“My Life’s an Open Book”: Al “Jazzbo” Collins Interviews Louis Armstrong, April 1957

Our previous post discussed the inspiration behind Louis Armstrong’s composition, “Someday You’ll Be Sorry,” and the similarities between that song and “Goodnight Angel,” a 1938 pop tune eventually recorded by Armstrong for the 1957 Decca album Louis and the Angels. This led to a discussion of that supremely beautiful, yet somewhat undervalued LP on Facebook–here’s one of Louis Armstrong’s three copies, this one marked with an “X” and a little piece of tape on the cover as a way of signaling that he had dubbed it to reel-to-reel tape:

This led me to toy with going down the rabbit hole of doing an entire post devoted to this album–and I still might, if there’s interest–but then I remembered something that might be more fun to share as a holiday present of sorts. In April 1957, Louis sat down for an interview with famed disc jockey Al “Jazzbo” Collins on Jazzbo’s WRCA (NBC radio in New York City) show. According to a newspaper clipping I recently dug up, the interview would be interspersed throughout a six hour block of programming on the appropriately named “Marathon.” Here’s the clipping, from April 27, 1957:

The first part of the “Marathon” broadcast with Jazzbo would be devoted to promoting Louis and the Angels, which was recorded over the course of two sessions, with Armstrong recording six selections on January 29, 1957 and six more on January 30. Louis’s friend Paul Studer was there and took several photos, all of which were donated by Studer’s family in 2017; here’s a session photo with Louis and arranger Sy Oliver in the center of the photo, with some of the choir in the foreground (and Louis’s valet Doc Pugh seated in the back):

This was all coming on the heels of the many sessions that made up the 4-LP set Satchmo: A Musical Autobiography, recorded throughout December 1956 and January 1947. That deluxe set would require some extra time for Decca producer Milt Gabler to assemble–he would have it in stores by August–so Louis and the Angels came first, being rushed into release by May (it’s first mentioned by Variety in its May 16 issue, but Decca had already issued a single of “The Prisoner’s Song” backed by “You’re a Heavenly Thing” by April 24).

In addition to promoting Louis and the Angels, Armstrong sat down with Jazzbo Collins when he was in the middle of a three-week run at the Roxy Theater at 51st Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan. Here’s the cover of the program for that engagement:

Paul Studer was there, too, and took a photo from the audience of Louis and the All Stars doing their thing while the Roxy floorshow dancers took over the rest of the gigantic stage:

With that preamble out of the way, a bit more about Louis and Al “Jazzbo” Collins, who had been a fixture on the WNEW airwaves since moving to New York in 1950, in addition to getting added notoriety with his appearances on Steve Allen’s Tonight Show. Going through our Archives, we have multiple photos of Satchmo and Jazzbo together; here’s a nice one in color:

Jazzbo attending an Armstrong opening at the nightclub Basin Street, which Louis and the All Stars headlined at yearly between 1954 and 1957:

A photo of Jazzbo with Louis, Lucille, and an unknown man (any ideas out there?) clipped out by Louis and used at some point on one of his collages (a piece of old Scotch tape is still visible across Jazzbo’s head):

Jazzbo did made the back of one of Louis’s collaged tape boxes as Louis cut out a tiny photo of Collins’s head and affixed it to a display of his records:

And to bring it all full circle, the April 1957 interview we’re about to share was photographed and Louis included it on another of his tape box collages, as seen here:

I can’t quite tell who that is on the lower left of the box–it might be Joe Glaser–but someone–not Louis–has written “Taken It All In On Louis + Jazzbo.” Even in the photo at the top of the box, where Armstrong and Collins are examining the Roxy program, there’s an unidentified man with glasses seated next to Armstrong–perhaps it’s Jerry Damon, WRCA’s newsman.

Jazzbo spoke to Armstrong for nearly an hour and, professional that he was, made sure to insert multiple breaks, throwing it over to music and news breaks that would all be inserted later. After the conclusion of the interview, Collins made sure Armstrong received a copy of the raw conversation on tape, which is what are sharing today!

(As usual, when we share large chunks of Armstrong’s private recordings, we do include watermarked beeps that go off every 30 seconds, just to prevent any unauthorized use or commercialization of this material. This is for research purposes only and we’re thrilled to be able to share it with Pops fans around the world.)

The first segment actually does open up with some music as, after Jazzbo’s introduction, a live version of “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” from the Decca LP At the Crescendo is played. Jazzbo explains that he’s going to be asking many questions Louis has already answered before, but Louis in nonplussed, replying, “My life’s an open book.”

There’s a bit of discussion of Louis and the Angels beginning at 4:50, as Louis gives credit for the idea to Decca and Sy Oliver, noting that he just had the arrangements waiting for him on a music stand when he showed up to the studio (we still have some of those charts in the Archives). Jazzbo asks Louis to name some of the songs featured on the album and he does a pretty good job of recalling some of the titles three months later, but he mistakenly lists “Angel Eyes”–I wish he had done that one! There’s also a mention of “The Prisoner’s Song,” which both Armstrong and Collins call “If I Had the Wings of an Angel,” a line in the song, and how Louis performed it for prisoners at Salt Lake City back in the 1940s. Then, showing how everything blended together, Louis notes that they also did all of the old “Dixieland” tunes with “modern” backgrounds (there’s two loaded words for you), a reference to the Satchmo: A Musical Autobiography sessions. After talking about “Mahogany Hall Stomp,” Jazzbo introduces the “first part” of Louis and the Angels, concluding this first segment–here’s the audio!

After a chunk of Louis and the Angels, Part 2 opens with Jazzbo re-introducing Louis and giving some more details about the Roxy engagement. Louis calls the Roxy his “old stomping grounds,” mentioning an all-star engagement he was a part of there in 1945 with Bill Robinson, the Delta Rhythm Boys, and the Peters Sisters, as well as the All Stars’ first engagement there in April 1950. Jazzbo begins to launch into an apology of sorts for asking the “same old questions” about New Orleans, but Louis immediately jumps in and starts happily reminiscing about his upbringing and how everyone in his neighborhood helped each other out.

Asked about the earliest instance of when he knew music was meant for him, Louis talks about his days of singing in a quartet. Now, the Roxy engagement was billed as a celebration of Louis’s “40 Years in Show Business”–how did they come up with that year? Asked about it, Armstrong talks about playing at Henry Matranga’s honky tonk, an engagement that began in 1917. (Obviously, this whole thing was a marketing ploy on Joe Glaser’s behalf. In 1941, Armstrong celebrated “25 Years in Show Business,” meaning he would have started in 1916; and in 1965, a Carnegie Hall show was tied to his 50th anniversary as a musician, which dated his debut to 1915!)

After a little conversation about of the Colored Waif’s Home, Jazzbo asks a seemingly innocent question at 4:01 about the last time Louis was in New Orleans. Louis thinks about it and recalls when he was named King of the Zulus in 1949, then correctly remembers another time he went back home to play a one nighter in 1952. But then Armstrong grows serious and talks about how New Orleans passed a law in 1956 prohibiting integrated bands from performing in public and he couldn’t go back there with the All Stars. Louis even mentions how Memphis used to be a hard town for Black bands but now it was much better, while New Orleans seemingly went backwards. Louis says it will take public demand to change it alas, it didn’t come; New Orleans kept the law in place until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Louis didn’t step foot in his hometown again until October 1965. Here’s the audio of this segment, perhaps the highlight of the interview:

After the serious way the previous segment ended, part 3 of the conversation opens with something completely different: a discussion of Armstrong’s “Lose Weight the Satchmo Way” diet chart! Though Armstrong’s fascination with laxatives is usually played up for laughs–such as the famous Swiss Kriss “keyhole” photo–you can tell how heartfelt and serious he is about doing this to help his fans get healthy. He even estimates that Joe Glaser’s office had sent out over 20,000 copies; he’s probably not wrong as we have many letters from this period from housewives writing in for a copy of Armstrong’s “reducing chart.”

Armstrong then talks about turning 57 on the Fourth of July, adding, “You wouldn’t know it!” He brags about how he handles one-nighters even when the rest of his band is exhausted, noting that sometimes he only got two or three hours of sleep. At 2:30, Jazzbo asks about Louis’s routine of keeping his chops up, leading to a discussion of witch hazel, Sweet Spirits of Nitre (which the Food and Drug Administration banned in 1982), and Franz Schuritz’s Ansatz Creme, which Schuritz renamed Louis Armstrong Lip Salve.

At 4:36, Jazzbo asks how much Louis practices and responds that when he’s working every night, he only needs to warm up for about 15 minutes a day! But then he drops in a mention of a time he had to stay off the trumpet for six months, which occurred after he returned to the United States in 1935, mentioning that he went back to a “first grade” method book to build his chops back up. He closes the segment by explaining why was against taking vacations; Pops was a tough man. Here’s the audio:

Collins teased playing Armstrong’s records with Ella Fitzgerald in the previous segment so part 4 is devoted to Louis’s memories of Ella, saying he remembered her first day with Chick Webb. Sure enough, we do have a photo in our Archives of Ella in the 1930s, signed to Louis, “To Satchomouth, the greatest person I know”:

Armstrong and Collins then talk about Fitzgerald’s impression of Armstrong, which Armstrong seemed to enjoy. Ella and Louis had been released a few months earlier and Louis spotlights the ending of “Tenderly,” as well as the way Ella sings “Moonlight in Vermont” on that seminal album. Louis also mentions that he still owns Chick Webb’s “Stairway to the Stars” with Fitzgerald singing–sure enough, it’s still part of the Louis Armstrong Collection in our Archives!

At 1:58, Jazzbo turns his attention to Gordon Jenkins, praising his work on the 1951 Decca “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” which Louis remained very proud of. Louis praises Jenkins and Sy Oliver as his two favorite arrangers, saying, “Those boys, they dig me.” At 3:17, Louis reminisces about “Blueberry Hill” and how it reminded him of the choirs that sang in his church in New Orleans. He also praises Billy Butterfield’s work on that recording–here’s the audio of part 4:

Part 5 opens with Louis sneaking in a “carbon copy” joke before Jazzbo turns his attention to the Columbia recording of Ambassador Satch, asking Louis for his memories of Europe. Around 1:30, Louis tells stories of France and even speaks a little French! At 2:40, Louis talks about his desire to go to Russia, saying that Russians could swing and using his Decca recording of “Otch-tchor-ni-ya” as evidence. Of course, this is April 1957 and any attempts to send Armstrong to Russia evaporated after he blasted President Eisenhower and the United States government over their handling of the Little Rock situation in September 1957.

At 3:15, Louis talks about the response he received in Ghana the previous year, relating how a “110-year-old man” danced during his performance of “Royal Garden Blues” and how he saw a woman who looked just like his mother Mayann. Armstrong mentions bringing back two dozen records–“And every one of them is wailing”–and once again, the Archives bear him out as we have several hi-life records the he brought back from that 1956 trip, on 78s, LPs, and even on tape. Armstrong even tells a story about Count Basie coming over to his house, hearing one of those Ghanian records, and taking it home with him!

At 5:02, Collins mentions that Ambassador Satch is Louis’s most popular recording, noting that it “outsold them all.” Louis gives credit to the iconic cover photo, describing it with great laughter. Here’s the audio:

The beginning of Part 6 is marred by some audio issues as it runs a little fast, putting both Jazzbo and Louis in an higher register. Don’t let it bother you, though, as there’s some good stuff here about Louis’s many vocal duet partners over the years, with praise for Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Velma Middleton. Louis compliments Bing Crosby, calling him “the boss,” and tells some wonderful stories about the filming of High Society (I like how Armstrong got the reputation as “One Take Satch”). Louis also gushes over Grace Kelly’s acting ability, but then, at 3:10, he slips in a joke about Raymond Massey as Abe Lincoln in Illinois and how he would go up to Harlem and “free the Cotton Club girls!” This was one of Louis’s favorite risque jokes, one he used on his private tapes and even on stage with the All Stars. This cracks up Jazzbo, who tries to keep it together by talking seriously about Massey, but he can’t help laughing some more over Armstrong’s joke!

At 3:55, Jazzbo mentions Armstrong’s 1933 recording of “Laughin’ Louie,” talking about how “frantic” they were when they made it and how Victor chose to put it out on its smaller Bluebird subsidiary label. Armstrong talks about the ending, which came from “some little operatic thing we used to play in the symphony orchestra with silent pictures in Chicago.” He lovingly scats a bit of it, but admits he couldn’t think of the name of it; it wouldn’t be until the 1990s that Vince Giordano correctly identified the piece as Minnie T. Wright’s “Love-Song.”

At 4:47, Armstrong gives a detailed description about how Erskine Tate directed the band at the Vendome Theater as they accompanied silent films. This leads to another one of Armstrong’s favorite anecdotes, about the time he got distracted by John Barrymore losing his leg to Moby Dick in The Sea Beast, causing him to lose his place–a priceless story!

At the end of the segment, Jazzbo mentions that he’s going to play some of those duet records with Bing, Billie, and Ella, and Louis once again gets in a plug for Velma, talking about how much audiences loved their duets on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and “That’s My Desire.” Louis wasn’t blinded by starpower, he was truly devoted to Velma–here’s the audio:

Part 7 begins with Jazzbo inviting newsman Jerry Damon to join them–as mentioned earlier, perhaps he’s the man with glasses in the photo above on the back of Louis’s tape box. This segment was to kick off hour four of “Marathon” and is devoted to Louis’s “favorites.” Unfortunately for Collins, Armstrong didn’t like to play favorites, especially on the air, so his answers are mostly noncommittal, saying he “likes all music as long as it’s played good.” He does eventually call out Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby for male vocalists.

At 1:30, Jazzbo asks about rock ‘n’ roll and “skiffle” music; Louis is nonplussed, mentioning that Dan Burley used to do the skiffle at “them chittlin’ rags in Chicago.” He talks about how rock just came from the sanctified churches (“with the banjo,” he adds, an interesting detail) and tells a story about a hymn he heard two kids sing at cornetist Buddy Petit’s funeral in 1931 that later became the basis for the rock ‘n’ roll ballad “Pledging My Love,” which Louis recorded for Decca in 1955. Armstrong then decrees the preponderance of “styles” in music and delivers his mantra about how “a musician should never stamp themselves as one style noway.”

At 3:32, Jazzbo questions Louis on a quote he gave about folk music, “Folk music? Why, Daddy, I don’t know no other kind of music but folk music. I ain’t ever heard a horse sing a song.” This quote is still one of Armstrong’s most famous, but I don’t know, hearing him laugh so hard at it, it sure seems like this might have been the first time he heard it. (Let the record show that it was first attributed to Louis in an article by Eddy Gilmore written in May 1956 while Louis was in London.) Armstrong does admit he “might have” said it because he was asked so many questions and couldn’t remember everything he said. He then tells an anecdote about the time he was asked about “Big Four” summit meeting in Geneva and Armstrong, believing them to be musicians, said, “If they could blow, it’s all right!” But at 4:30, Armstrong says he’s never been into politics, which, again, is somewhat ironic given his Little Rock comments were just about five months away.

At 4:48, Jazzbo gets back on the “favorites” kick and asks Armstrong about his favorite instrumental groups. Once again, Armstrong leaves out specifics, and says he likes everything from trios to big bands as long as they play right. But then at 5:05, Jazzbo grills Armstrong on his criticism of “modern jazz.” This is a very interesting segment because Jazzbo was an advocate of those sounds and presented many “modern” musicians at a series of concerts in Central Park later that summer. He asks Louis if he still felt critical towards bop and Louis’s first response is to brush it off as a publicity thing, like the time Walter Winchell had a feud with Ben Bernie. At 5:30, Louis even mentions Dizzy Gillespie living right around the corner from him in Corona, Queens, and how every day, Dizzy was at his house or he was at Dizzy’s.

But then Jazzbo asks, “But could you hear some of the things now that Dizzy’s doing that maybe you didn’t hear before?” Louis springs into action and says he could always he hear what Dizzy was doing because Dizzy was a “first-class musician” but he frowns on “youngsters” thinking Dizzy’s style is one they should adopt and learning to play like him without getting his experience. “His chops aren’t developed enough to play that way so in a year’s time, he’s finished,” Louis says, insisting that he was taught as a young man to develop his embouchure properly. Jazzbo gets off the subject and asks Louis if he has any of his own records at home. “That’s all I’ve got in my files,” Armstrong responds–again, he wasn’t lying! Here’s the audio:

Part 8 begins with Jazzbo asking Louis if he prefers movies, television shows, or just concerts and Louis answers honestly that he likes the one-nighters, telling a story about how he always got frustrated on the sets of films by being told to keep quiet anytime he tried to warm up on his trumpet. At 1:30, Jazzbo asks Louis for his favorite country–and again, to no surprise, Louis doesn’t answer; Jazzbo good-naturedly pushes back but Louis won’t take the bait. At 2:18, Louis does tell another of his favorite stories, about the time he heard the Roman New Orleans Jazz Band in Italy in 1949 and how it sounded like the tailgate days in New Orleans.

A mention of England leads Louis to praising Humphrey Lyttelton, talking about the time Lyttelton played “That’s My Home” for Louis the previous year. This segment ends with Jazzbo asking Louis about the time he dedicated “Mahogany Hall Stomp” to Princess Margaret–here’s the audio:

Part 9 was designed to kick off the final hour of the “Marathon” program and is devoted to a discussion of the trumpet. Louis talks about cleaning his horn every night, breaking in new horns, and how he started playing his current French Selmer horn the previous year and he would probably stick with it for four or five years. At 1:50, Jazzbo asks about the difference between trumpets and cornets, which Louis does his best to answer before explaining that he only made the switch when Erskine Tate told him his cornet didn’t look good next to all the trumpets in his orchestra.

At 2:37, Jazzbo asks about mouthpieces, which causes Louis to admit that some musicians were “a little too buggy” about always switching mouthpieces. He says he feels the mouthpiece is more important than the horn and mentions that he always keeps his on him. Jazzbo asks to see it and Louis produces it in an “Alligator pouch” according to Collins; we have a little leather mouthpiece pouch in the Archives and have to wonder if it’s the same one from this interview. At 4:10, Louis plays his mouthpiece and explains how it “eulogizes the chops,” and even gets in one more dig on
“this modern music”–here’s the audio:

Alas, we must end on a bit of an anticlimax as for some reason, the audio level almost disappears entirely towards the end of this final segment. Jazzbo opens by thanking Louis and saying he enjoyed it more than anything he had ever done previously. Asked for any feelings about his career, Louis says, “Well, I appreciate the past–it wasn’t bad–but this future ain’t doing so bad either!” He rejects any notion of retiring, confident in his own abilities and even stating emphatically, “I’m my own public.” He gives one more shoutout to his trumpet routine–followed by one more shoutout to the importance of keeping his stomach clean and eliminating gas! It’s at this point that the sound starts to deteriorate but you can still hear Jazzbo thanking him and plugging “Lose Weight the Satchmo Way.” “My slogan is leave it all behind you,” Louis says as the tape comes to an end–here’s the audio:

That concludes the raw conversation as recorded by Louis Armstrong and Al “Jazzbo” Collins in April 1957, but I wanted to leave you with one more gift: a Spotify playlist of the music I believe Jazzbo spun in between the segments! Again, without the original broadcast to compare it to, this is mostly speculation but we know the “Marathon” broadcast began with Louis’s “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” from At the Crescendo and we know the first two segments led to Jazzbo playing Louis and the Angels. There are clear references to Louis’s recordings with Ella Fitzgerald and Gordon Jenkins and mentions of duets with Velma Middleton, Bing Crosby, and others, in addition to Ambassador Satch. I went on Spotify and pulled all of the above and got a 3 hour and 46 minute playlist! When you add in one hour of Louis and Jazzbo talking, plus all the commercial breaks and news breaks, it’s probably pretty close. Alas, there are no clear references to other 1950s gems like Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy, Satch Plays Fats, Satchmo Serenades, or live things like At the Crescendo, Satchmo at Pasadena, or Satchmo at Symphony Hall so I left those out. (I almost included “Otch-Tchnor-Ni-Ya” and “Pledging My Love” since Louis mentioned them, but chose not to.)

Anyway, we hope you enjoyed this precious conversation and we hope you enjoy this playlist–Pops is Tops!