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Downloaded from
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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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I think it's time now to sweeten the air

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with a little entertainment.

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But not on the principle of escapism,
but on the principle of affirmation.

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And there's scarcely
a more affirmative artist in

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the musical world than my old friend
whom I'm going to bring out now,

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on the theory that music hath charms
to soothe the savage breast.

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And because he is,

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past all question,
one of the greatest influences

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in American music

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and the greatest influence
in jazz of all time.

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It's my great pleasure
to bring you my great friend,

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Louis Armstrong.

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The whole world embraced Louis Armstrong.

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He was bringing a gift,
the gift of a presentness

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and a naturalness and a depth of insight.

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And the ability to act
on those insights in the moment.

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And it was in a difficult form like music.

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And that type of electric virtuosity
has not been seen before or since.

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Without him,

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many things that happen today in jazz
would not be possible.

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And I think that Mr. Armstrong
has not gotten a good deal

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of the credit that's due to him.

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He has been
the number one man in his department.

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He is really the ambassador
of the whole thing,

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so there will never
be another one like this.

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Well, he was a very, very deep person.

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He was very much aware
of world activities,

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what was happening everywhere.

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We would have our discussions at home.

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He had been asked
by many reporters in interviews

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what did he think
about a certain particular thing.

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And Louis would say, "Well, man,
you know, I'm just a musician."

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He never would come out publicly

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because his theory was that
"what I say carries a lot of weight."

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And he says, "And I just won't do it."
But at home, he had his opinions.

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American people,
they the most grandest people on Earth.

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And I'm from America,
well, quite naturally,

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I don't have no fucking flag

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other than a Black flag.

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Thank you, folks.

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Thank you.

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Now I'll be glad when you're dead
You rascal you

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I'll be glad when you're dead
You rascal you

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Boy, when you're laying six feet deep

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No more fried chicken will you eat

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Oh, you dog

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I know that'll break your heart

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My father would say,
"You have to check Pops out."

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I was going, "Man, I don't want Pops."

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In New Orleans, too,
where so much what we call

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"Uncle Tomming" goes on.

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Playing Dixie, shuffling.

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In my time, I hated that
with an unbelievable passion.

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When I was growing up,
there was no way for me to even express

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the type of anger and hatred I had
toward that type of behavior.

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So, I could not appreciate Armstrong.

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But when I left New Orleans,
and I was in New York at that time,

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my father sent me a tape.

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He said, "Man, why don't you learn
one of these Pops solos?"

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So I put it on
and I started to work on it.

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Man, I could not play this solo at all.

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Just the endurance of Louis Armstrong.

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He never stopped playing.
He was always up around high B's.

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And when we got to the final chorus,
I called my father.

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I said,
"Man, I didn't understand about Pops."

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He just started laughing.
He said, "That's right."

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Louis loved his home in Queens.

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Some people said
that it wasn't palatial enough.

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And he didn't wanna move anywhere else.

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When tape came on the scene,
Louis became enamored of that.

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And he used it most of all
for conversations.

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He had friends come to the house,
and he would tape it.

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Louis had a lot of, sort of, what
I would describe as archival materials.

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I mean, tapes and things like that.

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He had his own study.
It was taboo to everyone.

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That was his. He'd close that door
and nobody bothered him.

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He had his tapes
and everything of his was in there.

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I've heard a lot of
reel-to-reels of Pops just talking.

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Everyday life recordings.

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His humanity comes through.

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I got tapes on my wall in my den.

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For 40 years, Lucille had
one of them Tandbergs

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put up there with two tapes together.

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That really knocked me out
because we couldn't afford no den

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in them early days.

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No, we've gotta sleep in that room.

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-Now you got a den.
-Now I got a den.

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I got all of my tapes around the walls
and just pick out what I wanna hear.

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He was the busiest person,
taking care of things when he was home.

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It was his relaxation.

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He would sit up in his study
for hours and hours,

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indexing his tapes.

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And he has a hobby
of cutting out pictures,

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you know, and paste them up on the ceiling
in his den, all over the walls.

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I've got scrapbooks that Louis had

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that were made up when he first played
the Palladium back in '32.

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Most of the pictures and the newspaper
write-ups have gone yellow.

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People asked all the time,

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"Why is he recording these tapes?

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Why is he writing down
all of his thoughts?"

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And all this kind of stuff.

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He knew that one day they were gonna
write about him in the history books.

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And so he wanted to make sure
all sides of him-- good, bad, ugly--

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were gonna be captured
and preserved by himself.

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Not by anybody else.

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Hello, folks.
This is old Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong.

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I just finished this concert here and

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I feel good 'cause I had a nice supper
of Wiener schnitzels.

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Glad to see you around
and dig the concerts.

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We've been playing every night
around the neighborhood cities.

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So, later. Goodbye.

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Louis Armstrong is
the prime minister of the world of jazz.

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He and his trumpet are at the summit.

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His European concerts
have broken all records.

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Satchmo is one of our more valuable items
for export.

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His recordings are hot
on both sides of the iron curtain.

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Satchmo,
you always draw an audience, don't you?

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Yeah, man. That shows you
there's cats in all walks of life.

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He broke so many barriers.

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He would be the first Black performer
to open up a club,

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a ballroom, a radio station.

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He was the first Black movie performer
to have his name above the title.

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Don't you ever get tired?

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Well, daddy,
I'm just a little beat from my youth.

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You had quite a session here tonight.

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Yeah, we just start playing it the same
as we did in the tailgates in New Orleans.

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It's the same music.

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And it's universal, daddy.

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Yes, way down yonder in New Orleans

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Man, you should have made
All those scenes

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"Just saying 'Hello, folks'

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over a microphone sounds simple
and innocent, doesn't it?

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But I remember when it wasn't so simple.

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Back in 1931,
I was invited to play in my hometown,

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New Orleans, at a fancy nightclub,
the Suburban Gardens."

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You spent a lot of time in New Orleans,
in the South, looking for signs.

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You see a restroom that said,
"White Gentlemen."

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This always was a put-down.

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So, you saw that flashing
in your face all the time.

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The only way
Louis would agree to go to New Orleans

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was on his own private train.

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Which meant that we could have
our private car, our cooks,

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chefs, porters and things like that.

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In New Orleans, we're, quite naturally,

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the first band on the radio down there…

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Fleischmann's Yeast presents

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another great half hour of entertainment,

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featuring music by Louis Armstrong
and his orchestra.

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And you never heard
of no spade playing on no radio

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in those days. Just starting.

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The night we opened,
there's all the white boys

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that I was raised with, you know.

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Sitting up there, sharp.

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They done got rich.
Maybe their fathers done left 'em the--

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the produce places and different things

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that when we was kids
we used to hang around.

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And after school, we'd go out in the lots
and play cowboys and Indians

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with old broken slates
and things like that.

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You know what I mean? We--

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We was the Indians, of course.

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And at that time,
there was no mixing of the races at all.

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The only way
our people could hear the band

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was to come out
and sit along the levee and hear--

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and hear the music from the--
from a distance.

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They had 50,000 Negroes
on the levee to hear my music.

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See, and I had been away
about nine or ten years

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and I done got northern-fied.

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I done forgot about a whole lot of
that foolishness down there, you know?

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The night we're opening, and I'm charming,

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and there's-- place pack and jam.

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But this night, they done brought
this man up to-- "It's a big deal, now.

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You bring on Louis Armstrong.

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He's a New Orleans boy
and blah, blah, blah."

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But a second before
this cat had to go to that mic

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and bring me on, he walked away.

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Say, "I just can't introduce that nigger.
Can't do it."

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They got me and told me what he says.
I said, "Well, don't worry about it."

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You know?
I said, "Give me that card, boys."

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And I walked to that mic.
And when I went into…

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Pale moon shining

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Man, you thought the walls was coming in.

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Now the pale moon's shining

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On the fields below

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The folks are crooning soft and low

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You needn't tell me, boy

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Because I know, yes

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When it's sleepy time down South, yes

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And this announcer's standing there.

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He said, "I didn't know this would happen
in the South in New Orleans.

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Never happened before."

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So, they fired him and everything,
and I took over myself.

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Good evening, everybody

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It was particularly galling
for him to go home

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after being lionized the way he was
around the world

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and see the same type of prejudice.

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His feelings were perpetually hurt
by the nation

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and the injustice that he knew
when he was a boy.

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Pops grew up very hard.

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It's been said, Pops,

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that you were brought up
in abject poverty.

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00:15:32,099 --> 00:15:33,767
You didn't have money
when you were a kid, though.

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00:15:33,851 --> 00:15:37,396
We always had money.
I could shoot craps, sold newspapers,

205
00:15:37,479 --> 00:15:39,523
and I always hustled on the--

206
00:15:39,606 --> 00:15:42,401
with the quartet and a little guitar,
just sit and go busking.

207
00:15:42,484 --> 00:15:44,361
And I always had a pocket full of money.

208
00:15:44,444 --> 00:15:48,115
You know, in 1915, you had five dollars,
you had a whole lot of money.

209
00:15:48,615 --> 00:15:51,285
And I didn't ever have
to beg nobody for nothing all my life.

210
00:15:51,785 --> 00:15:54,079
Always a kid that had
some get-up about him.

211
00:15:56,748 --> 00:15:59,877
I was born in James Alley, they called it.

212
00:15:59,960 --> 00:16:04,506
It's back of town.
That's the real New Orleans.

213
00:16:07,342 --> 00:16:09,595
We have a photo of your mama
I wanna show everybody.

214
00:16:09,678 --> 00:16:13,015
-Yeah. That's my mother there, Mayann.
-How did she discipline you?

215
00:16:13,098 --> 00:16:15,142
What did she do
when you did something wrong?

216
00:16:15,225 --> 00:16:17,060
She had to whip the hell out of us both.

217
00:16:18,228 --> 00:16:20,230
And, man, she hit me like a man.

218
00:16:20,314 --> 00:16:22,691
And then she married Willie Armstrong.

219
00:16:23,442 --> 00:16:27,446
I mean, I'm only going by
what they tell me along that line.

220
00:16:27,988 --> 00:16:30,532
'Cause as long as I can remember,
they wasn't together.

221
00:16:31,033 --> 00:16:33,911
We didn't have much money
and things like that.

222
00:16:33,994 --> 00:16:36,955
But we lived and enjoyed good food. And--

223
00:16:37,039 --> 00:16:38,540
-You had a lot of fun?
-Yeah.

224
00:16:38,624 --> 00:16:41,752
My mother could take 15 cents
and go to the Poydras Market

225
00:16:41,835 --> 00:16:43,837
and come back and cook a meal.

226
00:16:43,921 --> 00:16:46,256
And you had to lick your fingers,
it was just so good.

227
00:16:46,340 --> 00:16:48,383
-You know what I mean? Yes, sir.
-For 15 cents?

228
00:16:48,467 --> 00:16:50,219
In those days, you could take a newspaper,

229
00:16:50,302 --> 00:16:51,803
and I'd go to the fish market

230
00:16:51,887 --> 00:16:55,474
and buy a whole newspaper
full of fish heads.

231
00:16:56,266 --> 00:16:58,227
Just plain, chopped-off fish heads

232
00:16:58,310 --> 00:17:00,646
that they wouldn't use, they put aside.

233
00:17:00,729 --> 00:17:03,106
Yeah.
That'd be garbage for them, wouldn't it?

234
00:17:03,190 --> 00:17:05,901
Well, they just ain't got time
to do what we did with--

235
00:17:05,983 --> 00:17:07,861
-Yeah.
-My mother would get them fish heads

236
00:17:07,944 --> 00:17:10,906
and cook 'em
and put a lot of canned tomatoes in 'em

237
00:17:11,490 --> 00:17:14,451
and call it court bouillon
and serve it on top of some rice.

238
00:17:14,535 --> 00:17:17,996
Boy, you talking about beautiful food.
And delicious.

239
00:17:19,164 --> 00:17:23,001
And the next morning,
I'd go to school with a cabbage sandwich.

240
00:17:23,085 --> 00:17:25,045
Kids would be begging for a bite.

241
00:17:25,796 --> 00:17:27,923
-No kidding?
-Absolutely. Yeah.

242
00:17:29,299 --> 00:17:31,218
New Orleans was a stomping ground.

243
00:17:31,301 --> 00:17:33,387
Well, they played every type of music.

244
00:17:33,470 --> 00:17:38,183
Everyone, no doubt, had a different style.
They had every class.

245
00:17:38,267 --> 00:17:40,769
We had Spanish.
We had coloreds. We had whites.

246
00:17:41,478 --> 00:17:44,147
I was working
for some Jewish people at seven years old.

247
00:17:44,231 --> 00:17:47,359
They had a rags-and-bones yard.

248
00:17:47,442 --> 00:17:49,444
And then we used to go down
to the red-light district

249
00:17:49,528 --> 00:17:53,156
and deliver stone coal,
five cents a water bucket.

250
00:17:53,949 --> 00:17:57,202
I've got those coal cart blues

251
00:17:57,786 --> 00:18:00,747
I'm really all confused

252
00:18:00,831 --> 00:18:04,293
I'm 'bout to lose my very mind

253
00:18:04,376 --> 00:18:08,589
It always worry, worry me all the time

254
00:18:08,672 --> 00:18:11,216
The center of entertainment in New Orleans
was Storyville,

255
00:18:11,300 --> 00:18:13,594
the notorious red-light district.

256
00:18:13,677 --> 00:18:17,472
"The Negroes were only allowed
to work in the red-light district.

257
00:18:17,556 --> 00:18:20,058
Most of the help was Negroes.

258
00:18:20,142 --> 00:18:23,228
They were paid good salaries
and had a longtime job.

259
00:18:23,312 --> 00:18:26,899
The pay was swell
no matter what your vocation was.

260
00:18:29,318 --> 00:18:32,404
No mixing at the guest tables at no time.

261
00:18:32,487 --> 00:18:37,242
As far as to buy a little trim,
that was absolutely out of the question."

262
00:18:37,326 --> 00:18:39,995
Down in the district,
the red-light district.

263
00:18:40,078 --> 00:18:41,788
As you call them, "prostitutes,"

264
00:18:41,872 --> 00:18:43,957
where they get five dollars for a job,

265
00:18:44,041 --> 00:18:46,835
the whores where I'm talking about,
up in my neighborhood,

266
00:18:46,919 --> 00:18:49,338
they get 50 cents to a dollar.

267
00:18:50,631 --> 00:18:52,382
Well, quite naturally,

268
00:18:52,466 --> 00:18:56,136
they're standing there with nothing on
but a chemise.

269
00:18:56,220 --> 00:18:58,931
We'd call 'em teddies at the time,
you know.

270
00:18:59,014 --> 00:19:03,227
So, there I'd be, a little boy,
and put some coal on the grates, you know.

271
00:19:03,727 --> 00:19:07,105
Quite naturally,
you gotta take a mug there right quick.

272
00:19:07,189 --> 00:19:09,691
If they'd seen me,
they'd have slapped me down.

273
00:19:11,318 --> 00:19:12,903
Yeah, I actually did all that.

274
00:19:13,654 --> 00:19:16,240
But I used to hear
all that good music too.

275
00:19:19,201 --> 00:19:21,161
That's how I got a chance
to hear Bunk Johnson,

276
00:19:21,245 --> 00:19:24,331
Manuel Perez, and all the best bands
and everything, you see?

277
00:19:24,414 --> 00:19:27,918
-They were all in the red-light district?
-Yeah, they-- Each corner had a band.

278
00:19:28,001 --> 00:19:29,586
Cabarets, they called them, see?

279
00:19:30,671 --> 00:19:32,005
And we'd dance.

280
00:19:33,215 --> 00:19:34,967
And I'd be waving at 'em all.

281
00:19:35,050 --> 00:19:37,970
And when they'd go inside,
we had to go to bed and sleep.

282
00:19:40,472 --> 00:19:44,977
New Year's Eve, 1912.
Louis and his pals were out on the street.

283
00:19:45,060 --> 00:19:47,855
And they were celebrating
and making noise like everybody else.

284
00:19:47,938 --> 00:19:50,232
And somehow,
Louis got hold of a .38 revolver.

285
00:19:50,858 --> 00:19:53,694
I found this pistol. Got blanks in it.

286
00:19:53,777 --> 00:19:56,572
But the noise is what everybody give you.

287
00:19:56,655 --> 00:19:59,575
So when I look around,
a little guy was shooting

288
00:19:59,658 --> 00:20:02,494
a little old six-shooter
across the street. You know.

289
00:20:04,371 --> 00:20:06,373
So, I was singing in a little quartet,
you know,

290
00:20:06,456 --> 00:20:08,625
we used to go around
and pass the hat, you know.

291
00:20:08,709 --> 00:20:11,879
And they called me Dipper at that time.
Dippermouth, you know.

292
00:20:11,962 --> 00:20:13,213
They say, "Get him, Dipper."

293
00:20:13,297 --> 00:20:15,799
And I reached up there
to grab the .38 and…

294
00:20:18,427 --> 00:20:19,636
and brighten it up

295
00:20:19,720 --> 00:20:23,140
until that detective was hugging me
and I said, "Oh…"

296
00:20:25,225 --> 00:20:26,977
In those days,
the cops would whip your head

297
00:20:27,060 --> 00:20:29,897
and then ask you your name afterwards,
you know?

298
00:20:29,980 --> 00:20:33,192
And you think
that's something that's changed?

299
00:20:33,734 --> 00:20:36,862
Well, I haven't been down there
in so long. I'm gonna go down and see.

300
00:20:38,530 --> 00:20:39,823
And I couldn't get away from him.

301
00:20:39,907 --> 00:20:41,825
He took me down to the juvenile court

302
00:20:41,909 --> 00:20:45,662
and then, the next day,
they took me out to the orphanage.

303
00:20:45,746 --> 00:20:48,457
It was called
Colored Waif's Home for Boys.

304
00:20:49,625 --> 00:20:51,877
When was the first time in your life

305
00:20:51,960 --> 00:20:54,129
that you actually picked up a horn?

306
00:20:55,005 --> 00:20:58,217
That was, you know,
when I went to the orphanage.

307
00:20:58,300 --> 00:21:00,219
I was about 13.

308
00:21:00,302 --> 00:21:04,681
This is the first horn
that Louis Armstrong ever owned.

309
00:21:04,765 --> 00:21:09,895
We did not have much money,
but we are proud of encouraging him.

310
00:21:10,646 --> 00:21:12,523
The little brass band was very good,

311
00:21:12,606 --> 00:21:16,276
and Mr. Davis made the boys play
a little of every kind of music.

312
00:21:16,360 --> 00:21:18,445
When he first arrived at your home,

313
00:21:18,529 --> 00:21:20,822
could you tell right away
he wanted to be a musician?

314
00:21:20,906 --> 00:21:22,616
-We could, yes.
-How could you tell that?

315
00:21:22,699 --> 00:21:25,869
Because he organized quartets, singing,

316
00:21:25,953 --> 00:21:29,289
then he introduced dancing out there,
tap dancing.

317
00:21:29,373 --> 00:21:32,417
The boys would clap and sing,
and he'd sing and dance.

318
00:21:32,501 --> 00:21:34,002
Then when I did get him to play

319
00:21:34,086 --> 00:21:35,879
"When the Saints Go Marching In,"

320
00:21:35,963 --> 00:21:37,339
"Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet,"

321
00:21:37,422 --> 00:21:39,091
there was a high note to be out on

322
00:21:39,174 --> 00:21:41,552
-because it was at the end of the strain.
-Yeah.

323
00:21:41,635 --> 00:21:43,679
None of the other boys couldn't make it.

324
00:21:43,762 --> 00:21:45,347
And I couldn't make it myself.

325
00:21:45,430 --> 00:21:48,058
But he would blow the high C
above the staff

326
00:21:48,141 --> 00:21:49,852
to let us know
that's the end of the strain.

327
00:21:50,686 --> 00:21:53,021
Every day I practiced faithfully

328
00:21:53,105 --> 00:21:54,815
on the lessons Mr. Davis gave me.

329
00:21:54,898 --> 00:22:00,487
I became so good on the cornet
that one day Mr. Davis said to me,

330
00:22:00,571 --> 00:22:03,490
"Louis, I'm going to make you
leader of the band."

331
00:22:03,574 --> 00:22:06,034
I jumped straight up into the air.

332
00:22:07,327 --> 00:22:09,621
You see, what people don't understand,
in New Orleans,

333
00:22:09,705 --> 00:22:12,374
the majority of the musicians
haven't had the opportunity

334
00:22:12,457 --> 00:22:14,001
of having a teacher.

335
00:22:14,084 --> 00:22:16,920
And they only pick up an instrument
and just fool around with it

336
00:22:17,004 --> 00:22:20,924
until they begin to try to get
some kind of tone or notes out of it.

337
00:22:21,508 --> 00:22:22,843
And that's how they started.

338
00:22:24,344 --> 00:22:26,597
We had military training in the orphanage.

339
00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:28,390
And "Star-Spangled Banner,"

340
00:22:28,473 --> 00:22:31,935
we was taught
that was our national anthem.

341
00:22:33,478 --> 00:22:36,231
And you're supposed to stand up
and salute.

342
00:22:38,025 --> 00:22:41,486
And I was taught to play that tune

343
00:22:41,570 --> 00:22:45,407
with every spark I had in my soul.

344
00:22:45,490 --> 00:22:48,327
On our lands we was taught.

345
00:22:48,410 --> 00:22:53,290
And when we play it,
that's the feeling I have.

346
00:22:53,373 --> 00:22:56,460
And then they hoist that flag.

347
00:23:01,465 --> 00:23:03,967
Note for note, I still remember.

348
00:23:12,768 --> 00:23:15,938
Do you have a happy feeling
when you play that song?

349
00:23:16,021 --> 00:23:18,440
I feel that I'm somebody.

350
00:23:18,524 --> 00:23:19,566
Yeah.

351
00:23:20,317 --> 00:23:22,611
When I finish playing
"Star-Spangled Banner,"

352
00:23:22,694 --> 00:23:29,284
I feel just as proud as anybody
that ever picked up a gun,

353
00:23:29,368 --> 00:23:33,914
shouldered a rifle,
and said, "Forward march."

354
00:23:41,713 --> 00:23:45,551
I was with James Baldwin,
listening to Louis,

355
00:23:45,634 --> 00:23:47,427
and he played a great set.

356
00:23:47,511 --> 00:23:51,682
And then he ended with
"The Star-Spangled Banner."

357
00:23:52,766 --> 00:23:55,352
And James turned to me, and he said,

358
00:23:55,435 --> 00:23:59,064
"You know, that's the first time
I've liked that song."

359
00:24:01,984 --> 00:24:04,236
What he heard from Louis

360
00:24:04,319 --> 00:24:10,617
did away with all the stuff
that was accumulated around it.

361
00:24:11,285 --> 00:24:16,123
And just in the purity
that Louis brought to it

362
00:24:16,206 --> 00:24:18,584
made him appreciate it.

363
00:24:19,209 --> 00:24:23,046
Everybody talks about Hendrix
and "The Star-Spangled Banner."

364
00:24:30,888 --> 00:24:34,016
But Armstrong was performing it
as early as World War II.

365
00:24:34,099 --> 00:24:37,227
You know, right after Pearl Harbor,
he started putting it in his repertoire.

366
00:24:37,311 --> 00:24:41,481
And he is going on stage
and pouring his soul into that song.

367
00:24:41,565 --> 00:24:42,774
And there's pride,

368
00:24:42,858 --> 00:24:46,403
but there's also a tremendous amount
of hurt every time you hear him play it.

369
00:24:46,486 --> 00:24:51,325
Louis Armstrong was coming
from a 40-year memory of what slavery was.

370
00:24:51,408 --> 00:24:54,620
He understood that there was
a battle in this country,

371
00:24:54,703 --> 00:24:58,123
so he was trying to use his music
to transform and reform

372
00:24:58,207 --> 00:25:01,251
and lead the country
closer to its higher ideals.

373
00:25:13,722 --> 00:25:18,519
Who, if anybody, was
the biggest influence on your early life?

374
00:25:18,602 --> 00:25:20,354
-What, in music?
-In music.

375
00:25:20,437 --> 00:25:21,730
King Oliver.

376
00:25:21,813 --> 00:25:25,067
'Cause I--
Outside of the Waif's Home, the orphanage.

377
00:25:25,150 --> 00:25:26,568
When I got out, he took me over.

378
00:25:26,652 --> 00:25:30,113
And he always told me, "Never play a lot
of that jiujitsu music.

379
00:25:30,197 --> 00:25:32,324
Play the lead. You got a good tone,

380
00:25:32,407 --> 00:25:35,118
and you know how to phrase,
and it says something."

381
00:25:36,578 --> 00:25:40,415
And I carried his cornet
when he wasn't blowing and marching.

382
00:25:40,499 --> 00:25:43,001
And the police would have been
running me out the parade.

383
00:25:43,085 --> 00:25:44,419
You know, I stayed with him on it.

384
00:25:44,503 --> 00:25:45,504
But that's my man.

385
00:25:45,587 --> 00:25:48,841
You play in that hot sun,
you know, with that uniform on,

386
00:25:48,924 --> 00:25:51,885
and he put a hanky on his neck
to keep the sun off his neck.

387
00:25:51,969 --> 00:25:53,512
And he was really blowing that horn.

388
00:26:00,143 --> 00:26:03,522
When the authorities closed down
sinful old Storyville,

389
00:26:03,605 --> 00:26:07,442
more than 200 musicians suddenly
found themselves out of work.

390
00:26:07,526 --> 00:26:10,112
King Oliver had left town
anyhow for Chicago,

391
00:26:10,195 --> 00:26:12,072
where they had heard
that their kind of music,

392
00:26:12,155 --> 00:26:13,615
called jazz up north,

393
00:26:13,699 --> 00:26:15,075
was getting very popular.

394
00:26:15,576 --> 00:26:19,913
"I have always been crazy
over Joe Oliver and his playing.

395
00:26:19,997 --> 00:26:22,958
So when Joe sent for me
to join him in Chicago,

396
00:26:23,041 --> 00:26:25,752
I was happy
because I knew I'd feel at home

397
00:26:25,836 --> 00:26:27,045
and he'd see after me."

398
00:26:32,092 --> 00:26:33,260
Chicago was about

399
00:26:33,343 --> 00:26:37,181
the second most popular section
for Black people in the country.

400
00:26:37,264 --> 00:26:40,142
It was a great migration point
where people went off

401
00:26:40,225 --> 00:26:43,228
from Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas.

402
00:26:43,312 --> 00:26:44,646
You could walk to Chicago,

403
00:26:44,730 --> 00:26:48,692
just keep walking
if you had enough muscles in your legs.

404
00:26:49,776 --> 00:26:51,111
I'd have gone back home

405
00:26:51,195 --> 00:26:53,947
if I knew I'd be pushed out
into all them tall buildings.

406
00:26:54,531 --> 00:26:56,992
Finally, I went to the Lincoln Garden…

407
00:26:59,369 --> 00:27:00,621
and played that music.

408
00:27:01,413 --> 00:27:06,543
I was so happy I did not know what to do.
I had hit the big time.

409
00:27:06,627 --> 00:27:08,754
I was up north with the greats.

410
00:27:08,837 --> 00:27:11,840
I was playing with my idol, the king.

411
00:27:11,924 --> 00:27:16,762
All of my boyhood dreams
had come true at last.

412
00:27:19,765 --> 00:27:23,644
All along, I'd been hearing
from all the musicians about Little Louis,

413
00:27:23,727 --> 00:27:25,812
and what a good trumpet player
he was gonna be.

414
00:27:25,896 --> 00:27:29,316
So, when he brought Little Louis over
to Dreamland to meet me,

415
00:27:29,399 --> 00:27:32,027
Little Louis was 226 pounds.

416
00:27:32,110 --> 00:27:33,820
So I said, "Little Louis?

417
00:27:33,904 --> 00:27:36,532
How come you call him Little Louis
as big as he is?"

418
00:27:36,615 --> 00:27:39,284
I wasn't impressed at all.
I was very disappointed.

419
00:27:39,368 --> 00:27:42,829
I probably would have never
paid any attention to Louis's playing

420
00:27:42,913 --> 00:27:45,415
if King Oliver hadn't said to me one night

421
00:27:46,041 --> 00:27:48,126
that Louis could play better
than he could.

422
00:27:48,877 --> 00:27:50,921
He says,
"But as long as I keep him with me,

423
00:27:51,004 --> 00:27:54,424
he won't be able to get ahead of me.
I'll still be the king."

424
00:27:54,508 --> 00:27:56,802
After he told me that,
I started listening.

425
00:27:56,885 --> 00:28:00,138
But when we got this recording date
in Richmond, Indiana, for Gennett,

426
00:28:00,222 --> 00:28:01,932
in trying to get the balance,

427
00:28:02,432 --> 00:28:04,643
Joe and Louis stood
right next to each other,

428
00:28:04,726 --> 00:28:05,936
as they always had,

429
00:28:06,019 --> 00:28:08,897
and you couldn't hear a note
that Joe was playing

430
00:28:08,981 --> 00:28:11,108
and only could hear Louis.

431
00:28:11,191 --> 00:28:13,026
So he said, "Well, I gotta do something."

432
00:28:13,110 --> 00:28:17,072
So they put Louis about 15 feet away,
over in the corner, from the band.

433
00:28:17,823 --> 00:28:21,785
And Louis was sitting in the co--
standing in the corner, looking so sad.

434
00:28:21,869 --> 00:28:24,705
You know, he thought it was bad for him
to have to be separated from the band.

435
00:28:24,788 --> 00:28:26,707
And so, I looked at him and smiled

436
00:28:26,790 --> 00:28:28,917
to reassure him
that he was all right, you know.

437
00:28:29,501 --> 00:28:30,961
And then I said to myself,

438
00:28:31,044 --> 00:28:36,842
"Now, if they have to put him
that far away in order to hear Joe,

439
00:28:36,925 --> 00:28:38,218
he's gotta be better."

440
00:28:38,302 --> 00:28:39,469
Then I was convinced.

441
00:28:43,932 --> 00:28:46,810
Then Louis and I started getting
to be sweethearts.

442
00:28:46,894 --> 00:28:48,687
Then we decided to get married.

443
00:28:49,563 --> 00:28:53,442
I told him, I said, "Now, I don't want
to be married to a second trumpet player."

444
00:28:53,525 --> 00:28:54,818
He says, "What are you talking about?"

445
00:28:54,902 --> 00:28:57,237
I said, "Well, I don't want
to be married to second trumpet.

446
00:28:57,321 --> 00:28:58,530
I want you to play first."

447
00:28:58,614 --> 00:29:00,782
He said, "Well, I can't play first.
Joe's playing first."

448
00:29:00,866 --> 00:29:02,534
I said, "Well, that's why you gotta quit."

449
00:29:02,618 --> 00:29:04,119
He said, "I can't quit Mr. Joe.

450
00:29:04,203 --> 00:29:06,580
Mr. Joe sent for me,
and I can't quit him."

451
00:29:06,663 --> 00:29:09,041
I said, "Well, it's Mr. Joe or me."

452
00:29:12,419 --> 00:29:16,131
I listened very carefully when Lil told me

453
00:29:16,215 --> 00:29:18,634
to always play the lead.

454
00:29:18,717 --> 00:29:21,803
He played 30
or 50 high notes, high C's,

455
00:29:21,887 --> 00:29:23,847
on this one tune they were playing.

456
00:29:23,931 --> 00:29:27,309
And the next day, everybody on the street
was talking about it.

457
00:29:31,897 --> 00:29:34,107
People would come to two or three shows

458
00:29:34,191 --> 00:29:35,984
waiting for him to miss it one day.

459
00:29:36,068 --> 00:29:37,110
So, he said to me,

460
00:29:37,194 --> 00:29:39,404
"Do you know people are coming
to the show four or five times

461
00:29:39,488 --> 00:29:40,948
to hear me miss that F?"

462
00:29:41,031 --> 00:29:43,367
I said, "Yeah?
Well, make some G's at home."

463
00:29:43,992 --> 00:29:46,161
So, he started blowing around the house.

464
00:29:47,204 --> 00:29:49,039
I said, "Oh, my God. Why did I say that?"

465
00:29:52,626 --> 00:29:55,379
He never misses hitting
that high note, does he, folks?

466
00:29:55,462 --> 00:29:57,422
Armstrong extends the range of the horn,

467
00:29:57,506 --> 00:30:00,050
ending every show
with hundreds of high C's.

468
00:30:00,133 --> 00:30:03,929
Just from that, more and more musicians
start playing higher notes.

469
00:30:04,012 --> 00:30:06,932
He really perfects the art
of improvisation.

470
00:30:07,015 --> 00:30:08,517
He shows the world what it could be.

471
00:30:09,685 --> 00:30:11,854
Tommy Rockwell had heard him,

472
00:30:11,937 --> 00:30:17,359
so it was he who suggested
that he form an recording outfit.

473
00:30:17,442 --> 00:30:21,697
And as a result, it was called
Louis Armstrong's Hot Five.

474
00:30:28,328 --> 00:30:29,872
Do that thing, Papa Dip.

475
00:30:30,581 --> 00:30:32,457
You didn't work in clubs with the--

476
00:30:32,541 --> 00:30:36,003
No, we never did think about
nothing like that.

477
00:30:36,086 --> 00:30:40,507
We just make up them things
and scat. Yeah.

478
00:30:40,591 --> 00:30:41,967
Wait. "Make up them things."

479
00:30:42,050 --> 00:30:43,468
-What do you mean?
-Make up those tunes.

480
00:30:43,552 --> 00:30:45,554
-Just in the studio?
-Yeah, sure.

481
00:30:45,637 --> 00:30:47,014
Say, don't you know it

482
00:30:49,141 --> 00:30:51,435
There's a rumor that you invented scat.
Is that true?

483
00:30:51,518 --> 00:30:56,064
Well, they claim
when we was recording "Heebie Jeebies,"

484
00:30:56,148 --> 00:30:58,150
we get down
to this part for the second chorus,

485
00:30:58,233 --> 00:30:59,526
and I drop the paper.

486
00:30:59,610 --> 00:31:02,237
President in the control booth, he says,
"Keep on singing."

487
00:31:02,321 --> 00:31:03,155
-See?
-Yeah.

488
00:31:03,238 --> 00:31:06,116
Well, that brought back memories
of when I was a kid,

489
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:07,659
going around in the quartet.

490
00:31:07,743 --> 00:31:09,912
You know, Rampart Street in New Orleans.

491
00:31:10,412 --> 00:31:12,748
Whenever we'd get to a part
we didn't know the words,

492
00:31:12,831 --> 00:31:15,667
we'd go to scatting
and blowing like a trumpet,

493
00:31:15,751 --> 00:31:16,752
or something like that.

494
00:31:16,835 --> 00:31:19,129
And it came to me just like that.

495
00:31:24,885 --> 00:31:27,095
When he's scatting,
the notes he's picking,

496
00:31:27,179 --> 00:31:29,389
and how sophisticated
the melodies he's creating--

497
00:31:29,473 --> 00:31:31,350
Louis Armstrong is never out of tune.

498
00:31:31,433 --> 00:31:34,019
He could do with his voice
what he could do with his horn.

499
00:31:34,102 --> 00:31:36,313
When people sang in those days,

500
00:31:36,396 --> 00:31:38,941
they often sang
in a very corny manner like…

501
00:31:39,024 --> 00:31:40,567
And I love you

502
00:31:41,068 --> 00:31:42,736
And you and me

503
00:31:42,819 --> 00:31:44,321
And the baby makes three

504
00:31:44,404 --> 00:31:45,948
Dinah

505
00:31:46,907 --> 00:31:49,493
Is there anyone finer

506
00:31:51,036 --> 00:31:53,372
In the state of Carolina?

507
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:58,794
If there is and you know her
Know her

508
00:31:58,877 --> 00:32:01,004
But Armstrong came in
with another kind of thing

509
00:32:01,088 --> 00:32:02,631
where he had that kind of…

510
00:32:04,550 --> 00:32:06,051
you know.

511
00:32:06,802 --> 00:32:08,554
Oh, Dinah

512
00:32:08,637 --> 00:32:11,890
Is there anyone finer
In the state of Carolina?

513
00:32:11,974 --> 00:32:14,601
If there is and you know
Show me

514
00:32:14,685 --> 00:32:16,854
Dinah
With her Dixie eyes blazin'

515
00:32:16,937 --> 00:32:18,605
How I love to sit and gaze

516
00:32:18,689 --> 00:32:20,524
Into the eyes of Dinah Lee

517
00:32:20,607 --> 00:32:21,984
Babe, every night

518
00:32:22,067 --> 00:32:23,861
When I shake with fright, oh

519
00:32:23,944 --> 00:32:25,946
'Cause my Dinah might
Change her mind

520
00:32:28,198 --> 00:32:31,243
Armstrong completely
changes the way people sing.

521
00:32:31,326 --> 00:32:33,912
I'm talking soul singing.
I'm talking Ray Charles.

522
00:32:33,996 --> 00:32:36,373
I'm talking Sam Cooke.
I'm talking James Brown.

523
00:32:36,456 --> 00:32:40,169
I'm talking hip-hop. I'm talking funk.
I'm talking pop music.

524
00:32:40,252 --> 00:32:42,254
I'm talking rock and roll.
I'm talking the Beatles.

525
00:32:42,337 --> 00:32:45,507
Anybody who has basically uttered a sound

526
00:32:45,591 --> 00:32:49,720
on American pop radio
in the last 90 years,

527
00:32:49,803 --> 00:32:52,431
it's because
of Louis Armstrong's innovations.

528
00:33:08,739 --> 00:33:10,449
I met Louis on records.

529
00:33:10,532 --> 00:33:13,535
That "West End Blues"
was a very, very moving experience,

530
00:33:13,619 --> 00:33:16,121
and it actually made a jazz fan out of me

531
00:33:16,205 --> 00:33:19,666
and ultimately found the direction
for my whole career,

532
00:33:19,750 --> 00:33:21,460
as it did for so many people.

533
00:33:22,127 --> 00:33:23,921
"West End Blues"
was a miniature masterpiece.

534
00:33:29,843 --> 00:33:34,264
I would say that
jazz almost stems from Louis Armstrong.

535
00:33:34,348 --> 00:33:35,849
People are accustomed to saying,

536
00:33:35,933 --> 00:33:38,393
and I've heard it said a lot,
that he was a genius.

537
00:33:38,477 --> 00:33:41,396
But very few people talk about
why he was a genius

538
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:44,608
and what it was
that his particular form of genius did.

539
00:33:49,613 --> 00:33:52,491
I could say now
that what he was really doing

540
00:33:53,033 --> 00:33:55,869
was playing music
for which there was no accounting

541
00:33:55,953 --> 00:33:57,829
in his immediate environment.

542
00:33:57,913 --> 00:34:01,625
Louis Armstrong is
the first important soloist

543
00:34:01,708 --> 00:34:06,380
because he is the first to break away
from Western harmony

544
00:34:07,172 --> 00:34:10,175
and to reintroduce the melodic

545
00:34:10,259 --> 00:34:13,929
and rhythmic developments
of African music.

546
00:34:19,976 --> 00:34:20,978
Stop it! Stop it!

547
00:34:21,061 --> 00:34:23,438
You are playing notes
between flat and natural.

548
00:34:23,522 --> 00:34:27,484
It's like discovering a secret scale
just made for this type of music.

549
00:34:27,568 --> 00:34:31,822
The so-called jazz scale is used
only melodically.

550
00:34:31,905 --> 00:34:33,156
That is, in the tune.

551
00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:37,786
In the harmony underneath,
we still use our old unflatted notes

552
00:34:38,954 --> 00:34:41,415
against the flatted note in the tune.

553
00:34:41,498 --> 00:34:43,708
So that causes a dissonance to happen.

554
00:34:43,792 --> 00:34:45,668
Jazz pianists are always using
this dissonance.

555
00:34:45,752 --> 00:34:47,504
I'm sure it sounds familiar to you.

556
00:34:47,588 --> 00:34:49,505
And there's a reason for it.

557
00:34:49,590 --> 00:34:53,010
It's because they are looking for a note
that isn't actually there,

558
00:34:53,510 --> 00:34:56,054
but which lies somewhere between the two.

559
00:34:56,554 --> 00:34:58,307
This is called a quarter tone.

560
00:34:59,057 --> 00:35:03,604
The quarter tone comes to us from Africa,
which is, after all, the cradle of jazz

561
00:35:04,188 --> 00:35:06,857
and where quarter tones
are everyday stuff.

562
00:35:06,940 --> 00:35:08,734
Now, ladies and gentlemen,

563
00:35:08,817 --> 00:35:11,361
we gonna take a little trip
through the jungles this time,

564
00:35:11,862 --> 00:35:13,572
and we want y'all to travel with us.

565
00:35:14,198 --> 00:35:16,658
That tiger's running so fast.

566
00:35:16,742 --> 00:35:20,287
Gonna take a few choruses to catch him,
so I want y'all to count with me.

567
00:35:20,370 --> 00:35:21,371
Yes, sir.

568
00:35:21,455 --> 00:35:24,208
Because this son-of-a-trumpet
is gonna get away from you this time.

569
00:35:24,291 --> 00:35:26,251
Lay it out there, boys. I'm ready.

570
00:35:31,131 --> 00:35:34,593
At this time in his career,
Louis was having problems with managers,

571
00:35:34,676 --> 00:35:37,471
and, inevitably,
the gangsters took a hand in his affairs.

572
00:35:39,765 --> 00:35:41,767
There were certain interests in New York

573
00:35:41,850 --> 00:35:43,644
who thought the trumpet king
belonged there.

574
00:35:46,230 --> 00:35:51,818
The gangster which was the toughest man
in Chicago at that time, Frankie Foster,

575
00:35:51,902 --> 00:35:54,154
he said, "You know
you're going to New York tomorrow?"

576
00:35:54,238 --> 00:35:56,657
I told him,
"I didn't know nothing about that.

577
00:35:56,740 --> 00:35:58,242
Nobody told me nothing about it."

578
00:35:58,325 --> 00:36:00,244
I said, "Excuse me a minute.
I'm going back on the stand."

579
00:36:00,327 --> 00:36:01,954
He said,
"You're going to New York tomorrow."

580
00:36:02,037 --> 00:36:03,705
That's when he pulled that .45.

581
00:36:05,165 --> 00:36:08,001
I said,
"Well, maybe I am going to New York."

582
00:36:10,796 --> 00:36:13,757
The whole business end
of music at that time

583
00:36:13,841 --> 00:36:15,759
was controlled by white people.

584
00:36:15,843 --> 00:36:17,010
They were not all crooks.

585
00:36:17,094 --> 00:36:18,804
They were not all
manipulating Black people,

586
00:36:18,887 --> 00:36:20,806
but quite a few of them were.

587
00:36:20,889 --> 00:36:23,183
It was very difficult for a Black musician

588
00:36:23,267 --> 00:36:26,436
not to be very bitter
about the entire system at that time.

589
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:29,106
But Louis was one of those few,
rare people

590
00:36:29,189 --> 00:36:31,275
that never gave the impression
of being bitter,

591
00:36:31,358 --> 00:36:32,943
whether it was under the surface or not.

592
00:36:33,026 --> 00:36:36,989
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm Mr. Armstrong.

593
00:36:37,781 --> 00:36:41,076
And we're gonna swing
one of the good old good ones for you.

594
00:36:41,159 --> 00:36:44,037
Beautiful number,
"I Cover the Waterfront."

595
00:36:44,121 --> 00:36:46,456
"I Cover the Waterfront," I like it.

596
00:36:48,625 --> 00:36:49,626
One, two.

597
00:37:16,153 --> 00:37:19,531
In 1932, first time I went to Europe.

598
00:37:20,616 --> 00:37:22,618
We used to travel by boats.

599
00:37:22,701 --> 00:37:24,995
Johnny Collins was my manager then.

600
00:37:25,495 --> 00:37:27,664
Didn't they give you
the name of Satchmo over here?

601
00:37:27,748 --> 00:37:29,416
Yeah. Given by Fuzzy Brooks.

602
00:37:29,917 --> 00:37:32,836
He was the editor
of the Melody Maker at that time.

603
00:37:33,629 --> 00:37:37,257
When I arrived in Plymouth,
England, on the ship,

604
00:37:37,341 --> 00:37:39,718
and then somebody's going up there,
"Hello, Satchmo."

605
00:37:40,260 --> 00:37:43,889
When I went all through Europe
and everything with different cats,

606
00:37:43,972 --> 00:37:46,433
you know, trying to be managing things,

607
00:37:46,517 --> 00:37:48,936
I said, "These are the people
I don't want to be bothered with.

608
00:37:49,019 --> 00:37:51,522
They're doing everything
but protecting their trumpet."

609
00:37:51,605 --> 00:37:53,273
See, I had a manager who would--

610
00:37:53,357 --> 00:37:55,776
who would grab all the money
out the box office.

611
00:37:55,859 --> 00:37:57,653
You know, that frantic stuff, you know.

612
00:37:57,736 --> 00:37:59,613
I say, "Well, that ain't what I wanna do."

613
00:37:59,696 --> 00:38:02,866
Around about that time
that Louis Armstrong found out

614
00:38:02,950 --> 00:38:08,997
that his managing director, Mr. Collins,
was making £20,000 a week for him,

615
00:38:09,081 --> 00:38:13,252
and Louis was getting,
say, about £100 a week.

616
00:38:13,335 --> 00:38:16,129
And he asked for more money,

617
00:38:16,213 --> 00:38:20,342
and Mr. Collins,
he used some beautiful adjectives.

618
00:38:20,425 --> 00:38:23,887
I said, "Listen, cocksucker,
you might be my manager

619
00:38:23,971 --> 00:38:25,806
and you might be the biggest shit,

620
00:38:26,306 --> 00:38:29,142
and book me
in the biggest places in the world,

621
00:38:29,226 --> 00:38:32,229
but when I get out on that fucking stage
with that horn and get in trouble,

622
00:38:32,312 --> 00:38:33,480
you can't save me."

623
00:38:33,564 --> 00:38:35,774
He said, "Take that nigger off the boat."

624
00:38:35,858 --> 00:38:38,235
Got to brawling, goddamn it.

625
00:38:38,318 --> 00:38:39,653
Shit.

626
00:38:41,530 --> 00:38:43,532
They gonna have this shit under control.

627
00:38:44,283 --> 00:38:46,159
And there's a big bottle of wine.

628
00:38:46,243 --> 00:38:47,786
All I had to do was take it like that.

629
00:38:47,870 --> 00:38:50,205
And the bald-headed motherfucker
had his head down.

630
00:38:50,289 --> 00:38:54,626
And said, "I gotta just tap it
like a pansy and kill the motherfucker."

631
00:38:55,377 --> 00:38:57,129
See, but the first thing I thought,

632
00:38:57,212 --> 00:38:59,131
all of them Black cocksuckers in Harlem
who'd say,

633
00:38:59,214 --> 00:39:01,425
"I knew he would blow his top someday."

634
00:39:01,508 --> 00:39:03,844
I don't know why…
"Fuck it. I got this shit."

635
00:39:03,927 --> 00:39:05,929
"Go on and eat your meal, man."

636
00:39:06,013 --> 00:39:08,182
Not that I hadn't been called
a nigger before.

637
00:39:08,682 --> 00:39:10,559
He fired Collins. He got rid of him.

638
00:39:10,642 --> 00:39:12,144
But Collins had a contract on him.

639
00:39:12,227 --> 00:39:15,189
So, Louis remembered
that he had worked for Joe Glaser,

640
00:39:15,272 --> 00:39:18,901
and that Joe Glaser was tied in with some
pretty rough boys around Chicago.

641
00:39:18,984 --> 00:39:23,071
So Louis got in touch with Joe,
and he told Joe, he said,

642
00:39:23,155 --> 00:39:25,699
"I'm having a lot of trouble
with this guy managing me."

643
00:39:25,782 --> 00:39:26,950
He said, "I'm kind of scared."

644
00:39:27,034 --> 00:39:29,161
He said, "I don't know
what he's gonna try to do to me."

645
00:39:29,244 --> 00:39:32,164
He says, "But I want you for my manager."

646
00:39:34,583 --> 00:39:37,794
The toughest guy
in the honky-tonk that runs the gambling,

647
00:39:37,878 --> 00:39:40,005
he knew I was getting ready
to come up north,

648
00:39:40,506 --> 00:39:42,549
and this is the pep talk he gave me.

649
00:39:42,633 --> 00:39:46,637
He said, "Look here, son.
I like the way you blow that quail."

650
00:39:47,221 --> 00:39:48,263
Talking about my cornet.

651
00:39:48,347 --> 00:39:50,349
I knew what he was talking about.
I said, "Yeah."

652
00:39:50,432 --> 00:39:52,809
He said, "Now, you go up north

653
00:39:53,685 --> 00:39:59,274
and always have a white man behind you
to say, 'That's my nigger.'"

654
00:39:59,358 --> 00:40:01,443
And that's the way he put it to me.

655
00:40:01,527 --> 00:40:03,570
Now, you can figure that out yourself.

656
00:40:04,404 --> 00:40:05,656
That was the talk.

657
00:40:06,156 --> 00:40:09,243
And Joe Glaser came right in the scene.

658
00:40:09,910 --> 00:40:11,662
-What did the--
-We were just like that.

659
00:40:11,745 --> 00:40:17,000
Because he knew I wanted to blow my horn,
and he saw to that.

660
00:40:17,084 --> 00:40:18,377
I said, "This is my man."

661
00:40:18,460 --> 00:40:20,546
I said,
"You tend to business, Daddy Glaser.

662
00:40:20,629 --> 00:40:22,798
And I'll blow the horn.
And that's where it is."

663
00:40:22,881 --> 00:40:25,217
And it's been over twenty-some years

664
00:40:25,801 --> 00:40:27,970
and we ain't even signed a contract.

665
00:40:29,346 --> 00:40:30,722
Joe Glaser's a nigga.

666
00:40:31,682 --> 00:40:33,809
Joe Glaser loves Negroes.

667
00:40:33,892 --> 00:40:35,394
He was raised with niggas.

668
00:40:35,477 --> 00:40:38,647
-He went to school with them.
-That's right. That's right.

669
00:40:38,730 --> 00:40:42,484
You know, I always felt
there was a weird relationship

670
00:40:42,568 --> 00:40:44,778
between Joe Glaser and Louis.

671
00:40:44,862 --> 00:40:47,155
And I felt Louis was exploited.

672
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:49,992
Louis believes that he never would've
made it without Joe Glaser.

673
00:40:50,075 --> 00:40:51,326
I think he wouldn't have.

674
00:40:51,410 --> 00:40:54,037
-That's possible?
-Quite possible.

675
00:40:54,121 --> 00:40:57,082
You got to have good management.
I don't care how great you are.

676
00:40:57,165 --> 00:41:01,753
Good management goes
hand in hand with success and talent.

677
00:41:01,837 --> 00:41:04,047
He never wanted anything
to do with business, right?

678
00:41:04,131 --> 00:41:06,592
He never even hired the guys in his band.

679
00:41:06,675 --> 00:41:09,178
He just wanted to concentrate
on that horn.

680
00:41:23,775 --> 00:41:25,694
Glaser--
On the strength of being with Louis--

681
00:41:25,777 --> 00:41:27,196
Louis used to tell us stories

682
00:41:27,279 --> 00:41:29,865
about they used to ride the bus
down South with Glaser,

683
00:41:29,948 --> 00:41:32,659
and Glaser didn't-- None of them
hardly had enough to eat with.

684
00:41:32,743 --> 00:41:36,121
But on the strength of that,
Louis started getting real popular.

685
00:41:36,205 --> 00:41:39,082
Glaser started getting good PR for Louis.

686
00:41:42,461 --> 00:41:47,341
By 1935, there were probably
some who hadn't heard of Louis Armstrong,

687
00:41:47,424 --> 00:41:50,135
and perhaps even those few
were erased that year

688
00:41:50,219 --> 00:41:52,721
when he recorded "La Cucaracha,"

689
00:41:52,804 --> 00:41:55,641
"Red Sails in the Sunset,"
"On Treasure Island."

690
00:41:57,142 --> 00:41:58,727
In the summer of 1936,

691
00:41:58,810 --> 00:42:01,355
he said to me, "We're going on a tour
of one-night stands.

692
00:42:01,438 --> 00:42:05,150
Why don't you ride along in the bus
so you can see what it's like?"

693
00:42:05,234 --> 00:42:08,862
It was a very exhausting trip
for musicians in those days.

694
00:42:08,946 --> 00:42:11,281
There were no air-conditioned buses
at that time.

695
00:42:11,365 --> 00:42:13,158
Now, we've traveled 800 miles.

696
00:42:13,242 --> 00:42:15,702
You know, you get up,
you can't hardly stand up.

697
00:42:15,786 --> 00:42:19,039
You'd think he would take it easy
the first few sets or something like that.

698
00:42:19,122 --> 00:42:23,043
No, you'd get in there
and that first number, boy.

699
00:42:23,126 --> 00:42:24,461
Pow, pow, pow.

700
00:42:24,545 --> 00:42:26,922
There was no letup.
He was there to entertain the people.

701
00:42:27,005 --> 00:42:29,216
And believe me,
that's what he believed in.

702
00:42:29,716 --> 00:42:33,053
No other leader I know would've
put up with what he had to go through.

703
00:42:33,136 --> 00:42:36,139
Louis became attached to laxatives.

704
00:42:36,223 --> 00:42:38,559
When you traveled
on the band bus with him,

705
00:42:38,642 --> 00:42:42,229
and you didn't know too much
about laxatives,

706
00:42:42,855 --> 00:42:46,942
he would find a way for you
to imbibe some of it.

707
00:42:47,025 --> 00:42:51,363
When I first got to know him,
it was Pluto Water.

708
00:42:51,446 --> 00:42:55,993
But then come Swiss Kriss,
which he really got to like.

709
00:42:56,827 --> 00:42:59,746
Enjoy the fun of eager living.

710
00:43:00,247 --> 00:43:05,419
That radiant, refreshed feeling
that comes from everyday regularity.

711
00:43:05,502 --> 00:43:11,717
Don't think for once that Swiss Kriss
wasn't in the rudimentals of my life.

712
00:43:14,428 --> 00:43:16,096
But I always did believe in herbs.

713
00:43:16,180 --> 00:43:18,265
-My mother always--
-Believed in?

714
00:43:18,348 --> 00:43:19,349
-Herbs.
-Herbs.

715
00:43:19,433 --> 00:43:22,186
How do you say it? "Herbs"? "Erbs"?

716
00:43:22,269 --> 00:43:24,146
No, I say, "Hoibs."

717
00:43:24,229 --> 00:43:25,689
Well. Okay.

718
00:43:25,772 --> 00:43:26,857
-Well, I'll say "herbs."
-Herbs.

719
00:43:26,940 --> 00:43:28,775
-You know what I'm talking about.
-Herbs. Right.

720
00:43:28,859 --> 00:43:30,777
-They make you trot.
-Pardon?

721
00:43:30,861 --> 00:43:32,237
Anyway.

722
00:43:32,321 --> 00:43:35,282
Have some
and just leave it all behind you, daddy.

723
00:43:36,950 --> 00:43:39,620
He believed that the laxatives

724
00:43:39,703 --> 00:43:43,540
were of primary, significance
to your health.

725
00:43:44,291 --> 00:43:45,751
His doctor traveled with him.

726
00:43:45,834 --> 00:43:49,171
Dr. Schiff told us,
"Don't try to emulate this guy at home

727
00:43:49,254 --> 00:43:52,883
because you'd die, probably tomorrow."

728
00:43:52,966 --> 00:43:56,970
Louis was perhaps the strongest guy
I ever worked around

729
00:43:57,054 --> 00:44:00,807
because he didn't try
to live carefully or anything like this.

730
00:44:00,891 --> 00:44:03,977
He lived the way he wanted to live,
and to heck with it.

731
00:44:04,061 --> 00:44:05,479
That's how he lived, you know.

732
00:44:09,775 --> 00:44:11,443
At five o'clock in the morning,

733
00:44:11,527 --> 00:44:13,403
Louis Armstrong had to be rushed
to the hospital.

734
00:44:15,197 --> 00:44:19,743
Louis had a case history
of a bad heart for a long time.

735
00:44:19,826 --> 00:44:22,120
We did a thing over in Spoleto, Italy,

736
00:44:23,121 --> 00:44:25,666
and he had a pretty bad heart attack
over there.

737
00:44:26,583 --> 00:44:28,794
In Spoleto, Italy,

738
00:44:29,378 --> 00:44:32,840
they sent to Rome
to get this special nurse in.

739
00:44:32,923 --> 00:44:34,132
She was here fast.

740
00:44:34,716 --> 00:44:36,593
Oh, yeah. She was good-looking too.

741
00:44:36,677 --> 00:44:39,263
Well, I ain't went with that.
I'm trying to get well now.

742
00:44:40,430 --> 00:44:43,350
When she said, "Uh-huh, Satchmo, eh?"

743
00:44:43,433 --> 00:44:46,478
-She come with this thermometer, you know?
-Uh-huh.

744
00:44:47,062 --> 00:44:48,730
I said, "What you gonna do with that?"

745
00:44:48,814 --> 00:44:50,065
She said…

746
00:44:50,148 --> 00:44:51,441
And this thermometer…

747
00:44:51,525 --> 00:44:52,818
I said, "Okay. Ah."

748
00:44:52,901 --> 00:44:53,986
"Ah, what?"

749
00:44:55,404 --> 00:44:57,739
Like, "Y'all trying to kill me."

750
00:44:58,782 --> 00:45:01,577
Now here is one of the miracles
of show business,

751
00:45:01,660 --> 00:45:06,456
because when Louis Armstrong
was with us in Spoleto, Italy,

752
00:45:06,540 --> 00:45:09,126
certainly Bob Precht and I
never thought to see him alive again

753
00:45:09,209 --> 00:45:12,421
because, as you know,
he was desperately sick over there.

754
00:45:12,504 --> 00:45:17,301
On the verge of dying, recovered
and is now back playing his horn.

755
00:45:17,801 --> 00:45:22,639
Nah, I ain't gonna give nobody
None of my jelly roll

756
00:45:24,933 --> 00:45:28,562
Give you none of it
To save your soul

757
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:44,870
Ain't gonna give nobody
None of my jelly roll, jelly roll

758
00:45:47,915 --> 00:45:51,001
You see, the other day
I met a man from Zanzibar

759
00:45:52,127 --> 00:45:56,006
who was telling me quite a lot
about racial prejudice.

760
00:45:56,089 --> 00:45:58,383
-Where?
-In East Africa.

761
00:45:58,884 --> 00:46:00,844
What, Africa?
You get it all over the world.

762
00:46:00,928 --> 00:46:02,721
Right here, you get prejudice.
Are you kidding?

763
00:46:03,931 --> 00:46:05,933
-They were--
-All over the world.

764
00:46:06,016 --> 00:46:07,726
-Not only in Africa.
-Many places.

765
00:46:07,809 --> 00:46:09,770
-Right here, you get prejudice.
-Here?

766
00:46:09,853 --> 00:46:11,522
Yeah, everywhere.

767
00:46:11,605 --> 00:46:14,942
-How is it here?
-Well, essence of it all over.

768
00:46:15,651 --> 00:46:17,778
Have you any examples of it here?

769
00:46:17,861 --> 00:46:19,947
Well, you can see a whole lot of example--

770
00:46:20,030 --> 00:46:22,282
I can go out there right now,
within an hour's time

771
00:46:22,366 --> 00:46:25,661
and see five situations
where there's race prejudice.

772
00:46:26,870 --> 00:46:29,039
The discrimination was unbelievable.

773
00:46:29,122 --> 00:46:32,084
I think you had to be part of it,

774
00:46:32,167 --> 00:46:33,669
or to be very close to it,

775
00:46:33,752 --> 00:46:37,339
to get any idea of what it was like
to be Black in those days.

776
00:46:37,422 --> 00:46:39,174
It seemed, on the surface,

777
00:46:39,258 --> 00:46:43,720
that a lot of Black musicians
and Black people were accepting it

778
00:46:43,804 --> 00:46:46,390
or were trying to live with it
as best they could.

779
00:46:46,473 --> 00:46:50,644
But the resentment, you know,
understandably, was tremendous.

780
00:46:51,144 --> 00:46:53,564
And the conditions for living--

781
00:46:53,647 --> 00:46:57,025
I mean, just for finding a place
to stay overnight, you know,

782
00:46:57,609 --> 00:46:59,736
finding a place
to go get something to eat--

783
00:46:59,820 --> 00:47:03,115
Everything presented its difficulties
because everything was segregated.

784
00:47:03,198 --> 00:47:05,033
And I'm talking about even in New York.

785
00:47:05,117 --> 00:47:09,162
But it was tragic, what you had to go
with this discrimination.

786
00:47:09,246 --> 00:47:10,789
And you had to be tough.

787
00:47:10,873 --> 00:47:13,292
'Cause discrimination,
in a sneaky sort of way,

788
00:47:13,375 --> 00:47:17,171
killed a whole lot of musicians
because they couldn't understand the code.

789
00:47:19,173 --> 00:47:23,886
"Do you know I played 99 million hotels
I couldn't stay at?

790
00:47:23,969 --> 00:47:27,347
When I was coming along,
a Black man had hell.

791
00:47:28,056 --> 00:47:32,895
On the road, he couldn't find
no place to eat, sleep, or use the toilet.

792
00:47:33,395 --> 00:47:37,191
Service station cats see a bus
of colored bandsmen drive up,

793
00:47:37,274 --> 00:47:39,651
and they would sprint to lock
their restroom doors.

794
00:47:40,861 --> 00:47:42,821
One time in Dallas, Texas,

795
00:47:42,905 --> 00:47:46,617
some ofay stops me as I enter
this hotel where I'm blowing the show--

796
00:47:46,700 --> 00:47:49,203
me in a goddamn tuxedo, now--

797
00:47:49,286 --> 00:47:52,331
and tells me I gotta come around
to the back door."

798
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:57,419
In Memphis, at the bus station,

799
00:47:57,503 --> 00:48:00,339
they claimed that the bus
needed some work done on it

800
00:48:00,422 --> 00:48:02,508
and they were gonna take it back
to have it overhauled.

801
00:48:02,591 --> 00:48:06,053
At that particular time,
all the guys in Louis's band were young

802
00:48:06,136 --> 00:48:08,931
and just about as obstinate
a bunch of people

803
00:48:09,014 --> 00:48:11,642
as you ever met in your life
if they thought they were right.

804
00:48:11,725 --> 00:48:13,727
When nobody would give up the bus,

805
00:48:13,810 --> 00:48:17,940
then they sent for the police
and arrested us for inciting a riot.

806
00:48:18,023 --> 00:48:20,776
With the intention of burning up
all of our baggage and everything,

807
00:48:20,859 --> 00:48:22,277
luggage and everything,

808
00:48:22,361 --> 00:48:24,154
and putting us in the hoosegow,
which they did.

809
00:48:24,238 --> 00:48:26,073
They arrested us all.

810
00:48:26,156 --> 00:48:29,284
He was playing in Los Angeles
one time. I don't remember where.

811
00:48:29,368 --> 00:48:33,580
And I, along with some other friends,
drove out to hear him play.

812
00:48:34,081 --> 00:48:37,292
And we got to this place,
we were put-- given a table,

813
00:48:37,376 --> 00:48:38,752
and Louis saw me.

814
00:48:38,836 --> 00:48:40,671
He was in the middle of a radio broadcast.

815
00:48:40,754 --> 00:48:42,798
And then the broadcast was over,

816
00:48:42,881 --> 00:48:44,758
and he disappeared in back.

817
00:48:44,842 --> 00:48:45,968
And I waited.

818
00:48:46,510 --> 00:48:49,012
I thought he'd come over and have a drink,

819
00:48:49,096 --> 00:48:51,098
or a Coca-Cola or a cup of coffee
or something.

820
00:48:51,181 --> 00:48:53,725
And he never showed up.
I waited about ten minutes.

821
00:48:53,809 --> 00:48:56,395
And finally, I thought,
"Well, what's wrong?" I went backstage.

822
00:48:56,478 --> 00:48:58,772
He was back there
with his little typewriter.

823
00:48:58,856 --> 00:49:00,899
He was always writing
these marvelous letters he wrote.

824
00:49:00,983 --> 00:49:03,610
And I said, "Hi, Pops."
He said, "Hey, Artie. How you been?"

825
00:49:03,694 --> 00:49:06,238
I said, "I thought
I understood you to indicate

826
00:49:06,321 --> 00:49:07,739
that you'd come over to the table."

827
00:49:07,823 --> 00:49:09,950
He looked at me. He said,
"Man, I can't come to your table."

828
00:49:10,033 --> 00:49:12,536
And I said, "Why?"
He said, "Oh, they don't allow me to sit--

829
00:49:12,619 --> 00:49:14,663
Well, I can't sit
at the tables out there."

830
00:49:15,247 --> 00:49:17,249
Well, I looked at him
in total astonishment.

831
00:49:17,332 --> 00:49:21,170
My first reaction was, "Well, why the hell
are you playing these places?"

832
00:49:21,253 --> 00:49:24,715
My next reaction was the practical one of,
you play where you gotta play.

833
00:49:25,215 --> 00:49:28,552
And Louis was not in
a what we now call civil rights fight.

834
00:49:28,635 --> 00:49:32,723
Louis was in a--
in an individual fight to survive.

835
00:49:32,806 --> 00:49:36,351
I guess his own inner dignity
was able to make him prevail

836
00:49:36,435 --> 00:49:39,313
over all these awful conditions
he must have worked with.

837
00:49:40,314 --> 00:49:42,816
"As time went on and I made a reputation,

838
00:49:43,483 --> 00:49:45,152
I had to put it in my contracts

839
00:49:45,235 --> 00:49:48,071
that I would not play no place
I couldn't stay at.

840
00:49:48,572 --> 00:49:54,036
I was the first Negro in the business
to crack them big, white hotels.

841
00:49:54,119 --> 00:49:56,663
Oh, yeah. I pioneered, Pops."

842
00:50:02,669 --> 00:50:05,547
People got tired of that situation,

843
00:50:05,631 --> 00:50:10,010
you know, that--
the separate this and the separate that.

844
00:50:10,093 --> 00:50:13,096
If a man is able and capable enough

845
00:50:13,889 --> 00:50:19,019
and could put the things together,
what a leader wants, he's--

846
00:50:19,102 --> 00:50:21,396
and he wants to hire 'em, he'd hire 'em.

847
00:50:25,150 --> 00:50:29,238
Old rockin' chair's got me

848
00:50:29,321 --> 00:50:31,573
Old rockin' chair got you, father

849
00:50:31,657 --> 00:50:34,076
What a marvelous,
democratic thing music is.

850
00:50:34,159 --> 00:50:36,203
That's right. We went everywhere together.

851
00:50:36,286 --> 00:50:39,665
And we never had a hard word or nothing.

852
00:50:39,748 --> 00:50:41,875
We didn't worry about, you know, color.

853
00:50:41,959 --> 00:50:43,919
…gin, son

854
00:50:44,002 --> 00:50:47,381
You know you don't drink gin, father

855
00:50:47,464 --> 00:50:50,300
I mean, in the early days, we did this.

856
00:50:50,384 --> 00:50:52,135
When those things wasn't happening,

857
00:50:52,219 --> 00:50:55,806
Jack and I was
busting those down barriers.

858
00:50:56,390 --> 00:50:59,351
Hitting the South there,
and just going all over.

859
00:51:00,519 --> 00:51:02,688
Some guy asked me,

860
00:51:02,771 --> 00:51:04,773
he said,
"Man, you're gonna take Jack Teagarden?"

861
00:51:04,857 --> 00:51:07,609
I said "Now, who am I to tell a white man
he can't go down South?"

862
00:51:09,152 --> 00:51:12,614
And it's all through New Orleans, Texas…

863
00:51:14,157 --> 00:51:16,368
I guess, more than all of the laws,

864
00:51:16,451 --> 00:51:21,081
music has had more to do with better
race relations through the years.

865
00:51:21,164 --> 00:51:23,125
-Hasn't it, Pops?
-It's done a lot.

866
00:51:23,208 --> 00:51:26,503
You remember that white boy,
he's a sailor or something,

867
00:51:27,004 --> 00:51:29,798
On one of these battleships
at Pearl Harbor?

868
00:51:30,299 --> 00:51:31,884
And he caught my show.

869
00:51:31,967 --> 00:51:35,596
And come to find out,
he has damn near every record I made

870
00:51:35,679 --> 00:51:38,557
from childhood, even his parents.

871
00:51:38,640 --> 00:51:41,852
But still and all, he expressed himself.

872
00:51:41,935 --> 00:51:45,480
He come up, and he shook my hand
after the whole show was over, didn't he?

873
00:51:46,064 --> 00:51:50,235
And he said,
"You know, I don't like Negroes."

874
00:51:50,319 --> 00:51:53,530
Right to my fucking face,
that motherfucker told me.

875
00:51:53,614 --> 00:51:57,492
And so I said,
"Well, I admire your goddamn sincerity."

876
00:51:58,327 --> 00:52:00,078
He said, "I don't like Negroes,

877
00:52:00,162 --> 00:52:02,331
but you one son of a bitch
I'm crazy about, baby."

878
00:52:02,414 --> 00:52:03,415
Didn't he?

879
00:52:03,498 --> 00:52:06,084
There, now,
you take the majority of white people.

880
00:52:06,168 --> 00:52:09,796
There's two-thirds of them
don't like niggers.

881
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:15,260
But they always got one nigger
that they just crazy about, goddamn it.

882
00:52:17,054 --> 00:52:18,055
Ain't that a bitch?

883
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:25,687
Pops, he faced a lot of challenges,

884
00:52:25,771 --> 00:52:28,649
and he always faced them with style

885
00:52:28,732 --> 00:52:32,778
and maintained his sanity and his joy
and his embrace of life.

886
00:52:32,861 --> 00:52:36,823
And it was not a simpleminded happiness.
It was a transcendent joy.

887
00:52:40,494 --> 00:52:44,331
He had a blessing inside of him
that he was acutely aware of.

888
00:52:46,124 --> 00:52:50,212
I remember when I was
a neighbor of Louis Armstrong.

889
00:52:50,754 --> 00:52:54,466
We lived within one block of one another

890
00:52:54,550 --> 00:52:58,095
in Corona, Queens, New York, for 15 years.

891
00:52:58,178 --> 00:53:00,681
I went over to his house
to wish him a happy birthday…

892
00:53:02,975 --> 00:53:04,977
and to bring him a little present.

893
00:53:05,060 --> 00:53:11,567
And I wound up getting a present myself
and also a present for my wife, Lorraine.

894
00:53:12,651 --> 00:53:14,403
If you had a hard-luck story

895
00:53:14,486 --> 00:53:17,197
and you needed something,
and you came to Louis, you got it.

896
00:53:17,281 --> 00:53:18,407
This is a throwback.

897
00:53:18,490 --> 00:53:21,743
It's been instilled in him
in the old days of-- in New Orleans,

898
00:53:21,827 --> 00:53:23,161
when Louis was a youth coming up.

899
00:53:23,245 --> 00:53:25,038
It was a way of life down there.

900
00:53:25,122 --> 00:53:26,456
They were all poor,

901
00:53:26,957 --> 00:53:29,209
and the one that had a little more
than the other

902
00:53:29,793 --> 00:53:32,754
saw to it that the one that has less
had a little bit.

903
00:53:32,838 --> 00:53:34,214
So he never outgrew it.

904
00:53:34,298 --> 00:53:36,133
He liked to get to know the people.

905
00:53:36,216 --> 00:53:38,760
That's where it was at with Louis,
and I think everyone knows that.

906
00:53:38,844 --> 00:53:41,805
You can see Louis--
see that in all the years

907
00:53:42,389 --> 00:53:44,433
and with all of the success
that Louis has had,

908
00:53:45,142 --> 00:53:48,520
Louis still remained the man
in the street himself.

909
00:53:50,814 --> 00:53:53,859
Royal Theatre
was in a poor Negro neighborhood.

910
00:53:54,484 --> 00:53:56,570
Real poor people, I'm telling you.

911
00:53:57,196 --> 00:53:59,323
Until we arrived in town,

912
00:53:59,406 --> 00:54:02,951
it was actually colder--

913
00:54:03,035 --> 00:54:08,415
I'm telling you, it was colder than
a well digger's-- Well, you know the rest.

914
00:54:08,498 --> 00:54:14,379
And when I heard about those poor people
who couldn't afford to buy hard coal,

915
00:54:14,463 --> 00:54:16,006
I bought it for them.

916
00:54:16,507 --> 00:54:20,677
I went to the coal yard,
ordered a ton of coal,

917
00:54:20,761 --> 00:54:25,224
and had the company to deliver it
to the lobby of the Royal Theatre.

918
00:54:25,974 --> 00:54:31,271
And had all the folks who needed coal
to help themselves,

919
00:54:31,355 --> 00:54:33,315
which made them very happy.

920
00:54:33,398 --> 00:54:38,070
Of course, it all made me
stick out my chest with pride.

921
00:54:39,404 --> 00:54:43,033
To be in his presence,
to see the power that he had--

922
00:54:43,116 --> 00:54:44,660
See, you'd go in his dressing room,

923
00:54:44,743 --> 00:54:49,081
he'd be sitting up, in his underwear,
with a towel around his lap

924
00:54:49,164 --> 00:54:52,918
and one around his shoulders
and had a white handkerchief on his head.

925
00:54:53,001 --> 00:54:56,129
And he put that grease around his lips.

926
00:54:56,213 --> 00:54:58,465
Looked like a minstrel man,
you know, with the white.

927
00:54:58,549 --> 00:55:01,134
And laughing. Natural, see, the way he is.

928
00:55:01,218 --> 00:55:05,931
And in the room,
you'll see maybe two nuns, a streetwalker.

929
00:55:06,014 --> 00:55:09,184
You see maybe a guy
that's come out of penitentiary.

930
00:55:09,268 --> 00:55:11,645
You see a rabbi. You see a priest.

931
00:55:12,271 --> 00:55:16,275
All of the different levels
of society in a dressing room.

932
00:55:16,358 --> 00:55:18,110
And he's talking to all of 'em.

933
00:55:20,362 --> 00:55:21,822
I'd like you to meet my son.

934
00:55:21,905 --> 00:55:24,992
First time we see important-looking whites

935
00:55:25,075 --> 00:55:29,329
be so,
like putty in the presence of a figure

936
00:55:29,413 --> 00:55:33,458
who had opened up the world of music
to new heights, you know?

937
00:55:35,085 --> 00:55:36,962
Now you know I don't lie much

938
00:55:45,721 --> 00:55:49,933
Fellas she can't get
The fellas she ain't met

939
00:55:53,562 --> 00:55:56,231
Louis,
you had, obviously, a very eventful life.

940
00:55:56,315 --> 00:55:58,525
Ever since I've known you,
they've been making a film on you.

941
00:55:58,609 --> 00:56:01,236
They make
a whole lot of films now. You know?

942
00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:03,989
Well, now I hear
they're finally gonna do a film on you.

943
00:56:04,072 --> 00:56:06,408
Yeah.
Glad they can't come up to me and say,

944
00:56:06,491 --> 00:56:09,453
"You must be a movie star.
I can tell by the film on your teeth."

945
00:56:12,206 --> 00:56:14,416
"Hollywood fascinates me.

946
00:56:14,499 --> 00:56:17,336
Everywhere I go,
there's a warm greeting for me.

947
00:56:17,419 --> 00:56:22,633
But you still have some small-minded
prop men, carpenters, callboys.

948
00:56:22,716 --> 00:56:26,970
One of the moments that dragged me
the most happened in 1952

949
00:56:27,554 --> 00:56:29,473
during the making of Glory Alley."

950
00:56:34,269 --> 00:56:39,107
Glory Alley, Glory Alley

951
00:56:39,900 --> 00:56:44,738
Hear that trumpet moan in Glory Alley

952
00:56:45,364 --> 00:56:48,116
And this ofay,
he wasn't nothing but a callboy.

953
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:53,247
He called,
the extras and different things.

954
00:56:53,330 --> 00:56:55,040
Then he'll come
to the stars' dressing room,

955
00:56:55,123 --> 00:56:57,000
let them know when they want
them for the camera.

956
00:56:57,084 --> 00:56:59,461
And he was hanging around
on the set all the time.

957
00:56:59,545 --> 00:57:00,796
-You know what I mean?
-Yeah.

958
00:57:00,879 --> 00:57:02,756
So now, he'll come up,

959
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:06,009
"Mr. Gilbert Roland, Ms. Caron,"
and everything.

960
00:57:06,093 --> 00:57:09,012
And then he'll come to my dressing room
with a whole lot of bullshit.

961
00:57:09,096 --> 00:57:10,931
"Satchmo, you better come on out there,

962
00:57:11,014 --> 00:57:14,184
or they'll send in Harry James."

963
00:57:14,268 --> 00:57:15,978
I said, "Listen, you cocksucker.

964
00:57:16,061 --> 00:57:18,438
If they wanted Harry James,
they'd have had him in front."

965
00:57:18,522 --> 00:57:21,233
I said, "The first place, he ain't
gonna play what I played out there."

966
00:57:21,316 --> 00:57:23,193
He said, "Why?" I said, "'Cause he can't."

967
00:57:23,277 --> 00:57:25,946
Just had to be a nasty
son of a bitch with him.

968
00:57:26,029 --> 00:57:30,033
And I said, "You take it-- You tell MGM
to shove that picture up their ass."

969
00:57:30,117 --> 00:57:31,410
Then he left me alone.

970
00:57:31,493 --> 00:57:33,537
I said, "I don't--
I ain't a movie star nohow."

971
00:57:33,620 --> 00:57:36,290
I said, "Why you hand me that shit?
'Cause I'm colored?"

972
00:57:36,373 --> 00:57:39,793
I didn't appreciate it. I'm just showing
you what I go through for no reason.

973
00:57:39,877 --> 00:57:43,380
You take the smallest fucking peckerwood,

974
00:57:43,463 --> 00:57:45,924
hand you that shit,
and the big bosses appreciate you.

975
00:57:46,008 --> 00:57:47,843
He made as many as 30 films.

976
00:57:47,926 --> 00:57:52,264
The Glenn Miller Story, the way he's cast
in that is very positive.

977
00:57:52,347 --> 00:57:56,852
Yes, Basin Street is the street

978
00:57:58,437 --> 00:58:00,898
Where the folks really meet

979
00:58:01,565 --> 00:58:02,566
Who is he?

980
00:58:03,442 --> 00:58:05,986
Who? Louis Armstrong.

981
00:58:06,069 --> 00:58:11,450
A Song Was Born,
what Louis does there is just performing.

982
00:58:12,951 --> 00:58:16,205
They took a reet jungle beat
Brought it to Basin Street

983
00:58:16,288 --> 00:58:19,041
And that's how jazz was born

984
00:58:19,124 --> 00:58:22,127
In High Society, he is Louis Armstrong.

985
00:58:28,133 --> 00:58:30,886
Hello, Dolly!
Of course, it's the last one.

986
00:58:30,969 --> 00:58:34,556
-Well, hello, Dolly
-Look who's here.

987
00:58:35,307 --> 00:58:38,143
-This is Louis, Dolly
-Hello, Louis.

988
00:58:38,769 --> 00:58:41,605
It's so nice to have you back

989
00:58:41,688 --> 00:58:43,357
Where you belong

990
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:45,651
They didn't write a whole lot of parts,

991
00:58:45,734 --> 00:58:47,236
you know, character parts--

992
00:58:47,319 --> 00:58:51,823
They just let me be myself in pictures.
That's what made it awful nice.

993
00:58:51,907 --> 00:58:56,036
We all can't be Reinhardts
and things like that.

994
00:58:56,537 --> 00:58:58,163
So they just tell me, "Be yourself."

995
00:58:59,122 --> 00:59:02,459
All my days were happiness
'cause I'm born with nothing,

996
00:59:03,085 --> 00:59:04,670
come here with nothing.

997
00:59:04,753 --> 00:59:06,755
And I come through the world,

998
00:59:06,839 --> 00:59:10,884
whatever nothing I had,
I enjoyed playing the music.

999
00:59:10,968 --> 00:59:14,221
And what little advancement
or whatever it was,

1000
00:59:14,304 --> 00:59:16,682
it was more than I had at all times.

1001
00:59:16,765 --> 00:59:20,519
And right now, it's still more than I had.

1002
00:59:20,602 --> 00:59:23,647
And the fans are still happy with Satchmo.

1003
00:59:23,730 --> 00:59:27,943
And I wouldn't give a damn
if they had ten trillion dollars.

1004
00:59:28,026 --> 00:59:32,447
They can't be no happier than
Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong and Lucille.

1005
00:59:32,531 --> 00:59:38,078
We never want an estate where servants
be falling all over each other.

1006
00:59:38,161 --> 00:59:41,874
They're working for colored people.
And then-- We don't wanna go through that.

1007
00:59:41,957 --> 00:59:44,459
And I want to live the life
that I come through

1008
00:59:44,543 --> 00:59:51,008
with what Mayann, my mother, taught me…
enjoy the rudimentals.

1009
00:59:51,091 --> 00:59:52,342
To hell with the rest of it.

1010
00:59:58,515 --> 01:00:01,727
I'm confessin' that I love you

1011
01:00:04,897 --> 01:00:08,775
Tell me, do you love me too?

1012
01:00:11,111 --> 01:00:15,407
I'm confessin' that I need you

1013
01:00:16,408 --> 01:00:18,160
Honest, I do

1014
01:00:18,660 --> 01:00:22,456
Oh, baby, need you every moment

1015
01:00:22,539 --> 01:00:23,665
Oh, yeah?

1016
01:00:23,749 --> 01:00:25,626
Lucille, how did he propose? I mean--

1017
01:00:25,709 --> 01:00:27,503
-What did he say to you?
-Well, actually--

1018
01:00:27,586 --> 01:00:31,298
-How long did you know him?
-About two years.

1019
01:00:31,882 --> 01:00:33,592
-Two years?
-Oh, yes.

1020
01:00:33,675 --> 01:00:35,969
Well, it wasn't love at first sight then,
was it, Louis?

1021
01:00:36,053 --> 01:00:37,638
Plenty love going on then.

1022
01:00:39,389 --> 01:00:41,141
But not at first sight. I see.

1023
01:00:41,225 --> 01:00:43,268
Well, you know, I'm Louis's fourth wife.

1024
01:00:43,352 --> 01:00:44,394
-I see.
-Uh-huh.

1025
01:00:44,478 --> 01:00:48,273
And he was separated from his third wife.

1026
01:00:48,357 --> 01:00:50,776
And so the-- We couldn't marry.

1027
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:53,612
And he kept saying,
"Well, you just stick around,

1028
01:00:53,695 --> 01:00:55,489
you know, wait for Pops.

1029
01:00:55,572 --> 01:00:57,407
And I'll get a divorce." You know.

1030
01:00:57,491 --> 01:00:59,368
And he's taking care of--
This woman's getting alimony.

1031
01:00:59,451 --> 01:01:01,662
-She's not about to give him up.
-Yeah.

1032
01:01:01,745 --> 01:01:03,205
And I just laughed.

1033
01:01:04,623 --> 01:01:07,000
He just tells me,
"Now, you just stay put, you know.

1034
01:01:07,084 --> 01:01:09,628
And one of these days, I'll…

1035
01:01:09,711 --> 01:01:11,713
She'll give me a divorce,
and we'll marry."

1036
01:01:11,797 --> 01:01:15,050
-Yeah.
-And I'm young. But how long do you wait?

1037
01:01:15,551 --> 01:01:18,512
So I was seen on the scene
with the young boys,

1038
01:01:18,595 --> 01:01:19,972
and Louis got tired of that.

1039
01:01:20,055 --> 01:01:21,682
And he says, "Look, I can't hold you down.

1040
01:01:21,765 --> 01:01:22,975
I guess I better marry you."

1041
01:01:23,058 --> 01:01:24,643
-You right.
-"I'll get the divorce."

1042
01:01:26,061 --> 01:01:29,523
Am I guessin' that you love me, babe

1043
01:01:29,606 --> 01:01:31,525
Oh, yeah

1044
01:01:32,985 --> 01:01:37,614
Dreaming dreams of you in vain, vain

1045
01:01:40,117 --> 01:01:44,413
I'm confessin' that I love you

1046
01:01:47,249 --> 01:01:48,625
Chops.

1047
01:01:48,709 --> 01:01:52,254
Over again

1048
01:01:58,218 --> 01:02:03,932
Well, what has been to you,
the most encouraging things?

1049
01:02:04,516 --> 01:02:08,187
My fourth wife, she fixed a nice home,

1050
01:02:08,687 --> 01:02:12,482
not elaborate, just someplace
where you settle down.

1051
01:02:12,566 --> 01:02:14,443
Your castle.

1052
01:02:14,526 --> 01:02:18,530
It's such a pleasure to go home.
That's why I canceled the road tour.

1053
01:02:22,075 --> 01:02:27,414
3456 107th Street.

1054
01:02:27,497 --> 01:02:29,750
-107th?
-Yeah. Street.

1055
01:02:30,334 --> 01:02:33,629
Corona, New York. The Queens.

1056
01:02:33,712 --> 01:02:37,299
It should be Long Island,
but, New York for many.

1057
01:02:38,675 --> 01:02:40,427
We would stay at my apartment,

1058
01:02:40,511 --> 01:02:44,890
but my mother had to get out
of her bedroom and sleep in my small room

1059
01:02:44,973 --> 01:02:46,642
so Louis
and I could have the large bedroom

1060
01:02:46,725 --> 01:02:49,061
for the few days of-- that we went home.

1061
01:02:49,144 --> 01:02:51,230
So I decided to buy a house.

1062
01:02:51,813 --> 01:02:54,191
And I told Louis, "Let's get a house."

1063
01:02:54,274 --> 01:02:56,985
And he said,
"What do you want a house for?

1064
01:02:57,069 --> 01:03:00,322
We'll be traveling.
I'll get a hotel room."

1065
01:03:00,405 --> 01:03:03,742
And I wasn't about to be cooped up
in a hotel room.

1066
01:03:03,825 --> 01:03:07,412
And after being married to Louis
for a few months,

1067
01:03:07,496 --> 01:03:13,001
I found that it wasn't very easy
to argue with Louis.

1068
01:03:13,794 --> 01:03:15,504
If he made his mind up about something,

1069
01:03:15,587 --> 01:03:18,924
he was very, very positive
that you couldn't change his mind.

1070
01:03:19,007 --> 01:03:21,260
And so he kept not wanting this house.

1071
01:03:21,343 --> 01:03:23,804
And I'm a very stubborn person myself.

1072
01:03:23,887 --> 01:03:26,932
And so I said, "This guy doesn't know
what the house is all about."

1073
01:03:27,766 --> 01:03:30,060
I bought the house myself
and didn't tell him.

1074
01:03:30,644 --> 01:03:33,355
I had had the house eight months
before I told Louis.

1075
01:03:34,356 --> 01:03:36,358
Eight whole months.

1076
01:03:36,441 --> 01:03:40,028
Meanwhile, my mother's writing me
about what's happening,

1077
01:03:40,112 --> 01:03:43,031
and they're planting flowers
and this, that and the other.

1078
01:03:43,657 --> 01:03:46,618
So finally, I tell him, two weeks before
we were to go back to New York.

1079
01:03:46,702 --> 01:03:49,621
And I told him, I said,
"Pops, I got something to tell you."

1080
01:03:50,414 --> 01:03:52,541
So he said,
"Well, what have you done now?"

1081
01:03:52,624 --> 01:03:53,959
I said, "I haven't done anything--

1082
01:03:54,042 --> 01:03:56,670
I don't think you're going to be unhappy
about what I've done.

1083
01:03:56,753 --> 01:04:00,924
But I wanna--
I have to tell you that we've moved."

1084
01:04:01,008 --> 01:04:03,302
And he said, "We've what?"
He said, "We've moved?"

1085
01:04:03,385 --> 01:04:05,387
He said, "That's all right.
You got a larger apartment?"

1086
01:04:05,470 --> 01:04:07,139
I said, "No, I bought a house."

1087
01:04:07,222 --> 01:04:11,393
So he looked at me like I was, you know,
like I was a cow with seven horns.

1088
01:04:12,060 --> 01:04:15,564
Now he said, "How did you pay for it?
You didn't ask me for any money."

1089
01:04:15,647 --> 01:04:19,151
I said, "You have to remember,
I have been working for 13 years.

1090
01:04:19,234 --> 01:04:20,944
I have a little money saved up.

1091
01:04:21,028 --> 01:04:24,656
And so, when I approached you
about a house and you were so down on it,

1092
01:04:24,740 --> 01:04:28,160
I didn't ask you. I just took my money,
and I put the down payment on the house,

1093
01:04:28,243 --> 01:04:29,953
and I've been keeping the payments up."

1094
01:04:30,037 --> 01:04:31,538
I said,
"Now that you know about the house,

1095
01:04:31,622 --> 01:04:33,373
you can take the payments over."

1096
01:04:34,458 --> 01:04:36,877
But I've never been able to move Louis
from that place.

1097
01:04:36,960 --> 01:04:39,463
Once he got in that place, he loved it.

1098
01:04:58,941 --> 01:05:01,818
Mrs. Armstrong, do you
always go with Louis wherever he goes?

1099
01:05:01,902 --> 01:05:02,778
Yes, I do…

1100
01:05:02,861 --> 01:05:04,446
It's your job to look after him?

1101
01:05:04,530 --> 01:05:08,492
That's part of my marital vow
to take care of the husband.

1102
01:05:08,575 --> 01:05:13,330
-Yes.
-And while I-- We travel a lot.

1103
01:05:13,413 --> 01:05:16,333
We try to maintain a home life
wherever we go.

1104
01:05:16,416 --> 01:05:17,918
So we were constantly together.

1105
01:05:18,001 --> 01:05:21,880
There was-- There wasn't that separation,

1106
01:05:21,964 --> 01:05:25,384
as most musicians and wives have.

1107
01:05:26,426 --> 01:05:27,678
But then, I was fortunate

1108
01:05:27,761 --> 01:05:30,138
for the simple reason
that Louis wanted me with him.

1109
01:05:31,181 --> 01:05:34,101
And secondly,
he could afford to keep me with him.

1110
01:05:34,184 --> 01:05:36,603
And the other chaps
couldn't afford to take their families.

1111
01:05:37,396 --> 01:05:39,147
Did it get boring at any time,

1112
01:05:39,231 --> 01:05:42,317
-listening to Louis night after night?
-You gotta be kidding.

1113
01:05:42,401 --> 01:05:44,570
-Really?
-How could anyone be bored

1114
01:05:44,653 --> 01:05:46,071
with those beautiful notes?

1115
01:05:46,655 --> 01:05:50,450
Yeah, I had a audience with the pope.

1116
01:05:51,076 --> 01:05:52,995
You had an audience with the pope?

1117
01:05:54,288 --> 01:05:56,039
And I remember that morning,

1118
01:05:56,123 --> 01:05:59,042
there was 10,000 people there waiting
just to see him.

1119
01:05:59,710 --> 01:06:01,879
And my wife,
she's dressed for the occasion,

1120
01:06:01,962 --> 01:06:06,175
had on a outfit with a black veil.

1121
01:06:06,258 --> 01:06:07,968
And I'm sharp.

1122
01:06:09,052 --> 01:06:11,638
So he asked me, "Have you any children?"

1123
01:06:12,514 --> 01:06:16,101
I said,
"Well, no, daddy. But we still wailing."

1124
01:06:16,185 --> 01:06:17,186
And--

1125
01:06:37,706 --> 01:06:39,833
Now, let's talk about pot.

1126
01:06:39,917 --> 01:06:42,002
Yeah.

1127
01:06:42,085 --> 01:06:44,421
I'm only sorry
you couldn't be here with us longer.

1128
01:06:44,505 --> 01:06:45,797
I wish you could have gotten higher.

1129
01:06:45,881 --> 01:06:48,050
But why don't you go and say hello
to the folks on the panel?

1130
01:06:48,133 --> 01:06:49,927
Well, I'm getting higher next time round.

1131
01:06:51,887 --> 01:06:55,682
Mary… wouna.

1132
01:06:55,766 --> 01:07:02,064
Honey, you sure was good
and I enjoyed you very much.

1133
01:07:03,357 --> 01:07:06,693
Marijuana is more of a medicine than dope.

1134
01:07:09,738 --> 01:07:12,908
Why did he do it?
Well, because it relaxes you.

1135
01:07:13,534 --> 01:07:15,994
It does something to your hearing.

1136
01:07:16,078 --> 01:07:19,623
And if you're a musician,
it does something to your playing.

1137
01:07:23,418 --> 01:07:26,421
"I have to go through
the whole world with this horn,

1138
01:07:26,505 --> 01:07:27,965
making millions happy,

1139
01:07:28,048 --> 01:07:32,928
and at the same time
ducking and dodging cops, dicks, so forth.

1140
01:07:33,846 --> 01:07:37,140
Why? 'Cause they say it's against the law.

1141
01:07:37,224 --> 01:07:40,477
I'm not so particular about
having a permit to carry a gun.

1142
01:07:41,103 --> 01:07:45,190
All I want is a permit
to carry that good shit."

1143
01:07:45,274 --> 01:07:48,777
On the West Coast, California, in 1931,

1144
01:07:49,319 --> 01:07:53,448
when I got busted,
it was during our intermission.

1145
01:07:53,532 --> 01:07:57,286
Two big, healthy dicks--
detectives, that is--

1146
01:07:57,369 --> 01:08:01,623
come from behind a car, man,
and say to us,

1147
01:08:02,499 --> 01:08:04,710
"We'll take the roach, boys."

1148
01:08:04,793 --> 01:08:10,424
I spent nine days in
the downtown Los Angeles city jail.

1149
01:08:10,507 --> 01:08:13,844
And when all of those prisoners looked up

1150
01:08:13,927 --> 01:08:20,267
and saw me walk in
with this great big deputy sheriff,

1151
01:08:20,350 --> 01:08:24,770
they all en masse started,
"Hey, Louis Armstrong!"

1152
01:08:25,354 --> 01:08:28,317
The judge gave me a suspended sentence,

1153
01:08:28,399 --> 01:08:33,404
and I went to work that night,
wailed just like nothing happened.

1154
01:09:08,982 --> 01:09:10,108
Ladies and gentlemen,

1155
01:09:10,817 --> 01:09:12,653
Louis Armstrong has told me

1156
01:09:12,736 --> 01:09:17,032
that his most honored ambition
is being fulfilled tonight

1157
01:09:17,115 --> 01:09:19,576
in playing with the New York Philharmonic.

1158
01:09:20,160 --> 01:09:23,412
I should say that it is rather we,

1159
01:09:23,497 --> 01:09:26,166
on the longer-haired side of the fence,

1160
01:09:26,250 --> 01:09:30,962
who are honored in that
when we play "The Saint Louis Blues,"

1161
01:09:31,046 --> 01:09:35,008
we are only doing a blown-up imitation
of what he does.

1162
01:09:35,591 --> 01:09:38,386
And what he does is real and true

1163
01:09:38,470 --> 01:09:41,765
and honest and simple, and even noble.

1164
01:09:49,481 --> 01:09:53,902
I never shall forget
the first time we went to Africa in 1956.

1165
01:09:57,781 --> 01:09:59,199
"My God, darling.

1166
01:10:00,075 --> 01:10:03,287
I had no idea
I would be so thrillingly received

1167
01:10:03,370 --> 01:10:07,791
by my brothers and sisters
in my homeland, Africa."

1168
01:10:09,251 --> 01:10:13,672
This is, though, a tour
to make friends and influence people.

1169
01:10:13,755 --> 01:10:16,758
Well, I guess that's the idea
when they did it.

1170
01:10:16,842 --> 01:10:20,637
But all-- We want to get out there
and blow for them cats. They're all fans.

1171
01:10:22,806 --> 01:10:25,809
Yeah, we got off the plane and…

1172
01:10:25,893 --> 01:10:29,646
All for you
Lord, for you, Louis

1173
01:10:39,323 --> 01:10:40,532
La la la

1174
01:10:44,244 --> 01:10:48,290
The attendance was so fantastic
that there wasn't a place to hold it

1175
01:10:48,373 --> 01:10:51,043
except the polo grounds,
which was just a big stadium.

1176
01:11:09,770 --> 01:11:12,397
And then one of the chiefs
said to Louis, "Hello, Satchmo."

1177
01:11:12,481 --> 01:11:13,607
And Louis told me, he said,

1178
01:11:13,690 --> 01:11:15,943
"See that, Moms?
They even got my records in the bush."

1179
01:11:16,026 --> 01:11:18,320
You know, everybody knows Pops.

1180
01:11:27,788 --> 01:11:30,290
-I had a wonderful time.
-I take it you did.

1181
01:11:30,374 --> 01:11:32,584
Yeah,
they had about nine tribes down there.

1182
01:11:32,668 --> 01:11:36,004
That's-- That come from miles away
just to dance with us.

1183
01:11:36,713 --> 01:11:39,800
And in one of those tribes,
they had a chick swinging there,

1184
01:11:39,883 --> 01:11:40,884
looked just like my mother.

1185
01:11:40,968 --> 01:11:43,595
Man, I made the cameraman
call her over here

1186
01:11:43,679 --> 01:11:46,640
and let her put a couple of
Wiggle Waggle Woos on there for me.

1187
01:11:53,438 --> 01:11:54,690
Here's a song we did

1188
01:11:54,773 --> 01:11:57,484
that was all about
one of the big events of the year

1189
01:11:57,568 --> 01:11:58,819
in my hometown,

1190
01:11:58,902 --> 01:12:01,363
the Zulu Parade in Mardi Gras week.

1191
01:12:02,197 --> 01:12:07,077
But it wasn't until 1949,
23 years after I made this record,

1192
01:12:07,160 --> 01:12:11,331
that they elected Satchmo
to be the king of the Zulus.

1193
01:12:18,755 --> 01:12:20,174
I got to New Orleans,

1194
01:12:20,257 --> 01:12:22,926
and it was like everybody was crazy
in that city.

1195
01:12:23,010 --> 01:12:24,344
Everybody was packing the streets,

1196
01:12:24,428 --> 01:12:26,388
and there were all kinds
of racial paradoxes,

1197
01:12:26,471 --> 01:12:29,600
like the Zulus were
prepared to present Louis that night

1198
01:12:29,683 --> 01:12:32,352
in a concert
at Booker T. Washington Auditorium.

1199
01:12:32,436 --> 01:12:35,439
Armstrong's All Star Band
has played 45 minutes

1200
01:12:35,522 --> 01:12:40,652
of New Orleans's own Dixieland music
to an enthusiastic capacity crowd.

1201
01:12:41,320 --> 01:12:42,905
I went to the concert, and I saw

1202
01:12:42,988 --> 01:12:45,908
Black spectators seated on the left
and the center aisles,

1203
01:12:45,991 --> 01:12:47,868
while the whites were
over on the right aisle.

1204
01:12:47,951 --> 01:12:50,454
But on the stage,
I saw Louis and Jack Teagarden

1205
01:12:50,537 --> 01:12:51,872
with their arms around each other,

1206
01:12:51,955 --> 01:12:55,209
radiating interracial brotherhood,
singing a duet.

1207
01:12:55,709 --> 01:12:58,170
And I saw white officials
shaking hands with Louis on stage,

1208
01:12:58,253 --> 01:13:01,298
and congratulating him,
and paying tribute to his talent.

1209
01:13:01,381 --> 01:13:02,883
I saw Louis bursting with pride

1210
01:13:02,966 --> 01:13:05,802
when the mayor of New Orleans
gave him the keys to the city.

1211
01:13:05,886 --> 01:13:07,554
That was the week
he made the cover of Time.

1212
01:13:07,638 --> 01:13:10,015
It was on every white newsstand in town.

1213
01:13:10,098 --> 01:13:12,100
On behalf of the people of New Orleans,

1214
01:13:12,184 --> 01:13:15,354
the city with a colorful past
and a promising future,

1215
01:13:15,437 --> 01:13:17,481
we want to present you
the key to the city.

1216
01:13:18,315 --> 01:13:19,983
To Louis Armstrong.

1217
01:13:20,067 --> 01:13:22,110
Thank you very much, Mayor.

1218
01:13:22,194 --> 01:13:24,947
This is really a treat.
This is the thrill of my life.

1219
01:13:25,030 --> 01:13:27,199
But I also knew
that there were hundreds of places

1220
01:13:27,282 --> 01:13:29,576
to which those keys would never admit him.

1221
01:13:33,372 --> 01:13:35,541
When he was king,
everybody was getting out.

1222
01:13:35,624 --> 01:13:40,838
People that didn't get out on Carnival,
they going out to see Louis Armstrong,

1223
01:13:40,921 --> 01:13:42,047
king of the Zulu.

1224
01:13:42,756 --> 01:13:44,299
And there was so many people.

1225
01:13:44,383 --> 01:13:46,385
Everything got held up,
you know what I mean?

1226
01:13:46,468 --> 01:13:48,053
It was stopping everything,

1227
01:13:48,136 --> 01:13:50,180
and he just had to get off the float,
you know.

1228
01:13:50,264 --> 01:13:52,724
'Cause sooner or later, man,
he might have got hurt up there.

1229
01:13:52,808 --> 01:13:53,809
You understand me?

1230
01:13:55,227 --> 01:13:58,647
Rex was the biggest parade
of all the white parades.

1231
01:13:58,730 --> 01:14:01,191
And by white, I mean it was what it was.
It was segregated.

1232
01:14:01,275 --> 01:14:04,486
But Zulu was like
the height of everything.

1233
01:14:04,570 --> 01:14:07,865
So, for Pops, he wanted
to be the king of Zulu his entire life.

1234
01:14:07,948 --> 01:14:11,076
The king of Zulu
would dress up in blackface.

1235
01:14:11,743 --> 01:14:12,995
That's what he did.

1236
01:14:13,078 --> 01:14:16,707
So Louis Armstrong did it,
and it became, you know, a crime.

1237
01:14:18,792 --> 01:14:21,378
-That was a great thing then…
-Yeah.

1238
01:14:21,461 --> 01:14:25,090
…'cause what's going on now
with all these marches and organizations,

1239
01:14:25,174 --> 01:14:28,594
they won't let it happen no more now,
you know, all that makeup.

1240
01:14:29,553 --> 01:14:31,263
First thing about blackface is

1241
01:14:31,346 --> 01:14:34,057
we have to understand
that it comes out of minstrelsy.

1242
01:14:34,141 --> 01:14:37,394
Minstrelsy was not invented
to elevate Negroes.

1243
01:14:38,103 --> 01:14:44,735
Minstrelsy was invented to get jobs
for white guys who were imitating Negroes.

1244
01:14:46,236 --> 01:14:50,240
Now, what it became, ironically,

1245
01:14:50,324 --> 01:14:57,289
was the first mass popular phenomenon
in American culture.

1246
01:15:03,504 --> 01:15:05,797
You have to know what the tradition is.

1247
01:15:06,507 --> 01:15:09,134
So it's people everywhere
who don't know what that tradition is.

1248
01:15:09,218 --> 01:15:12,054
All they're seeing is
a blackface minstrel,

1249
01:15:12,137 --> 01:15:13,931
but he wasn't looking at it like that.

1250
01:15:14,014 --> 01:15:16,600
You had a lot of traditions and things
that you had

1251
01:15:16,683 --> 01:15:20,395
that were viable and good and meaningful.

1252
01:15:21,104 --> 01:15:24,274
And then, during the movement,
we threw all of that stuff out.

1253
01:15:24,358 --> 01:15:26,902
Dancing a certain way, cheesing, Tomming.

1254
01:15:27,694 --> 01:15:30,280
And we didn't want
to be a part of any of that.

1255
01:15:35,285 --> 01:15:36,954
"And after the funeral,

1256
01:15:37,037 --> 01:15:39,623
with just Sonny and me
alone in the empty kitchen,

1257
01:15:40,374 --> 01:15:43,544
I tried to find out something about him.

1258
01:15:44,294 --> 01:15:45,546
'What do you want to do?'

1259
01:15:46,171 --> 01:15:48,632
'I want to play jazz,' he said.

1260
01:15:49,132 --> 01:15:51,844
'You mean-- like Louis Armstrong?'

1261
01:15:52,469 --> 01:15:54,388
His face closed as though I'd struck him.

1262
01:15:54,972 --> 01:15:58,767
'No, I'm not talking about
none of that old-time, down-home crap.'"

1263
01:15:59,476 --> 01:16:04,106
Pops, how much do you think
you've lost out of--

1264
01:16:04,606 --> 01:16:07,067
not your own life
and certainly not your own pride,

1265
01:16:07,150 --> 01:16:10,529
but out of commercial life
by being born Black in a white country?

1266
01:16:10,612 --> 01:16:13,073
No, I don't look at it that way.

1267
01:16:13,740 --> 01:16:17,494
Your color don't mean shit to me
if you're a dumb son of a bitch.

1268
01:16:18,203 --> 01:16:19,204
You understand?

1269
01:16:19,288 --> 01:16:22,708
Right, so, are you a man or mouse?
It's up to you.

1270
01:16:23,208 --> 01:16:26,795
A lot of young people resented the way

1271
01:16:26,879 --> 01:16:30,632
they thought Armstrong was
too submissive to the United States.

1272
01:16:30,716 --> 01:16:33,468
If you coming up in the '50s and '60s,

1273
01:16:33,552 --> 01:16:34,928
there's a different aesthetic,

1274
01:16:35,012 --> 01:16:38,098
a different kind of attitude,
political attitude, in the street.

1275
01:16:38,182 --> 01:16:41,935
And they didn't understand Louis
because Louis was always affable,

1276
01:16:42,019 --> 01:16:42,895
always smiling.

1277
01:16:46,773 --> 01:16:47,774
Yay!

1278
01:16:47,858 --> 01:16:51,737
Keeps that Georgia on my mind

1279
01:16:51,820 --> 01:16:53,572
Yeah

1280
01:16:53,655 --> 01:16:55,365
Mmm

1281
01:16:57,075 --> 01:17:00,621
They don't realize
that Louis was doing that

1282
01:17:00,704 --> 01:17:02,664
when he was around his friends.

1283
01:17:03,457 --> 01:17:05,959
-He was acting the same way.
-That's right.

1284
01:17:06,043 --> 01:17:08,212
But when you do it in front of white folks

1285
01:17:08,295 --> 01:17:11,840
and try to make them enjoy what you feel--

1286
01:17:11,924 --> 01:17:13,342
-That's what he was doing.
-Right!

1287
01:17:13,425 --> 01:17:15,010
-They call him Uncle Tom.
-Yes.

1288
01:17:15,093 --> 01:17:20,641
Oh, you can bend her legs
Bend her arms and bathe her too

1289
01:17:22,809 --> 01:17:24,728
Let's fly down or drive down
To New Orleans

1290
01:17:24,811 --> 01:17:27,606
First time you misplace words
and do that shit,

1291
01:17:27,689 --> 01:17:29,942
they gonna say you Uncle Tomming.
And goddamn it--

1292
01:17:30,025 --> 01:17:33,612
And every fucking nationality comedian
stays right in this category.

1293
01:17:33,695 --> 01:17:35,489
Look at the Jew,
doesn't he use his dialect?

1294
01:17:35,572 --> 01:17:37,449
I ain't supposed to be no comedian.

1295
01:17:37,533 --> 01:17:38,951
That's just everyday life, you know.

1296
01:17:39,034 --> 01:17:41,370
"Suppose" my ass.
You are a natural comedian.

1297
01:17:41,453 --> 01:17:42,955
Yeah, well, that's all right.

1298
01:17:43,038 --> 01:17:46,124
A lot of his film roles,
the early ones, I never liked those.

1299
01:17:46,208 --> 01:17:49,837
For my generation to see him
singing to horses and stuff,

1300
01:17:49,920 --> 01:17:53,298
or the kind of way Black people
acted in films,

1301
01:17:53,382 --> 01:17:54,842
it's not just Louis Armstrong.

1302
01:17:54,925 --> 01:17:57,052
Gosh all, git up

1303
01:17:57,135 --> 01:17:59,513
How'd they get so lit up?

1304
01:17:59,596 --> 01:18:02,140
Gosh all, git up

1305
01:18:02,224 --> 01:18:04,643
How'd they get that size?

1306
01:18:04,726 --> 01:18:07,354
Archie got his nose broke
for fighting a nigga

1307
01:18:07,437 --> 01:18:10,023
'cause he didn't like
the way he talked about me.

1308
01:18:10,107 --> 01:18:12,901
This smug motherfucker said,
"Louis Armstrong,

1309
01:18:12,985 --> 01:18:14,403
Uncle Tom nigga."

1310
01:18:14,486 --> 01:18:17,573
When the fuck have I "Uncle Tommed"
in my life?

1311
01:18:17,656 --> 01:18:19,449
I tell ya. All you have to do is

1312
01:18:19,533 --> 01:18:22,744
break up your face and mug,
and a nigga say you're Uncle Tom.

1313
01:18:22,828 --> 01:18:26,081
-I'm there blowing this fucking horn…
-A man got expressions, you know?

1314
01:18:27,749 --> 01:18:30,252
Most of the fellas
I grew up with, myself included,

1315
01:18:30,335 --> 01:18:32,171
we used to laugh at Louis Armstrong.

1316
01:18:33,005 --> 01:18:34,464
We knew he could play the horn,

1317
01:18:34,548 --> 01:18:37,426
but that didn't save him
from our malice and our ridicule.

1318
01:18:38,010 --> 01:18:40,679
Everywhere we'd look,
there would be old Louis.

1319
01:18:41,346 --> 01:18:46,727
Sweat popping, eyes bugging,
mouth wide open, grinning,

1320
01:18:46,810 --> 01:18:49,271
oh, my Lord, from ear to ear.

1321
01:18:50,522 --> 01:18:52,191
"Ooftah," we called it.

1322
01:18:52,858 --> 01:18:57,529
Mopping his brow, ducking his head,
doing his thing for the white man.

1323
01:18:57,613 --> 01:18:59,907
Oh, yeah.

1324
01:19:02,326 --> 01:19:08,040
It wasn't until 1966,
when we were working together

1325
01:19:08,123 --> 01:19:12,461
on a picture in New York
with Sammy Davis Jr., Cicely Tyson,

1326
01:19:13,212 --> 01:19:14,755
that I got to know Louis better.

1327
01:19:16,465 --> 01:19:18,842
One day, we'd broken for lunch,

1328
01:19:18,926 --> 01:19:20,677
and I decided to stay inside.

1329
01:19:21,178 --> 01:19:23,347
It was quiet,
so I thought everybody had gone.

1330
01:19:23,430 --> 01:19:26,642
I went back on the set
to lie down on the bed,

1331
01:19:28,810 --> 01:19:34,191
and there was Louis by the door,
sitting in a chair,

1332
01:19:34,274 --> 01:19:38,362
staring up and out into space

1333
01:19:39,947 --> 01:19:41,615
with the saddest,

1334
01:19:41,698 --> 01:19:45,160
most heartbreaking expression
I've ever seen on a man's face.

1335
01:19:47,996 --> 01:19:49,915
I just stared at him for a moment.

1336
01:19:51,333 --> 01:19:54,837
And then when I tried to turn
and sneak away,

1337
01:19:56,213 --> 01:19:57,673
the noise snapped Louis out of it.

1338
01:19:57,756 --> 01:20:00,217
And all of a sudden,
there was that professional grin again,

1339
01:20:00,300 --> 01:20:01,301
mouth wide open.

1340
01:20:01,385 --> 01:20:03,303
He whipped out his handkerchief,
mopped his brow.

1341
01:20:03,387 --> 01:20:04,972
"Hey, Pops,

1342
01:20:05,055 --> 01:20:08,433
look like you cats trying
to starve old Louis to death, yeah."

1343
01:20:09,726 --> 01:20:12,145
I put on my face and grinned right back.

1344
01:20:15,482 --> 01:20:16,650
But it wasn't funny.

1345
01:20:18,569 --> 01:20:19,570
Not anymore.

1346
01:20:22,364 --> 01:20:25,659
What I saw in that look shook me.

1347
01:20:27,661 --> 01:20:28,912
It was my father.

1348
01:20:29,872 --> 01:20:31,123
My uncle.

1349
01:20:31,874 --> 01:20:34,793
Myself, down through the generations,

1350
01:20:35,794 --> 01:20:37,921
doing exactly what Louis had had to do,

1351
01:20:38,755 --> 01:20:39,882
for the same reason,

1352
01:20:41,383 --> 01:20:42,384
to survive.

1353
01:20:43,510 --> 01:20:45,262
I never laughed at Louis after that,

1354
01:20:47,389 --> 01:20:52,728
for beneath that gravel voice
and that shuffle,

1355
01:20:55,105 --> 01:21:01,486
under all that mouth with more teeth
than a piano had keys,

1356
01:21:04,156 --> 01:21:08,160
was a horn that could kill a man.

1357
01:21:09,077 --> 01:21:13,207
That horn is where Louis had
kept his manhood hid all those years.

1358
01:21:13,832 --> 01:21:16,043
Enough for him, enough for all of us.

1359
01:21:39,441 --> 01:21:41,944
I understand
you're somewhat of a politician.

1360
01:21:42,027 --> 01:21:43,820
Do you know anything about politics?

1361
01:21:43,904 --> 01:21:45,906
No. No.

1362
01:21:45,989 --> 01:21:49,952
Politics…
I don't think you could print that--

1363
01:21:50,911 --> 01:21:54,623
that are African golfers,
and stuff like that.

1364
01:21:55,249 --> 01:21:59,545
We confuse what we perceived
as the social demeanor

1365
01:22:00,379 --> 01:22:02,923
in that context of lynching--

1366
01:22:03,423 --> 01:22:06,176
You understand? Overt segregation.

1367
01:22:06,260 --> 01:22:09,596
And we thought
that Louis was submitting to that.

1368
01:22:09,680 --> 01:22:13,725
Sometimes I feel

1369
01:22:14,685 --> 01:22:16,603
Like a motherless child

1370
01:22:16,687 --> 01:22:21,108
You know, Louis's expression
was musical and artistic

1371
01:22:21,191 --> 01:22:22,526
and transcended that.

1372
01:22:22,609 --> 01:22:25,362
When it was possible for Louis to speak,
he spoke.

1373
01:22:31,368 --> 01:22:33,203
Louis was very sensitive

1374
01:22:33,287 --> 01:22:38,584
when people did something that he felt--
I guess the word would be "unethical."

1375
01:22:39,585 --> 01:22:43,130
What about you? Do you think
the colored students will show up?

1376
01:22:43,213 --> 01:22:45,215
If I got anything to do with it,
they won't show up.

1377
01:22:45,299 --> 01:22:48,552
Well, I think it's a breaking point
of the school integration.

1378
01:22:48,635 --> 01:22:51,263
I don't feel that they should
have a right to go to school.

1379
01:22:51,346 --> 01:22:54,349
Oh, when the saints

1380
01:22:54,433 --> 01:22:56,226
When the saints

1381
01:22:56,977 --> 01:22:59,229
Go marching in

1382
01:22:59,313 --> 01:23:01,815
Go marching in

1383
01:23:01,899 --> 01:23:06,820
-When the saints go marching in
-Yeah

1384
01:23:06,904 --> 01:23:08,822
Oh, yeah

1385
01:23:09,323 --> 01:23:14,786
I want to be in that number

1386
01:23:14,870 --> 01:23:16,830
Oh, yeah

1387
01:23:17,581 --> 01:23:23,545
When the saints come marching in

1388
01:23:25,672 --> 01:23:28,133
-When the saints
-Oh, when the saints

1389
01:23:28,217 --> 01:23:30,844
-Go marching in
-Are marching in

1390
01:23:30,928 --> 01:23:34,223
Who's gonna play on the day
That the saints go marching in?

1391
01:23:34,306 --> 01:23:37,976
Well, man
The mostest and the greatest

1392
01:23:38,060 --> 01:23:40,270
From the oldest to the latest

1393
01:23:40,354 --> 01:23:42,606
Gonna play in the band
In the big bandstand

1394
01:23:42,689 --> 01:23:44,066
When the saints go marching in

1395
01:23:44,149 --> 01:23:46,777
-Now, Louis, how about Brahms?
-He ain't no bum.

1396
01:23:46,860 --> 01:23:48,278
Little Rock, Arkansas.

1397
01:23:48,362 --> 01:23:49,821
The white population are determined

1398
01:23:49,905 --> 01:23:53,325
to prevent colored students from going
to the school their own children attend.

1399
01:23:53,408 --> 01:23:55,994
And Mozart composed
With all he had

1400
01:23:56,078 --> 01:23:58,622
With symphonies
And operas and all that jazz

1401
01:23:58,705 --> 01:24:01,959
Later, the Central High School
of Little Rock storm center was sealed off

1402
01:24:02,042 --> 01:24:03,085
by orders of the governor,

1403
01:24:03,168 --> 01:24:05,170
who called out the state National Guard.

1404
01:24:05,754 --> 01:24:08,966
Oh, when the saints
Go marching in

1405
01:24:09,049 --> 01:24:10,217
Oh, when the saints

1406
01:24:10,300 --> 01:24:13,053
Colored youngsters arrived
under safe conduct by the guards,

1407
01:24:13,136 --> 01:24:15,764
but no sooner had they arrived
than they were off again.

1408
01:24:15,848 --> 01:24:18,308
Arkansas had evidently decided
to make its own laws

1409
01:24:18,392 --> 01:24:19,560
on the subject of integration.

1410
01:24:19,643 --> 01:24:24,398
Go marching in

1411
01:24:25,774 --> 01:24:27,818
What are you gonna tell the Russians

1412
01:24:27,901 --> 01:24:30,320
when they ask you
about the Little Rock incident?

1413
01:24:30,404 --> 01:24:32,739
It all depends what time
they send me over there.

1414
01:24:32,823 --> 01:24:36,034
I don't think they should send me unless
they straighten that mess down South.

1415
01:24:36,118 --> 01:24:39,997
Two, four, six, eight!
We don't want to integrate!

1416
01:24:42,416 --> 01:24:47,546
They've been ignoring the Constitution.
Although they're taught it in school.

1417
01:24:47,629 --> 01:24:49,923
But when they go home,
their parents tell them different.

1418
01:24:50,007 --> 01:24:51,508
Say, "You don't have to abide by it

1419
01:24:51,592 --> 01:24:54,011
because we've been getting away with it
a hundred years.

1420
01:24:54,094 --> 01:24:57,806
So, nobody tells on each other,
so don't bother with it."

1421
01:24:57,890 --> 01:25:02,019
So, if they ask me what's happening
if I go now, I can't tell a lie.

1422
01:25:02,102 --> 01:25:05,522
That's one thing. There's no worth
lying the way I feel about it.

1423
01:25:06,023 --> 01:25:07,774
-Thank you, Louis.
-Okay.

1424
01:25:08,317 --> 01:25:09,610
Now I'll say this to you.

1425
01:25:09,693 --> 01:25:12,988
I'll never open the public schools
in Little Rock

1426
01:25:13,071 --> 01:25:15,657
on an integrated basis
until the people say so.

1427
01:25:17,659 --> 01:25:19,703
You know,
there's a certain type of naivete

1428
01:25:19,786 --> 01:25:21,038
that a country like this has,

1429
01:25:21,121 --> 01:25:24,750
in those who are super patriotic
and they don't see anything.

1430
01:25:25,459 --> 01:25:27,085
It's just, "Everything we do is great."

1431
01:25:27,169 --> 01:25:31,173
And then those who are not patriotic
at all and see that we don't do anything.

1432
01:25:31,757 --> 01:25:34,092
Louis Armstrong was not in either camp.

1433
01:25:34,593 --> 01:25:37,888
And I dare say that he was actually more
in the forefront of civil rights

1434
01:25:37,971 --> 01:25:39,640
in terms of making statements

1435
01:25:40,140 --> 01:25:43,227
than a lot of the so-called
modern musicians of that time were.

1436
01:25:43,310 --> 01:25:46,146
And even when he said what he said
about Eisenhower in the '50s.

1437
01:25:46,230 --> 01:25:48,273
Yeah, he was upset about segregation.

1438
01:25:48,941 --> 01:25:51,360
Well, he said that
as far as he was concerned,

1439
01:25:51,443 --> 01:25:53,487
Ike and the government could go to hell,

1440
01:25:54,071 --> 01:25:57,950
and he sang his version of
"The Star-Spangled Banner" to me

1441
01:25:58,033 --> 01:26:00,285
with very dirty lyrics.

1442
01:26:00,369 --> 01:26:05,457
"Oh, say, can you mothers-- MFs see
by the MF early light."

1443
01:26:06,124 --> 01:26:07,334
He was very mad.

1444
01:26:08,210 --> 01:26:10,420
Then he said a number of things,

1445
01:26:10,963 --> 01:26:15,843
one of which was, "As for Orval Faubus,
he's just an ignorant plowboy."

1446
01:26:15,926 --> 01:26:17,678
Well, I think it's a damn shame

1447
01:26:17,761 --> 01:26:21,473
for people
to be so deceitful and two-faced.

1448
01:26:21,557 --> 01:26:23,433
I mean, that governor.

1449
01:26:23,517 --> 01:26:24,935
I mean, I bet you right now,

1450
01:26:25,018 --> 01:26:27,896
he's got an old colored mammy there
nursing his baby.

1451
01:26:27,980 --> 01:26:32,109
The nation alone, I mean,
is misguided, cold-blooded.

1452
01:26:32,192 --> 01:26:33,819
Shame just to keep it up.

1453
01:26:33,902 --> 01:26:34,903
They can't stand it.

1454
01:26:34,987 --> 01:26:36,989
I mean, how can they rest well at night

1455
01:26:37,072 --> 01:26:39,074
thinking they have to
go through that tomorrow?

1456
01:26:39,157 --> 01:26:42,160
The kids, they're only doing
what their parents told 'em.

1457
01:26:43,161 --> 01:26:44,496
They wouldn't do it if--

1458
01:26:45,497 --> 01:26:48,333
I mean, the colored people
who, at the end of the day,

1459
01:26:48,417 --> 01:26:52,171
they-- I don't know why, but, uh,
when they throw their…

1460
01:26:52,254 --> 01:26:54,548
We throw our heart in it and everything,

1461
01:26:54,631 --> 01:26:56,884
because we're just doing it
for our country.

1462
01:26:57,718 --> 01:27:01,054
Everybody was astonished
when Louis did it publicly,

1463
01:27:01,138 --> 01:27:05,392
but privately he had expressed stuff
like that all his life.

1464
01:27:05,475 --> 01:27:10,856
You know, he was very conscious of
what we now call civil rights.

1465
01:27:10,939 --> 01:27:14,067
He blew up. He put it on the line.

1466
01:27:14,151 --> 01:27:17,821
You know, and, of course,
he had very, very bad comments

1467
01:27:17,905 --> 01:27:21,074
from our political leaders
about making this particular statement.

1468
01:27:21,158 --> 01:27:24,161
That-- You know,
they interviewed Adam Clayton Powell.

1469
01:27:24,244 --> 01:27:25,996
They interviewed Sammy Davis.

1470
01:27:26,079 --> 01:27:27,539
They put Pops down

1471
01:27:28,040 --> 01:27:30,876
because they said he was a musician,
he didn't know what he was talking about.

1472
01:27:30,959 --> 01:27:32,836
Louis was that kind of person.

1473
01:27:32,920 --> 01:27:34,213
He-- Either he said nothing,

1474
01:27:34,296 --> 01:27:35,339
and when he got angry,

1475
01:27:35,422 --> 01:27:38,217
he said what was in his heart
and his mind.

1476
01:27:38,300 --> 01:27:41,803
It seems that
the White House was waiting for

1477
01:27:41,887 --> 01:27:44,097
some big name to speak out,

1478
01:27:44,181 --> 01:27:46,308
and Louis made his statement today,

1479
01:27:46,391 --> 01:27:48,727
and the troops were in Little Rock
the next morning.

1480
01:27:48,810 --> 01:27:52,898
After he'd made the statement,
he sent Eisenhower a wire saying that

1481
01:27:52,981 --> 01:27:56,151
"If you will go in with the troops,
I'll go with you."

1482
01:27:57,277 --> 01:27:58,987
That's little known, you know…

1483
01:28:00,030 --> 01:28:01,949
You know, it's a funny thing.

1484
01:28:02,032 --> 01:28:05,452
Nobody really stopped to really dig Pops,
and it's an unfortunate thing.

1485
01:28:05,536 --> 01:28:08,080
He felt it deeply. He really did.

1486
01:28:08,580 --> 01:28:10,582
A prophet is without honor
in his own country.

1487
01:28:10,666 --> 01:28:11,959
That's it.

1488
01:28:12,626 --> 01:28:14,211
Yes

1489
01:28:14,294 --> 01:28:15,295
Great.

1490
01:28:15,838 --> 01:28:18,465
We're gonna do this once more.
Louis, and say…

1491
01:28:18,549 --> 01:28:20,926
Set man free

1492
01:28:21,009 --> 01:28:22,469
-Me too?
-We-- No.

1493
01:28:22,553 --> 01:28:23,595
When they get through…

1494
01:28:23,679 --> 01:28:25,138
Set man free

1495
01:28:25,222 --> 01:28:30,102
They say I look like God

1496
01:28:30,185 --> 01:28:34,314
In the image of God
Created he them

1497
01:28:34,398 --> 01:28:37,734
Could God be Black?

1498
01:28:37,818 --> 01:28:40,195
My God

1499
01:28:40,279 --> 01:28:45,367
The Real Ambassadors.
It was meant to be a stage show.

1500
01:28:45,450 --> 01:28:49,454
And unfortunately,
it never made it to Broadway.

1501
01:28:50,247 --> 01:28:52,416
The tale of it was

1502
01:28:52,499 --> 01:28:57,462
that jazz represented America
in a very special way

1503
01:28:57,546 --> 01:29:02,134
and that jazz musicians
were the real ambassadors,

1504
01:29:02,217 --> 01:29:05,137
not politicians or speech makers.

1505
01:29:05,220 --> 01:29:07,931
Can it be?

1506
01:29:08,015 --> 01:29:09,558
Hallelujah

1507
01:29:09,641 --> 01:29:12,269
He brought the same thing
to every song he sang,

1508
01:29:12,352 --> 01:29:13,687
understanding the human condition.

1509
01:29:13,770 --> 01:29:16,190
Any kind of lyrics,
he could just imbue with that.

1510
01:29:16,690 --> 01:29:19,443
That understanding, it's like a--
It's a spiritual thing.

1511
01:29:19,526 --> 01:29:21,904
It's a depth and an insight.

1512
01:29:21,987 --> 01:29:26,575
He's watching all the Earth

1513
01:29:27,159 --> 01:29:31,288
The simple emotional impact of jazz
has cut through all kinds of barriers.

1514
01:29:31,371 --> 01:29:33,999
Louis Armstrong has become
an extraordinary kind of…

1515
01:29:34,082 --> 01:29:35,751
roaming ambassador of goodwill.

1516
01:29:35,834 --> 01:29:37,878
Well, you might say
he's America's ambassador with a horn.

1517
01:29:38,462 --> 01:29:41,715
I'm the real ambassador

1518
01:29:42,508 --> 01:29:47,346
It is evident I was sent
By government to take your place

1519
01:29:47,429 --> 01:29:49,348
All I do is play the blues

1520
01:29:49,431 --> 01:29:53,101
See, Jack, I think you're wrong
about me being the ambassador.

1521
01:29:53,185 --> 01:29:56,104
I think jazz is the ambassador.

1522
01:29:56,188 --> 01:30:00,734
Well, I might be the courier
that takes the message over there.

1523
01:30:00,817 --> 01:30:03,654
But it's jazz that does the talking.

1524
01:30:03,737 --> 01:30:07,658
My horn and me have traveled
from Sweden to Spain,

1525
01:30:07,741 --> 01:30:10,118
and when I played Berlin,

1526
01:30:10,202 --> 01:30:12,913
a lot of them cats jumped the iron fence
to hear old Satchmo.

1527
01:30:15,541 --> 01:30:18,669
Which proves
that music is stronger than nations.

1528
01:30:18,752 --> 01:30:20,754
I don't know much about politics,

1529
01:30:20,838 --> 01:30:23,090
but I know these people
in foreign countries

1530
01:30:23,173 --> 01:30:26,510
hear all kinds of things about America,

1531
01:30:26,593 --> 01:30:28,929
some good, some bad.

1532
01:30:29,012 --> 01:30:31,723
I'm pretty sure
what comes out of this horn

1533
01:30:31,807 --> 01:30:34,434
makes them feel better about us.

1534
01:30:35,394 --> 01:30:38,772
One thing is sure, they know
a trumpet ain't no cannon.

1535
01:30:41,066 --> 01:30:44,862
It ought to be possible
for American consumers of any color

1536
01:30:45,571 --> 01:30:49,825
to receive equal service
in places of public accommodation,

1537
01:30:50,325 --> 01:30:54,580
such as hotels and restaurants
and theaters and retail stores,

1538
01:30:55,330 --> 01:30:59,376
without being forced to resort
to demonstrations in the street.

1539
01:30:59,459 --> 01:31:01,253
When you return to the United States,

1540
01:31:01,336 --> 01:31:05,048
do you intend to take a more active part
in civil rights?

1541
01:31:05,132 --> 01:31:10,470
They have other people, politicians,
who take care of things like that.

1542
01:31:10,554 --> 01:31:16,768
And so the best I can do is,
put a little something in their till.

1543
01:31:16,852 --> 01:31:18,145
And that's my part.

1544
01:31:18,812 --> 01:31:22,608
That's the best I can do.
Because I love everybody.

1545
01:31:22,691 --> 01:31:25,235
I mean, the white people,

1546
01:31:25,319 --> 01:31:28,405
they're my greatest fans
all through the South.

1547
01:31:28,488 --> 01:31:32,409
We stay in the best hotels,
and they give us the best courtesies,

1548
01:31:32,492 --> 01:31:38,165
and my biggest audience is
people all over the United States.

1549
01:31:38,665 --> 01:31:41,251
So I can't abuse either one.

1550
01:31:42,085 --> 01:31:47,716
So I don't ignore
the march and the-- whatever it is.

1551
01:31:47,799 --> 01:31:52,095
I just do my little part
by putting a little money in my part.

1552
01:31:52,804 --> 01:31:55,265
Which some of them don't do, but I do.

1553
01:31:55,349 --> 01:31:57,643
You understand Pops? That's right.

1554
01:31:59,520 --> 01:32:03,440
"For me, if I'd be out somewhere
marching with a sign

1555
01:32:03,524 --> 01:32:05,776
and some cat hits me in my chops,

1556
01:32:05,859 --> 01:32:06,944
I'm finished.

1557
01:32:07,027 --> 01:32:10,072
A trumpet man gets hit in the chops,
and he's through.

1558
01:32:10,614 --> 01:32:13,784
If my people don't dig me the way
that I am, I'm sorry.

1559
01:32:14,451 --> 01:32:17,996
If they don't go along with me
giving my dough instead of marching…

1560
01:32:19,164 --> 01:32:21,375
Well, every cat's entitled to his opinion.

1561
01:32:22,084 --> 01:32:25,796
But that's the way I figure
I can help out and still keep working.

1562
01:32:25,879 --> 01:32:29,633
If they let me alone on this score,
I'll do my part in my way.

1563
01:32:29,716 --> 01:32:33,554
Pops, I come out of a part of the South
where it ain't no way in the world

1564
01:32:33,637 --> 01:32:35,556
you can forget you're colored.

1565
01:32:35,639 --> 01:32:38,267
My own mother went through hell
down there.

1566
01:32:38,350 --> 01:32:40,519
My grandma used to have tears in her eyes

1567
01:32:40,602 --> 01:32:43,689
when she'd talk about the lynchings
and all that crap.

1568
01:32:43,772 --> 01:32:48,026
Even myself, I've seen things
that would make my flesh crawl.

1569
01:32:48,735 --> 01:32:53,115
But it wasn't a damn thing I could do
about it and keep on breathing."

1570
01:32:53,699 --> 01:32:56,994
Louis, how much weight
have you lost? You're skinny as a rail.

1571
01:32:57,494 --> 01:32:59,663
Well, I don't know,

1572
01:32:59,746 --> 01:33:03,250
around 40, 45 pounds, like that,
in a couple of months.

1573
01:33:03,333 --> 01:33:05,794
Just took it easy, you know, and--

1574
01:33:05,878 --> 01:33:07,671
What'd you do about the wardrobe?

1575
01:33:07,754 --> 01:33:10,299
Well, I just got rid of it.
I mean, it was a pleasure.

1576
01:33:10,382 --> 01:33:12,467
You can't take them up but once.

1577
01:33:12,551 --> 01:33:15,012
So, I took it up once,
and it was still too big.

1578
01:33:15,095 --> 01:33:16,096
So that was it.

1579
01:33:17,973 --> 01:33:19,725
Mr. Armstrong, everybody calls you Louis,

1580
01:33:19,808 --> 01:33:21,268
-and I hope I can.
-Yes.

1581
01:33:21,351 --> 01:33:24,146
You've been very sick
the last couple of years. How you feeling?

1582
01:33:24,229 --> 01:33:28,317
Well, I feel fine now,
you know, and like the old saying,

1583
01:33:28,400 --> 01:33:29,776
"I've left it all behind me."

1584
01:33:29,860 --> 01:33:32,070
You went into
the intensive care unit twice.

1585
01:33:32,154 --> 01:33:33,363
Twice, yeah, yeah.

1586
01:33:33,447 --> 01:33:35,657
Did you think your life
was coming to an end?

1587
01:33:35,741 --> 01:33:38,660
A man going into intensive care twice,

1588
01:33:38,744 --> 01:33:40,704
you know, he's looking right at Gabriel,

1589
01:33:40,787 --> 01:33:41,788
and he's calling me.

1590
01:33:41,872 --> 01:33:43,832
He wants to blow a duet with me.

1591
01:33:45,250 --> 01:33:48,420
But I said, "No, daddy,
your union card ain't straight.

1592
01:33:48,504 --> 01:33:49,630
I better wait."

1593
01:33:51,965 --> 01:33:54,718
When I was in the Beth Israel Hospital,

1594
01:33:54,801 --> 01:33:58,430
boy, I got boxes and boxes of mail

1595
01:33:58,514 --> 01:34:01,016
from everywhere over the waters.

1596
01:34:01,099 --> 01:34:05,854
"Come on, Satch, get out of that bed
and come blow. We're waiting for you."

1597
01:34:06,772 --> 01:34:09,733
Hello, Louis. This is Enrico.

1598
01:34:10,526 --> 01:34:16,156
I hope you are getting better,
and we are all praying for you.

1599
01:34:16,240 --> 01:34:19,034
How many more years
do you think you'll be blowing that horn?

1600
01:34:19,117 --> 01:34:21,078
Well, I'll be blowing all my life.

1601
01:34:21,161 --> 01:34:23,205
I mean, that's the way it'll be, you know.

1602
01:34:23,288 --> 01:34:28,627
And I-- Even if I'll be teaching some kids
or something, I'll always be around music.

1603
01:34:28,710 --> 01:34:32,089
Satchmo, you've been everywhere
and done just about everything.

1604
01:34:32,172 --> 01:34:34,883
Is there anything you haven't done
that you'd like to do?

1605
01:34:34,967 --> 01:34:38,720
Yeah, keep living. I ain't finished yet.

1606
01:34:42,015 --> 01:34:44,184
I see trees of green

1607
01:34:46,937 --> 01:34:49,147
Red roses too

1608
01:34:50,148 --> 01:34:55,988
I see them bloom for me and you

1609
01:34:56,655 --> 01:35:00,325
And I think to myself

1610
01:35:02,077 --> 01:35:06,456
What a wonderful world

1611
01:35:10,377 --> 01:35:14,131
I see skies of blue

1612
01:35:14,214 --> 01:35:18,468
There's a zillion people who dug that tune
the way I did it when I felt it

1613
01:35:19,178 --> 01:35:23,557
because
there's so much in "Wonderful World"

1614
01:35:23,640 --> 01:35:29,188
that brings me back to my neighborhood
where I live in Corona, New York.

1615
01:35:29,771 --> 01:35:32,774
Lucille and I, ever since we married,

1616
01:35:32,858 --> 01:35:35,986
we've been right there in that block.

1617
01:35:36,069 --> 01:35:39,823
And everybody keeps their little homes up
like we do.

1618
01:35:39,907 --> 01:35:41,992
And it's just like one big family.

1619
01:35:42,075 --> 01:35:45,579
I saw three generations come up
in them blocks.

1620
01:35:45,662 --> 01:35:46,872
So that's why I can say,

1621
01:35:46,955 --> 01:35:52,336
I hear babies cry and

1622
01:35:52,419 --> 01:35:55,923
I've watched them grow

1623
01:35:56,006 --> 01:36:01,970
They'll learn much more
Than I'll ever know

1624
01:36:02,721 --> 01:36:05,766
And I think to myself

1625
01:36:07,809 --> 01:36:12,523
What a wonderful world

1626
01:36:15,359 --> 01:36:22,366
Yes, I think to myself

1627
01:36:23,659 --> 01:36:30,666
What a wonderful world

1628
01:36:33,752 --> 01:36:38,882
My doctor came to hear me blow,
and he was perfectly satisfied.

1629
01:36:38,966 --> 01:36:42,261
He examined me thoroughly

1630
01:36:42,344 --> 01:36:46,932
to see if my blowing affected
the old ticker, you know.

1631
01:36:47,015 --> 01:36:52,563
And the beats were perfectly normal.

1632
01:36:52,646 --> 01:36:55,774
Yeah.

1633
01:36:55,858 --> 01:36:59,653
Happy birthday to you

1634
01:37:00,153 --> 01:37:04,449
Happy birthday, dear Louis

1635
01:37:05,075 --> 01:37:10,372
Happy birthday to you

1636
01:37:10,455 --> 01:37:14,126
This is seven-- seventy steps.

1637
01:37:15,252 --> 01:37:17,379
And ten more steps, I'll be in heaven.

1638
01:37:20,132 --> 01:37:21,967
It had been my opinion

1639
01:37:22,050 --> 01:37:24,803
that Louis was gonna drop dead
on stage one day.

1640
01:37:25,387 --> 01:37:28,348
I didn't feel bad about that
because if he had to go, I think,

1641
01:37:28,432 --> 01:37:30,767
"What better way to go
than doing the thing you love to do?"

1642
01:37:39,276 --> 01:37:44,239
A lot of us would be very happy
to have accomplished

1643
01:37:44,323 --> 01:37:46,867
to the extent that he did
what we originally set out to do.

1644
01:37:47,659 --> 01:37:50,746
He had all the material things
that he needed, but more importantly,

1645
01:37:50,829 --> 01:37:54,499
he had the respect
and the love of millions of people.

1646
01:37:54,583 --> 01:37:57,836
I mean, literally millions,
all over the world.

1647
01:37:58,420 --> 01:38:00,214
What more could any man ask for?

1648
01:38:01,215 --> 01:38:06,512
The night Louis passed,
I had no idea, this man--

1649
01:38:06,595 --> 01:38:08,680
He disappointed-- He was doing so well.

1650
01:38:08,764 --> 01:38:10,307
It was a shock to me.

1651
01:38:10,390 --> 01:38:12,518
And he was telling me, he says,
"You know, I feel good."

1652
01:38:12,601 --> 01:38:14,478
He says,
"You know, I've got to get back to work."

1653
01:38:14,561 --> 01:38:20,692
So that's the mood Louis was in
on the 5th of July of 1971.

1654
01:39:06,321 --> 01:39:09,199
Music kept
Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong rolling

1655
01:39:09,283 --> 01:39:10,742
for 71 years,

1656
01:39:10,826 --> 01:39:14,454
until this morning when he died
in his sleep in his home in New York.

1657
01:39:14,538 --> 01:39:18,000
He had been battling heart
and kidney ailments for years.

1658
01:39:18,083 --> 01:39:20,878
We aren't saying goodbye to Louis tonight,

1659
01:39:20,961 --> 01:39:23,255
for a man's music does not die with him.

1660
01:39:23,338 --> 01:39:24,965
Certainly not this man's.

1661
01:39:25,048 --> 01:39:27,926
While we can only guess
how Beethoven played the piano

1662
01:39:28,010 --> 01:39:30,512
or Mozart conducted an orchestra,

1663
01:39:30,596 --> 01:39:34,641
the sounds of Louis singing, playing,
or just plain talking

1664
01:39:34,725 --> 01:39:37,311
will live as long as there is anyone
to listen.

1665
01:39:38,187 --> 01:39:41,690
Well, he was
a great artist and a very sweet man.

1666
01:39:42,524 --> 01:39:45,527
Down-to-earth, a lovely neighbor,

1667
01:39:46,945 --> 01:39:50,073
he was a regular,
and he just loved to be around people.

1668
01:39:50,157 --> 01:39:54,411
He was more of a friend
instead of celebrity in the neighborhood.

1669
01:40:03,045 --> 01:40:05,130
Bobby Hackett, learn anything from him?

1670
01:40:05,923 --> 01:40:08,634
To me, Pops was truly an immortal man.

1671
01:40:09,218 --> 01:40:11,887
And the truth of the matter is
that he will never die.

1672
01:40:12,471 --> 01:40:16,183
I think what he left will always be heard
all over the world and enjoyed,

1673
01:40:16,934 --> 01:40:21,021
and a very gentle reminder to everybody
to love thy neighbor

1674
01:40:21,104 --> 01:40:23,023
and cut out the nonsense.

1675
01:40:23,607 --> 01:40:25,359
He was a man that was beloved

1676
01:40:25,442 --> 01:40:28,320
with a certain depth and intensity
that you cannot fathom.

1677
01:40:28,820 --> 01:40:30,948
It was 'cause of how he touched people.

1678
01:40:49,800 --> 01:40:55,138
Well, folks, that was my life,
and I enjoyed all of it.

1679
01:40:55,722 --> 01:40:56,807
Yes, I did.

1680
01:40:57,432 --> 01:40:59,518
I don't feel ashamed at all.

1681
01:41:00,310 --> 01:41:06,233
My life has always been an open book,
so I have nothing to hide.

1682
01:41:07,025 --> 01:41:10,612
Bye-bye. Love aplenty.

1683
01:41:11,530 --> 01:41:17,578
Soul foodly, "Satchmo" Louis Armstrong.

1684
01:41:22,040 --> 01:41:24,334
This is one number I like to do, folks,

1685
01:41:24,418 --> 01:41:28,338
and it tells you a whole lot
about my life.

1686
01:41:28,422 --> 01:41:30,340
I can't tell it all, you know.

1687
01:41:30,424 --> 01:41:32,509
But let's give you a good synopsis.

1688
01:41:47,816 --> 01:41:54,031
When I was born long ago

1689
01:41:56,950 --> 01:42:01,997
July the 4th, 19-0-0

1690
01:42:04,458 --> 01:42:11,089
It was back of town in James Alley

1691
01:42:13,175 --> 01:42:18,889
A boy from New Orleans

1692
01:42:20,516 --> 01:42:27,231
When I was only five or so

1693
01:42:29,691 --> 01:42:34,905
Down Rampart Street I used to go

1694
01:42:36,949 --> 01:42:43,330
That's when I heard
The great King Oliver

1695
01:42:45,374 --> 01:42:51,255
Blowing jazz from New Orleans

1696
01:42:52,881 --> 01:42:56,677
Now folks, all these years…

1697
01:42:59,221 --> 01:43:00,973
I've had a ball.

1698
01:43:05,352 --> 01:43:07,312
Thank you, Lord.

1699
01:43:09,940 --> 01:43:11,692
And I thank you all.

1700
01:43:14,611 --> 01:43:18,240
You are very kind

1701
01:43:19,783 --> 01:43:23,161
To old Satchmo, yes

1702
01:43:24,496 --> 01:43:26,373
Nice looking boy, ain't he?

1703
01:43:27,332 --> 01:43:34,339
A boy from New Orleans