, a trumpeter who admired Armstrong greatly, had been hired in Detroit to rehearse the band and create their arrangements. During an intermission Armstrong turned to him and said, “Randy, pick out a set and take it down, this is your band.” What he meant was for Randolph to select a group of numbers he would like to conduct, which he would be doing from now on while Armstrong took breaks for part of a set or even an entire set, in which case Randolph would also take his solos. This development shocked the other musicians but they accepted it.

  One night at Suburban Gardens, the club put on a southern theme, with the women all dressed in white lace and the men in white linen suits. “All you could see was white on white,” remembered Preston Jackson. This was traditional summer style, but the racial implications must have been obvious. Randolph was conducting a waltz when an intoxicated young woman brushed up against him in the middle of her dance step; suddenly she grabbed his baton and drawled, “Aw I love you black man, I love you.” She held on to him for what seemed like a full minute, until the band stopped playing. Tubby Hall, the drummer (and a New Orleanian native), was so unnerved that he lost track of timekeeping, but the crowd laughed heartily. All Jackson could thi
nk about were the thousands of African Americans standing on the levee and the potential for a riot. The musicians quickly filed off the bandstand and scurried back to Armstrong’s dressing room. A few minutes later the club owner came to get them, told them not to worry, that the crowd felt sorry for the musicians and was taking up a collection of tips as a gesture of goodwill.

  Armstrong was certainly not interested in managing and disciplining his sidemen in the way that, say, Cab Calloway or Duke Ellington did. He had a hard time disconnecting personal from business matters; what he wanted was the freedom to concentrate on music without worry. Bud Freeman talked about Jack Teagarden’s troubles managing musicians: “the headaches of an artist like that trying to keep a band going are just too much,” he insisted. “I was always amazed that people like Benny Goodman, especially, who is a great artist, and Tommy Dorsey could have a band and still play as well as they did. But they were hard men. They had to be… . I realized it was not for me… . If the players in the band didn’t like me, I couldn’t play, where Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey didn’t give a damn what anybody thought of them.”

  Managing a band was not for Armstrong, either; he was happy to have Collins call the shots, though he intervened in special situations. Guitarist Mike McKendrick was Collins’s straw boss, and one day McKendrick approached Preston Jackson with the news that Collins had decided to fire him. Jackson had lumbago and was taking time off work for a few days to rest. He quickly made his way to the Patterson Hotel to tell his friend the story. Armstrong exploded, “This is my band, not Johnny Collins’s band!” and set out to argue with Collins until the situation was straightened out.

  Suburban Gardens (The William Russell Jazz Files, MSS 536, F. Louis Armstrong 331a, Williams Research Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection)

  Loyal to his friend, who had played for his wedding to Lillian many years before, Armstrong started having Jackson sing a number in their standard set. Jackson became well known over the radio and gathered lots of lunch invitations, especially from ladies. Newspapers ran stories about the local musicians in Armstrong’s band and how they had made good. Jackson noted how people who wouldn’t have anything to do with him when he was young, because of his dark skin, were now very friendly. This was Armstrong’s experience as well, multiplied to an incalculable degree.

  In New Orleans began the ritual (if it hadn’t already begun in Chicago) of people queuing up to greet him and ask for handouts. A line formed outside his hotel room every night in anticipation of the door opening at 6:00 p.m. Word got around that he was passing out dollar bills. “That happened the whole three months we were there,” remembered Jackson.

  On August 23 the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club invited Armstrong to visit headquarters at 1125 Perdido Street and made him an honorary lifetime member. He sponsored a local baseball team, the “Secret Nine,” buying them equipment and uniforms with his last name written across the fronts of their shirts. On August 16 the Secret Nine played the New Orleans Black Pelicans at Heinemann Park, at the corner of Tulane and Carrollton Avenues—2:00 p.m., admission 50 cents, with “special accommodations” for whites. On Sunday the 23rd his own participation was announced and 1,500 fans came to St. Raymond Park to watch him pitch. In between games he threw three pitches to Sherman Cook, catcher, with drummer Joe Lindsey, a friend from childhood, batting. After a comically exaggerated exchange of signals, Armstrong, cap turned backwards, wound up, ran down the mound, and hurled a “slow, tantalizing gumdrop.” Lindsey, with the brim of his cap pulled down over his eyes, flailed away violently and missed, while Cook desperately tried to catch the ball in his catcher’s mask. After strike three, the crowd urged Lindsey to run while Armstrong simply chuckled and walked off the mound.

  The summer of 1931 was also marred by a tragedy—the death of cornetist Buddy Petit (ca. 1897–July 4, 1931). Four years older than Armstrong, Petit was one of the players he had imitated during his teenage years. Petit played in a narrow range but with an expanded command of harmony, fast fingering, a gift for variations, and imaginative counterpoint to the lead; he was an example for Armstrong in all four areas. At the end he was heavily alcoholic, living by himself in a one-room cabin on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Armstrong served as a pallbearer, his presence attracting huge numbers to the funeral. What were his feelings, looking down at the sad end of an important musician in his life? Ten years before it would have been impossible for anyone to predict the dramatic differences in the trajectories of the two young musicians.

  Efforts were made to schedule three performances for blacks. On Saturday, June 6, he was booked for an evening at Astoria Gardens, the venue on South Rampart Street that had hosted him on the day of his arrival. Thirteen hundred people showed up only to be told that his contract with Suburban Gardens prohibited him from playing. He tried to appease them by singing three lines of Peanut Vendor. Twenty-nine people were arrested. Another futile attempt was made July 8 at Pythian Temple Roof Garden, and finally a big “colored-only” event was scheduled for Monday, August 31, at the U.S. Army Supply Base, Poland Avenue and Dauphine Street in the Bywater neighborhood, right next to the Industrial Canal, price 75 cents. Thousands came from all over in Model T Fords and found the place padlocked. Someone decided that the Army base could not host dancing, after all, though Preston Jackson suspected that nearby club owners had intervened.

  The only public performance Armstrong gave for black people during his three-month stay was a benefit for the Waif’s Home at an African-American theater (probably the Lincoln Theater; a performance of some kind was scheduled there for Saturday, June 13). He and Lillian took the stage as a duet. “I had never seen such a superb act,” said Randolph. “They looked like they could just breath together. They knew what one another was doing … just the witty little things that she and Louis would do.”

  The band left town on September 1, immediately after the fiasco at the Army base. Jackson implied that there was an element of escape in their departure, but it is clear that Collins had already arranged a tour through the South. He had been entertaining various offers from Europe, but decided to do this instead. The three months in New Orleans must have been immensely satisfying for Armstrong, except for the glaring fact that the people who had nurtured him, musically and otherwise, during the first 21 years of his life were not allowed to hear him play. The visit brought into high relief where he now stood on the ladder of his career—a step beyond the reach of the community he had grown up with.

  Collins’s southern tour was a grueling six-week run of one-nighters, some white, some black, and some precariously mixed. The band crisscrossed through Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, counting on the buzz from the first program in a city to generate return visits. Armstrong remembered how tough it could be to find food. A reliable method was to go around to the back of a restaurant and plead with the African-American chef to feed them in the kitchen. “Many are the times I’ve eaten off those big wooden chopping blocks,” he remembered. Sherman Cook and Joe Lindsey became part of his entourage, Cook as master of ceremonies and Lindsey to help book rooms and carry luggage. Armstrong subsidized Lindsey’s salary in a gesture of gratitude for the favor Lindsey had shown him some 16 years earlier when he hired him for his very first musical job, a little trio of teenage novices.

  First stop was Sam Houston Hall in Houston. The performance was a smashing success, with an estimated 8,000 in attendance and another 1,000 standing outside, hoping to hear something. A special dance floor was installed in anticipation of the “greatest ballroom event ever held in Texas.” Special railroad rates were arranged for towns within a radius of 100 miles. “For the first time in the writer’s recollection,” wrote a reviewer, “the high and the low, the rich and poor, white and black, learned and unlearned all, all turned out under one roof to such an occasion in Houston.” A return visit to Houston was sponsored by a group of African-American businessmen. Jackson remembered how Armstrong took Collins’s wo
rd on attendance without bothering to ask for documentation. “It was foolish of him not to check,” insisted Jackson. A December notice in the Afro-American gave some attendance counts for the tour: Galveston, 4,000; San Antonio, 2,700; Austin, 1,900; Wichita Falls, 2,200; Ft. Worth, 5,000; return trip to Houston, 3,000.

  From Houston they went to Oklahoma City; this was probably when Ralph Ellison heard him play. Ellison was impressed by the appearance of white women at the segregated dance hall: “They were wild for his music and nothing like that had ever happened in our town before. His music was our music but they saw it as theirs too, and were willing to break the law to get to it.”

  In Wichita Falls there was a glitch with housing. Arrangements had been made with a woman who owned a 15-room house, but when her husband came home he told his wife to get the dirty musicians out immediately, then turned around and threatened to shoot them. Adventures like this were routine on southern tours in the 1930s.

  They gave two performances in Dallas at the Fair Park Automobile Building, with a special section reserved for whites. For the return visit Paul and His Pals, a local black band, played while the Armstrong band took breaks to produce continuous dancing from nine until midnight. From Dallas they went to Tyler, Texas, but couldn’t find a bus, so they hunkered down for 95 miles in the back of a truck. In Tyler a rope was strung down the middle of the dance floor to separate the races. Someone from the black side snuck under the rope, according to Jackson, and the “Texas Rangers [state police] came down on him and beat the living shit out of him and they made the promoter give the white people all their money back.” The dance folded quickly and the musicians bolted. As pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith once wryly observed, “Anything can happen where a lot of people can’t read or write.”