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William Palmer, Louis Armstrong, Mark Handley, Slightly Foxed Issue 7

Natural the Way He Is

Here are two views of the same man: ‘an artist of Flaubertian purity, and a character of exceptional warmth and goodness’; and, ‘He was . . . rough, uncivilized, naïve and ignorant.’

Here is the man himself, writing about his boyhood:

Morris had the coal route in the Red Light District . . . hard coal – which the young white prostitutes used in their Cribs’ one room, to keep warm. They would keep the fire burning . . . and dim it down to a mellow burn, so they could stand at the doors of their cribs and work and work, in their Silk Teddies, calling in the tricks . . .

The first quotation is from Philip Larkin, the second from the American biographer James Lincoln Collier, and they are both talking about Louis Armstrong. The third passage is from Louis’s own previously uncollected writings, Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words.

It is a fair bet to say that, for most people under the age of 50, and those who are not jazz fans, the name Louis Armstrong is one associated – if recognized at all – with the sound of his voice (or, far worse, pastiches of it) singing ‘It’s a Wonderful World’ or ‘Hello Dolly’ on the backing tracks of commercials. A dimmer memory may come of a jovial old cove appearing in the film High Society, dueting with Bing Crosby and tooting a few notes on his trumpet. Even when Louis died in 1971, few of those who genuinely mourned the loss of a great entertainer had any knowledge of his true history or musical worth.

We are lucky that one of Louis’s ways of relaxing when he was on the road with his band was to write, either by hand or hammering on a portable typewriter. Born in New Orleans in 1901, he had a fairly rudimentary education, but his style manages to communicate the same charm and warmth as his music. He used capitalization, quotation marks, dashes and single or double underlining (represented by italics in the text) in a way that achi

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Here are two views of the same man: ‘an artist of Flaubertian purity, and a character of exceptional warmth and goodness’; and, ‘He was . . . rough, uncivilized, naïve and ignorant.’

Here is the man himself, writing about his boyhood:
Morris had the coal route in the Red Light District . . . hard coal – which the young white prostitutes used in their Cribs’ one room, to keep warm. They would keep the fire burning . . . and dim it down to a mellow burn, so they could stand at the doors of their cribs and work and work, in their Silk Teddies, calling in the tricks . . .
The first quotation is from Philip Larkin, the second from the American biographer James Lincoln Collier, and they are both talking about Louis Armstrong. The third passage is from Louis’s own previously uncollected writings, Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words. It is a fair bet to say that, for most people under the age of 50, and those who are not jazz fans, the name Louis Armstrong is one associated – if recognized at all – with the sound of his voice (or, far worse, pastiches of it) singing ‘It’s a Wonderful World’ or ‘Hello Dolly’ on the backing tracks of commercials. A dimmer memory may come of a jovial old cove appearing in the film High Society, dueting with Bing Crosby and tooting a few notes on his trumpet. Even when Louis died in 1971, few of those who genuinely mourned the loss of a great entertainer had any knowledge of his true history or musical worth. We are lucky that one of Louis’s ways of relaxing when he was on the road with his band was to write, either by hand or hammering on a portable typewriter. Born in New Orleans in 1901, he had a fairly rudimentary education, but his style manages to communicate the same charm and warmth as his music. He used capitalization, quotation marks, dashes and single or double underlining (represented by italics in the text) in a way that achieves a rhythmical momentum almost like one of his own trumpet solos. Although his idiosyncratic style was tidied up, the two autobiographies published in his lifetime were largely his own work. This latest collection contains memoirs of his early life in New Orleans, personal and public letters, comments on his most famous recordings and some miscellaneous magazine articles all reproduced, as exactly as possible, in his own words. As a child, he lived in poverty with his mother and sister. The children never saw their father, though as Louis says, ‘We had a few stepfathers through the years.’ No other musician of his stature and background has captured the New Orleans of those early years of the last century with such colour and atmosphere. It is difficult to isolate passages; the writing abounds in vignettes, both sad and hilarious, of people and incidents, but the main value is in the rolling monologue which circles about in time, from memories of pimps’ funerals to loving evocations of his feisty mother, May-Ann. The longest section of the book is entitled ‘Louis Armstrong + the Jewish family in New Orleans, La.’, and was written by Louis in 1969 when he was in hospital recovering from a heart attack. The Karnofskys were a family of Russian Jews who had arrived in New England as penniless immigrants. Louis worked for them, in their house and in their business. The little money he earned was sorely needed. He and his sister and mother (and whoever was her current boyfriend) all lived in one room. Many times they had hardly enough to eat.
There was a Baker Shop which sold two loaves of stale (the day after baked) bread for a nickel. They would do that to help the poor children. They could always get filled up with bread. Mama, Lucy and me, we had to do it lots of times.
In writing of their poverty, Louis scathingly compares what he saw as the laziness of his own male black community with the work ethic of the Jews, and there is no doubt that he regarded the Karnofskys as a second family, and remained in touch with them for many years after he had become a famous figure. His memoir of them covers the years 1907 to 1917. It does not mention his time in the Colored Waifs’ Home for Boys, to which he was sent at the age of 12 for firing a gun in the street. Reading not so far between the lines of Louis’s other autobiographical writings, there is little doubt that if it had not been for the Waifs’ Home and the Karnofsky family he would probably have ended up, as so many of his contemporaries did, as a petty criminal or common labourer. What made the difference was being placed in the Waifs’ Home band and discovering in himself a huge musical gift and the inner drive and character to master his instrument and his life. After his time had been served, Louis went back to work for the Karnofskys. He worked on the coal cart with Morris Karnofsky, delivering coal to the red-light district. On the rag-and-bone cart that the family also operated, he would put on a show, playing the cornet and singing to attract customers. Louis ate with the family in the evening and helped to put the youngest child to bed:
I thrilled every night – Singing with them when putting little David to sleep in Mama Karnofsky’s arms, Russian Lullaby. Every night I would look forward to joining in Singing with Mama and Papa with the baby in her arms – these words, real tenderly and softly – Every night you’ll hear her Croon A Russian Lullaby Just a little plaintive tune When Baby starts to Cry . . . A soft good night by every one . . .
Louis’s account of his boyhood with this Jewish family, surrounded by the black community of New Orleans, throws a warm spotlight on an existence as far away and as foreign as Byzantium. Louis advanced rapidly through the ranks of New Orleans’s musicians, but although he left the city as a young man, his memories of it and its people remained his touchstone for the rest of his life.
I was such a small boy at 17 . . . the Whores used to come into the Honky Tonk where I was playing . . . around four o’clock in the morning, especially Sunday Mornings after a big night’s take in their stockings (which was genuine silk even in those days) and they have me blow those blues for them . . . Yea, those were my people my crowd and everything, and still are . . . Real people who never did tell me anything that wasn’t right.
One piece of advice he seems to have taken to heart was given to him by a drummer, Black Benny, who told him, ‘Always remember, no matter how many times you get Married – Always have another woman for a sweetheart on the outside.’ Well, Louis married four times. His first wife was Daisy, a prostitute; the second, Lil Hardin, a gifted pianist who had attended Fisk University, groomed the young Louis and encouraged him to go out on his own as a performer. The third, Alpha, a dancer, is a shadowy figure who lives on mainly in descriptions of the clothes and jewellery Louis lavished on her. Lastly, there was Lucille, another dancer, to whom he was married for thirty years, until his death. But through all of these marriages Louis seems to have led an active and varied extramural sex life. This was common among travelling musicians who might be away from home on tour for as long as six months. Lucille was tactful enough always to ring Louis before she turned up in a town where he was playing. Although he repeatedly declares his love for her in his letters, not long into their marriage we find him writing to his manager, Joe Glaser, asking him to arrange monthly payments to various people, including a secretary who had become his mistress, and another woman who had borne him a child in New York. Nothing of the private life Louis led was allowed to taint his public image. Unlike many of his fellow musicians, he was not much of a drinker; his chosen methods of relaxation, apart from women, were his writing and a lifelong attachment to marijuana. And, of course, in the entertainment world of the 1930s and 1940s no suggestion of sexual attraction could attach itself to a black man: in the many films he made, the closest he was allowed to get to romance was to sing ‘Jeepers Creepers’ to a horse. So where in all of this is the artist of ‘Flaubertian purity’? Well, the great early recordings of Louis, from 1925 to 1935, contain trumpet solos that for originality, brilliance and invention have never been equalled. A piece such as ‘West End Blues’ (1928) accords with Flaubert’s ideals of art, in the sense that nothing could be added, removed or replaced without destroying a perfectly harmonious whole. It is no exaggeration to say that his improvisations influenced every musician who came after him and determined the course of jazz. The music developed and grew away from him, but Louis could hardly remain a young revolutionary musician for ever. Jazz purists may have lamented his later years, and his final apotheosis as an iconic figure known for a huge smile and a gravelly voice, but Louis always regarded himself as first and foremost an entertainer. Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words is an extraordinary look inside a man who was a great deal more complex and driven than his public image ever suggested. Let’s take our leave of him through the eyes of a fellow musician, in a dressing-room, after one of his countless performances:
He be sittin’ down in his underwear with a towel around his lap, one round his shoulders an’ that white handkerchief on his head . . . an’ laughin’, you know natural the way he is . . . And there’d be some kids there, white and colored. All the diverse people of different social levels . . . an’ everybody’s lookin’. Got their eyes dead on him, jus’ like they was lookin’ at a diamond.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 7 © William Palmer  2005


About the contributor

William Palmer is a novelist and poet. He has written six novels; the latest is The India House, published this year by Jonathan Cape.

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