Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues

 

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band

Armstrong with his mother and sister

Armstrong and Lucille

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).

The Exiles (1961)

THE EXILES             A-                   

USA  (72 mi)  1961  d:  Kent Mackenzie

A remarkable record of a city that has vanished.    —Thom Andersen, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

Watching this early 1960’s film about American Indians adapting to their city environment in the now demolished Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles, the same neighborhood depicted a few years earlier by Joseph Losey in M (1951), where huge, sprawling Victorian mansions overlook the city and cheap hotels are squeezed between old houses, with the Angels Flight tramway traversing the steep incline of the hill, where in the space of 12 hours they go on an all-night drinking binge, which is literally like opening a time capsule to a different era, but despite the vintage cars and the dated vernacular of the times (a trolley ride is only 5 cents, haircuts 25 cents, while gas is a whopping 27 cents a gallon), this film is as relevant today as it was when it was made.  The film’s strength is its wrenchingly honest documentary style, where the reality of a marginalized people whose past has been stolen from them is stunning, as they feel as detached from the present as from their past, where they have literally become exiles in their own country.  The film opens with sage words:  “The old people remember the past,” along with Edward Curtis portraits of strong Indian faces in the late 19th century, a time when Indians were forcibly evicted from a life of freedom on the open plains and ordered to live on restricted reservation lands, a military and political act that effectively cut native people’s ties to their heritage, the Exiles #1 1961 Native American History Conformity YouTube (21:16).  More than a century later, they’re still searching for it.  It’s an undisputed fact that on the East coast Mohawk Indians helped construct many of New York City’s tallest skyscrapers, as they supposedly possess no fear of heights (The Mohawks Who Built Manhattan - Native Village), but American Indians born on U.S. soil were only granted full citizenship in 1924, yet voting rights were still denied by individual states for several decades, where the final state to grant full citizenship was New Mexico in 1962, only then becoming free members of American society, coming several years “after” this was filmed, and nearly 100 years after the freedom of slaves.  In the 50’s and 60’s, in one of the untold historical migrations, many young people moved off the reservations into the cities in search of a better life, many who served in the army together, with Los Angeles becoming a primary destination.  By 1960 Los Angeles had the largest urban concentration of American Indians in the country, but few found opportunities awaiting them, a harsh reality this film reflects.  The camera initially focuses on a neglected pregnant wife, Yvonne Williams, whose husband Homer Nish (the spitting image of César Rojas from the Los Lobos band, known for his wide girth, trademark black sunglasses and slicked-back, black hair) all but ignores her and lays about jobless all day long as he would rather hang around every night in the company of friends than be at home.  In the opening moments of the film, we hear her in voiceover describe how she’s glad to be off the reservation and hopes for a brighter future for her unborn child.  But life is no picnic in the city either, especially when her husband avoids any connection to family and abandons her every night while he and his friends mooch drinks and cigarettes, hustle up whatever change they can scrounge together, and pretty much joyride and barhop every night listening to Anthony Hilder and the Revels’ primitive rock ‘n’ roll on the jukebox, THE REVELS - REVELLION (Impact) YouTube (1:12), getting as drunk as possible on rotgut Thunderbird and Lucky Lager beer. 

Coming between Morris Engel’s Little Fugitive (1953), John Cassavetes’ Shadows (1959), and Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World (1964), the film captures the raw, independent spirit of American films, arguably the spiritual cousin of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), as both are neorealist black-and-white independent films that use a documentary style to explore how minorities survive in downtrodden regions of Los Angeles, both named to the Library of Congress National Film Registry.  Literally unseen for decades, never finding a distributor, despite premiering at the 1961 Venice Film Festival and making the cover of Film Quarterly magazine, lingering out of sight until Thomas Andersen sought rights from Mackenzie’s family (as the director died at age 50 in 1980) to feature footage in his amazing documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), it was restored in 2008 by preservationist Ross Lipman and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, who was responsible for the restoration of Killer of Sheep as well, comprised of three different storylines, almost as if they’ve been stitched together, offering uniquely differing perspectives, as they aren’t always on the same track.  There is barely any trace of anyone who is non-Indian, maintaining a separate communal presence in such a large urban environment, existing in their own figurative island, subject, for the most part, to their own laws and rituals.  The luscious black and white photography by cinematographers John Morrill, Erik Daarstad, and Robert Kaufman is extraordinary throughout, particularly the night photography, shot on a 35mm Arriflex, utilizing a very modern free-form camera technique of weaving in and out of crowds, capturing bar scenes, fights, sidewalk action, joyriding, and people gathering together high atop Hill X (bulldozed for Dodger Stadium) after the bars have closed at 2 am for more drinking, drumming, and chanting Indian songs while also occasionally engaging in fisticuffs.  While the camera captures the free-spirited look of the times, the audio track reflects the lack of any script whatsoever where much is dubbed from recorded interviews, so it lacks the searing intensity of the images and despite its best efforts to remain relevant, falls short in many respects.  This may be what the “original” version of Shadows (1959) was like when it was completely improvised, filled with greetings, hip expressions, and an otherwise detached way of communicating with one another before Cassavetes sat down and wrote a more personal script.  However this lack of personal connection in THE EXILES matches the theme of the title.  The characters are so busy getting high and avoiding life and its responsibilities that their evasiveness even from one another leaves them completely detached from their own lives.  In one telling scene, Homer and his gang are sitting in a car smoking a cigarette watching the cops routinely roust some customers in a bar before he gets out, without a word, and enters the bar alone, If you ever fall for someone - YouTube (1:36).  The guy doesn’t even feel like acknowledging his friends, he simply does whatever the hell he feels like doing.  No questions asked.  While in his mind this feels like freedom, it’s actually another failed connection, as he exists in a separate reality from the world around him.  This stands in stark contrast to those Indian portraits from the 19th century of men who lived in complete harmony with their environment. 

British/American filmmaker Kent Mackenzie endeared himself to Bunker Hill and the people who lived there while a student at the University of Southern California, completing his graduate film project, a documentary entitled BUNKER HILL (1956) that featured old, dilapidated tenement homes in the city’s most crowded neighborhood, with poor elderly pensioners concerned about the city’s plans to demolish the neighborhood, as there was no similar low-rental district in the city.  Using leftover film stock and working with fellow film students for no pay, he shot this film in 1958, using borrowed equipment and spending a lot of time with a group of young Native Americans that lived in Bunker Hill, where the original budget was only $539, but a good deal of it was spent on alcohol, where the heavy alcohol consumption in this film is literally scary, certainly part of the overall story, but there is some question about the degree to which the director actually enables or contributes to abhorrent social behavior, including woman continually forced to fend off the predatory sexual behavior of inebriated men, seen getting punched at one point, as the alcohol certainly contributes to a perception of violence, and while not shown in the film, rape is certainly not out of the question.  Women are either pursued sexually, with men continually grabbing at them, or completely ignored, like Yvonne at home, with men only turning to them for money.  One could argue about whether this is even a documentary film, whether it might have been more powerful without fictionalized re-enactments, like the director (in glasses) placing himself behind Yvonne in the movie theater, but as is, we have never gotten such an unflinchingly realistic glimpse of Indians carousing, particularly wandering in and out of bars they frequent, offering a social portrait on being poor and being Indian that is simply remarkable, with three figures narrating their own extended sequences in the film.  Perhaps the real revelation at the time of the release was seeing Indians doing such ordinary things, like window shopping, going to the movies, buying groceries, driving cars, or pumping gas, as American film had never portrayed this before.  Indians in westerns were always seen on horses living in teepees, which makes this film all the more enduring, seen in an urban environment where they have blended into the popular culture of the 50’s, rebellious outcasts who are capable of controlling their own destinies.  To its credit, this film features transplants from the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, but also members of other tribes, men and women who have never been welcome anywhere except in the company of other Indians, all living hardscrabble lives in a fringe world where arrests and police intervention are the norm, where Homer’s drinking buddy, ex-convict Tommy Reynolds, exclaims that life on the outside or inside prison is all the same to him, as either way it’s just doing time.  What’s uniquely relevant in the film is the focus on subjects rarely seen in front of cameras before, offering sympathetic views of young men and women that live their lives hard and fast and age quickly, consuming ungodly amounts of cheap alcohol, where their treatment of women is equally abominable, and their own life expectancy is short.  Outside of Yvonne, a prisoner of cultural neglect who has to stay with a girlfriend for companionship, no one even hopes for a better existence.  This is all there is.  

Kent MacKenzie, THE EXILES - The Center for Studies in Americ  10-page screen notes (pdf)

Postscript

John Patterson from The Guardian, February 17, 2010, The lure of the night | Documentary films | The Guardian 

To add texture and verisimilitude, ­Mackenzie asked his actors to speak of their own lives, and their hardscrabble ways led to certain continuity ­problems.  “Characters’ facial features were altered by fist-fights, their ­costumes ripped in brawls or stolen while they were drunk,” Mackenzie wrote.  Nonetheless, the impression is of a proto-beatnik brotherhood, tearing up the night to a honking soundtrack by the Revels.  The Exiles is anything but depressing or admonitory.

And then it vanished.  David James, head of film at USC, suggests two ­reasons for this.  Firstly, The Exiles worked in a documentary style that was soon to become obsolete for 20 years. “It was poetic, visually striking, great 35mm stock.  But around this time, cinema verité was coming in: 16mm, handheld, sync sound, and instead of prizing visual appearance, film-makers now prized authenticity and non-intervention, so this kind of documentary was discredited.”

Secondly, says James, “by the ­beginning of the next decade, the 70s, the civil rights movement had entered into film culture and minority­ peoples had started demanding­ the right to represent themselves.  So the idea of a white male representing Native ­American people was discredited.”

Mackenzie went on to work as an ­editor on industrial shorts, medical films and TV documentaries, mostly with a progressive bent, throughout the 60s and 70s, and taught high-school classes in Marin County on Super-8 film-making.  He died young, in 1980, of complications from ­medication he was taking.

Dennis Doros, of Milestone Films, which has restored The Exiles, says the cast fared badly in later life.  He tried to track them down for its release, with little luck.  “Homer died young.  Most of the others too, in their 30s and 40s.  Yvonne is the only one who is still alive.  She had two babies during the production, and they both died.  It’s a problem for her, seeing the movie.  If you’re drinking and partying, particularly if you’re poor, dying young is something that happens more often.”