Timex All Star Jazz Show Celebration Part 1: The Script and First Rehearsal

[An earlier draft of this post celebrated the 65th anniversary of this broadcast…but the New Year got me and it’s actually 66 years! Even though it’s not a round number, we will continue the celebration because it’s worth celebrating no matter the day or year!]

66 years ago this evening, on January 7, 1959, CBS televised the fourth (and final) Timex All Star Jazz Show. Like the previous three, it featured Louis Armstrong heavily, including his one and only duet with Dizzy Gillespie, an immortal piece of film if there ever was one. To celebrate the anniversary of this landmark telecast, we peaked into our Archives–and struck paydirt. So much so that we have decided to turn this anniversary celebration into a multi-part series, one that might make you want to call out of work to soak it all up properly (though if you’re in New York City, you don’t want to miss Jazz Congress at Jazz at Lincoln Center and especially the panel at 2 p.m. on January 9, “From Pops to Dizzy: The Passing of the Torch,” featuring Bruce Harris, Jon Faddis, Hyland Harris, Bria Skonberg, and Andromeda Turre!).

We don’t have the time to go into a ton of backstory, but the first of these primetime spectaculars aired on NBC on December 30, 1957, and was hosted by Steve Allen. In addition to Louis, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Dave Brubeck, Jack Teagarden, Carmen McRae, and Gene Krupa appeared. The second Timex extravaganza (which is available on YouTube here) moved over to CBS and was hosted by Gary Moore, in addition to featuring Lionel Hampton’s Orchestra, Jack Teagarden, Gerry Mulligan, and the Dukes of Dixieland. For the third installment, broadcast on November 11, 1958, the whole operation moved to the Americana Hotel in Miami, was hosted by Hoagy Carmichael, and featured Louis alongside Les Brown, Bob Crosby, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Chico Hamilton, and more.

The third installment was knocked by some of the critics who didn’t like the Miami setting, plus Armstrong was battling some issues with his chops that evening (Les Brown trumpeter Wes Hensel recalled Louis picking at a scab on his lip with surgical tools until Hensel threw them in the trash and told Louis to just let it heal on its own; the next time Louis saw Hensel, he told him, “Man you was right. They healed
right up. I got a high F like you wouldn’t believe!”). Thus, for the fourth special, it was decided to bring the show back to New York City and film it with none other than “The Great One” himself as host, Jackie Gleason.

Jazz journalist George T. Simon had been involved with the previous shows and was tasked with writing the script, alongside Mack Bing–and thankfully, we still have a copy of the original draft, saved as part of our Jack Bradley Collection (Jack wasn’t on the scene yet in January 1959 so it was most likely given to him later by Louis or given to Jeann Failows at the time of filming). Here’s the cover:

The first draft of the script is fascinating and also a bit frustrating when compared to what made it to air. Here’s how Simon and Bing envisioned it:

Yes, folks, if you’re reading closely, the eventual duet between Armstrong and Gillespie was originally envisioned as a three-way trumpet conversation with Roy Eldridge. Here’s the corresponding pages of the script:

And later in the show, “Body and Soul” was originally conceived as a feature for Coleman Hawkins and Armstrong; again, here’s the script:

Going back to the timing rundown, I don’t know how Simon and Bing thought they could cram so many numbers into a one hour slot so some stuff would have to go. Interestingly, there remains the duet between Armstrong and Gillespie and Hawkins even plays “Body and Soul” later in the show so why the decision was made to remove Eldridge from the trumpet piece and Armstrong from “Body and Soul” remains a mystery. (This is pure conjecture, but though there was admiration between them all, there was some inherent tension baked into Armstrong’s relationships with both Eldridge and Hawkins so perhaps someone–not necessarily Armstrong, maybe Joe Glaser–voiced displeasure at the pairings. However, when we get into the rehearsal photos momentarily, neither Eldridge or Hawkins appears in any photos from the first two days of rehearsals, which took place in the evening. Thus, perhaps they were booked (maybe at the Metropole) and it was decided to not try anything different on the day of the show since Louis and Dizzy already worked out their routine.)

The last bit of the script that’s worth sharing is the finale, which was originally supposed to be a jam over Ellington’s “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue”–what a moment that would have been (especially compared to the televised finale, but more on that later).

If that’s not enough of a bonus, it’s time to turn to one of Louis Armstrong’s famed reel-to-reel tapes, made the same week as the Timex show. It opens with Louis addressing “Dear Nick,” a reference to his friend, Canadian pianist Nick Aldrich, perhaps best known for being part of the Tramp Band in the 1943 film Stormy Weather. Louis was putting together a tape for Aldrich of some of the moments they spent together earlier in the decade but decided to open up with a little “ditty,” him and Lucille going over the script for the Timex All Star Jazz Show, which was going to air, “Wednesday, tomorrow night,” meaning this was taped on Tuesday, January 6, 1959. Louis mentions that Aldrich was “such a wonderful guest,” meaning he must have attended the rehearsals. After the introduction, the tape of Louis and Lucille begins at 1:20–and unfortunately, the sound quality diminishes quite a bit, which is unfortunate. Though it starts off on the cloudy side, it does become listenable after awhile and paints a lovely portrait of Louis and Lucille’s offstage love for one another.

It opens with Lucille preparing drinks, with Louis asking for orange juice, noting he’ll get to his Cherry Heering–his alcoholic beverage of choice–later. At 2:43, Louis mentions he had rehearsal tonight and makes a reference to “these chicks came with these beatnik stockings on,” chuckling at the thought; the only women on the program were Barbara Dane, Ruth Olay, and Dakota Staton, so maybe he was referring to one of them. After some more laughter, Lucille pulls out the script and they humorously bicker about where to start. A second draft of the script must have been delivered by this point as there are more lines between Armstrong and Gleason here than in the physical copy held in our Archives.

For example, there’s a whole new sequence where Armstrong says, “I sure like those fine modern sounds Brother Dizzy Gillespie’s making over there. That Diz, he’s a real happy swinger.” Louis then turns to Lucille and comments, “Dizzy’s doing his number, what’s it, ‘St. Louis Woman,’ or something, clapping hands and all that–well, that’s their prerogatives.” At 4:30, Louis gets in a mention of Swiss Kriss and says he has go now! Louis says he has to “let them remnants out” but Lucille stops him, saying, “Yeah, well, you got a tight one, you can hold it.” At 4:47, Lucille notes in the script that Dizzy is playing “Toodle-lama-lama,” a reference to “Umbrella Man,” meaning the original Roy Eldridge plan was already scrapped by the second day of rehearsals.

Lucille then reads a whole new page of dialogue that was to go after “Umbrella Man,” with Gleason getting in a “to the moon” reference and Dizzy doing the old routine of using lots of big words comedically. Lucille keeps going with the script, reading both parts of dialogue between Gleason and Ellington that was to go before a medley of hits that was eventually axed. They next do the segments devoted to Gene Krupa, Dakota Staton, and George Shearing, with Lucille flipping the pages as there aren’t too many lines for Louis. At 9:26, Lucille reads Gleason’s introduction to Louis and Coleman Hawkins’s duet on “Body and Soul,” which was still in the program as of January 6! My guess is Hawkins and Eldridge finally showed up to dress rehearsal on show day and Roy, having lost his feature with Louis and Dizzy, was given the trumpet duties on “Body and Soul” so he’d have something to do.

This was to be followed by Ruth Olay and Dakota Staton’s vocals before Lucille reads Gleason’s introduction for the “Diminuendo and Crescendo and Blue” finale. As we’ll share in the second part, there are lots of photos of Louis rehearsing with the Ellington band on day two of rehearsals, but my hunch is when it came to show day, perhaps someone got nervous about Ellington’s composition as the opening and closing portions alone take about six minutes to play through in full. It must have been a last minute decision to change it to a jam on “Perdido,” which proved to be a trainwreck, but again, more on that in a future part of this series.

At 10:45, Louis flips through the script and realizes, “They’ve got to stipulate ‘Now You Has Jazz,’ and all that,” a reference to something that came up at the first rehearsal that we’ll have photos of below. Finally, at 11:45, Lucille says, “Maybe you better go take your crap now,” telling him not to stay there long because she’ll be asleep soon, causing Louis to laugh. Here’s the audio!

With the script written and the musicians lined up, it was time to book the rehearsals; here are the initial schedules:

And now, the gold. One of the photographers assigned to shoot the rehearsals was Maynard Frank Wolfe, a photo journalist some might know for his later book on Rube Goldberg (here’s his short obituary from 2005). I don’t know which periodical hired Wolfe as I’ve never seen any of his photos published anywhere but at some point, he met Jack Bradley and let Jack know that he had negatives that featured Louis Armstrong. That was good enough for Jack, who bought the negatives outright–and as far as I can tell, did nothing with them. They were finally discovered in Jack’s Cape Cod home by the intrepid Mike Persico in 2018, who hand-delivered them to the Louis Armstrong Archives that year. In 2020, with the pandemic raging, Persico found another few sets of Wolfe’s negatives, which we only recently finished scanning. Bradley ended up with over a thousand of Wolfe’s photos, including many taken at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival and at the 1958 Timex All Star Jazz Show but for obvious purposes, today, we will stick to the photos he took in 1959–of which we have scanned 330 negatives!

Even in our densest Jack Bradley post, we have never shared 100 photos, never mind 330–perhaps this will give someone the idea for a coffee table book some day–but we’ve decided to break this post into multiple parts and will share the best from each day based on the rehearsal times above.

Thus, we’ll begin at the rehearsal hall on the second floor of the CBS Broadcast Center at 524 West 57th Street on Monday, January 5. Perhaps Wolfe got there early and shot all the other artists, but Bradley wasn’t interested in those negatives so we don’t have anything to share from the Dukes of Dixieland, George Shearing, Dakota Staton, Ruth Olay, and Dizzy Gillespie’s group. But at 10:15 p.m., Armstrong strode in to rehearse with Gillespie and Roy Eldridge–only, judging by Wolfe’s photos, Eldridge didn’t show. Still, Dizzy was there with his group and that was enough to get started and to allow Wolfe to start shooting–here’s the first batch!

We begin with some photos of Dizzy alone, which might be from Dizzy’s rehearsal with his own group; however, Louis soon magically appears so it’s also possible Wolfe was just shooting close-ups.

Pianist Junior Mance in the background:

And there’s Louis!

Wolfe apparently didn’t think to get any photos of Louis and Dizzy together on that first rehearsal except the one above. Thankfully, that changed in a major way in the next two days as we’ll have dozens of incredible shots of the two trumpet titans together to share. For now though, we’ll switch to some close-ups of Louis blowing:

Applying lip salve:

Louis, with glasses in hand, checking out the script:

Glasses on, reacting to something with some goofy expressions:

Then glasses off again, all business:

According to the schedule, at 10:45, Louis and his All Stars were due to rehearse with guests drummer Gene Krupa and trumpeter Bobby Hackett. Looking at Wolfe’s photos, the All Stars were on time, as was Hackett, but Krupa did not show (The Minneapolis Star published an AP photo that day of Krupa greeting girlfriend Patricia Bowler in Chicago so perhaps he wasn’t even in town). Time was precious so they went on without drums–here are some Wolfe photos of Louis and Hackett along with Trummy Young on trombone, Peanuts Hucko on clarinet, Billy Kyle on piano, and Mort Herbert on bass:

Some close-ups of Hackett:

Louis and Bobby together (as Louis once said, “I’m the coffee, Bobby’s the cream”):

Next, a good example of what happens when you don’t show up to rehearsal. In the script, Louis would do one number with Bobby Hackett and later in the show, one with Gene Krupa; as broadcast, it was all mashed into one performance, “Ole Miss,” mashed together with a Barbara Dane vocal on “Old Fashioned Love.” But at the January 5 rehearsal, Armstrong and trombonist Trummy Young obviously went into their stage routine on “Now You Has Jazz” from High Society, as evidenced by the next batch of photos. The producers must have been charmed and made space for “Now You Has Jazz” to make it into the final show, topped off with a few hot choruses of “Tiger Rag.” Though it wasn’t yet in the script that Louis and Lucille read on tape on the following evening, this segment did make it into the final show.

Here’s Wolfe’s photos of Armstrong and Young in action:

We’ll close out today’s post with some more close-ups Wolfe took of Armstrong in action:

That will conclude part one but we’ll be back soon with part two, which will cover the rehearsals of January 6, 1959, once again featuring Armstrong, Gillespie, and Hackett, as well as the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Gene Krupa and more!