The Fine Print; Program 03 21 Guest Laurence Bergreen Book Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life

from national public radio this is the fine print and exploration and celebration of the written word i'm scott smith filling in for rebecca day this week we'll remember our true icon of american music legend has it that he was born on the fourth of july nineteen hundred and that is more records found after his death indicated he was actually born on august fourth nineteen oh one so and just a few days will celebrate the one hundred second anniversary of the birth of louis armstrong columbia records has recently issued three cds of newly re mastered recordings by the hot five and the hot seven bands with which armstrong rose to prominence in the nineteen twenties all of which gives us a reason to revisit it that the danes nineteen ninety eight interview with lawrence burglary author of the definitive and award winning biography louis armstrong an extravagant life but first here's one of those legendary top five recordings a record that musicians have been studying and fans have been enjoying for seventy five years the performance that still sets the standard for jazz trumpet playing

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is childhood new orleans was so deprived and so dickensian it's almost incredible for example his family was a more less the bottom of the social scale he was the grandson of slaves his mother was illiterate she worked as a laundry so the part time prostitute which he writes about his first wife was a prostitute she is a few years older really matter in a honky tonk and algiers louisiana when he was playing there as a young

musician and he was completely smitten by her needless to say this was a disastrous marriage and she was very violent and part of the reason that he left new orleans was to escape her razor because he was afraid that she would kill him and for cellist rages nevertheless despite all this deprivation he insisted that this was the most wonderful childhood that anybody ever had and many characters i think that most people would consider to be menacing threatening orders not wholesome in some way he loved he had many friends who were pimps who were prostitutes who were thugs who were just in some way outside the bounds of normal society but he had this gift for saying what jerry considered to be the best in people and there was this odd thing about was he was both very body in very profane and yet very spiritual the same time i think that comes through in his music you can hear those two extremes i found that very interesting also he was baptized as a roman catholic he attended the bad discharge he was exposed to all of it in the air his grandmother

and he just sort of took all these elements and while his own mythology that's right and he also it felt an extraordinary affinity for jews because he was virtually adopted by a family of russian immigrant jewish peddlers name on our skis when he was about seven years old and was very formative years of seven to twelve spent a great deal of time working for the family and more or less living there because his own family was in total disarray his father vanished when he was born which was always a great source of bitterness to armstrong and yet he was extremely fond of his mother but this family did more than just take care of him he gets first musical experience there because when he was working america john card in the red light district of new orleans the two brothers bought him a tin horn in order to attract attention to the car as it went through the district's selling colin picking up rags so there i was perched atop the car blowing a tin horn attracting customers not only that but he got his first exposure to seeing when he was having dinner

with the family in the evenings because we used to sing a lot so there you have the two heads of his musical genius already been formed in this white house in a black city with some news about armstrong is that he really draws on many different traditions at once however that's not unusual in a city like new orleans which is in a way the ultimate melting pot because you have influences there from all over america from africa from the caribbean from france from italy from mexico in someway armstrong picked up an sos jazz is as music i just have this wonderful image of a small minority with a strike and i thought that was so sweet that we can ask you to encourage i'm thinking there's this child sitting there blowing this tim horner hour after hour after hour i would have to build oh that's a great job

so much as they were and he's in touch with the family throughout his whole life in the family even today several generations down the line still remembers him to his own childhood habits crates of that he was sent to reform school for a while on new year's day nineteen thirteen it still is a custom in new orleans on a new year's day for my to go on the streets and fired guns up in the air which somehow leads to tragedy almost every year and it was the custom then he got a hold of one of here his mother's boyfriend's pistols went out on the street he was only twelve years old at the time and fired off some shots into the air was arrested by two detectives and to his absolute heart the next day he was sick it's to indefinite term in a reform school which he felt was the end of his life because after all he had lived sort of have the liberty of the streets until this time and enjoyed himself but was totally and disciplined what sounds like it might have been a miserable experience became for him something very positive again this ability to turn something negative into a positive because it was there that he began to acquire a sense of discipline and self respect

he also got some formal musical education now he had some informal musical education already just from other very talented jazz musicians he met around words like bob johnson but here he came in touch with peter davis who was the music director of this waste home where he was sentenced to stay and he began by blowing a bugle and then he worked his way up to the cornet and became the leader of the band which was a big source of pride in this institution and they marched all over new orleans and they raised money and they wore snappy uniforms and this was a very big deal for him so it gave him a sense of worth that he completely was lacking until this point and just to illustrate the time katie felt to this institution when he came back to new orleans in nineteen thirty one he was at thirty years old he was a national celebrity he was the leading figure in the jazz world and rising star in the popular music world where to go its first place to visit now home he went back to the ways how many founder zone anyway

laid out in the company took out a new law masters it is you prepared to not like his mother michigan after all give birth to louis leave him with her husband does leave which you wonder how this woman could do this is a very stable first five years with his grandmother she was very nurturing he felt very loud and that is another reconciles briefly with his father

is first to another child adoption system becomes ill and has listed age five come to take care of them and suddenly this whole world changes i was prepared not like i just thought this woman is not good for this child but i was touched by the fact that she worked as a lawn tennis but she would in order to put food on the table so herself as a prostitute and as lewis did he and his mother formed a very close bond eventually i came to admire her to for what you would do to keep our children alive and well and healthy like a lot of his spunk and spirit came directly from his mother nan keep in mind that she was really a teenage mother she was fourteen fifteen he was born and she was no better equipped than any other fourteen or fifteen year old to take care of a child their relationship was unusual because as i got older it was almost as if she wasn't much older sister rather than a mother in fact he tells an absolutely right is stories about her trying to teach him how to drink and how old is like or in later life was never really had a problem with alcohol and he attributes that to the fact that

they went on some venues together when he was a teenager in the honky tonks of new orleans and got themselves absolutely roaring drunk and after that they had a way of sort of de mythology eyes and liquor for him later on when he became a well known younge as physician in chicago she came out to visit and stayed there for months on end and they had some great times together there too but it was almost as if they were more like friend as a mother and a son i think this had to do with the fact that they were separated and then rejoined inform the mother son bond later in life rather than at the inception of his life most unusual she also instilled in lewis and his sister the habit that he would follow the rest of his life and that was that years of lax physics political will right this is one of the most bizarre things and my publisher and i all the people there we had more fun laughing about this because they would always say to me well are you writing about alexis so much in your book what your problem is it's not me was fixated on laxatives is louis you must

understand he was really obsessed with in later life he became familiar with the teachings of the lord hauser who was a physical culture a list and gaylord hauser advocated the use of a verbal laxative called swiss chris which came in small cellophane packages armstrong gave this stuff away to everybody he met every fan to the prince of wales every jazz and he would insist when you came into his house the first thing you did was drink some of this stuff with some or all he took a dry he does put on his tongue and he would take three times the normal dose you can only imagine the astounding effect on it so people who loved him in a new world a sort of tolerated this quirk of his but for him it was a big deal and if it became so fixated on this that he shot those friends and the public by widely distributing a photograph of him seated on a toilet with his pants down around his ankles limbs through a keyhole and beneath it was a legend that said sexual says leave it all behind and he gave this picture where he printed on the outside of his own thoughts we thought it was a big joke he really didn't care who was shocked that when you hear

a story like that you're tempted to dismiss him as a clown but it can never forget is that the high angus mask of a clown is a genius and a very deeply caring person was capable of doing astounding things in his music in reaching people in a way that when they heard him blow for the first time to change their lives change relies musically or in some ways people so we have this transforming power more of rebecca janes interview with lawrence peregrine author of louis armstrong an extravagant life is coming up after a short break you're listening to the final fifth it

in naming the support for the fine print come from real estate brokers hell and older and gene smith a little unreal to incorporated and trusted to sell the most cherished homes in the nashville area for six very hairy three thirty three jelly roll morton clearly a jazz musician a genius and he proclaimed himself the inventor of jazz and yet his influence on other musicians was not as widespread as armstrong's that's the thing about armstrong he influenced virtually every other jazz musician and that you could say that he influenced virtually every other popular position black or white when you think of people

who are directly influenced by him and visits incredible billie holiday bing crosby sarah vaughan ella fitzgerald diggs biter back so many other people picked up their cues from listening to louis from hearing alive were stunning his records that he really had a great influence now part of this was an accident if he'd been born ten years earlier he would've been able to record is widely i think it would've been known more as a legend that a living presence but because he did record from the time he was twenty one years old he did have this great influence and also i think part of the reason was that he rose to the occasion he wanted to be <unk> jazz or to personify jazz for people went out of his way when he was older to embrace traditional jazz and new orleans jazz we want to just make it as popular as it possibly could so he tended to avoid experimentation once he found his formal anyone to stick with let's talk about to the people who are most responsible for louis' career

first joe king oliver for giving him a star and then of course lil harden is one bank right well both fascinating characters you can hear jo oliver on a lot of early recordings he was one of the brilliant really great jazz rhythm orleans couldn't work full time work part time as a butler part time as a jazz musician after a while became a leading figure in play the trumpet and cornet hired lewison became a surrogate father david looked alike they both were very rotund both love to eat and if you see pictures of my book you can see how they just look really look like father and son or so he was the father that was never had because his own father willie was just you know a lost cause so oliver louis former spy and when oliver went to chicago was took over his seat in the in one of the leading bands and curious band then oliver eventually some of those to chicago was going to go because he wanted to escape diseases homicidal first wife says oh meaning to the term straight razor don't normally olive oil all this was not again not

unusual by your own standards by and the funny thing is what's he left nora she had a way of turning up in his life you know at odd times when he least expected it you know there she was it was almost like you know freddie from for it to take that you know razor in hand or in her stocking she just couldn't get over him because after all he was a great lover for life ok so oliver brought to chicago and then they became law can kind of the battle because on the one hand was felt very loyal tower at the same time he wanted to break away in some waverly didn't know how to now the catalyst for that was lil harden she was a much different than a person from daisy she had gone to college if it's has now fisk she her family was from memphis she was very sophisticated she was highly educated she was extremely ambitious at the time they met in chicago she was much better known than that he was she was considered a child

prodigy piano player she considered him a great hit from new orleans what's so funny is hearing their differing accounts of what it was like when they first met i just think this is so typical of so priceless of the way men and women think because according to louisa county when they met he said well we'll just love me from the word go in she knew i was in she just never got me out of her mind and you know i thought she was pretty cute to you hear louisa can she dismisses him as this that said i was saying stuff air and just like hey you see and she was waiting to do with them shooting is really talented on the trumpet either but eventually she heard jo oliver complaining about him and she began to feel a little bit sorry for him she sits there was sort of a maternal influence going on issues a few years older well then surely they started going out together and then she played often on with oliver she rejoined the band and one thing led to another and he became her sweetheart project a free lil was to make her boyfriend her

balled a star she told him that he had a breakaway from joe oliver and convinced him to leave his band to his shop he quit but she did and he says he's the connecticut she said well somebody is currants i'm lucky so he went out and look for work and he finally found work and eventually did begin to launch a solo career over and steadily at first but this was chicago in the mid nineteen twenties that was and then the center of the jazz world there was lots of money there are lots of gangsters run these nightclubs there was a recording industry so things were happening you know you're getting a lot of momentum so his career didn't take off until proved to be right one of the way she pushed him was to encourage his ability to say what you heard was beautiful twist she encouraged him to work in those motifs those riots in his trumpet playing which he eventually did so this was the beginning of his really unique style of the time he records his first solo with leyland jo oliver is banned

in the nineteen twenty three year louis armstrong you hear them attack you hear the way he comes out on top of the melody and just means that they in that old station band of oliver's by the scruff of the neck through the music and in its sandwiches i saw other musicians succumb to drink when they were trying to contend with the pressure of playing to this very high standard his way of coping was to use marijuana that was his stimulant of choice in his way of relaxing which he considered to be less destructive than less harmful to his health anyway he did eventually come into his own as a soloist he tried to combine both extremes so

virtuosity which really was astounding because physicians from all over will come and listen to a cooling classical musicians who played a very symphony orchestras in chicago and elsewhere as they want to hear this this guy who could make more music come from a trumpet that anybody had ever done before with old fashioned new orleans polyphony that relaxed feeling that good time and a lot of the stuff that we considered very dated today during non pc and talking about minstrel show antics and things like that no matter how progressive and cutting edge louis armstrong became an almost avant garde he was also a person from yourself to the dismay of many younger blacks he retained a great fondness and a stingy for the south when the boppers came along in the fifties i had a great problem with armstrong's repertoire when he was playing songs like when it sleepy time down south and he talked about banjos twining him mammy singing and this just was too much for many people to handle but for armstrong this was a legitimate longing for an idealized

past that never existed of course if you look at his own life there was nothing like that but there was a sweetness of his character which carried through all the music that he played in just would've been out of out of character for him to do anything different i think there's something very important that we learn in your book louis armstrong he was accused in his own lifetime beim many people being an uncle tom wright of cow telling a white man and right and yet we learn in this book he never did for example and his indictment of eisenhower and charges of being an uncle tom head follow him for a long time ever since the early or mid nineteen forties for example charles mingus brilliant bassist and composer and world class eccentric as a young musician played based in armstrong's ben which was then tore impossibly and finally mingus quick and discuss because he said he just couldn't stand we called lewis's comedy which men playing to audiences in sort of greening and telling a lot of self

deprecating body jokes and dominguez this was just very passe and perpetuated stereotypes later on billie holiday with whom lewis starred in the movie new orleans said very memorably that was tom's from the heart which was both a putdown i suppose as well as a complement anyway was very interesting comment this perception i don't think it was reality listen to my way of thinking is perception clung to louis until nineteen fifty seven when he happened to be on the road as he was almost all the time and he was in north dakota and he saw tv pictures of the little rock school desegregation crisis and he saw pictures of white time workers speeding by young black girl she was trying to integrate a school he was incensed you can well imagine and he gave an interview to a reporter on the spot denouncing eisenhower and later on he said that eisenhower should take that child and other children in the lead them by the hand school he called the governor of arkansas orval faubus of england or an educated plow boy and he said many telegrams to

eisenhower urging him to take a very strong activist and on civil war it's well they shot audiences black and white this certainly caught other jazz musicians many of whom were black by surprise because they didn't think he had it in him he was saying what they all thought and felt but often did not say either because no one would listen or to speak those kinds of wars was considered career suicide his comments were picked up and repeated everywhere often denounced wright because after all if someone is apparently meaning st louis armstrong saying there might be something to it yeah yeah although his flaws and foibles are certainly present in this book louis armstrong is obviously someone wants birdbrain respects myers and likes very much he was not only a trumpeter

great genius and creativity who's a vocalist the who genius and creativity and also he was a wonderful man a lot of people whose art you know you would meyer one admired in ireland yeah so great when you put them under a microscope and when you start interviewing people as i did for this book over and over hundreds of times and say oh what would be really like and you'd hear one of pleasant story after another with armstrong on her no matter who i interviewed over know what a wonderful man he was so lovely he was so generous he was so funny that was one hurdle is really an extraordinary individual that's lawrence peregrine in a nineteen ninety eight interview with rebecca bain discussing the book louis armstrong and that includes our show for this week and scott smith filling in for rebecca bain and invite you to tune in again next week for another look hard to find creative built uprooted body yodel

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