“Sugar Ray, Armstrong Click on Loew’s Stage”: Louis Armstrong and Sugar Ray Robinson in Rochester, April 1953

Today’s post is a bit different, but we hope it’s a rewarding one. On April 10, 11, and 12 1953, Louis Armstrong and His All Stars shared a bill with boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson and vocalist Helen Forresst at Loew’s Theater in Rochester, NY. Here’s an ad that ran in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on April 10, 1953:

A pretty tantalyzing bill! You might be wondering, “Gee, I wonder what it sounded like?” Well, today, we’ll be able to provide an answer to that question–thanks to the efforts of Louis Armstrong himself, who tape recorded the entire show from the wings!

But first, a little backstory, as you might also be wondering, “Sugar Ray Robinson? The boxer?” Yes, Sugar Ray Robinson, arguably the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time, became a song-and-dance man for a short spell. Already a longtime welterweight champion, Robinson successfully defeated Jake LaMotta on February 14, 1951 to win the middleweight title (a fight Louis Armstrong also taped off the radio), but then made an unsuccessful bid for the light heavyweight championship on June 28, 1952, succumbing to intense heat against Joey Maxim.

It was at this point that Robinson decided to hang up his gloves with an astounding 131-3-1-1 record. A few months later, word came out that Robinson was about to make his comeback–as a song-and-dance man. This interlude is usually treated like a blip in the Ray Robinson saga (it gets about one line in his Wikipedia entry), but it gained a tremendous amount of publicity at the time. Courtesy of YouTube, here’s a British Pathe newsreel:

Robinson spent the latter half of 1952 polishing an act in preparation for his new show business career–a career that would be managed by none other than Joe Glaser, manager of Louis Armstrong and countless other entertainers of the era. Glaser quickly had Robinson take some new headshots, which he put his Associated Booking Corporation stamp on; here are three that were saved by Armstrong:

By February 1953, Glaser felt confident enough to book his two star clients together at the Chicago Theater; here’s an ad saved by All Stars bassist Arvell Shaw:

And here’s a clipping Armstrong himself saved:

From Newspapers.com comes this February 28, 1953 Chicago Defender photograph of Larry Amadee, Robinson, Armstrong, and Alvin James backstage at the Chicago Theater:

1953 was a peak year for Armstrong’s reel-to-reel tape recording habit and he lugged his equipment to the Chicago Theater to record some riotous backstage conversations (perhaps the subject of a future post), but he didn’t tape any of the show. After their time in Chicago and a run at Detroit’s Fox Theatre, Armstrong and Robinson went their separate ways, with the All Stars performing at the Towne Casino in Cleveland and making a short tour of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

But Glaser must have known he had a good thing and booked Armstrong and Robinson together again in April, doing four days at Shea’s Theatre in Buffalo before the three days in Rochester at Loew’s. Once again, courtesy of Arvell Shaw, is an ad for Shea’s:

And once again, courtesy of Armstrong, a newspaper clipping about the Rochester engagement:

No photos from the Loew’s show survive, but to get a visual for what it must have looked like, head over to RochesterSubway.com to see some gorgeous images of the 3,500 seat movie palace, which was sadly demolished in 1964.

As can be gleaned from the ad at the start of this post, Armstrong and Robinson would do four 90-minute shows a day at 1:20, 4, 6:40 and 9:20, alternating with showings of the film The Bandits of Corsica. Though it was a lot of work, there was also a lot of down-time, explaining why Armstrong decided to bring his tape recorder to the theater during one of the days. Here’s a photo from around 1953 of Armstrong and his trunk, which housed a tape deck and turntable:

We don’t know what day or what show Armstrong taped, but we do know that his reel opens up during a period of downtime. To give an idea of the kinds of people who decided to shoot their shot with Armstrong, the tape begins with a local Rochester composer, Tommy Albert, pitching his songs to Louis, playing demo records of two selections, “We Are the Army” and “I’ve Got a Peck, Peck, Peckin’ Woman.” Nothing comes up when I Google Tommy Albert or these compositions, but perhaps his family is out there and will enjoy knowing this exists–here’s the audio of this opening segment (as always, everything does feature beeps every 30 seconds to prevent an unauthorized use):

Next up, something special: Armstrong dubbing the Columbia Records 78-rpm album, Louis and Earl, which we wrote about in our extended Hot Five series of posts last year. Here’s the cover:

And here’s the liner notes, if you’d like to read along:

As Louis says early on, this album “was handed to Satch in Rochester, New York, buy Dan Barley, a trombone player right here at the Loew’s State Theater where we’re playing with Ray Robinson and his show.” We’re happy to report that we still have Louis’s copy in our Archives! Louis reads the notes and makes some comments as he goes (his “Wow” response to what’s written about “Weather Bird” is priceless). At about 4 minutes in, someone enters the dressing room and Louis explains what he’s doing and how he’s going to “write this in my story one day.” Here’s the audio:

Now this next block can be skipped, but in the interest of sharing the complete audio from the tape, here’s the entire dub of Louis and Earl, plus one extra side; at the end of the album, Armstrong had enough time to turn on the radio and catch the debut airing of “Can’t Let You Leave Me Now” by a Chicago songwriter, Earl Clendon (at least that’s what it sounds like; again, Google is no help).

But with that out of the way, it’s showtime! We’ve decided to break the audio up into segments and will say a few words about each. This piece opens with Armstrong announcing, “We’ll put the mike out in the hallway and catch the rest of Ray Robinson’s show with Helen Forrest, Satchmo and his All Stars and the De Santos Trio. The show is getting ready to go on so stand by. This is Satchmo in his dressing room at Loew’s State in Rochester, New York, on the bill with ex-champ Ray Robinson. He’s a livering asperin on stage, that ol’ boy is!” The next sound we hear is that of the emcee onstage, narrating what a highlight reel of Robinson’s fight clips that was being shown on the movie screen. Variety caught this at the Chicago Theater and was unimpressed, writing, “Only minus in the show is a mawkish trailer about his boxing and charitable efforts which might be okay for someone without talent, but is a degrading touch here.” Robinson then comes out and says a few words of welcome:

Robinson then introduces “two gauchos and a gal,” the DeSantos Trio, who dance to a medley of Spanish-themed songs. Variety reviewed them in February 1954, writing, “The DeSantos Trio— two gauchos and a gal with a nifty chassis — keeps patrons at high pitch with exciting gymnastics, plus intricate dance steps. Men fly through air with daring flips and tricks to win vigorous applause. “

It should be obvious by now, but this is not a high-fidelity, straight-off-the-soundboard bootleg, but rather the primitive sounds captuerd by Armstrong’s microphone in a hallway–better than nothing, but it can be frustrating, especially when other folks start talking backstage. However, in this segment, there’s a rather annoyed voice and it might be Joe Glaser. Glaser didn’t leave Manhattan often, but it would make sense that he’d make the trip up to Rochester to see how Robinson and Armstrong were doing. We only have one audio interview with Glaser in our Archives and he has a heavy Chicago accent and a similar timbre to the guy yelling about the timing; I can’t make out much, but there’s an utterance of “for Christ’s sakes” and “They don’t know what the hell they’re [unintelligble]” followed by more bickering about the time. Give it a listen:

After the DeSantos’s do a tight five minutes (and bow off to the strains of “Rosetta”; I wonder if these were local union musicians or if Robinson had an orchestra set up for such events), Robinson comes back for a few jokes that bomb before he wins the audience back with a long comedy routine done with Joe Scott. (Again, audio is not perfect as there’s some conversation that occasionally obscures the onstage antics.)

Variety‘s earlier review provides some more insight: “Robinson, a handsome chap, works as emcee throughout the show, and while not perfect in this department, acquits himself well. He changes clothes four times in his act, looking somewhat like a sartorial flash, but always in excellent taste. He gets some yocks about boxing with Joe Scott, who proves an excellent comic foil, and then does a series of dances with Scott that got the pair a hefty mitt.” Here’s the comedy segment, but just as Robinson goes into his song, “I’m Never Satisfied,” Armstrong’s tape runs out! Here’s this segment:

Fortunately, Armstrong was quick to flip his tape over and catch the bulk of “I’m Never Satisfied” followed by a long tap dance routine, which goes over well and seems to leave Robinson gassed. For visual purposes, here’s a watermarked photo of Robinson and Scott in action that’s available on eBay:

And here’s the audio:

Next up is the great vocalist, Helen Forrest, then in the midst of a successful solo career after serving her time as a “canary” in the big bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Harry James. Forrest is in dynamic voice, performing four selections in her 10-minute spot, “Falling in Love with Love,” “I’m Thru with Love,” “Hallelujah,” and “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate.” But for the Armstrong fans, you’re going to want to go to Aaopdsgij as for once, the backstage sounds take precedence–the sound of Armstrong warming up!

It begins at 3:15 as Forrest is signing “I’m Through with Love,” a gorgeous ballad Armstrong never recorded before. He quietly plays along and sounds so pretty while doing so. He then pauses for a while before coming back at 4:37, even taking the melody up an octave. He does garble one note (he’s warming up after all), but recovers for a lovely ending. Could the audience hear him? Next up, Forrest sings “Hallelujah,” another standard Armstrong never recorded, and he continues warming up, testing out both his upper and lower register, finally feeling good by around 6:15. A personal favorite moment–here’s the complete audio of Forrest’s segment:

Sugar Ray Robinson then returns for more comedy with Scott (the “dapper/diaper” joke is rough) before his big feature segment, of which Variety said, “Topper is a solo effort, however, with Robinson in tails and top hat doing a a nice soft-shoe.” Robinson dances to “Just You, Just Me” and closes with a splashy “Ballin’ the Jack,” which he even sings The strains of “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” can be heard at the end, letting Robinson know that it’s time for Armstrong. The applause for Robinson is quite strong and he sounds very grateful for it:

But now it’s time for the main event, 30 minutes by Louis Armstrong and His All Stars that you won’t find in any discography or anywhere else! In the band we have stalwarts Trummy Young on trombone, Barney Bigard on clarinet, Arvell Shaw on bass, and Cozy Cole on drums, but there’s a surprise on piano: Joe Bushkin, potentially making his debut with the group. Glaser brought him in for the upcoming Armstrong-Benny Goodman tour that would kick off in mid-June. As seen above, Marty Napoleon was still mentioned in the Buffalo ads earlier in the week so it’s possible this is audio of one of Bushkin’s first performances with the group. He was very close friends with Louis and a marvelous pianist, but as Bushkin himself later told Phil Schaap, Louis complained that he played too many notes behind his vocals. Marty Napoleon would return as soon as the Goodman tour ended in June (of course, Goodman only made the first few nights of that tour, but that’s a story for another day).

When Armstrong would do these four-shows-a-day blocks, he’d always make sure to rotate the All Stars featuers so everyone would get their turn in the spotlight throughout the day. Thus, for this session, after a short instrumental rendition of the usual “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” theme, Armstrong immediately throws down the gauntlet with Cozy Cole’s exciting drum feature on “Bugle Blues.” Though Cole eventually takes over, Armstrong takes some wild breaks at the start to let everyone know that his chops were percolating.

Next up, Armstrong would do one of his big Decca hits, in this case a delightful version of “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” with a powerhouse trumpet spot in the middle. Then Barney Bigard and Arvell Shaw light a fire on Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues,” complete with an interpolation of Ellington’s “Rockin’ in Rhythm” towards the end. New man Bushkin sings a chorus of his big hit, “Oh, Look at Me Now,” before tearing out on “The Lady is a Tramp.” Louis takes a breather and can be heard telling someone backstage to tell Ray Robinson that he recorded the show! Wonder if Robinson got a copy?

But then it’s time for the other star of the show, Velma Middleton. Jazz critics might have been mean to her, but hearing Velma in a setting like this, you can understand why she and Louis were such a hard act to follow. She opens with her usual “Big Mama’s Back in Town” (though someone backstage, now hipped to the fact that Armstrong was recording it, decides to make an announcement directly into Armstrong’s microphone at the start). This is an extra exciting version that captures the All Stars in transition; 1952 was something of a rebuilding year for the group but the addition of Trummy Young in September and changing tastes in the music world towards the more raucous sounds of rhythm-and-blues and early rock ‘n’ roll led the group to take on a louder, more jumping style. This change in approach is sometimes associated with Barrett Deems joining in 1954 but one listen to Cozy Cole’s backbeats here show the band was already heading in that direction. Louis and Velma follow with “That’s My Desire” and tear down the house, as they always did.

The house band (with a hip trumpeter) starts playing a closing “Sleepy Time” but Louis isn’t done! He drags Sugar Ray Robinson out to sing two duets, “You’re Just in Love” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” Perhaps this was part of the act, but it truly sounds like they’re winging it as the band doesn’t quite know what’s happening either (Louis even tries to start “You’re Just in Love” without them and they scuffle like hell trying to find the key for “Sunny Side”). After Robinson does his best to sing a chorus of “You’re Just in Love” with Armstrong pulling the plug with a scat finish, even saying, “That’s it!” Armstrong tries his best to get Robinson to take the lead on “Sunny Side,” but Robinson demurs (Armstrong has a good line about being as “rich as Ray Robinson”), only joining for the finish. Armstrong can be heard as he approaches the microphone backstage kidding Robinson for being “bashful”). Sit back, relax and enjoy!

I wish Armstrong let the tape roll a bit longer or offered some postshow recap, but beggars can’t be choosers and it’s a gift that such a recording exists at all, even with its audio deficiencies. Alas, for poor Sugar Ray Robinson, his move to the world of entertainment did not prove to be as successful for as the world of boxing; he would return to the sweet science in 1954 and fought for more than a decade, making this rare glimpse into his short-lived show business act all the more precious (and curious)

Hamilton B. Allen attended one of the Rochester shows and reviewed it for The Times-Union. The scan on Newspapers.com is a bit blurry, so I just transcribed the text:

Sugar Ray, Armstrong Click on Loew’s Stage
By HAMILTON B. ALLEN
That’s a red-hot package of stage entertainment Loew’s uncorked yesterday. Not in many months has Rochester seen or heard such a notable troupe of big-name personalities perform in person. It is, as the hipsters informed this square, quite a ball.
It’s a fast-moving show with plenty of eye and ear appeal.
Sugar Ray comes through with the one-two sock of a showbusiness veteran. In comedy bits and duo routines he has the very able assistance of comedian Joe Scott.
The champ’s nimble feet, which made him one of the high style fighters of the ring, carry him nicely through several fast dance numbers. It is hard to believe that he’s been a professional dancer only six months.
He also makes a pleasant master of ceremonies and wears to perfection several handsomely tailored: suits during his turns on stage. Altogether Sugar Ray rates exceedingly high as showman and can probably stay in the business as long as he wants to. He’s that good.
THEN THERE’S Louis Armstrong. When he comes on with his sextet of All Stars the audience crawls right up into the palm of his hand. Right away you know that good old Satchmo is still tops on that horn. As the big curtains part the six rip into “Sleepy Time Down South” and then “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”
Louis generously steps aside for plenty of fast solo work by Cozy Cole on the drums, Arvell Shaw, bass, Trummy Young, trombone, Barney Bigard, clarinet, and Joe Bushkin, piano. Each of them get in those New Orleans style hot licks that win plenty of enthusiasm from a completely gone audience. This is a combo it would be hard to beat. The performance is sparked by Satchmo’s raspy renditions of the vocals which reach their climax in “When the Saints Go Marching On.”
THIS IS THE CUE for Velma Middleton, dusky vocalist, to. Enter stage left and join Armstrong in “My Desire.” Both of them clown through the number and then into a patter song the name of which escapes this reviewer. Miss Middleton, of considerable girth, is surprisingly dynamic in her performance, at one point doing the splits in comic fashion. Her song delivery is definitely socko.
Earlier in the show, Helen Forrest, widely known to record fans of the nation as a top vocalist, is heard in neat renditions of “Falling in Love,” “I’m Through with Love” and “Hallelujah.” In response to the applause she does the oldtime, “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate.”
COMPLETING THE STAGE BILL is a dance act, the DeSantos Trio, offering Latin-flavored dancing in/ nice style with some clever acrobatics thrown in for good measure. On the screen is. the adventure-romance, “Bandits of Corsica” with Richard Green and Paula Raymond.
**********************

That was all from Rochester, but when Armstrong got back home to Corona, there were still a few minutes left at the end of the tape, which he filled with dubs of Al Jolson’s “Hebrew Chant” and “The Cantor.” Once done, and typed up the contents of the reel, which he affixed directly to the back of the tape box. Here’s the front of “Reel 61”:

And here’s the back, with Armstrong’s typed contents list:

Hope you all enjoyed this time machine trip back to the Loew’s Theater in Rochester, New York, 73 years ago today. Let us know if you enjoyed these deep dives into individual tapes as we have plenty more to share. Thanks for reading and listening!