Days 46-49: New Orleans - Louis Armstrong

NEW ORLEANS 46-49: New Orleans - Louis Armstrong

At the end of the French Market, in the old Mint building, there is a jazz museum.  We were surprised to see that it features only two musicians – the great Louis Armstrong and Pete Fountain, his equivalent on the clarinet.

Nevertheless, the Louis Armstrong section gave an excellent summary of his life.  

Louis Armstrong,  BB King,  Elvis Presley: three men from different cities, different times.  But what is the thread behind all three of these men (and many more)?  The humble beginnings.  All of them rose to overcome adversity and to make great men of themselves.  All three acknowledge the influence of people in their childhood - their mothers, their teachers or their grandmothers.

Born in this one-room shack in Jane Alley in August 1901, he visited the place of his birth when he returned to New Orleans in 1931.  Although he lived away from New Orleans for many years, he always considered his home to be New Orleans.

His father left soon after Louie was born and he was raised by his beloved mother, Mayann,  and his grandmother. Of his mother, he said she has ‘dark, lovely expression and … beautiful soul. And she instilled in me the idea that what you can’t get – to hell with it.  Don’t worry what the other fellow has.. I think I had a great mother.’

Of his father Willie, Louis Armstrong had little good to say. “Of course my father didn’t have time to teach me anything…. He was so busy chasing the chippies….He was sharp, no good as he was.’

‘There were churchpeople, gamblers, hustlers, cheap pimps, thieves, prostitutes and lots of children, ’ he wrote in his autobiography.

        

As part of his 1968 autobiography, Louis composed a colourful list of people in his neighbourhood.   Here he has listed the bullies and trouble makers.

 In 1910 and again in 1913, Louis spent time in the ‘Coloured Waif’s Home for Boys’.  The first was for ‘appearing as a dangerous and suspicious character’ and the second for shooting a gun at a New Year’s Eve celebration. 

  

While on his 1913 sentence, he learned to play the cornet and within five months he had become the leader of the home’s brass band.

 By 1915, Louis was on the ‘professional circuit’ – in a local honky tonk, on the riverboat circuit and backing famous musicians.

Here he plays with Fate Marable’s dance band (third from right).  It was around this time that he learned to read music.

By 1922 he was one of New Orleans’s top musicians. In 1922 he was invited to Chicago to join King Oliver’s band.  He later said that this was the most important move of his life.

Of Joe ‘King’ Oliver, his biggest influence in the world of jazz, Louis Armstrong said ‘…(he was) the finest trumpeter who ever played in New Orleans.  No one in jazz has created as much as he has.  That is why they called him ‘King’. In his 1968 autobiography he said, ‘Wasn’t nobody going to get me to leave New Orleans but King Oliver…..all my life was wrapped around Joe Oliver. I lived for Papa Joe.’

By 1931 Louis Armstrong increased his exposure beyond recording by appearing nightly on the Suburban Gardens radio shows. Through the radio shows, he became a super-star.

In 1931, he was given a hero’s welcome when he returned to New Orleans. This included him being made an honorary member of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club.

He considered himself something of a fashionable man and enjoyed dressing well – possibly because of his impoverished childhood.

In 1949, Louis Armstrong was crowned ‘King of Zulu’ for Mardi Gras, a position which gave him great pleasure and for which he always felt honoured. The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, the first African American Mardi Gras krewe, blackened their faces for the parade, in deference to the early 20^th century vaudeville practice. By blacking up, Louis was heavily criticized by his fellow African Americans.

He returned to New Orleans in 1949, 1952 and 1955. Each time, Louisiana segregation laws did not allow Louis to appear with his mixed race band. In 1956 he refused to return to New Orleans even the law was repealed in 1958. It was not until the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that he returned to his home city.

Louie was a prolific diary writer and in 1954 wrote his autobiography.

This section talks about he always took his mother’s advice regarding the need for laxatives – being ‘physic minded’.

He became obsessive about the use of laxatives, eventually finding the brand named Swiss Kriss. He was so impressed when he lost 90 pound through their use that he had this card made up and he handed it to his fans (and even the British royal family) at every opportunity.

‘I’ll probably never be rich, but I will be a fat man.’  Louis was a huge fan of food, especially New Orleans food.  Here, in 1960, he eats a plate of red beans with his wife, Lucille.

In 1965 Louis Armstrong finally returned to New Orleans to a hero’s welcome

 He died in New York in 1971 and is buried there.

This newspaper report expressed great disappointment that in New Orleans, the memorial service, which started as a dignified jazz funeral, turned into a noisy affair akin to mardi gras: so noisy in fact that Pastor Henry of the First Baptist Church, who was to give the eulogy, stepped down from the podium and refused to give it in such a noisy atmosphere.