Satchmo At The Waldorf: Louis Armstrong Revisited

Satchmo At The Waldorf
August 29, 2012
Tina Packer Playhouse
70 Kemble St.
Lenox, Massachusetts
http://www.shakespeare.org

The chances a kid like Louis Armstrong could succeed in life were one in a million. Satchmo at the Waldorf, Terry Teachout’s one man play at the Tina Packer Playhouse in Lenox, MA, packs Armstrong’s story into a theater experience as layered as one of Louis Armstrong’s blazing trumpet solos.

Following the trajectory of Armstrong’s life is like watching a shorthand version of the history of jazz and race relations in the twentieth century. It’s the story of a man with indomitable spirit, an incandescent talent for connecting with people through his music, and a man with an ego robust enough to shed the criticism and humiliation he endured on his way to becoming a man known around the world by one name: Satchmo.

The fact that Terry Teachout manages to compress Armstrong’s story into a one-act play is a feat as dazzling as one of Satchmo’s famous solos. Steeped in research including Armstrong’s letters, interviews with people close to him, news stories, and especially a trove of tape recordings Armstrong made, Teachout paints a narrative with a broad brush to illustrate the pivotal events in Armstrong’s life and a fine line pilot pen to sketch insights that reveal the heart of the man. Teachout transforms an icon into a man who rose to fame using his talent, good luck, and a forgiving nature.

How in the hell did Louis Armstrong end up in the Waldorf Astoria in March 1971, not only playing his last gig there but staying in a luxury suite with his wife Lucille to boot? Just like Joe “King” Oliver made a good choice by asking young Louis Armstrong to leave New Orleans and join him to play in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago, Teachout and director Gordon Edelstein made a good choice by casting John Douglas Thompson to tell Armstrong’s story.

The first moments of the play are jarring. There is Louis Armstrong standing in a tuxedo with a red bow tie and holding an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

“I shit myself tonight,” he says in his first line. “Something stinks here, (his wife) Lucille said in the elevator tonight. Here I am a 70-year-old man messing myself at the Waldorf.

Not many plays have the gumption to explode an icon in the first line of the performance.

“Here I am playing for the rich white folk and I shit myself. Had to give up dope, no salt in my food, troubles with my heart, kidneys, back….” he trails on.

The stooped man moves slowly, with effort, to a tape recorder, plays a cut from the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band in which he first gained notice, begins to muse about how his manager Joe Glaser has died, how he used to drink fancy wines and travel all over the world living the life...and that now people say he's lost his chops.

“Everybody knew me. I've had 4 wives - one whore, one piano player, and two chorus girls. I’ve played with Bing Crosby, been on Ed Sullivan, been around the world. I loved folks and they loved me. Where did it all go?”

John Douglas Thompson plays Armstrong from the inside out. From the first scene, Thompson’s tall and muscular frame assumes the persona of the smaller, portly Armstrong. And when Thompson flashes the iconic Satchmo smile, all straight white teeth and klieg light intensity, there is Louis right in front of us.

Through Armstrong’s reminiscences and tape recordings, we learn of his growing up fatherless and in extreme poverty in New Orleans, his two years in reform school where he got his first cornet, his persistence in playing trumpet, being hired to play with bands in New Orleans, then Chicago, his marriages along the way, his troubles with the mob, his association with manager Joe Glaser, his encounters with racism ("What you got for Pops?" he’d say as he went into a hotel’s back door to find food for him and his band, the same hotel he’d been hired to play at but not stay at), his anger at Governor Orville Faubus in the 1957 desegregation crisis and President Eisenhower’s slow response to it.

For all his technical brilliance, Armstrong had no talent for business or self-promotion. After the first boost from wife number two, who convinced him to leave King Oliver and hired him to be in her band in New York, advertising him to be the world’s greatest trumpet player, and dressing to look the part, his connection with a Chicago lawyer with shady connections to the mob became his ticket to success.

This may be heretical to say but Louis Armstrong would not have become a household name without his manager Joe Glaser. The idea for Thompson to play a dual role as Glaser is brilliant – the play wouldn’t work without that touch.

We’re caught off guard the first time the house lights dim and shine a solitary spot on Thompson’s face. He utterly transforms himself into Joe Glaser, a shrewd, fast talking, tight lipped, calculating business man whose primary concern is the bottom line. Glaser understood how the race factor works in the music business. Thompson nails him right down to his cigar chomping Chicago accent.

Playwright Terry Teachout handles race head on. “My friend Black Benny gave me advice way back. ‘White men like you, find one to take care of your business, he can say, this is my nigger.’” Armstrong says. That’s exactly what happened.

“Joe Glaser saved my ass,” Louis says, then tells us how he arranged the tours, paid the band, paid Armstrong’s bills, and bailed him out of jail a few times. He also had Satchmo on the road as many as 300 times a year.

For all his fame, or maybe because of it, Armstrong no longer played for a black audience. “I go on stage to make people happy, but I see no spades. The audience looks like a carton of eggs out there,” he says. But he knew he had a style unmatched and unrivaled by any other trumpet player.

In the performance I attended, Teachout added a section in which Armstrong plays a haughty Miles Davis who calls Satchmo an Uncle Tom, and worse, says he’s an untutored musician. “I study,” Davis sniffs.

“When I play there are no wrong notes. My solos tell a story, like a moving picture, things I feel come right out of me, maybe I remember some sad man I saw the corner when I’m leaving a gig, it all comes out,” Armstrong says, then turns on the tape recorder to play a solo that smokes with  fierce, passionate improvisatory skill.

“Study that!” Armstrong shouts at the top of his lungs.The audience roars with gusto.

“No one has a heart like Louis Armstrong. People love you, they want to be you,” Glaser tells Armstrong. And through Armstrong and Glazer’s narratives it’s clear that there was a bond of love, often tested, between the two men. A revelation about a part of their business partnership that crushed Armstrong is revealed in the final scenes of the play.

Despite the bitter taste of race relations for most of Armstrong’s life, he never became stuck in the past, always looked forward to the next day with a forgiving heart. And played his heart out every time he set foot on stage.

Photo: Cavanaugh for Boston Globe

Comments

[Carole Blossom]

Again Satchmo comes alive on the page. What a feat of writing and acting recreating the life and soul of this legendary God of jazz to thrill audiences once again "revisiting" his talent thru a play. CA is far from MA but you brought the essence of this performance right onto my computer here in North Orange County, CA. What I would give to have seen this play! Thanks for your review PT:) Ms Blossom

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr aka pt at large]

So much of his life story is below the radar. He had lucky breaks, made the most of them. THe combination of his immense talent on trumpet and singing (mostly a scat style he started one night when he forgot lyrics!)and his remarkable open hearted personality put him on the map. His stage personality was forged in the 1920s 30s and 40s and didnt change much in the 50s and 60s, and he took lots of flack for that. He did publicly rebuke Eisenhower for not acting faster during the school desegregation in Little Rock, AK and quit his good will ambassador gig for a while over that ugly time.
Thanks for your thoughts!

[May Louise White]

Yes, Louis Armstrong's success story is indeed amazing!

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr aka pt at large]

The more I learned about his rise to fame, the more i was fascinated with the role his manager played in Louis' life. When Louis says, "He saved my ass," he wasn't kidding. That said, no manager could have done what Joe Glaser did unless his client had more talent and personality than any other trumpeter in his orbit.

[Carole Blossom]

Hi Back Paul: Thanks for the informative and prompt reply. You sure don't let any grass grow under your feet! Love your writing style and your big heart. You do have a way with people all walks of life...like a magnet!
In fact, now that I think of it, you and Satchmo have that remarkable open hearted personality in common :) You mentioned Louis' life story being below the radar. That is what makes him unique and real. He was the real deal even down to the story he told at the Waldorf about "messing himself". And good for him that he gave Eisenhower a piece of his mind....Satchmo wasn't afraid to express his beliefs even if they were not popular with segments of his audience, ie the whities . Anyway, thanks for sharing your insights and wisdom with me. Woulda loved to see that play. Will stay tuned.....