“The Greatest Photo Taker”: Remembering Jack Bradley Part 50–“Dial M for Music” and “Down Beat” and “Saturday Review” Tributes, June 1970

Last time out, Louis Armstrong kicked off his upcoming 70th birthday (now is not the time to go into the whole birthdate fiasco) by recording the album Louis Armstrong and His Friends. As Armstrong’s July 4 birthday approached, he did not celebrate it alone: the event was accompanied by a multimedia onslaught with television specials, a new album, live concert tributes, magazine articles, newspaper coverage, and more–and Jack Bradley would be in the thick of it all.

On June 7, 1970, Bradley once again found himself with Armstrong, this time at a television taping for the CBS show Dial M for Music. This would be Armstrong’s first reunion with his All Stars (well, most of them) since September 1968. Armstrong sounds quite happy and energetic throughout the broadcast, telling some of his favorite stories (which don’t seem to connect with the small audience, though they’re still funny) and calling the reunion of his All Stars “a birthday present.” Trombonist Tyree Glenn, clarinetist Joe Muranyi, and pianist Marty Napoleon all returned to the fold but CBS didn’t want to pay to fly bassist Buddy Catlett or drummer Danny Barcelona in from the west coast, so their places were taken by New Yorkers Al Hall and Jo Jones (though Armstrong, from habit, mentions that he kept referring to Hall as “Buddy Catlett” that week).

Armstrong was still not cleared to play trumpet so he sticks to vocals, including a touching, slower than usual “What a Wonderful World.” CBS sent Louis a copy of the broadcast on reel-to-reel tape, which he soon added to his collection; we already wrote about it here, but thought it would be a good idea to share the audio again today:

Towards the end of the broadcast, Armstrong calls out Jack Bradley “snapping away” out there with his camera. The full set of negatives Bradley shot of this broadcast have sadly not turned up but he turned his three favorite images into prints and it’s definitely worth sharing them again now:

And for more proof that there are missing Bradley photos from this period, he sent one to his pal in Sweden, Gösta Hägglöf, who shared it with the Swedish press in this article about all the activities surrounding Armstrong’s 70th birthday:

Meanwhile, over in Chicago, Down Beat editor Dan Morgenstern was deep in the planning stages of a tribute to Armstrong that would include new appreciations by Martin Williams and Leonard Feather, clippings from past Down Beat articles on Armstrong, rare photos, transcribed solos, and the main event, “Roses for Satchmo,” a collection of short tributes to Armstrong from jazz musicians coast to coast. Morgenstern enlisted the help of Harriet Choice, Jane Welch, Harvey Siders, and of course, Jack Bradley, to gather the quotes so we felt it would be fitting to share it here considering Bradley’s involvement. First, the cover:

And here’s an absolutely spot-on appreciation of Armstrong by Morgenstern (with subtle, yet appropriate digs at Williams’s and Feather’s articles in the same issue), topped by the photo Bradley recently took of Armstrong in his Den, shared in our previous post, paired with a photo Bradley took of Armstrong’s first cornet, on display at the New Orleans Jazz Museum (then and now):

And here it is in full, “Roses for Satchmo”:

In case you’re wondering which musicians Jack was responsible for, we do have a bunch of handwritten pages in the Jack Bradley Collection with quotes from the following musicians (in this order): Max Kaminsky, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Budd Johnson, Chris Clifton, Walter Johnson, Johnny Russell, Bingie Madison, Les Carr, Bob Haggart, Vic Dickenson, Herb Hall, Lou McGarity, Bernard Flood, Charlie Holmes, Bobby Hackett, Bob Wilber, Harry Glantz, Bud Freeman, Harry Lim, Ralph Sutton, Jimmy McPartland, Billy Butterfield, T-Bone Walker, Cliff Leeman, Punch Miller, Tyree Glenn, Ernie Royal, Dave McKenna, Eddie Condon, Benny Morton, Gus Johnson, Jake Hanna, Bill Ratzenberger, Clark Terry, Buck Clayton, Tiny Grimes, Jack Lesberg, Wild Bill Davison, Roy Eldridge, and Joe Newman.

It does appear that Walter Johnson, Johnny Russell, Les Carr, and Bill Ratzenberger didn’t make the final cut. According to Bradley’s note, Ratzenberger was a trumpet player and manufacturer of Jet-Tone mouthpieces. He told Bradley, “There will never be another Louis Armstrong. He has created a scene which will never be duplicated.” The other comments that didn’t make it are all on the same page of Bradley’s handwritten notes so for completeness, here’s that page:

There were three other musicians Bradley officially spoke to sometime in May or June: trumpeters Clark Terry, Ray Nance, and Billy Butterfield. Bradley was commissioned to do a story for Saturday Review’s upcoming July 4 issue devoted to Armstrong and he decided to host a trumpeter’s roundtable with these three greats. First, for those who haven’t seen it, the cover of the issue, with a beautiful color photo of Louis taken by David Redfern in 1967:

And here is the edited version of the conversation that appeared in the magazine, spread across two pages:

And now, an extra special bonus: the above article might take the average reader maybe 3 or 4 minutes to read….but Bradley talked with Terry, Nance, and Butterfield for 35 minutes….and tape recorded the entire conversation. A couple of warnings up front: the sound quality isn’t the greatest and this conversation is not suitable for children! The three trumpeters are supremely relaxed and drop curses into the conversation right from the outset, but the love for Louis comes shining through.

In perhaps the most interesting portion of the conversation, Bradley prods them to say something negative against Joe Glaser, Armstrong’s longtime manager who had died the previous year. Bradley firmly believed Glaser worked Armstrong too hard and scoffed at the notion that Armstrong needed Glaser to become a star, but all three trumpeters actually defend the relationship, arguing that good talent needs good representation, Armstrong wasn’t stupid and knew what he getting into, and the terms of his deal with Glaser were actually favorable and something any of these three trumpeters would have gladly lived with. Needless to say, Bradley didn’t put any of that into the published article, but it’s all here for the record–here’s the audio:

We’ll close with one more piece of audio to tie everything together, featuring the two men at the heart of this series, Louis Armstrong and Jack Bradley. Armstrong woke up on July 4 out in California, where he celebrated his 70th with a huge concert at the Shrine in Los Angeles the night before. He also did multiple TV interviews while out there and filmed his part in a Johnny Carson primetime special, Sun City Scandals. Meanwhile, over in New York City, Armstrong’s birthday was celebrated on jazz critic John S. Wilson’s “The World of Jazz” radio show, broadcast over WQXR, with special guest Jack Bradley. Bradley got to talk about his hero and brought some rarities from his private collection and–here’s the complete broadcast (minus a few seconds lost on “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” due to flipping the tape):

It was really an amazing time. One year earlier, Armstrong barely emerged out of intensive care for the second time and was in a dark, depressed state, saddened by the death of Joe Glaser and worried that he might never play the trumpet again and would just be remembered as an old Uncle Tom. In one year, he was back on top and musicians, young and old, Black and white, were paying their respects from all corners of the world. Bradley summed it up with a paragraph in his Hot Notes column of July 1970:

And there would be more: as referenced briefly in the article, George Wein would pull out all stops to celebrate Armstrong’s 70th at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 10. Bradley would be there for that one and we’ll have his photos in our next post!