Louis Armstrong, maestro of jazz, would be a good subject for one of his own songs—a black rascal raised in a waifs' home, whose first real job was playing on a Mississippi steamboat; a headliner unimpressed by contracts, with a jail sentence in his past for using drugs. Okeh, a subsidiary of Columbia Phonograph Co., knows all this. So does Victor Talking Machine but just the same they were fighting last week over Louis Armstrong. The courts in California were going to have to decide whether he was bound to go on making Okeh records for another year or whether he could sign up with Victor.
In Los Angeles the bone of the contention was doing a nightly turn at the Sebastian Cotton Club. It was a typical Louis Armstrong act, like the one he has given in New Orleans, his hometown, where there is a special cigar named for him; in Philadelphia, where a musician in the audience once accused him of playing on a trick trumpet, enraging him so that he smashed it, sent out for a new one before he would go on with the show; in Manhattan where he once took a phial from his vestpocket, drank the contents (said to be dope) with a swaggering toast to the crowd.
He always bounces out of the wings, a square, bullet-headed man, smooth shaven except for a tiny marceled patch where his fontanel was 30 years ago. He brandishes his trumpet. He gives a roguish grin. His eyes roll around in his head like white, three-penny marbles.
"Ladies & Gentlemen, this is the Reverend Satchelmouth Armstrong. . . ." He gets his head up to an amplifier. His June 13, 1932 natural voice is almost whisper-small. "Chinatown, My Chinatown, Chinatown, Chinatown. . . ." He rarely has more than a rough idea of the words. "All right, boys, I'll take the next, five bars." He throws back his head, raises his trumpet, bleats noisily but marvelously. He has struck 200 high C's in succession, ended on high F. He slides all around a tune as easily as if he were doing it on a saxophone. He triple-tongues it in a way that has earned him the reputation of being one of the world's greatest trumpeters.
The Negroes behind Louis Armstrong are carrying the tune, when it can be detected behind his raspy, comical singing, his fancy trumpeting. Their rhythm is flawless, thanks to their leader who may smoke Muggles* to make his own performance hot but who realizes perfectly the need for tireless rehearsing. Louis Armstrong may have developed a fancy man's taste for clothes, travel with 20 trunks full of them. But no black man works harder than he does. In Depression not many phonograph artists are worth fighting over but Victor and Okeh are both aware that more than 100,000 Louis Armstrong records sold during the past year, that he is one of the few orchestra leaders whom radio has not overpopularized. Radio, as a matter of fact, is a little wary of his improvisations. Several times he has been switched quickly off the air for getting profane or slipping in sly remarks about his friends' extra-marital escapades.
College Music Deplored