TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.
Here's a question for you. Who do you think was the first Black pop star? The answer is Louis Armstrong, according to one of the leading experts on Armstrong's life and music, my guest Ricky Riccardi. He's just published his third book about Armstrong. This one is about Armstrong's early years - his rough childhood, his first recordings with other bands and his famous first recordings with his own group, the Hot Five and Hot Seven. As Riccardi points out, those two early groups that Armstrong led, recorded between 1926 and '28 over the course of 25 months - those recordings have been studied by up-and-coming musicians around the world because they provide the foundational language necessary to master the art of improvisation. For instrumental soloists and vocalists, Riccardi says Armstrong's innovations as both a trumpeter and vocalist set the entire soundtrack of the 20th century in motion.
Riccardi has been the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2009. It's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician. It gave Riccardi access to previously inaccessible documents, including 700 hours of Armstrong recordings of his thoughts and his music, the unedited and unsweetened version of his autobiography, and several chapters of an unpublished autobiography by his second wife, Lil Hardin, who was also the pianist in the Hot Five. She wrote or co-wrote several songs Armstrong recorded and was instrumental in landing his first recording date.
Through writing about Armstrong, Riccardi's new book has a lot to say about segregation in New Orleans in the first part of the 20th century. The new book is called "Stomp Off, Let's Go," which is the title of a song he recorded with another band led by Erskine Tate.
Ricky Riccardi, welcome to FRESH AIR. What a joy it was to do the research for this - you know, being forced to listen again to Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings. I love Armstrong's recordings, particularly like the ones through the 1940s. But you've written about all of them - like, his whole life of recordings. So let's start with one of his great recordings, and this is "West End Blues." And it's what you describe as one of the most iconic recordings of the 20th century. Tell us why.
RICKY RICCARDI: I mean, for me, this is kind of everything you need to know about Louis Armstrong in three minutes. Actually, it's probably everything you need to know about him in the first 13 seconds 'cause that unaccompanied opening trumpet cadenza - people are still learning it. I mean, during the height of the pandemic, there was a hashtag, Louis Armstrong "West End Blues" challenge, and they had musicians around the world trying to nail that cadenza. But then the rest of the recording - the way he plays the melody, the way he scat sings, the operatic trumpet playing at the ending - it was really his announcement to the world that he is here, he has arrived, and nothing will ever be the same.
GROSS: All right, we need to hear it. So here's (laughter) - here's "West End Blues."
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG'S "WEST END BLUES")
GROSS: So that was "West End Blues," one of Louis Armstrong's early recordings. What year was that, Ricky?
RICCARDI: 1928.
GROSS: OK. So why do you consider Armstrong the first Black pop star?
RICCARDI: So the records he makes in the 1920s, which are at the heart of "Stomp Off, Let's Go," they were known at the time as race records - records aimed at, you know, cities and urban areas and the Black community in general, and, you know, a lot of blues and a lot of instrumental jazz. But "West End Blues" wasn't a runaway pop hit, you know? That was still the terrain of Paul Whiteman and Guy Lombardo and bandleaders like that. But it did move the needle a little bit. People were buying it. They were listening. They were influenced.
And OKeh Records, Armstrong's label at the time, their head A&R man - his name was Tommy Rockwell - he was the one who kind of had the brainchild, like, man, this Armstrong guy has got something different. If we could just get him to connect with the larger public, you know, he really has a chance to be a star. And so beginning in late 1928, Rockwell starts expanding the sound of Armstrong's band, and he starts simultaneously releasing his recordings as race records and as pop records. And lo and behold, the pop records were selling. So in 1929, Armstrong comes to New York and begins his reign as a full-blown pop artist for OKeh, recording things like "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "When You're Smiling." And by 1932, he's the biggest selling recording artist in the entire industry. And so at that point, you know, the race record experiment is over, and Louis Armstrong is the first Black pop star.
GROSS: Well, I want to play a song that made him a star, and that's "Heebie Jeebies" from 1926. It's a Hot Five recording. And it's considered the first example of scat - at least the first time it was called scat. So the story that's always told is that Armstrong started singing syllables - scat - instead of words because he dropped the sheet music and didn't remember the words. There's other versions of the story of how he started scatting. Which do you think is the most authentic story?
RICCARDI: So to my ears, I'd - and also to Johnny St. Cyr, the banjo player - he did corroborate the dropping of the sheet music thing. People have always said that that story was too good to be true. But if you listen carefully, there is a little bit - I don't want to call it panic, but in the first vocal chorus towards the end, Armstrong sings something that almost sounds like, you don't debo (ph). It's kind of gibberish, but in my mind, at that point, he might've dropped the lyrics, and he didn't quite know what to do next.
But this whole concept of using his voice like an instrument, people remember that he was doing that in his vocal quartet when he was 11, 12 years old. One musician, Norman Mason, remembered him doing that on the river boats with Fate Marable in 1920. Another musician remembered him doing that in New York with Fletcher Henderson in 1924. So this whole concept of wordless vocalizing was something he had done, and Armstrong himself said, you know, these things just come to you in a flash. So he did not spend much time planning, like, I am going to do this on "Heebie Jeebies." But in the moment with the sheet of paper on the ground, he just launches into this entire chorus completely wordless. And by the end, you know, he's throwing sweet mama and things you normally don't hear in 1920s pop music.
But if you continue listening to the end of the track, there's a moment where they had worked out a thing where they would play a Charleston beat and everybody would sing a line. Whatcha (ph) doing with the Heebies? And Kid Ory, the trombone player, he comes in at the wrong time. And even Armstrong himself, he admitted that he thought that they would try it again. But E.A. Fearn, who was the producer for OKeh of this particular recording, he came in and said, we're going to take a chance on this one. And so even with the imperfections and all this stuff, they knew that that vocal had something different. And Fearn was the man that Armstrong gave credit for using the word scat. And in the book, I have a cover of the sheet music from later 1926. It's spelled S-K-A-T. But even though you can find other instances of wordless vocalizing on record before "Heebie Jeebies," for all intents and purposes, this is the record that really put scat singing on the map.
GROSS: OK, so let's listen to this 1926 recording of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five - his first scatting on record. And this is "Heebie Jeebies."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEEBIE JEEBIES")
LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND HIS HOT FIVE: (Singing) Say, I've got the Heebies - I mean, the Jeebies. Talking about the dance, the Heebie Jeebies do, because they're boys. Because it pleases me to be joy. Say, don't you know it. You don't know how. Don't be blue. Someone will teach you. Come on and do that dance they call the heebie jeebies dance. Yes, ma'am. Papa's got the heebie jeebies dance. (Vocalizing) Say, come on now and do that dance they call the heebie jeebies dance. Sweet mama, papa's got to do the heebie jeebies dance. Woo, got the heebie jeebies. What you doing with the heebies? I just had to have the heebies.
GROSS: So that was Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five recorded in 1926, "Heebie Jeebies," which is considered the first recorded scatting. It's interesting, when he played in New Orleans with King Oliver, and when he played in New York with Fletcher Henderson before starting his own bands, nobody wanted him to sing. And he became so famous and so loved for his singing. Why didn't they want him to sing?
RICCARDI: Well, to Armstrong, he said that the concept of a trumpet player or any instrumentalist also singing was just - it was a foreign concept at that time. You just - people just didn't do it.
GROSS: But you were one or the other?
RICCARDI: Either one or the other. Exactly. But there was also something about Armstrong, where I just think his natural personality, his - you know, the showmanship, his mugging, his way of putting over a song, especially when he got to New York. I think the - Henderson and the men and his band, which kind of fancied themselves as, you know, Harlem Renaissance intellectuals, they kind of looked down at that kind of Southern-fried performing style. And so Armstrong, he - for the rest of his life, he always said Henderson had a million-dollar talent in his band, but he missed the boat. And I even called one of the chapters in the book, Blessed Assurance, because I think before anybody else, Armstrong was confident in his abilities as a vocalist. He knew it was different, and he knew if he only got the chance, you know, people would respond. And here we are, you know, 2025. "What A Wonderful World" just went, you know, certified double platinum in 2024 of a record where he doesn't even play a note of trumpet. So once again, you know, Armstrong kind of has the last laugh. He just needed that opportunity to let people hear that distinctive voice of his.
GROSS: And he was singing before he was playing trumpet.
RICCARDI: Another point that he always wanted to stress, you know, because people would say, oh, you know, the trumpet player, that's the genius. You know, the guy singing, that's kind of - he's just doing that, you know, just to commercialize himself and put these songs over. But, no, I have a quote from Arvell Shaw that said that if Armstrong never picked up a trumpet, he would have been a singer. You know, singing was in his blood more than the trumpet. And it was, you know, his real first musical foray in New Orleans before he ever picked up a cornet.
GROSS: I want to play him backing up a singer, because this is a famous early example of his playing. Bessie Smith in 1925 recorded "St. Louis Blues, " and this is before Armstrong had his own band. And he's playing trumpet behind her, and it's quite beautiful and very sympathetic to what he's singing. Do you want to say anything else to introduce this track?
RICCARDI: Yeah, this track literally just turned 100-years-old. It was recorded in January, 1925. And this was Armstrong, the sideman. He goes to New York to join Fletcher Henderson in October 1924, and Okeh records and other labels, Columbia, they start using him as just a studio musician. His name is never on the labels, but people respond to the sound of his trumpet. And this is something he had never really done in New Orleans before - backing up a vocalist. And on some of his early forays into this, he would be a little too busy. He might play too many notes or, you know, kind of step on the singer. But by the time he got in the studio in January of '25 to back the empress of the blues, he had kind of perfected his approach. And even though she's technically the lead artist singing the vocal, and he's supposed to be, you know, the background figure just playing in and around her, I consider a duet. Every one of his statements is so sensitive. He is listening to her. He is maintaining the mood. And, you know, she only gets through W.C. Handy's chorus one time in 3 minutes, but it is all soul.
GROSS: Well, let's hear it. This is 1925, Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong on trumpet, "St. Louis Blues."
(SOUNDBITE OF BESSIE SMITH SONG, "ST. LOUIS BLUES")
BESSIE SMITH: (Singing) I hate to see the evening sun go down. I hate to see the evening sun go down. It makes me think I'm on my last go 'round.
GROSS: That was the "St. Louis Blues" recorded in 1925 by Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong on trumpet. And my guest, Ricky Riccardi is the author of a new book about Armstrong's early years. It's his third book about Armstrong. This new one is called "Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years Of Louis Armstrong.".
I think we need to take a short break here. So let's do that, and then we'll be right back and talk more about Armstrong and hear a lot more of his great music. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG & OSCAR PETERSON SONG, "I WAS DOING ALL RIGHT")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Ricky Riccardi, author of the new book, "Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years Of Louis Armstrong." It's his third book about Armstrong. Riccardi has been the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2009. It's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician.
You know, it's really remarkable and lucky for us that Armstrong was able to reach such iconic status and have such a long and productive career, considering the circumstances he grew up in. Describe for us the neighborhood he grew up in in New Orleans and just remind us, too, of the year he was born.
RICCARDI: So Armstrong was born in 1901. I won't get into the whole birthday...
GROSS: Yeah, we can skip that part.
(LAUGHTER)
RICCARDI: ...Debate. You know, I believe he was born July 4, 1901, but for reasons that are explained in the book. But either way, he's born 1901, spends his first few years living with his grandmother. But then around the age of 5, he moves to the third ward, Liberty and Perdido streets. He moves into a tiny flat with his mother and sister. And this neighborhood was so dangerous, it was known as the battlefield. And Armstrong, he spent most of his adult years telling these stories with a little bit of a wink and a smile. And he would talk about Black Benny, you know, the drummer who would fight during the parades. And he would say, oh, well, me and my mother, whether or not she was a prostitute, I cannot say. But, you know, she worked hard and taught us the rudiments.
And so for this book, you know, I wanted to keep Armstrong's words in place, but I wanted to dig a little deeper and talk about some of these characters. And the deeper I went into police records and newspaper reports, all I can say is it's a miracle he emerged alive because from the time he's 5, 6, 7 years old, he is seeing, you know, gun fights and stabbings. And there's, you know, gamblers and pimps and prostitutes. And his mother is arrested almost every year and sent to the house of detention sometimes three, four weeks. Armstrong would have to watch over his baby sister, cooking for her and for him and doing whatever he could to make ends meet. He's working. He's selling newspapers. He's working for the Jewish Karnofsky family, doing whatever he can to survive.
But the police are there. He mentioned the only time he was ever scared in his childhood were the police because they would whip his head and then ask his name later, gets arrested multiple times, the first time at the age of 9 for being a dangerous and suspicious character. And even in his teenage years, when he finally starts taking music seriously and getting more and more gigs, he said it was a miracle he didn't die at these honky-tonks because, you know, every night there would be a gun fight, bullets going right past him. And he said that, you know, the bouncer, whose name was Oscar "Slippers" Johnson (ph), he would protect Armstrong, make sure he didn't get hit.
And that's why, I think, when you read Armstrong's second autobiography, "Satchmo: My Life In New Orleans," it ends with him leaving New Orleans and joining King Oliver, because I think in his mind, that was the climax. Everything that followed was gravy because he had survived this childhood that if it was a Hollywood film, somebody would say, well, this is cliche. This is rags to riches. You know, nobody could've actually experienced this. But in his case, it's all true. And I found all the facts to back him up.
GROSS: Well, in doing your research, you think that his mother was a sex worker and that his sister became a sex worker while his mother was in jail, and she needed to earn some money - and as a kid, that Armstrong helped out, worked for sex workers. And as a young man, he tried being a pimp.
RICCARDI: He did. And, you know, that was one line in his New York Times obituary that I'm sure had a lot of "Hello, Dolly!" fans kind of scratching their...
(LAUGHTER)
RICCARDI: ...Their head. But it's true. And, you know, he told that story, too. He was stabbed in the shoulder by the prostitute that he tried serving as the pimp for, and he showed off that scar for the rest of his life. So I also take time in the book to talk about the other figures from the Waifs Home, you know, the orphanage where he spent a couple of years, and some of these...
GROSS: Let's stop at that for a second, because he spent a couple of years there after being arrested for possession of a gun - he was still a minor - and for shooting it in the air. You think it was his mother's gun.
RICCARDI: It was, according to his sister. She said definitively it was their mother's gun.
GROSS: So he was sent to the Colored Waifs Home for Boys for, what, a couple of years, he was there?
RICCARDI: He was there a year and a half.
GROSS: And that's where he really got his start as an instrumentalist.
RICCARDI: I mean, you know, you hate to say something like, you know, that's the best thing that ever happened to him. But honestly, it was the first time that he had structure in his life. You know, the Waifs Home gave him three meals a day and schooling and taught him trades. But more importantly, they had a music program. It run by a man named Peter Davis. And at first, Davis did not give Armstrong the time of day because he knew kids from Armstrong's neighborhood were nothing but trouble. But he saw that Louis was always hanging around the band room and eventually started him on the tambourine and the drum and the horn, the bugle and finally the cornet. And so on New Year's Eve, when Armstrong was arrested, the newspapers, you know, they referred to him as Louis Armstrong, comma, old offender. That was his reputation at the age of 12.
GROSS: (Laughter).
RICCARDI: But then on Decoration Day, the Waifs Home band did a parade through Armstrong's neighborhood, and the newspapers covered that. And all of a sudden, it was Louis Armstrong, comma, leader. And so the Waifs Home made him into a musician. It really showed him, this is your way out if you take this seriously, and he did. And even though they had this incredible music program, I followed the stories of some of the other kids there and who ended up, you know, shot in the head at the age of 17, who ended up in Sing Sing, who ended up, you know, a well-known pickpocket. And so he could've made any wrong choice at any time and have been one of those kids. He could've been gunned down. He could've been arrested. You know, the whole sound of the 20th century could've changed. And we're just lucky that he had some angel on his shoulder or something that kind of helped him through, and we're all the beneficiaries.
GROSS: We need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Ricky Riccardi. He's the author of the new book "Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years Of Louis Armstrong." It's his third book about Armstrong. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG'S "STRUTTIN' WITH SOME BARBECUE")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Ricky Riccardi, author of the new book "Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years Of Louis Armstrong." It's his third book about Armstrong. Riccardi has been the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2009. It's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician.
Another thing about Louis Armstrong's early years is that he started working as a child. He loaded coal and kind of ran the junk yard truck or wagon for the Karnofsky family, a Jewish family in New Orleans. And on the one hand, it was child labor. And, you know, like the loading and unloading of the coal that he delivered, almost, like, broke his back, literally. On the other hand, the Karnofsky family, a Jewish family, treated him pretty well and they encouraged his singing. This was before he had a cornet. They encouraged his singing. They recognized his talent, and he credits them for helping, like, launch his career in a way, because they encouraged him when he was very young. And also, he developed an affection for Jewish food and for Jewish music of the time, which you can hear in some of his playing. Tell us some of the things he said about loading coal and unloading coal.
RICCARDI: Yeah, that was his main occupation. I mean, he had other little odd jobs, but the coal cart - you know, he wrote a song called "Coal Cart Blues," and he knew of what he sang, because this was something that he probably started - I've kind of narrowed it down to probably 10 or 11-years-old. And he did it right until - well, excusing the Waif's home, you know, exile there for a year and a half, but he did it once again, right until the Armistice was declared in World War I. And this was backbreaking work. You know, he would wake up in the morning and, you know, fill up a cart with coal, and then he had a mule, and he would go through the neighborhoods, you know, shouting out, who needs coal. And, you know, this was tough. And then when he wanted to become a musician at the age of 15, 16-years-old, he would get gigs at night. And so he would come home. He would sleep for maybe an hour. Then put on a pair of long pants, and then go out and play the cornet, maybe until 4 in the morning, sleep one or two hours and do it again. So that's part of his childhood.
The Karnofsky family, though, he always gave them credit. He said they treated him like a human being. And the other benefit of working for the Karnofsky family is their coal wagon delivered coal to the prostitutes in the Red Light District of New Orleans, which was later known as Storyville. And, you know, African American kids could not walk around Storyville unless they were with their white boss. And so Armstrong had Morris Karnofsky and he was his boss there. He would stay on the coal cart and Louis would go around delivering the coal. But this is also the time that the Red Light District starts bringing in jazz bands. And so this is Armstrong's first time hearing King Oliver and Freddie Keppard and Manuel Perez. And so, you know, there are benefits to this work. He always had this way of kind of finding the good in these situations. Situations that I think if anybody else had lived them or spent their lives talking about them or writing about them, would have come off as horror stories. But Armstrong, he always found a lesson that he learned and internalized, and in his mind, everything he did made him a better person.
GROSS: Well, let's hear another recording by Armstrong. I'm going to play "Cornet Chop Suey. " And you say about that, that it had the effect on instrumentalists that "Heebie Jeebies" had on singers. So what is the importance of this song in terms of American music and in terms of Armstrong's career?
RICCARDI: Well, the amazing thing for me is "Cornet Chop Suey" was the next song recorded after "Heebie Jeebies." So I always like to make the point that, you know, you can name a million great vocalists and a million great instrumentalists, and Armstrong's the only person who totally changed the way people sang and he totally changed the way people soloed and played music on their instruments. And he really does it on one day, February 26, 1926. But "Cornet Chop Suey" was kind of his coming out party to show all the tools in his toolbox of what he could do with his cornet. And so it opens with his dazzling unaccompanied introduction, you know, just letting everybody know, I'm here. I'm the leader. And then the melody - I was just talking to the great multi instrumentalist Scott Robinson. We were just saying, you can play that melody tonight in the 21st century, and it sounds fresh. It sounds modern. And so that was a melody that he had written two years earlier. But the main part was this stop-time solo. And I think trumpet players and trombonists and guitarists and piano players, they all heard that, and they said, wow, that's how you tell a story. You know, that's how you really solo, and it's not just arpeggios. It's not just, you know, just playing, you know, quick or whatever this technical stuff. It's actually got a beginning, middle and an end. And so "Cornet Chop Suey" was analyzed as this masterpiece of improvisation until the 1990s, when it was discovered that Armstrong had copyrighted the song two years earlier, and he had written down the whole solo note for note. And then in the 1950s, when that record was played for some of his old New Orleans contemporaries, they all said, oh, my goodness, that's Buddie Petit. And Buddie Petit was a cornet player that Armstrong heard and admired when he was a kid, but Buddie Petit never recorded. He died in 1931. Left behind no record. And so, to me, "Cornet Chop Suey" is on surface level. You'll hear it. You know, it's still - it sounds modern and fresh, and we can still learn a lot from it. But to me, it's also Armstrong serious about his craft, writing down the melody, writing down the solo, showing off the influence of a musician who never got to record. And, you know, simultaneously forecasting the shape of jazz to come, but also really leaning into his New Orleans roots.
GROSS: So I - we're going to feature the stop-time part in this recording. So you described the stop-time part as thrilling. But I want you to describe what stop-time is for people who don't know.
RICCARDI: Sure. So stop-time, the - you know, usually, you got the rhythm section is hitting the beats on every beat in every quarter, you know, bump, bump, bump, bump. Well, stop-time, they all just focus on the first beat. So it's like, one, two, three, four. You know, they hit one note, one accent. And that just lets Louis - he's out there, you know, without a parachute. He just has to play without that chugging, swinging rhythm section behind him. They're just accenting the first beat of every measure. And it's hard to do that, because, you know, you could lose your time. You could lose your equilibrium. You know, the band, they also have to hit that first beat altogether on the nose. And it's become kind of a lost art form in certain circles, but few did it better than the Hot Five.
GROSS: So let's listen to Louis Armstrong's 1926 Hot Five recording of "Cornet Chop Suey." And what we're going to do is we're going to cross fade and skip a part, 'cause I want to hit all the high points that Ricky Riccardi just mentioned.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND HIS HOT FIVE'S "CORNET CHOP SUEY")
GROSS: That was "Cornet Chop Suey," Louis Armstrong's Hot Five recorded in 1926. And my guest is Ricky Riccardi, author of the new book "Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years Of Louis Armstrong." It's his third book about Armstrong. We'll be back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND SY OLIVER AND HIS ORCHESTRA SONG, "LAZY RIVER")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Ricky Riccardi, author of the new book "Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years Of Louis Armstrong." It's his third book about Armstrong. Riccardi has been the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2009. It's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician.
So I want to jump ahead to Armstrong's last chapter of life, so I'm going to jump ahead to 1971. And your book begins with this story. And it's a very moving start that really pays tribute to Armstrong's love and complete dedication to playing music. In 1971, he signs a two-week contract for two shows a night at a newly renovated nightclub called the Empire Room at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, even though he'd recently been in the ICU with kidney problems and, I think, heart problems as well.
RICCARDI: Yes. Yeah, both.
GROSS: And his doctor warned him he could die onstage. Armstrong didn't seem to care because his life was his music. So what deal did the doctor make with Armstrong?
RICCARDI: His doctor, Gary Zucker, basically told him, all right, you can do the gig, but we're going to turn your hotel room basically into a triage at a hospital. And every night, before and after each show, I will come in. I'll do your blood pressure. I'll test your vitals. As the gig went on, Louis started suffering from heart failure. And Dr. Zucker said, you know, we'll try to keep the heart failure at bay, but he knew he wasn't going to stop him. He tried stopping him, but he said Armstrong almost got into a possessed state. And he said, doc, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn. The people are waiting for me. I can't let them down.
So, Armstrong made it through the entire Waldorf gig, two shows a night for two weeks. And two days later, he had a major heart attack, ended up in the hospital for almost eight weeks and ended up passing away in July of '71. So it really is his last stand. And it really is also, to me, him going out on his shield. You know, he probably could've lived another five, 10 years if he could just put the horn down, retire, relax. He had money. He had a house. It was paid off. He had his wife. He had his tapes. He had everything he wanted in Corona, Queens, but he needed to be out there performing for his fans. He knew. Even his old friend, the drummer Zutty Singleton, said that, you know, don't let anybody fool you. He knew the end was near, but I think he was satisfied that he had finished the gig and was still on his feet at the end.
GROSS: I think this would be a good time to play Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five, recorded in 1928. So this is the final side that he made in Chicago before moving to New York. And you say it sums up his entire life up to that point. How so?
RICCARDI: Well, he takes a three-chorus solo. It's his longest solo on record. And to me, he opens off - I kind of jokingly refer to it as cantor Louis Armstrong. It's like, you know, this minor keyed song, and he opens almost like he's blowing the shofar, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
RICCARDI: And so, you know, the influence of the Karnofsky family is immediately right there. Then there's comedy. You know, people always said, you know, well, Armstrong can mug and fool around, but when he picked up the horn, that's when he was serious. Well, to an extent, but he was also very funny on the trumpet. And so there was something called "The Streets Of Cairo," which is known as the snake charmer song - (vocalizing). And so he takes that and turns it into a musical quote. And of course, you know, the hip-hop world now, they call it sampling. But this was something Armstrong brought to the jazz world, of taking a preexisting melody and incorporating it into his improvisation.
And it's funny, but he also really makes a meal out of it, stretching it out and everything. Meanwhile, the band in the background, they turn their backing into kind of a Spanish rhythm, what Jelly Roll Morton called the Spanish tinge. And, of course, that's another ingredient of the New Orleans sound, the Cuban influence, Afro-Cuban influence, all of that. So all these different things - comedy, the Jewish influence, New Orleans influence - everything that he had heard is all coming together. And eventually, it all builds to this climax where he is wailing in the upper register. High notes, opera, Enrico Caruso, everything he learned from buying opera records as a teenager, it's all coming out of his trumpet.
And I make the point that this three-chorus solo, the way it builds and builds and builds - it starts off so slow and quiet, and by the end, it's like this roof-shaking climax - that's the blueprint for, like, all kind of extended solos. And in the book, you know, I just use guitarists, you know, Jimmy Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen. You know, it's the blueprint, doesn't even have to be jazz. You know, anybody who is improvising, taking a solo and starting off quietly, building and building and building and, boom, here's the big, high-note ending, they're all taking a page out of "Tight Like This." So to me, this is Louis Armstrong's life up to 1928 in three minutes.
GROSS: OK, well, let's hear it. It's a great recording. This is Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five. And what we're going to do is focus on that solo that you just described.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TIGHT LIKE THIS")
DON REDMAN: (Singing) Oh, it's tight like that, Louis.
EARL HINES: (Singing) Oh, it's tight like that. Now it's close like that.
GROSS: That was Louis Armstrong, "Tight Like This," recorded in 1928. My guest is Ricky Riccardi, who is the author of the new book "Stomp Off, Let's Go." It's about the early years of Louis Armstrong. We'll be back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG SONG, "C'EST SI BON")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Ricky Riccardi, author of the new book "Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years Of Louis Armstrong." It's his third book about Armstrong. Riccardi has been the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum since 2009.
So you are the director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum. You've been that since 2009. And what it is, it's the house where Armstrong and his fourth wife, Lucille, lived for about 20 years until his death, and it was transformed into a museum. And it's the world's largest archive focusing on one musician. One of the amazing things in that collection is 700 hours of tape that Armstrong recorded. Some of it is music, but a lot of it is his thoughts. You know, him kind of thinking out loud, sharing memories of the past, as well as it has conversations with friends and fellow musicians. And it must be very exciting to have access to that. What are some of the gems that you found in that 700 hours of tape?
RICCARDI: I mean, they're - to me, they're all gems, but the big takeaway is that what you see is what you got. You know, the Armstrong who had the time of his life and always said he was there in the cause of happiness onstage, he's that guy offstage. He is laughing the loudest and telling the dirtiest jokes. And he's, you know, so accessible with his friends and with his family and with fans. You know, he had an open-door policy, and he would sometimes tape record those conversations. And, you know, just so sweet, so genuine, so earnest. But at the same time, the tapes also showcase him as a human being. You hear him cursing. You hear him angry. You hear him upset about racism and about the way he was being treated. And I think that's kind of the big takeaway - the big discovery for me. And I tried getting that into all three books, is that sometime Armstrong is painted as kind of a man-child. Like, you know, like that smiling, eye-rolling persona. People think, well, that's all he was. You know, he didn't really know how to navigate the world, and he needed a white manager like Joe Glaser. And he just wanted to make fans happy and smile, and he just was totally kind of ignorant about the situation.
GROSS: And some people thought of him as an Uncle Tom.
RICCARDI: Oh, my goodness. You know, that started early and kind of haunted him for years, and it actually clung to him to the first maybe 10, 20 years after he died. That was a big part of many of the writings about Armstrong. And all of that changed when his archives became available. You know, his archives went to Queens College in 1991, and the first writers is beginning with Gary Giddins, and then all through the '90s and, you know, Wynton Marsalis, of course, and the Jazz Lincoln Center tributes and the Ken Burns documentary. All of a sudden, once people had access to these tapes and to these journals and to these scrapbooks and his unpublished writings, it was, like, oh, my goodness, you know, this guy, well, he was aware. He knew the story, and he was street smart. And I think this book, you know, kind of doing it in backwards fashion the way I did, you realize that what he learned on those streets in New Orleans, nobody was going to pull the wool over his eyes. You know, he was aware at all times of who he was. He was aware of his talent. He was aware that, you know, people wanted him to perform and all this stuff, but he knew how the money worked. He knew how the country worked. You know, he puts his career on the line to tell off President Eisenhower over the way he handled Little Rock. And so all that stuff is bubbling under the surface, and he did it himself. You know, he was his own archivist. He makes these tapes. He curates his own archive. And I think he realized, on a deep level, that he could not go on Johnny Carson or Ed Sulivan in 19, you know, '67 and talk about being Black in America and talk about marijuana and talk about all these subjects. But he left behind a record of his feelings on all these things. And so now, you know, I've done three books, but I - honestly, there's enough in those archives for 50 more books. And I really feel like, you know, he was playing the long game. He knew that one day future historians and musicologists would want to study his life. He even said, I quote it in the book, he said they're going to write about me in the history book someday. And so as long as he was in charge of his own archives, people would have to go to him. And, you know, you could agree or disagree with his takeaways, but the key is he is now allowed to speak for himself.
GROSS: So I'm going to ask you to choose a song to end with.
RICCARDI: (Laughter).
GROSS: And I'm going to say, let's not do the Hot Five and Hot Seven, 'cause we've played several of those recordings. Let's move on to another chapter of his life. And I was telling you before we started that I love his recordings from the '30s and '40s, so - and you seem to love them, too. I'm sure you love every...
RICCARDI: I do (laughter).
GROSS: ...Every bit of his work. But why don't we choose something from the '30s and '40s? Because it's kind of, like, represents the next chapter of his musical life. And we haven't played him actually singing. We've played him scatting.
RICCARDI: You read my mind.
GROSS: Oh, good. OK.
(LAUGHTER)
RICCARDI: Yeah, no, so the next chapter of Armstrong's life was covered in the previous chapter of my previous book, which was called "Heart Full Of Rhythm: The Big Band Years Of Louis Armstrong." Again, my intention was never to do this in reverse chronology, but it actually kind of worked out pretty interestingly. And "Heart Full Of Rhythm" tells the story of Armstrong becoming the first Black pop star and dealing with these Tin Pan Alley songs. And for me, if I - if you asked me to name 10 Armstrong songs, I couldn't do it. Oxford University Press asked me to do that, and I asked them if I can do 20.
GROSS: (Laughter).
RICCARDI: We negotiated down to 12 because I couldn't cut anything. But if you ask me to name one, it's going to be "Stardust," recorded by Armstrong & His Orchestra, November 4, 1931, and "Stardust" might be the most recorded standard of the 20th century. And I just ask you out there, listen to Bing Crosby's version, listen to Nat King Cole, listen to anybody and you'll hear Hoagy Carmichael's beautiful melody and Mitchell Parish's poetic lyrics, and it's, you know, one of those songs that will live forever. Then listen to Armstrong and tell me if he doesn't sound like he came from another planet, 'cause his interpretation is so personal. He totally changes the melody. He rearranges the lyrics. He throws in bits of scat, singing asides. And then he picks up the trumpet and, you know, and makes the angels weep, as Gary Giddins once said. So to me, "Stardust" in three minutes is everything you need to know about Armstrong's impact on pop music of the 20th century, and like I said, it's a perfect next chapter from - you know, the Hot Five and Hot Sevens and New Orleans made him into who he was, and then he took those gifts, shared them with the world and really changed everything in his path.
GROSS: Ricky Riccardi, it's just been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
RICCARDI: Oh, my pleasure, Terry. This has been an honor, and, you know, I always have to leave my closing phrase - Pops is Tops, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: OK, so let's hear Louis Armstrong's recording of "Stardust" - and what year did you say this was?
RICCARDI: 1931.
GROSS: OK. And Ricky Riccardi is the author of the new book, "Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years Of Louis Armstrong." Thank you again.
RICCARDI: Oh, my pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG SONG, "STARDUST")
GROSS: If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AlR interviews you missed, like our conversation with Questlove about his new documentary covering 50 years of music on "Saturday Night Live," or our interview with journalist Derek Thompson on our nation's loneliness epidemic, check out our podcast and you'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our cohost is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STARDUST")
LOUIS ARMSTRONG: (Singing) Sometimes I wonder why I spend such lonely nights, oh, baby lonely nights, dreaming of a song, melody memory. And I'm once again with you, when our love was new, oh, baby. Each kiss an inspiration. Now that, baby, you know was long ago. Oh, beside a garden wall when stars are bright and you are in my arms, baby, now. The nightingale tells his fairytale, a paradise where roses bloom. Though I dream in vain, in my heart it will remain, baby, my stardust melody. Oh, memory. Oh, memory. Oh, memory.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELLA FITZGERALD AND LOUIS ARMSTRONG SONG, "CAN'T WE BE FRIENDS?") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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