Satchmo Tells the Feds: "Go to Hell"
An interesting morsel of music history involving Louis Armstrong
Among this week’s music selections: A brief celebration of Louis Armstrong, and some exciting recent discoveries, including a couple funky re-issues from the 1970s; a bi-lingual, indie-ish art-pop record out of Brooklyn; a very fine example of a recent post-punk-electro-disco-remix bumper; and some crazy neo-90s-raver sounds that triangulate Atari Teenage Riot, KMFDM and Bikini Kill in a way that will either excite or terrify you. Let’s see what happens…
Louis Armstrong’s cancelled tour in the Soviet Union, and some hard truth for Eisenhower
There were layers of statecraft, human intelligence gathering, and campaigns for hearts and minds being waged between the US and Soviets throughout the Cold War. One such US program enlisted famous musicians and other cultural figures to do tours in the USSR and Europe, generating goodwill and also gathering information to bring back to the State Department.
This worked out pretty well for them for a couple of years until they reached out to jazz icon Louis Armstrong, who told them in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t support them until they made some effort to improve equality. The following is from The New York Times archive, originally published in September 1957:
Grand Forks, N.D., Sept. 18 (AP) -- Trumpet player Louis Armstrong said last night he had given up plans for a Government-sponsored trip to the Soviet Union because "the way they are treating my people in the South, the Government can go to hell."
Here for a concert, Mr. Armstrong said President Eisenhower had "no guts" and described Gov. Orval E. Faubus of Arkansas as an "uneducated plow boy."
He said the President was "two-faced" and had allowed Governor Faubus to run the Federal Government.
"It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country," the Negro entertainer said.
"Don't get me wrong," he added, "the South is full of intelligent white people, it's bad for the lower class people who make all the noise, though."
He said if he ever did go to the Soviet Union, "I'll do it on my own."
In Washington the State Department declined to comment on Mr. Armstrong's statements. Officials made no attempt, however, to hide the concern they caused.
Mr. Armstrong was regarded by the State Department as perhaps the most effective unofficial goodwill ambassador this country had.
They said Soviet propagandists undoubtedly would seize on Mr. Armstrong's words.
If you aren’t immediately familiar with Governor Faubus, mentioned above, he was the executive power responsible for deploying the National Guard to try and prevent the desegregation of schools in Little Rock. He called soldiers in to scare children and their families in 1957, and then closed all public schools in the district the following year to try and further prevent integration efforts. A real racist asshole.
Armstrong did eventually go out on tour on the government’s dime, but it would take two more years before he’d agree to join the ranks of the Jazz Ambassadors, which included Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Brubeck, among other luminaries.
A Couple of Extra Toots on the Horn
One
While I was looking for images of Louis Armstrong, I stumbled across the one above via the Louis Armstrong House Museum’s website. That organization has a very interesting set of archives.
One random discovery from there, recorded during the summer of 1970, is audio of Orson Welles interviewing Louis Armstrong, after a short performance. Welles was guest-hosting The David Frost Show (a program you might recall from Frost/Nixon.) The LAHM has some incredible media assets, including the only known film footage of Armstrong in the studio, which they acquired in 2016.
Two
Louis Armstrong was a long-time marijuana enthusiast, and not afraid to talk about it. In an Armstrong biography, Pops (2009), there’s an anecdote about Armstrong getting busted outside of the Cotton Club in Los Angeles smoking a joint with his drummer.
While Vic and I were blasting this joint, having lots of laughs and feelin' good, enjoying each others' fine company, we were standing in this great big lot in front of some cars. Just then, two big, healthy dicks (detectives, that is) come from behind a car, man, nonchalantly, and say to us, “We'll take the roach, boys.” Mmmm! Vic and I said nothin'. So one dick stayed with me until I went into the club and did my last show. He enjoyed it, too.
Apparently, among the many slang terms employed by Armstrong and peers for fellow weed smokers were “Vipers”, “Tea Smokers”, and “Muggles” although it’s unclear whether that was the source of the term for non-magic people chosen by JK Rowling in the Harry Potter series.
This week’s picks all emerged from serendipitous encounters. #listeninghabit
The Black Truth Rhythm Band - Ifetayo
Soundway Records is serving up this freshly mastered edition of a very funky set of grooves first released in 1976. The band’s leader Oluko Imo grew up with Yoruba music on Trinidad, blending bits of West Africa, the Caribbean and Black Power into a potent stew. Stir it up, indeed.
The title track opens the record with a strong West African funk runner, but the mood evolves from front to back. “Kilimanjaro” is a psych-funk adventure that knows a thing or two about changes in elevation. It’s chased by an infectiously optimistic and percussion fueled tropicalia of “Aspire” while “Umbala” is a slow-burn groove with steel drums woven in. If you need a dose of funk to blow off the dustiness of mid-winter, this one might help.
If you’re not quite ready to leave the warm embrace of Yoruba, this Guyanese record I mentioned last year is a ray of sunshine.
Fisher - “Music Makes Me Feel Good”
This is another recent re-issue from 1976 that’s on Mad About Records. I’m not crazy about the album as a whole, but this tune is an absolute banger. The drums go hard, and the bass is the hard-slap pre-cursor to what Les Claypool and Flea (among others) repopularized in the ‘90s. Bust a move.
Automatic - “Skyscraper” (Gum & Ginoli Remix)
Automatic’s album Excess came out on Stones Throw back in 2022, and it was sort of refreshing because even while Stones Throw’s catalog has gotten much more eclectic style-wise, I wasn’t expecting a throwback to 1980s minimalist no-wave post-punk. However, the zeitgeist demands a certain amount of disengaged-but-anxious electro on the soundtrack.
For this remix, the languid bass line and disenchanted layers of vocals of “Skyscraper” are tranformed into an LCD Soundsystem-adjacent block party dance-rock anthem. Pairs well with “Cavern” by Liquid Liquid, if you catch my drift.
Helado Negro - Phasor
On his newest record, which just came out this month on 4AD, the multi-faceted, multi-national, Brooklyn hipster-pop purveyor Helado Negro delivers something that manages to meet expectations but also surprise and delight.
I’m by no means an expert on his whole catalog, but he strikes me as someone who is consistently expanding and contracting elements of his sound like an amoeba moving across wherever it is one finds amoebas.
There are moments that are more traditionally “indie rock” and others that are more atmospheric, which is balanced with the occasional mellow uptempo number, and then all split between English and Spanish lyrics. So he has this territory that he’s been marking off and building on over the years. This record meets the bar and raises. Play “Best For You and Me” into “Colores Del Mar” and you’ll have a good sense of the stakes.
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