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The tapes are thrilling, revelatory, wrenching: the warm-gravel voice of Louis Armstrong, perhaps the most famous voice of the 20th century, speaking harsh truths about American racism, about the dehumanizing hatred he and millions of others endured in a world he still, to the end, insisted was wonderful. He tells the stories \u2014 of a fan declaring \u201cI don\u2019t like Negroes\u201d to his face; of a gofer on a film set treating him with disrespect no white star would face \u2014 with fresh outrage and can-you-believe-this? weariness.<\/p>\n
He also tells them with his full humor and showmanship, his musicality clear in the rhythm of his swearing.<\/p>\n
The public can hear these stories, privately recorded by Armstrong as part of his own lifelong project of self-documentation, in the Sacha Jenkins documentary \u201cLouis Armstrong\u2019s Black & Blues\u201d (streaming on Apple TV+). Often, Armstrong recalls getting the last laugh on those who disrespected him \u2014 he harangues that gofer, and the studio, too, telling both where to stick their movie.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no revelation that a Black man born less than 40 years after the abolition of slavery endured harrowing racism, or that stardom on par with Bing Crosby\u2019s and Frank Sinatra\u2019s offered him no exemption. Armstrong faced blowback in 1957 for speaking against discrimination, and donated to the Civil Rights movement. Usually, though, he avoided controversy.<\/p>\n
By the 1960s, Armstrong\u2019s reticence \u2014 as well as that wide-grinning, eye-rolling performance style that echoes minstrelsy \u2014 inspired backlash, most painfully among younger jazz musicians who revered his recordings of the 1920s, the very headwaters of jazz.<\/p>\n
That backlash has been exhaustively hashed over ever since, with critics often dividing the Armstrong legacy in two. On the one hand: the young genius-artist-virtuoso, who perfected the arts of swing, scat singing, and improvisational solos, hitting trumpet notes so high they tickled God\u2019s toes. On the other: the global entertainer with hits in six decades and a penchant for sentimental pop and discomfiting tunes like \u201cWhen It\u2019s Sleepy Time Down South.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well into this millennium, defenses of Armstrong\u2019s later years have been, well, defensive. But Jenkins\u2019s film, following the lead of Ricky Riccardi\u2019s 2012 biography \u201cWhat a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong\u2019s Later Years,\u201d draws deeply on the Armstrong archives to make an assertive argument, often in Armstrong\u2019s own words, that the man called Pops was deeply committed to the cause of racial justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Armstrong story has been in plain sight for so many years \u2014 and been so misunderstood for many years,\u201d Jenkins said in a Zoom interview. \u201cAmerica\u2019s going through something. In many ways, things haven\u2019t changed, and in many ways things have gone backward.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time of the film\u2019s release, the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens, is preparing for its 20th anniversary and the opening this spring of its new Louis Armstrong Center. The museum\u2019s executive director, Regina Bain, said that the center will exponentially increase the museum\u2019s educational outreach, a core mission with roots in Armstrong\u2019s own development \u2014 he was given his first formal musical training as an adolescent at the Colored Waifs Home for Boys in New Orleans. The center also will host concerts, exhibit the Armstrong archives and showcase its Armstrong Now program, which puts artists in dialogue with Armstrong\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n
Bain acknowledged that legacy\u2019s complexity. \u201cWhen you look at him,\u201d she said by phone, \u201cyou should see what most people see: an icon and a musical genius with a gorgeous smile and an effusive personality full of joy. And you should also see the racial terror that he and the people around him went through, and affected his life and body, and that he was still able to move through.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s extremely important to tell your story in a way that doesn\u2019t have any tainting or tampering,\u201d said Jeremy Pelt, one of today\u2019s top trumpeters, composers and bandleaders, in a phone interview. He\u2019s published two books of interviews with Black jazz musicians (\u201cGriot\u201d volumes 1 and 2) for just this reason. \u201cTo be able to expose yourself, and deal with what you\u2019ve gone through \u2014 it\u2019s essential and freeing, even in the last chorus of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
For 23 years, David Ostwald has led the Louis Armstrong Eternity Band, playing weekly gigs at Birdland. Ostwald has long championed Armstrong as a pioneer of civil rights, making the case in a 1991 New York Times guest essay that Armstrong, as early as 1929, actually did address race in his music. His example: \u201cBlack & Blue,\u201d the song on which Jenkins\u2019s film title riffs. On it, Armstrong sings, \u201cI\u2019m white inside, but that don\u2019t help my case \/ \u2019cause I can\u2019t hide what is in my face.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked how he feels to see that argument going mainstream, Ostwald released a whoop. \u201cFinally,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Armstrong story has been in plain sight for so many years \u2014 and been so misunderstood for many years,\u201d said the documentary\u2019s director, Sacha Jenkins.Credit…Apple TV+<\/p>\n
Ostwald credited Wynton Marsalis with having made Armstrong \u201cOK again\u201d in the jazz world. In the film, Marsalis describes growing up hating \u201cwith an unbelievable passion\u201d the \u201cUncle Tomming\u201d that Armstrong has often been accused of. But listening closely to Armstrong\u2019s trumpet jolted Marsalis, the future artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, who has since championed Armstrong. In the documentary, he says that Armstrong \u201cwas trying to use his music to transform and reform and lead the country closer to his ideals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armstrong\u2019s musical legacy has likewise been contested. His solos, especially from the 1920s, have long been celebrated \u2014 in one of Pelt\u2019s \u201cGriot\u201d interviews, the saxophonist J.D. Allen says that for jazz players, \u201call roads lead back to Pops.\u201d But Ostwald recalled being regarded as \u201cweird\u201d for playing traditional and old-time jazz in New York in the 1970s and \u201980s. \u201cPeople were saying the music\u2019s going to die, but I always felt that Armstrong was too powerful a force to ever go away, even if some people did misunderstand him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, young musicians feel increasingly free to find inspiration throughout Armstrong\u2019s career. Like most Juilliard jazz graduates, the up-and-coming trombonist, composer and bandleader Kalia Vandever studied Armstrong\u2019s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens recordings of the 1920s. But she also prizes his 1950s duets with Ella Fitzgerald: \u201cI love the way that he transitions from singing into playing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s seamless and sounds like one voice.\u201d Listen to Vandever\u2019s playing on her \u201cRegrowth\u201d album, and you may feel the connection, though the music sounds nothing like \u201cHeebie Jeebies.\u201d<\/p>\n
With each fresh look at Armstrong\u2019s life and influence, perhaps the old artist\/entertainer distinction is fading. In a video introduction shown before the deeply moving tour at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, Bain offers, with welcome precision, a third way to think about Armstrong: as \u201cone of the founding figures of jazz and America\u2019s first Black popular music icon.\u201d The message: He\u2019s both. And both matter.<\/p>\n
View this article at The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Louis Armstrong\u2019s Last Laugh: The tapes are thrilling, revelatory, wrenching: the warm-gravel voice of Louis Armstrong, perhaps the most famous voice of the 20th century, speaking harsh truths about American racism, about the dehumanizing hatred he and millions of others endured in a world he still, to the end, insisted was wonderful. He tells the
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