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| King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band |
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| Armstrong with his mother and sister |
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| Armstrong and Lucille |
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| Director Sacha Jenkins |
LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S BLACK AND BLUES B USA (106 mi) 2022 d: Sacha Jenkins
My only sin is in my skin, what did I do to be so black and blue. —“(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue,” Fats Waller, 1929
Sacha Jenkins is an American documentary filmmaker, a pioneering hip-hop journalist and cultural historian who profoundly shaped how hip-hop, graffiti, and black culture has been documented and celebrated, who died a year ago from complications from a rare and progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Shot by Ed Lachman, this is another film that relies heavily upon archival material, much of it from preeminent Armstrong scholar Ricky Riccardi, director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New Orleans, where throughout his life Armstrong was a prolific writer, avidly tapping out thousands of pages of handwritten notes on stationery from his touring days, writings that explored everything from his musical philosophy to the trauma of Jim Crow segregation. Lovingly called “Satchmo” or “Pops,” his personal letters reveal an intensely private anger regarding systemic racism, where he frequently bemoaned the indignity of playing in venues and staying at hotels where he, as an internationally celebrated star, was legally prohibited from entering. In this way, the film offers an interiority of Armstrong that has rarely been known or seen, as we’re so used to seeing the smiling face of his showbiz persona. Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, and most disappointing, is how the majority of the film accentuates his singing instead of his playing, yet Armstrong is a legendary jazz trumpet or cornet player, especially during his Hot Five or Hot Seven recordings of the 1920’s, where it was staggering how good he was, literally inventing the art of the jazz solo, but never developed that same reputation for his raspy-throated singing, though he is one of the inventors of scat singing. It’s hugely disappointing, especially considering how accomplished he was so early in his life, standing out above all others, developing a legacy as a founding father of jazz, and one of the first internationally known or recognized stars, serving as a cultural ambassador for the United States. But in the budding era of television in the 50’s and 60’s, Armstrong was seen on plenty of TV shows, one of the first blacks to be accepted by white audiences, yet he was often seen patronized by white talk show hosts, where he seemed to bear no relation to that earlier version of himself, instead viewed as an Uncle Tom in the radical coming-of-age of the Civil Rights era, where openly defiant civil disobedience became part of the black experience. At the time of his death in 1971, Armstrong was viewed as one of the most famous black entertainers of all time, which is not the same as being one of the great performers of jazz, one of the first to accentuate the art of improvisation.
Born in the black Storyville neighborhood of New Orleans, a legalized red-light district where music and entertainment were prominent sidelines, Armstrong spent his youth in poverty, the son of an absent father and a mother who occasionally resorted to prostitution, living in a rough Back o’ Town neighborhood known as The Battlefield, filled with working-class families, gamblers, and hustlers, where as a child he met the great jazz cornet player Bunk Johnson, one of the early pioneers of jazz. Supposedly, after firing a pistol in the air, he was arrested and sent to what was known as the Colored Waifs Home for Boys, a reformatory where Armstrong developed his cornet skills by playing in the band, marching in parades, and playing music at other venues across the city. A remarkably self-taught and original musician, Armstrong listened to the early sounds of jazz from bands that played in brothels and dance halls, where he saw King Oliver performing, who soon took him under his wing to become his mentor and teacher. Oliver sent for him from Chicago to play second cornet in Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, one of the most influential jazz bands in the early 1920’s, but made sure he always stood at least fifteen feet away so his sound didn’t drown out his solos. It was there that he met the female pianist Lil Hardin, who he would marry, but she urged Armstrong to come out from under Oliver’s shadow and develop his own style, where he immediately switched to trumpet, suddenly responsible for some of the greatest recordings in jazz history, where it was positively uncanny the amount of talent he displayed between the years of 1925 to 1940, where no other jazz musician was able to transcend the music industry for so long. World War II seems to be the dividing line in his career, as he was solidly a black entertainer in the earlier years, written about extensively in black newspapers, and mobbed by ardent fans when he walked through black neighborhoods, where he went from being praised as a black cultural hero to being denounced as an Uncle Tom. Following the war, he became, in effect, a white entertainer, steadily losing his black audience. The film addresses this situation in the words of Wynton Marsalis, a fellow New Orleans jazz trumpeter who was familiar with the Uncle Tom reputation of Armstrong, which cost him a lot of respect by black musicians who saw that as the worst thing a black artist could do. It was the father of Marsalis who sent his son a 1928 recording of Armstrong’s West End Blues YouTube (3:16), and it was only when he attempted to emulate the sonic range and meticulous phrasing of the notes that Marsalis realized just how difficult it was, suddenly gaining profound respect for his “electric virtuosity,” claiming “It was not a simple-minded happiness, it was a transcendent joy.”
Perhaps the biggest criticism of the film is just how conventional it is, which is a major distraction, never really distinguishing itself artistically, using a standard format to release lifelong biographical information, mostly told in chronological order, much of it through Armstrong’s own private audio diaries, personal home recordings, and unseen archival footage, as Armstrong was obsessed by reel-to-reel tape recordings, leaving behind about 700 of them, taping conversations with his friends and family, conversations with himself, where he spoke his mind, cursing prolifically on tape, expressing himself in a frank manner, with American hip-hop rapper Nas reading many of his diary entries. So in effect, it’s a story told by Armstrong himself, as we hear his own personal reflections about the events in his life, suddenly hearing the fomenting anger at the continuing discrimination he faced, revealing a different truth, that he adopted this accommodating persona as a professional survival tool, using it as a shield to mask deep, personal pain. His frustration with the Eisenhower administration’s inaction during the 1957 Little Rock school integration crisis (The Little Rock Nine) led him to fiercely condemn the President as “two-faced” in recorded interviews. Armstrong learned to demand better treatment for blacks in his business contracts, indicating that if he couldn’t stay there, he wouldn’t play there, offering an avenue to discuss race and racism in a direct and more authentic manner. To help articulate this point, the late actor Ossie Davis was also inclined to believe Armstrong was pandering to white America, but he shares a personal experience where he learned more about what Armstrong was like behind the scenes, loyal to a fault, and always looking out for those less fortunate, helping out in any way he could, which was often substantial monetary contributions. White managers and record company executives made a fortune off his talent, as they took heavy percentages of his earnings, denied him royalties, and subjected his bands to devastatingly low pay, where there was little he could do about it, even performing at gunpoint at one point, so he hired a mob-connected white manager, Joe Glaser, to protect his life and stop getting ripped off. This is the underside of the predominately white music business that he lived through. Armstrong’s kind demeanor and generosity are explored in depth, living with his beloved fourth wife, Lucille, in a humble Queens home for decades, a simple life free of pretense or grandiosity, where there’s a special warmth in the way he sings one of his signature songs, Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World (At The BBC) YouTube (2:24).
