“At Home in Corona”: A Memorable Audio Letter from Louis Armstrong, February 6, 1956

A scratchy record can be heard faintly in the background. It’s “Stranger in Paradise,” but it’s not Tony Bennett’s hit recording, it’s an obscure Italian pop singer, Ray Martino. After a few moments, the familar voice of Louis Louis Armstrong speaks:

“At home in Corona, Long Island, New York. February 26th, 1956.”

All of a sudden, another voice calls out from the background.

“February 6th,” Lucille Armstrong states, firmly.

“Correction,” Louis responds. “February 6th….1926.”

“1956!” Lucille calls out, as the husband-and-wife team break into laughter.

It’s a short, fly-on-the-wall moment capturing the dynamic of Louis and Lucille Armstrong at home–and it might be the single most played clip out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours contained on Armstrong’s reel-to-reel tapes. It has been a staple of just about every tour of the Louis Armstrong House Museum since opening in 2003. It was released on a CD of bonus material that went along with a collection of Armstrong’s 1937 Fleischmann’s Yeast radio broadcasts. It’s been used in YouTube videos and television profiles of the Armstrongs and the Armstrong House.

And it was recorded 70 years ago today.

Before going any further, I urge you to read the post we did earlier this week about the filming of High Society, as it also had some other tales that will pay off once we share the audio of the tape.

The tape in question was made for the pioneering French jazz historian Hughes Panassie and his partner/secretary, Madeleine Gautier. Here’s a photo of them with Louis in France in 1948 (Panassie always looked like he was in his 60s, but is 36 here):

Armstrong and the All Stars performed in Paris in November and early December 1955, a blockbuster run of shows at the Olympia Theater, spending most of his offstage time “carousing” (in the words of frustrated Columbia Records producer George Avakian) with Panassie and Mezz Mezzrow. Here’s a photo from one of those nights of carousing, with Louis, Velma Middleton, and (in the shadows) Panassie eating dinner after apparently writing their names on the wall (could it be Leroy Haynes’s restaurant Gabby & Haynes?)!

Armstrong seemed to truly love spending time with Panassie while in Paris. Thus, it shouldn’t come as a total surprise that when Armstrong found himself home in Queens with an eye infection in early February 1956, he decided to spend his free time making an audio letter for Panassie and Gautier.

As mentioned last time, Armstrong returned from Europe at the end of December 1955 and spent most of January filming High Society, until the smoke blowing from his cigarette holder began to affect (and infect) his eyes. Armstrong headed back to Corona for a short break, which is when he made the tape on February 6, 1956.

It would be easy to just share the entire audio here, but we think it’s better to share it in sections, offering some backstory for each part. As we usually do with Armstrong’s tapes, we must watermark the audio with subtle beeps every 30 seconds or so to prevent any unauthorized use.

Without further ado, let’s kick off the tape with audio of the first sequence, with an explanation to follow below:

We begin with the sound Armstrong putting on his friend Ray Martino’s recording of “Stranger in Paradise” before he nearly hacks up a lung (as will be shared later, Gautier had her suspicions upon receiving the tape about what kind of cigarette might have caused Armstrong to cough like that….)

The “At home in Corona” exchange follows, with Lucille helpfully correcting Louis on the date in the background. The clip we play on tour fades with a laughing Louis noting, “Pardon me folks, Lucille’s here messing with my eye,” but as you can now hear, he immediately explains that he got “carried away with that picture of High Society. And I was so busy swinging with my cigarette holder while singing the ‘High Society Calypso,” and the director kept saying, ‘Keep it in,’ you know. And that son-of-a-bitch turned my eyes every which was but loose.”

Louis jokes that he’s “Sitting up here like Art Tatum” (the pianist was legally blind), while “Nurse” Lucille attempts to administer eye drops. There’s some playful banter and after Lucille says, “Oh come on now, Pops, let’s leave us not play around,” Louis appeals to “Madeleine and Panassie,” “Ain’t that just like a woman?” Lucille invokes the name of Louis’s longtime beloved doctor, Bernard Kronenberg, saying that Louis behaves for him but plays around for her, but a bashful Louis responds, “I don’t know, you’re a fine doctor!”

After a little more flirtatious back-and-forth about “moving in,” Louis begins to formally address the recipients of this audio letter, but Lucille interrupts again, hell-bent on administering these eye drops. She keeps telling him to “look up,” which results in Louis asking if he should put his hands on his hips and say, “Ooh, dearie!” At first, I thought this might have been a joke from an old Wheeler and Woolsey film, but it actually comes from the Three Stooges’ Slippery Silks, when Curly and Larry, hearing Moe use the phrase “Madame de France,” tell him, “Put your hand on your hip, tilt your head back,” then make an effemitate “WOOO!”  sound. We know Louis loved Stan Laurel, but he also shared a bill (and a Frank Sinatra TV show) with the Three Stooges so perhaps he was a fan and that sequence stuck with him (he also made TV appearances with Harpo Marx and Buster Keaton, plus we have photos of him with Harold Lloyd, so Louis knew his classic comedy!).

Onto part two:

Now, for this next part, one more plug to read our other post this week, which has the original letter Louis Armstrong sent to his manager Joe Glaser on January 9, 1956 about buying a tuxedo with lace on it from Sy Devore’s shop in Los Angeles. That bit of news made the gossip columns, which compared Louis to Liberace, and is the basis for much of the next section of the tape. Louis has a great time recounting the story (with Lucille chiming in front the background, “Louis Armstrong is out-Liberace-ing Liberace!”), re-iterating that he wants to be there with the “young cats” like Buddy Rich, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and even Bing Crosby who got their suits from Sy Devore. Louis sounds proud of his recent weight loss and mentions he left Devore’s with 10 newsuits!

Louis then gets hung up on the difference between a vest and a cumberbund. Listen for when he calls out for Lucille and whistles for her–what a powerful whistle! He actually repeats a two-note phrase trumpet players used to use in the brass band days of New Orleans. Folks like his second wife Lil Hardin Armstrong and the pianist Richard M. Jones used to talk aboutabout Louis’s beautiful whistling, but he never recorded it, either in the studio or on tape so this short burst is a nice souvenir.

Lucille was offer watching Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, which indeed aired on CBS television in New York City at 8 p.m. on February 6, with Louis noting that the episode featured a Black female singer from New Orleans singing “Mobile.” Lucille enters and the two engage in more flirtatious banter over the word “cummerbund,” which Louis says sounds “nasty” to him! Lucille sounds like an exasperated sitcom wife as she explains that it’s simply a waistband–and no, she doesn’t know how to say it French. Louis asks Madeleine Gautier to translate when she gets the tape (as we’ll see later, she did). Obviously feeling silly, Louis makes quite a pun, turning “half-a-vest” into “effervescent”!

Louis says “skip it” and changes the subject, bringing up a banquet he attended with his good friend, Los Angeles nightclub owner Stuff Crouch. Louis reminisces about the old days, buying a Buick with Crouch in the days when they were “good hustlers,” which leads Louis to tell a quick politcally incorrect joke about the South. “Nuts,” he says, as he laughs to himself.

Time for more audio–here’s part three:

Louis opens up part three by saying he’s “feeling pretty good after that picture,” a reference to High Society. But before he gets to the making of the film, Armstrong sets the scene by recounting his return from Europe, arriving on December 31, 1955 and doing a walk-on appearance on Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town the day after. (Sorry the audio gets a little crackly, but it soon clears up.) Louis talks about he got a great response after taking his bow “to let all the cats know that I was back,” saying “Oui, oui,” when Sullivan asked him about his European travels.

But then he says something that rang a bell for me: he mentions being backstage with all the “bigwigs” like Helen Hayes. We have a photo in our Archives that belonged to Louis of Louis, Lucille, Sullivan, Helen Hayes, and two unidentified folks. I did a quick Newspapers.com search and there it was! It was published in the Abilene Reporter News on January 15, 1956 with the following caption: “Abilenian Appears on ‘Toast of the Town’–Mildred Cook appeared with her partner, Herb Corey, right, on Ed Sullivan’s television show Toast of the Town, New Year’s Eve in New York. The program will be shown on television tonight in Abilene. Miss Cook, the daughter of Mrs. L. P. Cook, 233 Clinton St., is pictured with Mr. and Mrs. Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong, Ed Sullivan and Helen Hayes. Miss Cook and Corey are currently showing at the Versailles, a Broadway supper club.” Mildred Cook would change her name to Carole Cooke and appeared in many films and television shows, becoming quite close with Lucille Ball (who made her change her name).

Here’s Louis’s print!

Back to the tape, Louis then tells a nice story that also requires a little bit of context. June Clark was a terrific trumpeter in the early 1920s who made several recordings before eventually ruining his lip while still a young man. By the 1950s, he was often a member of Armstrong’s circle of friends in New York (Dan Morgenstern remembered him whistling Louis to sleep between shows at the Roxy Theater in 1950), but was more frequently spotted as a part of the entourage of legendery boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. On the tape, Louis mentions that June Clark turned up at the taping of Sullivan’s show to see Louis, but he didn’t have a ticket and hoped it was okay to just stay backstage. Joe Glaser only had three tickets, one for himself, one for Louis, and one for Lucille. Louis, “to keep [Clark] from being embarrassed,” convinced Glaser to give his ticket to Clark because Glaser was close with Sullivan and would be running around the theater anyway. Glaser agreed and the result was a happy ending as “all the cats” saw Clark on TV (this quick appearance has not turned up yet on the Ed Sullivan YouTube channel).

Here’s a Paul Studer photo of Armstrong and Clark taken at a session for Satchmo: A Musical Autobiography one year later:

Armstrong then talks about a hang that occurred at Joe Glaser’s penthouse after the Sullivan show. He mentions Glaser’s thoroughbread dogs running around the apartment and that Glaser gifted Lucille with a miniature Pomeranian! We have a pretty good record of Louis and Lucille’s dogs, but the name of this Pomeranian has escaped us, though a friend named Vivian Roberts donated two photos of Louis and Lucille with such a dog in this period so we’re guessing this was Glaser’s gift:

After the Pomeranian tale, Louis tells one of his favorite stories about the time he took a Rorschach test and showed the results to Joe Glaser only for Glaser to respond, “You’re nuts.” Louis told this story numerous times over the years, always laughing uproariously at Glaser’s retort. Well, searching through the Archives, here’s the results of Armstrong’s Rorschach text, as conducted by Dr. Milton McCullough in 1947! Turns out Louis eventually stuck it in one of his scrapbooks. Quoting Dr. McCullough: “You are as solidly sane as a man can be, and in this day and age that is a great achievement for anyone.”

Still laughing at the punchline (“Mr. Glaser’s a mess, man,” Armstrong says), Armstrong goes back to the Sy Devore story and the tuxedo with the lace, having more fun with it as he quotes part of his original letter in which he said he’s been with the teenagers for three generations and he “can’t let them down.” Louis relates that he told Glaser about the time he spent with Panassie and Gautier in Paris, joking, “We lived the life of Riley–but after three weeks, Riley came home!”

Armstrong starts to talk about High Society in part four, before detouring into some information on Velma Middleton:

Armstrong opens this part by explaining just how fast the turnaround was, appearing on Toast of the Town on Sunday and being in Hollywood rehearsing for High Society on Tuesday morning. As alluded to in his letter to Glaser, Louis talks about how hard they tried to get Velma Middleton a role in the picture, saying Glaser pulled all of his strings without luck. Glaser put her on half-salary while waiting for the All Stars’s big Pasadena show on June 20 but Middleton kept herself occupied with weekly visits from her boyfriend, who lived in Las Vegas. I truly do love how Armstrong refers to their alone time: “So she was straight with Pompeii City!” She also mentions Velma had just moved into her new home in the Bronx with her mother and was very happy; if you’d like to hear a tape Velma and her family made from that home in 1957, check out this post.

Armstrong then praises the Pasadena concert, where he shared the bill with Teddy Buckner. This concert was eventually released in the late 1970s on the GNP Crescendo label as An Evening with Louis Armstrong. Portions of it are on YouTube; here’s an exciting “Indiana,” though with a trace of rust as the All Stars hadn’t performed in concert in three weeks (Down Beat thought Buckner cut him and this was the end of Armstrong….until they heard him when he was performing regularly again a few months later and realized they jumped the gun):

Armstrong lets Panassie and Gautier know, “I’m just showing you how Papa Glaser keeps everybody happy,” which sets up part five, getting us into the saga of High Society:

This is a short segment, but a classic, one the Louis Armstrong House Museum also issued commercially on the now out-of-print Fleischmann’s Yeast compilation.

“Now, for the picture, it’s made for us cause we open it up with a bus scene,” Armstrong begins. “It’s a satire on this jazz festival up in Newport. And it seems as though we’re in this bus, going up there to play this festival and as we go up that road among those fine homes, you know what I mean, that’s when I start telling the boys….”

At this part, Armstrong sings a chunk of “High Society Calypso” and it’s positively charming. He stops and says, “You know, one of them things? We sing it among ourselves. That’s in the beginning of the picture and you talking about a bunch of cats—you know your boys, how they can ham up a thing! They’re all trying to steal that scene! [Laughs] Trummy Young mugged so much, folks, I’m telling you, even when the director was explaining that scene, he was mugging listening! [laughs] Oh, we had the greatest laughs, everybody trying to steal scenes, you know? And even when Bing got on the stand with us doing this big number, I had to tell him to lighten up. You can tell from the music he’s wailing—I’m going to play it for you after awhile!”

But before Armstrong can do that, he gets sidetracked, setting up part six:

Ray Martino was an Italian singer Armstrong first met during a tour of Italy in 1949. Martino–who introduced himself as “Ray Martin”–served as Armstrong’s interpreter, but once Armstrong learned that Martino was a singer, he insisted on hearing him. Martino ended up singing at several All Stars show through the country and was always there to welcome Armstrong when he returned to Italy. Here’s a photo of the pair in 1949:

Martino eventually began sending Louis his recordings and Louis loved playing along with them, especially one called “Quarto di Luna.” Armstrong recorded himself playing along with that one in 1954; Ray Martino visited the Louis Armstrong House Museum in the early 2000s and when he heard that tape, he cried. He had no idea that his hero–and his friend–did that.

Armstrong and Martino reunited when the All Stars performed in Milan in December 1955; in fact, Martino immortalized himself in the Armstrong discography by providing the booming introduction in Italian that opens side 2 of Ambassador Satch, just before “All of Me” kicks in. Martino must have shared his latest recordings with Armstrong, including a single featuring his interpretation of “Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup.” Here’s the original 45, which Armstrong saved:

Back to the Panassie tape, Armstrong finishes his High Society story and puts the needle down on “Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup,” letting Panassie and Gautier know that he’s recording “some beautiful things by a little cat that I discovered in Milano, Italy. You’ve heard me me talk about Ray Martin? Of course, he’s getting a little bigger now and he’s Ray Martino!” Armstrong talks about Martino tearing down the house every time he sings and gives him one of his greatest complimetns: “He’s a living asperin!”

Armstrong sets his microphone up by the speaker to let Panassie and Gautier hear how he’s “recording it wild.” After a few seconds of music, a chatty Armstrong lets them know that he’s flying to Miami the next night to play two weeks at the Beachcomber, noting he’s spending his last night home “talking to you, Madeleine and Panassie!” He then addresses Panassie’s kids and sincerely compliments son Louis Panassie on his photography. (If you’ve followed this site for a while, Louis Panassie would visit the Armstrongs in Corona in 1969, a visit Louis taped and which we discussed here.)

Armstrong attempts to call Louis Panassie a “hepcat” but accidentally says “hubcap.” He catches himself and dispenses a favorite witticism he used anytime he had a slip of the tongue: “My tongue got in the way of my eye-tooth and I couldn’t see what I was saying!” This was a line Louis grabbed from a radio appearance he did with Jerry Lewis in 1950 and one that was already used on one of Louis’s tapes by the aforementioned Stuff Crouch, as shared here. Armstrong even gives a “Kyuk kyuk kyuk” stage laugh at the end of his joke–he truly was in a jolly mood on this particular evening.

Armstrong promises to keep quiet and let the music play (“Dig Ray Martin!”) but again, after a few seconds, he returns to let them know that he’s looking for some High Society-related discs and promises to send them his script–wonder where it is today? After all that, Armstrong leaves the microphone alone (after some rustling)….and the record ends!

Don’t worry, though, with a shout of “Encore,” he plays it again from the start–this time with a surprise we’ve been saving for this moment:

The audio for part 7 consists solely of Ray Martino’s rendition of “Darlin Je Vous Aime Beaucoup” but with a surprise–during the instrumental interlude in the middle, Armstrong picks up his trumpet and plays a glorious solo over the record! For those who have visited the Louis Armstrong House Museum in recent years, this should sound familiar, as it’s a clip we often play in Louis’s Den. It’s quite an experience to be standing in the room where Armstrong made this tape and hearing the sound of that trumpet come blasting out of the speakers. (Book a visit today!)

That clip ends with Louis asking, “How do you like it? Great little cat, isn’t he?” Armstrong praises Martino some more before stopping the tape. This sets up audio of the next section, part 8:

Armstrong goes back into something of a radio announcer voice as he again lets us know we just heard Ray Martino before yelling, “Flash! Flash! Flash!” attributing this declaration to Walter Winchell. This is his way of letting Panassie and Gautier know that Cozy Cole just called ont he telephone and Lucille Armstrong was going to try to bring the phone into Louis’s Den so he could say a few words them. Louis had clearly already been talking to Cozy downstairs and decides to relate part of their conversation, dropping a line that can probably be the subject of a dissertation: “We’ve been laughing, you know, about who is the biggest Tom and I was telling him about how all the boys in this scene in the picture where we in this bus singing ‘High Society Calypso,’ everybody was trying to steal the scene by mugging, you know. I told him even Trummy Young was mugging when the man was explaining the scene to him! [Laughs] That killed me, man! So Cozy’s going to come up in a minute. And I tell him, he and Red Allen, the only two that’s staying on Broadway a long time. So you know they got to be the greatest Toms in the world!”

Phew–what to make of that? Louis resented, bristled, and got angry about any accusations of being an “Uncle Tom,” but he was proud of his mugging and comedic stagecraft and he found the Trummy Young story of him mugging while listening so hilarious, he told it twice on tape and once to Cole. But Louis also seemed to resent the Broadway scene and vented about it on other tapes, complaining about musicians on Broadway and what ruined Broadway. So I think the insinuation is that to make it on Broadway, a Black musician had to be pretty extroverted and since Cozy Cole and Red Allen found success there at the Metropole, they must be “the greatest Toms in the world.” I personally don’t think he’s calling them Uncle Toms, as Cole and Allen would have probably resented that as much as Armstrong; if anything, he’s using it sarcastically, ridiculing the notion that if a Black entertainer smiles, they must be a Tom. But it is a deep, astute observation featuring some loaded language that is open to multiple interpretations.

Lucille struggles to get the phone to Louis, causing Louis to describe his Den as looking like “a whorehouse on Christmas morning.” Lucille says Louis has outgrown it and needs to knock out some walls and have the room extended. “It ain’t but two of us and look like we crowding out this little house,” Louis responds. For visual purposes, here’s a photo Burt Goldblatt took of Louis’s Den the following year (the photo at the top of this post was taken by Charles Graham around 1958 and showcases another wall, loaded with collages, as well as tape recorders and records spilling out of the shelves):

Finally, Armstrong attempts to speak to Cozy, but there’s some technical difficulties. “Hello? What the hell-o!” he says. He tells Cozy to get ready but there’s a cut in the tape, followed by Armstrong saying he held the microphone up to the wrong end of the phone (he must have rewound a bit). Finally, he gets it going, but sadly, Cozy’s instantly identifiable baritone voice is barely decipherable. Here’s what I can make out, which is a tribute to Louis: “I know that he has been the master for years and it does me all the good in the world to tell him he inspires me.”

“He’s talking backwards!” Louis says, “He’s talking backwards!” Cozy says goodbye and Louis thanks him, calling him “Thomas Cozy Coles,” another reference to the “Tom” line, though this time he adds, “These are people who love you you say those words to, and every time you stretch those chops, boy, the scene’s gone!” Louis and Cozy conclude their conversation, with Louis promising to surprise him “on his program.” “My man,” Louis says, ending that segment.

Now we get into the record-spinning portion of the tape, beginning with his new hit single “Mack the Knife,” heard here in full–plus some bonus material!

We’ve already covered the 70th anniversary of the recording of “Mack the Knife” in a post back in September, but the timeline is worth pointing out again here. Armstrong recorded it on September 28, 1955, just before leaving on his tour of Europe. The song became a bona fide hit, but Armstrong didn’t bring the arrangement with him so he didn’t play it on his overseas tour. Once back in the States, he was whisked off to High Society so it still wasn’t part of the aforementioned Pasadena set as the band had not had time to learn it over again. But now Louis was home and listening intently, getting ready to put it in his set, where it would never, ever leave.

But listen carefully around the 2:47 mark! Right where you’d expect Louis to say, “Take it, Satch” and for the rideout chorus to begin, there’s a cut. As related in our “Mack the Knife” post, Armstrong also attempted a duet on the song with Lotte Lenya at that September 28 session. Columbia must have sent him a copy because at that cut, Armstrong switches to the Lenya version!

However, as it plays on, he realizes he’s going to run out of tape. He stops the recording and says that it will continue on the other side. Sure enough, he soon announces, “Part 2 continued of ‘Mack the Knife’ by Satchmo and his orchestra and Lotte Lenya, producer of The Threepenny Opera.” (That wasn’t quite right as Lenya was married to composer Kurt Weill.) Now, if you’re an Armstrong nut, listen carefully because session tapes and edited masters of Louis and Lenya’s duet have been issued (all shared in that aformentioned 70th anniversary post), but I hear differerent things in Louis’s vocal here, such as some extra laughing and a concluding, “Take it, Fraulein!” What take this is or what disc Armstrong was sent remains a mystery (and sadly, it only seems to exist on this tape). But then “mixmaster” Louis rears his head again and after “Take it, Fraulein,” he switches back to the rideout chorus on the original single! That’s a lot of effort, but I think it’s a pretty cool sequence.

Then it’s back to High Society for the duration of the tape. Louis was excited to share the music from the film, so, with script in hand, he plays demo acetate recordings of “High Society Calypso,” “I Love You Samantha,” “Little One,” “Now You Has Jazz,” the fast version of “I Love You, Samantha,” and the closing swing version of “Here Comes the Bride.” This will be the longest segment of audio we share because of all the music, but we’ll take you through it all below. First, the audio:

And here’s a transcription:

“Getting back to this picture, High Society, I’d like to play some of the rehearsal records that they give you to remember what you recorded so when they put the camera on you, you’re straight, you know? So I have these records here and I’m going to run them down for you, let you this music, which is very beautiful, I think. Of course, I told you, we open the picture, we’re sitting inside of this bus going to this big home and we’re happy, you know, and I’m sitting in the middle in the backseat, the camera right on me, grinding. Finally, I start this song, singing, in terms of calypso music.”

[Armstrong then starts reading from the script] “‘The purpose of Armstrong’s presence in this once bashful playground of the wealthy, a certain amount of the background of our story is revealed in this musical dissertation.’ Ump ump, big word, huh? ‘Terminating with the arrival of the bus at their destination.'”

“See, and as we get out of the bus, we ham it up, we see this beautiful home, I say, ‘Man, look at this!’ I say, ‘Will you dig that big old rehearsal hall?’ and blah blah blah. And Trummy says, ‘Man, that’s a big pile of bricks but I ain’t going in there, I don’t have my library card!’ And this butler comes out with his dried prune face and quite naturally we’re all happy go lucky—I even got a hat on. And here’s this cat, standing erect. ‘Are you the musicians?’ I say, ‘Yeah, daddy, that’s what the man said,’ you know, blah blah blah. ‘Who should I tell them is out here?’ something like that. Talking about Dexter—that’s Bing, you know—I said, ‘Tell Dexter, Satchelmouth.’ And he turns around, just as erect, and says, ‘Will you follow me, Mr. Satchelmouth?’ [laughs] That killed me, man!”

“And we go in this out and turn it out, see? So the first thing we’ll play is, ‘Calypso, High Society,’ that’s the first one we sing in the front of the picture. And we’ll do it just like we did in front of the camera. Quite naturally, after we finish this song, I say, ‘End of song, beginning of story,’ and then they go on, see, with their lines and blah, blah. And all through this story, they’ve got this music, see? And the next one will be ‘Samantha’ which Ben—Bing, see. I keep calling him Ben! The boy who was my stand-in, who stands in front of the camera while I was relaxing, his name was Ben! I keep calling Bing Ben–Bing will kill me! Anyhow, we had a lot of fun and everybody was so wonderful. Grace Kelly, she was just a doll. And Frank Sinatra, regular as ever, you know. Quite naturally, Bing was right in there with us, telling jokes on the set. Everybody, Johnny Green, the director, I think the whole MGM lot was in our corner. So here we go.”

(Before getting to the records, Marion Gustowski, a dear friend of the Armstrong House and of Louis Armstrong called in to share that she saw Louis in Boston after the filming of High Society and Louis ran over to her with a big box in his hand, saying, “Look, look, look at what Bing Crosby sent me!” In the box were a pair of cufflinks in the shape of trumpets that appeared to be solid gold. “Louis was over the moon having received them from Crosby, Marion said, adding that Crosby had them custom made for Louis. “It just shows Louis’s affection for Bing Crosby,” she says. “They did have a wonderful relationship.” Thank you, Little Muggsy, for sharing this story!)

At this point, Louis began playing all the records in a row. After “Calypso,” he comes back on the mike with an explanation: “I’d like to mention before ‘Samantha’ that this line, ‘Charlie Knickerbocker,’ he’s this great society columnist here in New York. So I say ‘Charlie Knickerbocker we’re going to be, in High Society,’ you know what I mean. I thought I’d hip you to that. You might know him, he’s a young boy. Okay, here goes ‘Samantha.”

After “Samantha” and “Little One,” Armstrong says, “Here comes the big number in the picture for Bing, ‘Now You Has Jazz.’ Yeah, ‘Now You Have Jazz.’ This is the big number. This is the number that old Bing really works—all of us works.”

Before “Here Comes the Bride,” Armstrong says, “Since we’re closing the picture, this is what we played.” At the end, he says, “Well, that’s it. That’s it folks. It’s been such a pleasure, I’m almost speechless cause I just want to say a whole lots through here. Thanks for listening and God bless you. This knocked me out.” Armstrong again mentions that he’s leaving for Miami the next day and promises to write “a nice long letter” once his typewriter got fixed; apparently it was “smashed” on the airplane ride over from California.

“Well, ain’t nothing else to say but to play an encore on ‘Here Comes the Bride,” Armstrong says before another replay of “Here Comes the Bride.” Then, as another encore, he again plays the conclusion of “Samantha,” picking it up with his gorgeous trumpet bridge. Then, ever the showman, Armstrong puts a punctuation mark on the tape with a closing chorus of his theme song, “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” taken from the recent Decca release, At the Crescendo. It’s a touching conclusion to a rollicking listen. I sometimes get asked if there’s a single tape that I’d recommend to someone wanting to hear one for the first time and now you can see why this one is usually my answer: Louis is in great spirits, he plays trumpet, he tells stories, he’s funny, there’s music, comedy, Lucille, it’s all here.

Armstrong did go to Miami the next day, but his eye condition worsened as time went on. He returned to New York at the end of the month and was admitted into the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. Armstrong must have gotten pretty bored sitting there and asked Joe Glaser to bring him a tape recorder–Glaser did and Armstrong recorded some conversations with other patients, which maybe we’ll share another time. But he must have known he had a winner with the Panassie tape. He made a copy for himself, sticking it in a box he eventually decorated with a collage appropriately featuring a small color photo of his Corona, Queens home:

But he also made a copy for Joe Glaser, who got such a kick out of it, he asked Armstrong to play it for his “buddies.” Armstrong must have made a copy of the copy for himself, because it exists in our Archives–here’s Armstrong’s audio introduction to Glaser and a snipper of the “At home in Corona” section (actually, the version the Armstrong House used on the Fleischmann’s Yeast CD in 2008 came from this tape):

This is already bordering on being one of our longest posts, but we’re not quite finished–after sending a copy of the tape to France, Madeleine Gautier wrote back with a sprawling letter of her own. It arrived at a time when Jeann Failows was regularly helping Louis with his fan mail. Failows kept Gautier’s original, eventually giving it to future boyfriend, Jack Bradley. Jack put it in a scrapbook and here it is, being shared publicly for the first time:

Since they might not be too easy to read, here’s a transcription:

27 Mars 1956 (and not 1926, as you say on your tape-letter, Mr. Armstrong!!) P.S.A good thing Lucille is there to remind you that you’re 30 years later!)
Dear dear Louis,
That tape letter is just too much – and we put it on and on and on ….. My my! mu! Gudie lettre!!! That’s the French for “what a letter” – as for “commor-bund” (or whatever the spelling is) I don’t know what it is in French either, probably “belt” “waistcoat” “ceinture-filet”, or “faux-filet” “fake” “waistband” (P.S. I was going to unite “faux-filet”, which is “T-Bone”!!! “Tenderloin”) You see what a different a little letter can make!! You put on “F” instead of “g” and there you find yourself quite out of place!! But that letter is just too much – and we are still under the shock, and under the spell too – we’re tape-letter bound!! Every bit of it is too much) and there’s so much in that letter that I could write you pages and pages about it. I just can’t explain – can’t tell how we feel about about it. You know, the funny thing about it is that, when we first played it (you see? without thinking I said “played” it – ‘cause it sounds like a letter played with your heart, my! We’ll never get over that shock we had!) we were so surprised that we didn’t understand the words…. We didn’t know what it was all about and only could dig one word here and there …. (P.S. I’m writing on the blanks because it’s so hard to read otherwise). The only part that we still can’t dig is Cozy Cole’s call. We got a murmur, but it sounds nice…. And the idea is so fine. You’re a POET, M! Armstrong, every way…. And Hughes was still in bed when we received the tape – he’s been 6 weeks in bed, his legs were real bad, but it’s all over now, except that he has to take it easy for a few day yet…. _ and we wished that someone would be there to understand, and we didn’t know what to do, etc…. Until we past the tape on and on and now it’s all right. – P.S. – there’s a funny noise now and then, like if you would be turning the pages of some script once in a while. Is it right? And in the beginning, when Lucille is taking care of your eyes and says, “Look up…. look up….” why are you caughing so much? What kind of a cigarette are you smoking?….. Well!!!
Anyway, we’ll never be able to thank you enough for that…. Never…. How could we? I told Curly Hamner about it when we went to see the band (Lionel Hampton) on Sunday in Bordeaux. They were staying on the same hotel (splendide) and played at the same hall (Alhambra) and when I told Curly, he just grinned so nicely, because he loves you, you know. And Curly told us about when you gave him a help when he first started. And also when all little kids, about 8 or 10 or 12 years old, saw you (I don’t remember the place Curly said) and watched you putting cream on your lips (Curly imitate you so well) and you were wearing collars which you fixed with pins – and the next days after they had seen you doing that on your lips and the pins on your collar, the kids would all turn up with cream on their lips and pins on their collars!!!
Then Lionel told us that in Germany where he played, everybody is just raving over you, etc… which they’re right to do, “quite nat’rally” – (That’s what you say quite often in that tape letter). I have so many things to write that I just don’t have time to write fast enough, because one thing makes me think of another and by the time I’ve written one thing, the other’s gone. I’ll have to read this letter after to add the bars on the “T’s” and if I read it over I won’t send it because I won’t dare send you such a foul-written letter – so I’d better not read it over and if it’s too badly written just don’t read it…. Because you see, I’m in my room, everybody’s in bed and I can’t use my type writer: too noisy, especially when nights are so quiet here. You don’t hear nothing, at this hour, in this house or out in the street, and that’s what I like about this little town, among other things. You should come here once in your life, at least, ‘cause that’s probably an experience that you, as big as Louis Armstrong as you are, never had! The quietness of a little French country town. Quite busy in the daytime – and silent at night. There’s something very great about that, like if everything was in its place, sun included …. beings included.
Now, what am I talking about, and let’s come back to what I wanted to tell you. Oh yes! We saw Lionel and the band again in Bordeaux. The poor guys are tired because they travels like mad and don’t get much sleep. – they gave 2 concerts in Bordeaux, one matinee and one evening, and after the 1st half in the evening, there seemed to be a yawning competition among the musicians on stage, ha ha! But that’s between us! They kept yawning in turn – and all of them had [switches to typewriter]
. . . . PS.- Now, ain’t that something? As I am taking this letter again a few days later (and I am determined to finish it, this time) I don’t know what I wanted to tell you about Lionel’s band. . . Oh, yes, they had all lost weight, but not on Swiss Kriss, because they looked too tired, I suppose it’s because they travelled too much and the jumps are too big, and they don’t get enough rest or sleep.
But I don’t know what I was going to tell you next concerning the band because you know how it is, when you take a letter after having left it in a certain mood, etc., when you take it again, it seems kind of cold, like a dish that’s been waiting too long and you just feel ready to the next one and leave the other alone…
And it’s day time too, and I can use my machine and also you don’t have the same things coming to your mind as when it’s night time. This was written with no back thoughts at all, ha ha. . .
This morning we had a letter from Paul Studer, the boy who came to see you on our part at the Carnegie in Brooklyn. He was so moved to see you near, and you were so kind that he wrote us all about it, the way he could get in backstage until Dr Pugh came and then you yourself – and I do wish I had even there…
We also had a letter from Joe Glaser, saying that you’ll probably be in England in May – and maybe also come to Paris, with Bing Crosby. . . Now, I’m finding myself waiting between the times you’re here, just swallowing up days passing – and listening in the meantime to your sound letter or your records. The last we had were Mack the Knife – Moments to remember, which I love – and The German Song, which you say in the beginning composed by some guy in German. . . –
And Paul Studer says also that you’re going to Australia and will be back in New York in June. I think that somebody will have to make this planet bigger for you to travel all over it like that in a minute… One day you’re in France, two days after you’re in California and the next morning finds you in Australia and the week after somewhere else. The only little trouble for us is that we don’t know anymore where to send our letters to you. Joe Glaser opens them, and you’re never home… So they will probably wait among two other thousands letters – but that’s all right, I’ll keep on writing because I don’t I’ll burst. . .
Now, I’ve found the exact name of “commer bund” : that’s, in French, a CEINTURE-GILET (which litteraly means a ”belt waistcoat”), and the pronunciation is, phonetically: Saintur – jeelay. Now, please practice this a little, like you practiced “That’s My Desire” in French in front of the looking glass in your room at the Negresco, and I was watching you – and Hughes was sleeping on your bed, remember ? In Nice, in February 1948 ? So please while you’re on the road, pull out your looking glass from your inside pocket, the left side inside pocket your coat, I think it is, and start saying “Saint-ur jee-lay”, and the next time I see you, you’d better say it right ! PS. – For the “saint”, the phonetic pronunciation won’t be quite right, I’m sorry, because there’s not such a sound that I know in the American language to make our French “in”. The only thing I can tell you is that the “n” must not be pronounced. … I’ll have to record a tape with “ceinture gilet” all the way through, and send it to you !
To day, it was Therese’s birthday (Hughes’ daughter), she is 20 years old to day, and we gave her a gold watch, and she was very happy about it. And we had a nice dinner, with the two doves flying all over the place in the dining room as usual. First we had only one, a male, which we had found wounded by some cat in our little yard. So I picked him up and took care of him, and bought him a little cage, etc… But he seemed so lonely that I bought him a female, and the eggs started to be laid, etc… But the cage was too small and they seemed to be so annoyed to be in that cage that one day I decided to let them fly around in the dining room. It was cute to see those two birds, and they know me so well that I could have them in my hands, on my shoulders, on my head, they wouldn’t move when I called them and would come right on to me…. Then I thought that maybe they’d like to have a little fresh air, and let them go outside. But I thought they wouldn’t come back after their trip “back to nature”, because when nighttime came, there was no birdies to be seen. And the next morning, there they were again, perched up on the fig tree in the yard, watching the 5 cats who were there too, in a row and ready to jump at them. So I chased the cats, and now, believe me or not, but they learnt how to skip the cats. Ain’t that something ? But they wouldn’t make their eggs anymore in the little nest I had prepared in the cage, and started bringing little pieces of thread, or herbs, or any small things they would find, and one day, there was an egg in that nest they had chosen in the dining room, in some copper fountain we have up on the wall… Then there were two eggs, but one was broken somehow and they started staying on that egg until last monday [sic], there was a tiny bird born, about as big as a dice. Nice, don’t you think ?
I must leave now, but not before saying that Gerry Mulligan who appeared lately at the Olympia for 2 weeks, was the biggest flop they had on the program in a long time. For the first shows, Gerry Mulligan was given 35 minutes – while the Nicholas Brothers, who were on the same bill, had only 15 minutes. But after the three first shows, they had to switch the minutes around, and Gerry Mulligan had a hell of a time to stay on stage 12 or 15 minutes without having the public sleeping and snoaring… As for Stan Getz, who was supposed to give a concert at the Olympia one of them wednesdays, the closing day for the regular week program, the first date chosen was put off because Stan Getz was supposed to be ill, and the concert was said to be postponed to a leter date. Then 4 days before that last date chosen, there was an announcement in the papers, saying that the Stan Getz concerts were altogether cancelled and that those who had booked their seats were invited to come and get their money back. As for Chet Baker, he was trying to play everywhere in Paris but nobody wanted to book him. All those musicians were so disgusted that I think they all went back to the States. I do think they’re through with what they had to say… which never was much to me, but I’m no critic….
But you know, Louis, it’s a good thing they all came over here, like Stan Kenton, who is trying to come over again and nobody wants to take the chance to book him, at least in France, besides maybe Paris for one concert. Because their music talks by itself – and the story it tells, nobody wants to hear it again, ha ha… Don’t you think I’m right? So now they can try and explain in long articles that you can read in some magazines, how they made that music to try and get away with the same old things jazz musicians had been doing for too much a long time, and also that if the coloured musicians created jazz, they had created something new too, and this and that, it won’t help them so say such childish things (they said it in a very mean way, believe me, I’ve read some of those articles, written for instance by Dave Brubeck), because the public has heard them now and there’s nothing to what they making. And in the deep end, they are so prejudiced and envious that they tried to pull you all down and take your place. And in that they were helped by a scandelous publicity about them on the air, in the papers, etc., by such people as Leonard Feather, etc. But you can’t fool the public all the time, and over here, guys like Delaunay, André Hodeir, etc. (who were so mean and evil in their writings concerning the greatest musicians who came over here), guys like that have lost a lot of the credit they might have had, while men like Hughes, Mezz are respected and getting consideration more and more. And you always gave them a tremendous support, and it kept Hughes going to feel you on his side, and youre the most loyal and faithful man we know, faithful to your music too and to your people. And as you’re the greatest, we’re lucky and we thank you, darling Louis, from the bottom of our hearts.
With our best love to Lucille – and a big hello to everybody in the band, and God bless you always,
Love, love, love and love again for you, and a lot of kisses,
“Commer-bundly” yours, or “Cainture-gilettement votre,”
Madeleine
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Wow, what a juicy letter, huh? It’s clear that Gautier listened to the audio tape over and over as she really caught everything, even Louis’s multiple uses of “quite nat’rally.”

If you need a visual after all that text, here’s a photo Gautier sent to Louis that was taken in Brussels in October 1953, featuring some of the names mentioned above: Mezz Mezzrow, Lionel Hampton, Panassie, and Gautier herself (she’s the short woman; in her inscription, he listed the other women flanking Panassie as “Unknown”):

As a postscript of sorts, Armstrong listened to the Panassie letter again when cataloging his tapes in 1969 and made a new page for it, that is quite hilarious. First off, he gets the date wrong up top, carrying on the tradition, dating it as 1966! And check out some of his spellings: “Cozy Cold” and the translation of “Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup” as simply “Zem Boo Coo”!

And maybe the only way to really end is with a video of the finished film High Society, as this YouTube user put together the opening “High Society Calypso” and the closing “Here Comes the Bride,” both of which figured prominently in our posts this week:

I think that’s all that can possibly be shared regarding this one tape, recorded 70 years ago today. Thanks for reading!