Louis Armstrong grew up poor and powerless, and he never forgot it.
“I don’t socialize with the top dogs of society after a dance or concert,” he said in a 1964 profile in Ebony.
“These same society people may go around the corner and lynch a Negro.”
Dexter Gordon... tenor saxophone... he Collaborated with players like Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus but the father of bebop had nasty habits... heroin...
.. The many sides of Louis Armstrong, nasty habits and inspiration..
Louis Armstrong was first turned onto marijuana in the mid-1920s, and he smoked it all his life, including before performances and recordings.
Armstrong was arrested in November 1930 while smoking marijuana with drummer Vic Berton outside the Cotton Club in Culver City, California.
Variety, under headline "Drug Charges Against Jazz Band Musicians" said that pair were arrested by narcotic officers and arraigned on charges of possession of marijuana, "a dopeweed used in cigarettes." According to Vic Berton's brother Ralph, "The cops took Vic and Louis downtown, where
they spent the night in a cell, laughing it up--they were still high. They stopped laughing the next morning when the judge game them six months and a one thousand dollar fine each." Connections, possibly through graft exercised by Prohibition-era club owners, got the sentences suspended
and "Armstrong went back to smoking marijuana almost immediately." The furor in press died down.
In 1954 Louis published a book titled, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins reveals that Joe Glaser, an Al Capone acolyte who was Armstrong's manager later in his career, suppressed parts of the book that dealt with marijuana. Armstrong planned to publish a sequel which he said he would call "Gage"--slang for marijuana. He said, at one point, "This whole second book might be about nothing but gage."
Giddins thought the book had been lost, but a recently published document, taken from writings held at the Louis Armstrong House and Archives at Queens College/CUNY, is thought to be the beginnings of it. It begins:
"The first time that I smoked Marijuana (or) Gage as they so beautifully call it some time, was a couple of years after I had left Flecther Henderson's Orchestra…And I'm telling you, I had myself a Ball…That's why it really puzzles me to see Marijuana connected with Narcotics--Dope and all that kind of crap…It is actually a shame.
An LA-based trumpet player who toured with Armstrong told me in January 2007 that Louis told him he once ran into Richard Nixon at an airport in Japan.
Nixon said, "Hi Pops, can I do anything for you?" and Louis, who had his gage in his case, asked Nixon to carry it for him. Both Armstrong and Nixon toured Japan in 1953. Just afterwards, Lucille Armstrong was arrested for carrying what was widely speculated to be Louis's stash.
On the evening of January 16, 1954 Louis Armstrong sat at the Alexander Hamilton Hotel at 631 O’Farrell Street in San Francisco and wrote what has been called “one of the most stunning documents Armstrong ever composed.”
"Mr. Glaser, you must see to it that I have special permission to smoke all the reefers that I want to when I want or I will just have to put this horn down, that's all," the letter says, addressing Armstrong’s manager. "I can gladly vouch for a nice, fat stick of gage, which relaxes my
nerves, if I have any...I can't afford to be ...tense, fearing that any minute I'm going to be arrested, brought to jail for a silly little minor thing like marijuana."
An often-told story relates that Armstrong once prevailed on Richard Nixon to carry his valise containing pot through an airport for him.
A trumpeter in LA told me that that Satchmo laughed heartily every time he told the story, pinpointing the locale as Japan. Both Armstrong and then-VP Nixon toured Japan in late 1953, just before Lucille’s arrest. The timing begs the question, did Nixon figure out he’d been used for a
drug courier and fail to see the humor in it?
Nina
Simone sang a mix of jazz, blues and folk music. A
civil rights activist, she wrote songs promoting the Civil Rights
Movement.
In
many ways, Simone's music defied standard definitions. Her classical
training showed through, no matter what genre of song she played, and
she drew from many sources including gospel, pop and folk. She was
often called the "High Priestess of Soul," but she hated that nickname.
She didn't like the label of "jazz singer", either. "If I had to be
called something, it should have been a folk singer because there was
more folk and blues than jazz in my playing"...
