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Louis Armstrong: Gangsters, the CIA, and Hot Music · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: story of one of music histories giants, an artists so
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: big and so influential that the word icon doesn't do
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the man justice. It's a story about a trumpet player,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: an accidental jazz innovator, and reluctant jazz ambassador. It's a
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: story about a drug bust, a pissed off president, racist
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Southern lawmakers, a CIA coup. And it's a story about gangsters,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: lots and lots of gangsters. Because this is a story
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: about the great jazz man Louis Armstrong, which of course
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: means it's a story about great music. Unlike that music.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I played a few at the top of the show
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: my melotron called roll Them if you Got Them MK one.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: rights to Tammy by Debbie Reynolds. And why would I
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: play you that specific slice of Princess Leah's Mom's cheese?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: song in America on September seventeenth, nineteen fifty seven, and
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: that was the day that Louis Armstrong gave an interview
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: that instantly changed how the public thought of him. It
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: may have been the catalyst for the President of the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: United States to suddenly become involved in the civil rights movement.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: On this episode, a drug bust, racist politicians, a CIA coup,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: stone cold gangsters, and one of the greatest to ever
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: do it, Louis Armstrong.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: There are two ways to say Louis Armstrong's name. The
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: first way is how I've just said it, Louis. The
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: second way is Louie. Watch any footage then or now
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: as someone talking about Louis Armstrong or Louis Armstrong, and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you'll hear different people say it different ways. And even
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty nine Barbara streisand musical Hello Dolly,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: in which he made a memorable cameo as a bandleader,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: he introduces himself as Lewis. But still I'm gonna call
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: him Louis, just because that's what I've always done, and
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I tried doing it the other way, and frankly it
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: just sounds weird. So here we go. Anyhow, I bring
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: this up because just like there are two ways to
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: say Louis Armstrong. There are two ways to see Louis Armstrong.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: In fact, there are two Louis Armstrong's. Let me explain
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the first one you're familiar with. That's the larger than
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: life icon you call Satchmo or Pops. The lifelong ambassador
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of jazz, the American art form, born right there in
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: his hometown, New Orleans, an art form that in many
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: ways he invented, or at least was its most important
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: early innovator. He was the giant on whose shoulders every
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: jazz great to come in the twentieth century stood impossible
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: high seas on the trumpet, that gravelly scat singing voice.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: What a wonderful world and all that. This is the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: same guy who as the years went by and the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: culture shifted and so called traditional jazz took a back
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: seat to bebop, modal jazz and hard bop with new
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: strains of the art form, he helped shape now soundtracking
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the civil rights movement. He stayed the same in the
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: minds of jazz cats such as Dizzy Gillespie. Louis became
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: an artifact of the past, still catering to the white
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: man at a moment when a famous black musician should
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: be using his platform not to cater but to dissent.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I don't get involved in politics, Louis Armstrong once said,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I just blow my horn. What Dizzey Gillespie didn't know
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: at the time, though we'd learned much later, was that
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I just blow my horn was Louis Armstrong's code for
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I survive. Louis was taught early on how to survive
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: as a black man in a white man's world. He
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: did this by heeding the advice of his mentors, including
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Joe Oliver aka King Oliver, the famous band leader, who
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: told Louis, you're crying in your horn, all right, but
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it's the audience that should cry, not you. You have
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: to learn to never wear the trouble in your face.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: So Louis hid that trouble in his horn, which was
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: exactly what he was doing on a particular night in
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, the year he seriously leveled up, going
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: from getting paid to respectable three hundred and fifty dollars
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a night to commanding a staggering twenty five hundred dollars
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: every show. That's like thirty five grand in today's dollars.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: By the way.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Tonight, Louis found himself in a familiar spot outside the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: club in between sets, puffing on a joint, getting high
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: as hell actually, and also getting paranoid, worried that a
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: couple of cops would step out of the shadows to
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: pinch him for communing with one of his greatest loves, marijuana.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: This is where the other Louis Armstrong comes in, the
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: real Louis Armstrong, the one from the real part of
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: New Orleans, the back of town James Ally, not Storyville,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the red light district where black men weren't allowed to
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: pay for sex, but Black Storyville, the city's other red
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: light district, some three blocks away, where sex workers weren't
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: prostitutes as they were known in the white establishments, but horrors,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: a small distinction in descriptors that functioned solely to degrade
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the black citizens of New Orleans even more than they
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: already were by segregation and discrimination. It was in this
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: environment of systemic racism, sex, and violence that Louis Armstrong
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: came of age, including the years he spent in an orphanage,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: a fortuitous turn of events that found him joining their
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: brass band, where his self taught god given skills quickly
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: rocketed him to Cornett Player first chair. Now, as an adult,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: he continued to navigate not just a racist city, but
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a racist world. And a little Reefer went a long way,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: not just in how it made Louis feel, or how
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: it made the music sound, all those horns winding themselves
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: around each other in harmonious ecstasy, but and this is
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: in Louis's own words, it made you quote forget all
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: the bad things that happened to a negro unquote. Louis
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: had his fair share of bad things to forget, and
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: he hoped that tonight he wouldn't add another one of
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the lists. As he choked on the joint, his manager,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Joe Glazer told Louis he had nothing to worry about. Then,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: an arrangement had been made with the federal agents who'd
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: been following Louis arm Strong's trail of skunky marijuana smoke.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Joe Glazer had done this by setting up his other
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: famous client, Billy Holiday, who was at this very moment
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: being booked for possession. Didn't matter that Billy wasn't in
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: her hotel room when agents searched it and found the dope.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, yes, it did matter that she wasn't there,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: because legally there was nothing tying her to the drugs,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: and even the shittiest of public defenders could have fought
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: and beat the charge easily. But it didn't matter because
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Joe Glazer, Billy Holiday, and Louis Armstrong's manager had advised
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Billy to not lawyer up and instead to plead guilty.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: One hand washed the other. Joe gave Billy to the Feds,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and in return, the Feds laid off Satchmo, who no
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: offense to Billie. Holiday was the golden goose for Joe Glazer,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: it was just business. For Louis Armstrong, it was survival.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Louis watched Billy take the fall, and he couldn't help
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: but think back to a time when he found himself
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: in a similar situation. It was seventeen years prior, in
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, not in Chicago, where he'd been making his
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: home and his name, but instead in Culver City, California,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: where he was on tour with his band. This was
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: long before Joe Glazer entered the picture. Louis was standing
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: outside the Cotton Club, passing a joint back and forth
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: with his white drummer weed, or gage, as Louis called
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: it was not yet illegal in the United States, but
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: it had been illegal for years in the state of California,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and the two detectives who suddenly came out of nowhere
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: made this abundantly clear. They charged Louis with a felony
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: punishable by up to six years behind bars. But Louis
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: didn't wind up like Billy Holliday, who had her cabaret
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: card revoked and could no longer find steady work. For
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: this offense, Louis had nothing taken away and only served
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: nine days, after which he was free to go to
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: keep making that money and to keep blowing his horn.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And it's all because the two men who simply made
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: their presence and their considerable influence know At Louis's trial,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: the Cotton Club's band leader, Abe Lyman, showed up with
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: his brother and sat in the gallery. The judge looked
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: out at the small crowd and locked eyes with the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: two men. He knew what they said about the Limans,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: that they were bootleggers, that they were cozy with Culver
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: City politicians, and that they were even cozier with gangsters.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: The judge was a sworn man of the law. But
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: even lawmen knew to tread carefully around the mob. So
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong got that cush sentence and made his way
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: back to Chicago. Because a couple of supposed wise guys
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: put the pressure on just by showing up. The words
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: of King Oliver came back to him. Now, never wear
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the trouble in your face, which is what Louis did,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: completely unaware that this very moment was the true beginning
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: of his private life. Of the other Louis Armstrong, the
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: one the American public was just getting to know and love,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the same Louis Armstrong who was about to fall into
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the arms of organized crime. Chicago, nineteen thirty one. Louis
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Armstrong sat backstaye at the show Boat Club, sweating from
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the Knight's feverish set hot music. They called it so
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: hot that his heart was still pounding, his ears still ringing.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: He stripped down to his T shirt with a handkerchief
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: wrapped around his head. He was just another horn player,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: but of course he wasn't. Louis didn't play like anyone else.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: His thrilling sound was the product of his self taught style,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: and the emphasis here is on self taught he had
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: incorrect ambusher, which is a fancy word for the way
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to press your lips to the mouthpiece. To
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: put it plainly, Louis Armstrong had poor technique technically speaking, This,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: of course, was a huge part of his individuality and
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: what made him stand out, like the way he would
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: shake his head and get vibrato instead of using his fingers,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: which was the norm. These things, this irregular technique, helped
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: make him the hottest jazz man.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: In the country.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: The groundbreaking records he cut with his Hot five and
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Hot seven combos just a few year years earlier were
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: hard to come by because it seemed like the music
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: stores were always sold out. Louis's record label at the time, Okay,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: released his music on their Race Records line, which was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: at the time the industry term for music marketed to
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: African Americans, as well as their regular line of records,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: which is to say, records for white people. And yeah,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: we know that's pretty fucked up, but that's the way
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: that it was. Louis Armstrong's reach was wide, and you
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: need look no further than an up and coming pop
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: singer named Bing Crosby, whose style was obviously indebted to
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong. Louis, on the other hand, was in debt
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to someone else. The door to the dressing room backstage
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: at the Showbo Club swung open, and in walked Frankie Foster,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the notorious Chicago gangster. Some said Frankie was the trigger
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: man who took care of that Tribune reporter Jake Lingle,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: and despite his clean cut image, Link was dirty and
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: on the take, real buddy buddy with al Capone a
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: little too buddy buddy, apparently, because he went out with
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: one bullet to the back of his head, died with
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: his cigar clenched between his teeth and that day's paper
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: still in his hands. Louis didn't have to know whether
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Frankie was the one who actually did Lingle, because he
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was sure the guy had the stones for killing, period.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: And now that guy with the stones for killing was
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: standing between Louis Armstrong and the door. Pack your bags.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Frankie said, you're going to New York to play a
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: show there tomorrow. What Louie thought, New York? The hell
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: he was going to New York. Louis had show his
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: book right here in Chicago, and he told Frankie. This
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Frankie responded by reaching into his jacket pocket and producing
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: a revolver. He pulled the hammer back, and the sound
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: of the pistol cocking sent the shiver down Louis Armstrong's spine.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: How about now, was he getting through New York City tomorrow?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Let me back up for a second. There are a
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: few things he needed to know in order to understand
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: why one of Chicago's most feared trigger man was threatening
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong in his dressing room. At this point nineteen
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: thirty one, Louis was not yet managed by Joe Glazer,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: the guy who set up Billy Holliday on that phony
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: drug bust, but instead by a man named Johnny Collins.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Johnny Collins was a big guy with a Hitler mustache,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and like many others working at the time in the
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: music business, he was a gangster. Okay, maybe not in
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: the literal al capone way, but in the way that
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: he did his fair share of shady shit kind of way.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: In fact, Johnny Collins had weaseled his way into his
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: current role by making some sort of below the table
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: deal with Louie's former manager. Now that former manager, Tommy
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Rockwell was making a stink. Either he wanted his old
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: job back or he wanted to get paid. He told
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Johnny Collins to cough up six grand or he'd burn
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: that fucking hitler mustache right off his face. Collins and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Louis knew that Tommy Rockwell was serious, just like they
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: knew that the t German Frankie Foster was serious. This
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: was a guy with a direct line not just to
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: al Capone, but to the New York mobster Dutch Schultz.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And though Tommy Rockwell always denied hiring Frankie Foster to
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: do his dirty work, the dirty working question being forcibly
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: removing Louis Armstrong from Chicago and shipping him to a
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: club in New York where Rockwell was connected. No Rockwell
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: did manage to get Louis kicked out of the American
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Federation of Musicians where the AFM by complaining to them
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: that Louis Armstrong was in violation of his previous management contract. So,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: on top of having a gun pointed in his face,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and on top of being caught in a power struggle
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: between warring and well connected gangster managers, Louis Armstrong was
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: now no longer protected by a union, which meant he
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: was out of luck when it came to negotiating wages,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: working conditions, etc. Faced with this extremely messy situation, Louis
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Armstrong and his manager, Johnny Collins, saw only one way out.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: They ran. They high tailed it out of Chicago and
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: headed south, far away from Frankie Foster and Tommy Rockwell
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: and from al Capon. Louis and his band hold up
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: in a private Pullman train car, steam and smoke powering
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: them all the way to New Orleans, then by bus
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: to Memphis, where a dispatcher at the depot told them
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to exit the larger vehicle Johnny Collins had paid for
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and get on a smaller bus with fewer amenities, and
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: they refused, so the Memphis Police Department was called, and
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: the cops took one look at Johnny Collins, his white
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: wife on a bus with a bunch of black musicians,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and being the racist pencil dicks that they were, threw
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: all of them in jail and Moviie Armstrong had to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: agree to play a local benefit show in order to
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: be released, which he did not, wearing the trouble in
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: his face all that. Instead, he delivered his message inside
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: his music, dedicating one of his favorite tunes that night
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: to the Memphis PD a song called I'll be Glad
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: when You're dead, You Rascal You. In Philadelphia, the problem
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't racist cops. It was a couple of local goons
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: who found their way backstage, just like Frankie Foster had done,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: But unlike Frankie Foster, these goons were offering Louis their protection.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Louis was once again reminded of what was at stake
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: of the people who would be glad when he was dead,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: you rascal you, and this freaked him out. He went
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: straight to the police station, fearing for his life, and
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: asked them to lock him up for his own safety.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: And there in that cell, all these things weighed on
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: his mind, as did his other problems, like his lips,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: which had become bloody and shredded on account of his
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: bad technique. And then there was his estranged wife, Lil
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: who was demanding thousands of dollars and unpaid quote unquote
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: maintenance money. All of which is to say when Joe
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Glazer finally showed up, the man who would become Louie's
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: manager for just about the rest of his life, it
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: couldn't have happened at a better time. Glazer had his
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: own direct line to guys like al Capone, having run
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the gangster cell side clubs and brothels in the past,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: he'd managed boxers. He was tough and feared and respected
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: in his own way. Not that Glazer wasn't extremely problematic,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: because he was. He nonchalantly tossed around racial slurs. He
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: was once given a ten year sentence for the rape
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: of a fourteen year old girl, but avoided jail time
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: by marrying her. A few years later, when he found
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: himself in a similar situation with a seventeen year old girl,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: his friend al Capone pulled some strings to make it
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: go away, which is what Joe Glazer did, and that's
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: what Louis Armstrong wanted right now. To make everything go away.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: He needed a guy like Joe Glazer, because to survive
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: he needed more than the ability to hide his trouble
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: in his horn. Joe Glazer believed in Louis Armstrong, and
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: he was ready to go to work for Louis, and
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: those facts outweighed the very glaring moral and ethical deficiencies
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: of his character. This was the world that Louis Armstrong
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: came from and the world in which he continued to live,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: and starting in nineteen thirty five, he lived it with
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Joe Glazer as his manager. Glazer paid off Louie's wife, Lil,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: He paid off the ex manager Johnny Collins, and he
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: used his connections to get organized crime off Louis's back.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Then he took out a six figure life insurance policy
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: on his client and got to work. As Louis later said,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Joe Glazer saved him from the gangsters, but Louis Armstrong
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: would win his next battle on his own. We'll be
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: right back after this.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: We're we're where.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: In January nineteen fifty seven, like millions of others in America,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: President Dwight D. Eisenhower was watching Elvis Presley on the
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Idiot Box. This was the Tupelo Boys third appear errants
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: on The Ed Sullivan Show, and this time the censors
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: at CBS insisted that the camera only show him from
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the waist up. If the decision were left to Elvis
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the Pelvis, that camera would have gone south of his
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: belt line to show people at home with the girls
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: in the studio audience were losing their minds over but
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: this was America not the land of the free, as advertised,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: but the land of the carefully crafted, damage controlled public
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: relations image, an image that Dwight D. Eisenhower was more
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: than well aware of. But a rock and roll singer's
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: quivering hips weren't on Ike's mind at the moment. Neither
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: was the upcoming inauguration in which he would be sworn
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: in for a second term. Instead, Eisenhower was worried about
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: how the rest of the world currently looked at America.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about what parts of Elvis Presley's
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: body were being shown on TV. I'm talking about Rosa
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Parks arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior busted for doing thirty twenty five,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and the KKK forcing a black truck driver to jump
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: off a bridge to his death. And despite Brown versus
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Board of Education, which just three years prior had declared
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: segregation in schools to be unconstitutional, a follow up opinion
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: by the Supreme Court actually made it okay for some
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: districts to ignore desegregation, places like Little Rock, Arkansas. But
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I'll get to that in a minute. My point is
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Eisenhower knew that America's image wasn't as pretty as it
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: was made out to be, because America, both on the
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: surface and deep down, could get kind of ugly. Eisenhower
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: needed to work on polishing that image, in part by
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: spreading the good news about capitalism. As the Cold War
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: continued to heat up, part of Eisenhower's plan was to
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: send jazz ambassadors out to visit the rest of the world. Essentially,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the State Department would earmark tens, even hundreds of thousands
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: of dollars to fund overseas tours of jazz artists with
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: racially mixed bands. For the musicians, it was good money
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and an opportunity to see the world. For Eisenhower and
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, it was a
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: way to control a narrative of black and white Americans
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: living and working together in harmony for far flong audiences
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: in the Balkans, the Middle East, and in Russia. Russia
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: in particular was where Eisenhower wanted Louis Armstrong to go
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: on a government funded jazz ambassador tour later that year,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty seven. At this point, Louis Armstrong was
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: fifty six years old. He was an American Institution, and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: with the help of his manager, Joe Glazer, he crossed
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: over to white audiences, performing not just jazz tunes but
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: pops standards. He'd appeared in movies with Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and Grace Kelly. He was a beloved entertainer and an
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: ideal cultural export. But most importantly for President Eisenhower and
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Secretary of State Dulles, Louis Armstrong lived by the code
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: of the mentor King Oliver. He never won trouble in
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: his face meeting. Of course, that Eisenhower could trust Louis
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: to hang with the Soviets, not the bitch and moan
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: about the real troubles that black Americans faced every day
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: back home. And this is not to say that Louis
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Armstrong did not stand up for civil rights. The year prior,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: he famously refused to appear with his Integrated band in
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: his hometown, New Orleans, when the state of Louisiana passed
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: a law forbidding black and white musicians from performing together.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: He also refused to perform at any venue where he
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: was not allowed to stay, which is how he began
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: staying in white's only hotels and how he found himself
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the first black guest ever at the Dakota Hotel in
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Grand Forks, Michigan, on the evening of September seventeenth, nineteen
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: fifty seven. Again, September seventeenth, nineteen fifty seven, two weeks
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: after the Governor of Arkansas, Raville Fabas, called in the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: National Guard to stop nine black students from enrolling in
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Little Rock Central High School in defiance of Brown versus
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Board of Education. Also, just one week after the Civil
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Rights Act was passed, the first piece of civil rights
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: legislation signed into law by President Eisenhower. These things were
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: no doubt on Louis Armstrong's mind this particular night when
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: a student journalist writing for the Grand Fork Herald showed
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: up at his room at the Dakota Hotel. At first,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the conversation when it's expected, they talked to music, and
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Louis went on and on about Bing Crosby and what
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: a great voice he had. But then the kid mentioned
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Little Rock and Louis's face twisted up as horn was
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: tucked away in its case, and he had no place
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: to hide his trouble. So, for once Louis Armstrong let
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: his trouble emerge in his face, and then in his voice.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: You know what he said to the college reporter. It's
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: getting almost so bad. A colored man hasn't got any country.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Eisenhower has got no guts. He's a two faced politician.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And that Governor Fabis he's a no good motherfucker. So
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: is John Foster Ellis. That man's another motherfucker. And the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: way they are treating my people in the South, the
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: whole government can go to hell. The college reporter couldn't
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: write fast enough in his notebook. He could hardly believe
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: what he was hearing, because the public Louis Armstrong never
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: talked like this, meaning that, as far as the world
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: was aware, the private Louis Armstrong never thought like this,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: but he clearly did. And as the kid kept writing,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Louis started singing, Oh say, can you motherfucking see by
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the motherfucking don's early life. Obviously, this being nineteen fifty seven,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: many Louis Armstrong's actual words could not be printed. He
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and the reporter settled on uneducated plowboy as a replacement
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: for motherfucker to describe Governor Foubis. And when the story
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: ran not just in the Grand Forks Herald, but in
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the papers all over the country via the Associated Press,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: it was like a bomb went off. Louis Armstrong's words
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: were strong, and his stance was even stronger, a stance
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: that resulted in his refusal to go through with the
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Jazz ambassador toward Russia for the gutless motherfucker Dwight d
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: eys an Hour. The backlash was immediate. White radio stations
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: threw out all the Louis Armstrong records. Ford Motor Company
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: prepared to pull their sponsorship from an upcoming being Crosby
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: TV special in which Louis was slated to appear. Even
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: on the other side of the divide, Sammy Davis Junior
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: called out Louis Armstrong for waiting so long to do
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the right thing, and Louise's mind, however, doing the right
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: thing if it involved putting himself out there, well that
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: was dangerous. If he was on the front lines of
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the movement, picketing, marching and holding a sign, if he
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: got in a scuffle, if the cops roughed him up,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: or he got clocked in the face, if his lips,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: his mouth, if they got any more fucked up than
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: they already were, he was done, he would not survive.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: So saying these things to this reporter now in nineteen
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: fifty seven, that was putting himself out there more than
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: he ever had. And in the wake of Louis Armstrong
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: calling out President Eisenhower in just about every newspaper in
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the country, something truly remarkable happened. Less than one week
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: after the article ran. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: He sent the US Armies one hundred and first Airborn
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Division to Little Rock, and he ordered Little Rock Central
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: High to admit the nine black students immediately. Eisenhower's action
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: was enough to convince Louis to embark on one of
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: those government funded jazz ambassador tours after all, but not
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: to Russia. Three years later, Louis Armstrong and his band
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: took off for Africa to represent in America that, in
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: his eyes, was perhaps beginning to listen and beginning to change,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: when in reality, America was just using Louis Armstrong for
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the one thing he didn't want to get involved with
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: in the first place.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Politics.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: November nineteen sixty, Louis Armstrong, with his fourth and final
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: wife Lucille by his side, was just finishing a most
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: excellent meal at a restaurant in Leopoldville, capital of the
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: newly independent Republic of the Congo, and back home in
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the States, John F. Kennedy had narrowly defeated Richard Nixon
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: in the presidential election. Louis one time nemesis, the lame
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: duck Dwight Eisenhower, the end of his two term run
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: in sight, had finally persuaded Louis to be a jazz
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: ambassador after all, despite their differences. Perhaps Louis believes he
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: was the anointed President Whisperer thanks to his part in
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the Little Rock Dustup. Perhaps the election of JFK gave
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: him hope for the future of his divided country. And
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: perhaps all of this and more made Louis now feel
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: great pride as a representative of that country. Or maybe
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the money was just that good. However it went down,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Louis was working for Ike, a man he once called
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: two faced, bringing a positive image of America to a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: country that had only recently thrown off the shackles of colonialism.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Eisenhower intended to influence the Congo before the Commies got
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: to them. First part of this strategy was while Louis
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: was now dining in Leopoldville with his wife and a
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: diplomat from the US embassy, or at least Louis Armstrong
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: was made to believe that the man in the white shirt,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: black tied, black jacket in dark shade sitting across the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: table from him was a diplomat. Louis did not know
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: that this man, Larry Devlin, was in fact not a diplomat,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: but instead the CIA station chief posted to the Congo.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Louis also did not know that the purpose of Larry
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: devlin presence here in Leopoldville was to arrange and support
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the assassination of the Congo's first democratically elected Prime Minister,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Patrese l Mamba, who the US feared was sympathetic to Russia,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: and then replace him with Joseph Mobutu, a military man
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: who was also anti communist. Furthermore, Louis had no idea
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: that at this very moment, as the dinner wrapped up
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: and he and Lucille made small talk with a man
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: they thought to be an innocuous agent of goodwill, just
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: a mile from where they sat in Prime Minister of
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Maamba's home, soldiers affiliated with Joseph Mobutu were holding him hostage.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: The fix was already in, and Louis Armstrong, feeling like
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: he was doing something good, feeling a little patriotic even,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: was in fact being used as a smoke screen, in
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: elaborate cover so that the CIA and the US government
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: could meet the right people, shake the right hands, and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: get the wheels turning on their hit job. Fucking gangsters,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: always gangsters with Louis Armstrong. Shortly after Louis's three month
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: tour of Africa ended in January of nineteen sixty one,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Prime Minister Patrice Lumumbo was tortured and executed by Congolese
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: separatists aided in part by the Belgian government. Later CIA
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: station chief Larry Devlin, the man who had dinner with
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong and his wife the Congo's capital, told the
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: US Congressional Investigation quote, the coup of Mobutu was arranged
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: and supported and indeed managed by the CIA. Unquote. Louis
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Armstrong would never hear this quote or know about this
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: plot or about the role he unwittingly played in it,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: because Larry Devlin's testimony happened in nineteen seventy five, four
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: years after Louis Armstrong died of a heart attack at
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the age of sixty nine. Oddly enough, this wasn't the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: only shocking revelation that emerged following the Great trumpet Player's death.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, one year after Devlin's testimony, The
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: New York Times ran a three part investigative piece on
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: a man named Sidney Korshak. Now, just like there were
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: two Louis Armstrong's, there were two Sydney Korshaks. The public
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Sydney Corshak was a well respected labor attorney in Beverly Hills,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: but the private Sydney Corshak was known as a fixer
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: for Chicago organized crime. As The Times revealed, in the
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties, Sidney Korshak went into business with Louis's
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: longtime manager Joe Glazer, the man who had once saved
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong from gangsters, assigned control of his majority stock
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: in his business over to Sidney Korshak and alleged gangster.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Why It Is Louis Armstrong biography pops, The writer Terry
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Teachout hypothesizes that cutting such a deal was perhaps Joe
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Glazer's solution to getting organized crime off his clients back
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: for good regardles This is the reason why. However, it
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: still means that for the rest of his life, Louis
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Armstrong's survival was handled in part by the hidden world
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: of the Chicago Mob, the very same group that it
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: once tried to make his very life a disgrace. I'm
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: All right, disco's thanks for rolling with us and Satchmo
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: through Chicago, Africa and back again.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Question of the week, and it's not an easy one.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Which musical artist would you choose from any generation to
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: represent America as an ambassador? As President Eisenhower chose Louis Armstrong.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: You can only choose one six one seven nine oh
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: six six six three eight. Leave me a voicemail, send
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: me a text and let me know. Can also reach
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: me at disgracelampod as well on Instagram, X and Facebook.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here come
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: some credits.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
• 34:21
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• 34:24
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• 34:27
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• 34:29
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• 34:34
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• 34:37
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• 34:38
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• 34:43
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• 34:47
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• 34:51
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  Speaker 4: slash at disgraceland Pod.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Rock a Roller. He's a bad, bad man.