Last time out, we told the story of the genesis of the album Ambassador Satch, the efforts of Columbia Records producer George Avakian, the recording of a complete Louis Armstrong concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the incredible publicity being generated by Armstrong’s European tour, including a New York Times Sunday front page story and the filming of a CBS See It Now special overseen by none other than Edward R. Murrow. Phew, that was a packed post–go back and check it out if you missed it the first time.
That See It Now special aired on December 12, 1955 and is worth sharing now; this version has a watermark but is the only way to see the complete show–enjoy:
Avakian was in Paris for Armstrong’s three-week engagement at the Olympia Theatre (quality isn’t great, but he can quickly be glimpsed in the scene with Claude Luter’s band at the Club du Vieux-Colombier). It was here (maybe–see below) that Avakian took charge of getting the eventual cover photo for the album that would be known as Ambassador Satch. While helping Mosaic Records put together a 9-CD boxed set of live All Stars material, David Ostwald and I visited George Avakian and his wife Anahid at their Upper West Side apartment on January 9, 2014. I spotted a photograph on the wall and knew we needed to include it in the set:
That’s George Avakian on the left, Louis Armstrong in the center, and Piet Beishuizen, Director of Publicity for Philips’ Records on the right. Armstrong is wearing the same outfit that would appear in the iconic cover photo so I knew there had to be a story behind this image. David pulled out his phone and recorded George’s reflections on this photo–here’s a lightly edited transcription of what he had to say about it:
“This photograph is an outgrowth of my desire to do an album that I could call Ambassador Satch because I thought Louie was the greatest ambassador the United States could possibly have. I’m glad that Felix Belair of the Stockholm office of the New York Times felt that way and wrote an article with a beautiful headline, just a few days before I met up with Louis in Paris at the beginning of this tour.
“I decided that the album we would record would be called Ambassador Satch for the simple reason he was the greatest ambassador the United States could possible have. And to illustrate it properly, I thought why not have Louie on the cover of the album wearing an ambassador’s morning clothes–but where do you get that in Paris on short notice? So I spoke to Piet Beishuizen, who was the publicity directorfor Phillips, who was accompanying us on the tour, and he said, ‘Oh, that’s easy.’ Well, I first said to him, ‘Where could we rent some things like morning clothes and so forth for Louie to wear in the photograph?’ And he said, ‘That’s not necessary. Dr. E. B. W. Schuitema, the President of Philips, is going to give a speech tomorrow at an assembly of company presidents, I guess it was, and so he brought his morning clothes and we’ll borrow it for the photograph from Dr. Schuitema.’ And I said, ‘Well, you can’t do that! After all, he’s the president of Philips Phonogram and what’s more, Louis is 5 feet 4 inches tall and Dr. Schuitemais more like 6 feet 2!’ And Piet said, ‘It’s not a problem. Lucille can pin up the back of the jacket and we’ll pin up his pants and it’ll get by in the photograph.’ I said, ‘All right, let’s do it.’ Of course, when we proposed it to Louie, he laughed and said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the way to go!”
“So we gathered in Louie’s suite at the Hotel. We arranged that and Piet came with the photographer. Lucille pinned up the back of the jacket and we got the pants hiked up as high as we could, but they still fell over the tops of his loafers. I thought to myself, ‘Oh hell, he’s wearing loafers.’ And the bottom of the pants are folding themselves into the [slit on top of the loafer]. And so we went for it. One of the delightful things about it is Louie took his horn out to blow a few notes for the hell of it–it had nothing to do with the photograph–and to my horror, he hit the spit valve, which means he ejected saliva that was clogging up part of the tubing, and spit landed, plop, just below the knot of the ascot that Louie had already put on. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, it’ll never show.’ Of course, it did! But you know, of all the thousands of people who have seen that photograph, not one person commented on the fact that there seems to be a dark spot below the knot of the ascot. Nor did any one notice that Louie’s trousers are flopping over the lip of the loafers–or even that he was wearing loafers with the morning clothes!
“Well, after we stopped laughing, we got the picture done and next came the idea of how to use the photograph. I was only interested in just something from the waist up so I didn’t care about the trousers being draped over the shoes. But when I saw the picture on the proof prints, he looked so wonderful standing up the way he did, I said, ‘We’re going to use the whole thing and if people want to comment on anything like the loafers and so forth, so be it.’ Not one person ever said a word about the loafers or the pants being too long or the spot on the tie. That picture really said the whole thing. You look at it and there he is, smiling away happily, representing the greatest democracy on the face of the earth and the most democratic music of all.”
Isn’t that wonderful? If you knew George, you must still miss him like I do. For reference, here’s the final cover, a copy owned by the late Swedish Armstrong historian Gösta Hägglöf that was signed by none other than George Avakian: “What a great memory–Louis in Paris in his hotel room in the clothes of Dr. Schuitema!” (There’s a second, later inscription above it from a 2004 trip to Sweden where George kidded Hagglof–known to friends as “Gus”–for no longer having green ink.)
[A note about the suitcase Armstrong is holding. Armstrong’s press agent Ernie Anderson recalled in 1991 that Armstrong personally told him, “I had to get all togged out in that rig one morning for the photographer. It was the same morning I had already made a date with my connection to pick up half a pound of fine mutah [marijuana]. So when you see that picture of Ambassador Satch you know he’s got half a pound of fine jive right there in his satchel.” It’s a great story (if the photo was taken in Paris, Mezz Mezzrow would have bene his connection), but perhaps it’s a bit too great as Ernie Anderson was a world-class public relations man and knew how to come up with good stories that might not have been 100% accurate. For the record. Terry Teachout relayed Anderson’s story to George Avakian in 2005 and Avakian responded, “Pops never let on to me that he had a stash in the attache case!” Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but it’s a better story to think that he did!]
And now, it’s time to dip into our Archives for alternate takes of the album’s cover photo, each one found on a series of contact sheets later collected by Jack Bradley. Here they are:
Some of these photos were able to be repurposed; Philips used one of them on an EP, Satch the Trump:
And Associated Booking Corporation used an alternate take for Louis’s 1957 concert program:
Back to the contact sheets, here’s where things get interesting as Armstrong steps outside–pray tell, what is that building in the background?
Now I might be wrong, but that sure looks like the famed Duomo di Milano–the Milan Cathedral:
Avakian remembered the Ambassador Satch cover photo being taken in Paris, but the contact sheets sure do point towards Milan being the actual location–and that makes the most sense because the next batch of recording Avakian would do for the album would take place in Milan.
At the end of our first post in this series on Ambassador Satch, we chronicled how Avakian found himself in a state of frustration in early December 1955. He had Philips record an entire All Stars concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, but the results weren’t up to par in Avakian’s opinion and some of the best songs performed that night had already been issued on live recordings put out by Decca Records–who put a five-year restriction against other labels releasing other Armstrong performances of those same numbers. Avakian hoped to record Armstrong in Paris, but Armstrong was being run ragged by Mezz Mezzrow and Hugues Panassie and wasn’t in great shape. On December 2, Avakian wrote to Columbia Records President Jim Conkling on December 2, “So far we have no ‘Ambassador Satch’ album. However, I’ll get one by December 21 in Milan. Will not go into detail, but I have a plan which will work if Tallerie (Louis’s U.S. road man) and Trummy Young do just half what I have arranged for them to do before I meet them in Milan, plus the screwing Langley will give the CBS TV tapes and the little bit useable from Amsterdam.”
The “little bit useable from Amsterdam” would indeed make up four out of Ambassador Satch’s ten tracks. The “CBS TV tapes” referred to what Edward R. Murrow was recording for his See It Now TV special, which aired on December 12; Avakian knew that some complete performances were being filmed and at this time, held out hope that perhaps the CBS audio would be good enough to use. (It wouldn’t–though he made a note of the performance of “Twelfth Street Rag” that Murrow’s cameras captured.)
So what was Avakian’s seemingly nefarious “plan”? The All Stars would be performing two shows a day at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan, Italy on December 19 and 20. Avakian could have recorded a show in Milan and hoped for better quality performances, but instead, he had a smarter idea: to record the All Stars after an evening of playing and to treat it like a studio session instead of a live recording.
To do this, Avakian had to get the approval of road manager Pierre “Frenchy” Tallerie, who managed Armstrong’s schedule. Tallerie checked and worked it out that Armstrong and the All Stars would be free to do such a session after their second concert, meaning the early hours of December 20. Avakian thought about holding such a session at the Teatro Nuovo since Armstrong and the All Stars were already there, but in the end, opted to set up at the smaller, 500-seat Teatro Leonardo da Vinci. Avakian didn’t hire a photographer for the session so we don’t know exactly how it was set up, but here’s a photo of the venue today which gives an idea of the space:
According to Italian saxophonist and historian Vittorio Castelli, Philips sent their engineer in Milano, Gennaro Carone, to set up his sound equipment, but they also sent a “Dutch engineer from Holland” to be in charge of taping the session, with Carone serving as Assistant Engineer. The name of this Dutch engineer has not apparently survived, but it appears that Avakian wanted whomever recorded the All Stars in Amsterdam to oversee the Milan session to match the sound.
Avakian had the theater booked from 1 a.m. until 4:30 and with the microphones and tapes all set up, he just had to wait for the All Stars. The theater wouldn’t be empty for long. Armstrong and the All Stars arrived with not only their usual entourage of wives, friends, girlfriends, valet and road manager, but also a few dozen overly enthusiastic young Italian fans from the Hot Club of Milan. Now at this point, I’m going to lean on the liner notes I wrote in 2014 for the Mosaic Records set, Columbia and RCA Victor Live Recordings of Louis Armstrong and the All Stars. A quick bit of backstory though on the production, as we will also share all of the music issued on that set.
Avakian recorded four reels of tape that evening. Going back to the Columbia Records files acquired from the late Chris Albertson, here are Avakian’s handwritten notes on all four Milan reels, which we used as a guide when putting the Mosaic set together. Here’s the first page, with someone getting the date wrong (Armstrong’s evening in Milan began on December 19, not 9, but the session technically took place in the early hours of December 20):
First up, Avakian’s notes on Reels 1 and 2.
Reel 1 survived in pristine condition and in great sound, most likely because none of the music captured on that reel made it onto the finished album. It apparently originally contained two takes of “Indiana” but only one was on the reel we were sent. “Someday You’ll Be Sorry” followed with one breakdown followed by three complete takes and then an announcement by Louis. Avakian writes, “Louis too alone 1st 2 choruses, Trummy off-mike.” Avakian seemed to prefer take 4, giving it a time, but we included takes 2 and 4 on the Mosaic set. Reel 1 ends with “Clarinet Marmalade” with multiple breakdowns before Edmond Hall completed full takes of his feature on attempts 4 and 5; we included take 5, which Avakian approved as “Basic OK.”
But Reel 2–“West End Blues,” “Royal Garden Blues,” and “The Faithful Hussar”–only survived with Avakian’s postproduction edits of the master takes that appeared on Ambassador Satch. It opened with two attempts at “West End Blues,” before the All Stars knocked off “Royal Garden Blues” in just one try. Avakian must not have had his Decca notes handy as that track appeared on Satchmo at Symphony Hall, released in early January 1951, and was one of that label’s “restricted” songs; we’ll describe how Avakian worked around it in our next post. Finally, Avakian wanted to record something completely new and fresh, which ended up being “The Faithful Hussar,” listed by Avakian as “Hussar Song.” A few complete takes were made, with Avakian trying to figure out which one was better in his notes below:
As for Reels 3 and 4, Sony didn’t have them–but George Avakian’s basement did! The sound quality was a step down from Reel 1, which makes me think these were dubs Avakian had made so he could decide what to edit from the original reels. Sony no longer had the original, uncut reels but George’s tapes, even in the slightly lesser sound, did have all the surviving takes and breakdowns so we used those for the Mosaic set.
Reel 3 opened with the All Stars attempting “Tiger Rag,” which had not been in the band’s book since 1947. After a breakdown take, the All Stars roared through two complete takes and an encore. Trummy Young was given a feature on “You Can Depend On Me,” which Trummy had recorded in France (along with Arvell Shaw) just a few weeks earlier in Paris. Avakian then attempted “The Lonesome Road,” which we’ll discuss in a bit, before Armstrong emptied the tank on multiple takes of “That’s a Plenty.” That ended Reel 3 and also ended Louis’s night; Reel 4 was used for multiple takes of another Edmond Hall feature, “Dardanella,” before Armstrong threw one of his Italian fans a bone, having vocalist Ray Martino sing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Nu Quarto ‘e Luna” with the All Stars’ rhythm section in hopes of getting him a record deal. Here’s Avakian’s notes on Reels 3 and 4:
With that out of the way, please enjoy this excerpt of my notes from the 2014 Mosaic Records set, with YouTube videos containing the audio of each track sprinkled in:
The revelers took their place in the seats but Avakian still wanted to treat it like a studio session, planning to add fake applause in postproduction. He demanded quiet and recorded the first number, another rollicking version of INDIANA, probably Armstrong’s request to make sure the chops were still “percolating” after such a long evening’s work. They certainly were.
But at this point, Avakian, probably taken in by the spirit of the fans who crashed the session, told the young fans to cheer and react as if it was a concert. They were more than up for the challenge, which turned out to be a smart move as Armstrong was always extra inspired performing in front of enthusiastic fans. A party atmosphere of pure love and joy between performers and fans began to arise.
SOMEDAY YOU’LL BE SORRY was the next choice, Armstrong’s own composition that he debuted on record shortly after the Town Hall concert. He originally gave it a tender, ballad treatment but after Trummy Young joined the All Stars and their excitement quotient rose as a result, Armstrong began to jump SOMEDAY, always with fine results. Takes two and four are included here, both infectious and consistently excellent. Surviving correspondence shows that Avakian loved this performance and even worked out a deal with Decca to get permission to release it but for some reason, it didn’t make it on to the final album.
Next Edmond Hall was given a chance to record CLARINET MARMALADE, one of his most exciting features. To give the impression that this was recorded in France, Avakian even had Armstrong record an introduction in French, with humorous results. He was covering all bases, recording announcements and even encores when appropriate, though this number also was left off the finished product.
Because the second reel from Milan is missing, the next three performances are heard as originally issued on AMBASSADOR SATCH, with Avakian’s postproduction work in place. WEST END BLUES is a special choice, as the 1928 original recording was one of the milestones of 20th century music. This one isn’t but that’s no reason to disparage it; in fact, it’s still an outstanding performance, one that has grown on me so much over the years, I listen to it almost as often as the iconic original version. The opening cadenza is slower and more dramatically paced than the original; he takes his time, to great effect. He might have lost a few miles off his fastball and a little of his breath control (he can’t hold the climactic note for the full four bars as he did in 1928), but just listen to his tone and the way he hits the high notes on the nose, especially the gigantic fat high C he hits after the descending arpeggios, conveying everything he wants to in just a single note. (Only a couple of sections from Trummy’s solo come from take 1—notice the change in cymbals. The rest is all take 2.)
The next tune only needed one take to nail, ROYAL GARDEN BLUES. Unlike the fast, but not-too-fast (half-fast?) versions from 1947, ROYAL GARDEN BLUES got a turbocharged treatment in the mid-50s and beyond. Like MUSKRAT RAMBLE from Amsterdam, it’s another one of the great Armstrong-Hall-Young performances in terms of excitement, with Armstrong in Herculean form during his solo and the encore. Avakian knew he had a winner and made this the opening track on AMBASSADOR SATCH.
Up to this point, the All Stars had recorded only numbers already in their book but Avakian’s next choice came from out of left field: THE FAITHFUL HUSSAR, a German folk song originally known as DER TREUE HUSSAR and written circa 1825. Armstrong heard it in Dusseldorf but probably never played it until Milan. Fortunately for Avakian, it fit the band like a glove, especially Armstrong, with its melody based on three quarter-notes at a time (a rhythmic hallmark of King Oliver’s playing). Shaw also deserves credit for his tremendously powerful bass lines. Avakian recorded multiple takes, notating that take three was “exceptionally wonderful” and questioning that take four might have been “better?” Back in New York, he edited the best parts together to form a rocking, six-minute performance, complete with some gutbucket shouting by Young and Armstrong’s time-honored feat of playing the melody an octave higher in the encore (Armstrong also calls Billy Kyle “Crazy Otto,” a reference to the popular German jazz and pop pianist Fritz Schulz-Reichel). A humorous aspect involves Armstrong never being able to remember the title, leading him to announce it as “Huzzah Cuzzah.” Even though this was a session and Avakian could have corrected him, Armstrong’s mangling of it was too good to leave out.
We have also included an edited single that Avakian rushed out for release on Columbia’s international label, Philips, featuring none of the fake applause of the AMBASSADOR SATCH version and a different solo by Kyle (with Trummy Young shouting out the name of boogie woogie pianist “Pete Johnson” amidst Armstrong’s cries of “Crazy Otto!”).
The rest of the Milan session does survive in full, allowing listeners the opportunity to hear how the rest of the issued—and unissued—material originally sounded in those early morning hours. TIGER RAG was an inspired choice Avakian credited to Hall. Though long associated with Armstrong, the tune does not seem to have made it into the All Stars’s repertoire after the 1947 Town Hall version. Thus, a bit of rehearsing had to be done as the band found a key, straightened out the changes and worked out a routine, centered around Armstrong and Young panicking about a tiger going to bite them, breaking up the Italians in attendance. Once everything was settled, the All Stars caught fire and delivered two burning takes, plus an encore, with the best parts spliced together to create the final track on AMBASSADOR SATCH (a separate edit was issued as a single by Philips). The unedited takes can now be heard heard here for the first time without the fake applause. Hall especially commands attention with both his scorching solo and ensemble work.
Trummy was up next with YOU CAN DEPEND ON ME, which Armstrong introduced in 1931 and was still featuring himself on at Pasadena in 1951. On December 6, Young and Shaw broke away in Paris one evening to record an LP for the Ducretet-Thomson label, TRUMMY YOUNG AND HIS FIFTY-FIFTY BAND with the likes of Guy Lafitte, Andre Persiany and Kansas Fields. A jumped version of YOU CAN DEPEND ON ME was a highlight of the session so it made sense for Young to call it two weeks later in Milan, even though this edition of All Stars had never played it together (the original session tape features Kyle leading the band through the bridge to make sure they have the right changes). Once the impromptu rehearsal ended (with Shaw instructing everyone to “Wail!”), the band again demonstrated just what pros they were by nailing it in one take, plus performing an extra encore. Young demonstrates the smooth, double-timed lines that made him an associate of the early boppers, as well as his more shouting style that endeared him to Jazz at the Philharmonic audiences (dig his quote of CANDY). Armstrong owns his solo and especially his full chorus and rideout lead during the encore; how much swinging can one band produce in a single night?
Avakian’s next choice, LONESOME ROAD, might have seemed like a good idea on paper but it wasn’t suitable for the album. In 1931, Armstrong and his big band (and various friends) recorded a hilarious version of the quasi-spiritual, everybody taking turns joking around with “Reverend Armstrong.” Avakian thought they could recreate in Milan with the excited Italian fans, but without any rehearsal, the results have a “you-had-to-be-there” feeling, with some of the fans getting a little too anxious to sing along (the fan Armstrong tells, “Don’t sing louder than me, Brother” was Gianni Tollara, who still got a featured role in Avakian’s liner notes to the album). Once again, though, the All Stars’s instrumental spot is as serious as it gets, Deems really laying it down, while Armstrong alludes to I WANT A LITTLE GIRL at the start (right after he, too, can be heard urging the band to “Wail” in the background before picking up his horn).
For the final All Stars full band feature, Avakian chose the demanding THAT’S A PLENTY, which the All Stars probably hadn’t played since Young’s first night with the group in 1952. After a bit of rehearsing and a couple of false starts, everything came together for a positively incendiary take, Armstrong’s trumpet still hitting the high, hard ones after playing multiple concerts and a recording session that was now into overtime.
An encore seemed like the perfect punctuation mark to the session—only for Avakian to call out, “Once again, would you?” Instead of balking, they counted it right off and did it one more time, though Young and Shaw can’t seem to get together on what strain they’re playing during the trombone solo, one of the pitfalls of the early jazz repertoire (Young actually seems to anticipate the changes incorrectly both times during the second strain). Everything eventually syncs, leading up to another exciting closing ensemble, Armstrong still knocking out those repeated high concert Bb’s, topping it off with a high concert D. Bravo, Pops.
With that, Armstrong earned a much needed rest, but Avakian still wasn’t done, wanting to capture Hall’s DARDANELLA again. On the two previously unissued takes here, Hall comes up with some new ideas but everyone sounds a little tired (with good reason); Avakian still ended up using the live version from Amsterdam. With that, the session was finally waved off in the early hours of the morning, Billy Kyle playing a few triumphant bars of Paramount’s newsreel theme as a humorous way to conclude what must have been one of the most exhausting nights of Armstrong’s life.
But instead of asking for pity, Armstrong felt triumphant. After the album was released, Armstrong sat down for a radio interview with disc jockey Joe Jeru in Benton Harbor, Michigan. When Jeru complimented Armstrong on his AT THE CRESCENDO live album for Decca, Armstrong responded by making no secret of his preference. “Okay, but you can get a later album than that,” he said. “AMBASSADOR SATCH. That I made in Milano, Italy, just coming out over here. It’s better than THE CRESCENDO. Dig that. And we made that after the third concert in Milano. We did three concerts that day, with intermission included. And 1:00 that night, we begin to record that AMBASSADOR SATCH. And at 5:00 in the morning, we’re wailing WEST END BLUES. See what I mean? And TIGER RAG, you ain’t never heard TIGER RAG in your life like them cats, the longer they played it. But that’s what I’m talking about. If you didn’t feel good, you couldn’t do that. You can’t force those things.”
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That concludes the story of what happened in Milan–but it does not conclude the saga of Ambassador Satch. Avakian came back to the States with hours of material from Amsterdam and Milan to edit an entire album from, but was soon confronted with Decca’s five-year restriction list of tunes. This included the complete Satchmo at Symphony Hall, which Decca was holding to a January 15, 1951 release date, instead of the 1947 recording date, as well as Satchmo at Pasadena, recorded on January 30, 1951 and released in 1952.
Those two albums alone contained a number of tracks Avakian could not release: “Muskrat Ramble,” “Royal Garden Blues,” “Someday You’ll Be Sorry” (re-recorded for Decca in 1953, as well), “You Can Depend on Me,” “That’s a Plenty,” “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” and “Indiana.” In short, a good chunk of the recordings Avakian had already earmarked for Ambassador Satch were now off the table. Thus, Avakian would have to book studio time with the All Stars on January 24, 1956 to finish off the album–and we’ll have the story of those tracks and the eventual production and release of Ambassador Satch next time!