New book about ‘Satchmo’ celebrates warts and talent
“Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong” by Terry Teachout (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 512 pages)
With his fun-loving stage persona and his mastery of music, he was beloved by people as varied as Johnny Cash, Jackson Pollock and Orson Welles. But there was more to Louis Armstrong than his artistic talent.
Armstrong’s life crossed many eras as he moved from the harsh, segregated South of his New Orleans childhood, which he called “Disgustingly Segregated and Prejudiced.”
He went from entertaining mainly black audiences to entertaining mostly white ones. He became the idol of countless musicians, where he commanded a “place of honor.” He was also denigrated by civil-rights activists who were embarrassed by his mugging and who saw him as selling out to gain white acceptance.
Armstrong was one of the few musicians to knock the Beatles off the top of the charts, but his musical ability was only part of his talent. He wrote two autobiographies — and there was none of that “as told to stuff”; he did it on his own.
He was also an artist who created collages that were compared to the art of Romare Bearden, called “one of America’s pre-eminent artists” and “the nation’s foremost collagist” by The New York Times.
Armstrong understood the drama of his life — both professionally and personally — and did a lot to document it. Besides his biographies, he was a great letter writer and was eager to use a tape recorder.
Terry Teachout, the Wall Street Journal’s drama critic and arts columnist, has put that wealth of material — including hundreds of private recordings of backstage and after-hours conversations — to good use in “Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.”
Using Armstrong’s own words throughout the book, Teachout draws a picture of an exuberant musician; an ambitious artist; and a complex man who had an explosive temper, lifelong love of marijuana and battled everyone from racists to the mob.
Armstrong — who called himself Louis, not Louie — had surprisingly few illusions about himself.
He loved his music above everything: “When I pick up that horn, that’s all. The world’s behind me, and I don’t concentrate on nothin’ but it. ... That my livin’ and my life.”
Teachout not only tells the familiar story of Armstrong’s poverty-plagued youth in New Orleans, he also covers the last decades of the musician’s life. He shows the grind of endless performing that Armstrong embraced, including the numerous television and movie appearances.
It was a life of magnificent adventure and accomplishment — and one of painful racial snubs and accusations. But just before he died in 1971, Armstrong wrote to a friend that “my whole life has been happiness.”
Teachout’s magnificent biography is as enthralling as Armstrong’s music.