Teachout's "Satchmo at the Waldorf'

Back in 1953, when I was a student at Temple University and program director of its radio station, WRTI, I approached the impresario Lee Guber for a ticket to a Louis Armstrong concert at the Academy of Music.

"Sorry, kid, we're sold out," Guber replied. "But I can let you stand in the wings." From the vantage point at the edge of the stage, I got to talk with the legendary jazz trumpeter before and after each of his sets.

So Terry Teachout's Satchmo at the Waldorf was for me a déjÓ vu experience: In it, Armstrong converses with an invisible visitor (the audience) in his dressing room following a performance at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in 1971.

But the differences between the two scenarios involve far more than time and place. The Satchmo I met was in his early 50s and relatively healthy, energetic and genial. Although he'd been famous since the 1920s, his signature hits— "Hello Dolly" and "What a Wonderful World"— were still ahead of him.

His signature smile was omnipresent. Each time he came offstage he grabbed a bottle of beer and took a swig or two. "I sweat so much, I need to refill my bodily liquids," he explained.

Angry at Ike

By contrast, Teachout's Armstrong is almost 70, exhausted and resentful (he died a few months later)— in short, engaging material for a biting one-man drama.

Satchmo was played at the Wilma Theater by John Douglas Thompson, a fine actor who sounds authentic and who moves with the gait of an ailing man. His Satchmo must breathe from an oxygen mask before starting his conversation with us. His anger over his failing health spills over into his critical comments about fellow musicians and the public.

He speaks bitterly about Miles Davis, Dizzie Gillespie, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus and President Eisenhower, calling most of them "motherfuckers." Contrary to a widely held view that Armstrong didn't speak out on racial matters, Teachout's Armstrong is incensed that Faubus refused to follow the Supreme Court's order to integrate Arkansas public schools, and also by Eisenhower's refusal to take sides in the matter.

Mafia connection

Miles Davis was one of those who thought Armstrong was an Uncle Tom, and Louis is especially vituperative in denouncing Davis as a privileged doctor's son who didn't have to fight his way out of poverty and racial discrimination. Armstrong also offers acid comments about the young black people who flocked to Manhattan's Village Vanguard to hear Davis but rarely attended Armstrong's concerts.

As the lighting and the backdrop change, Thompson changes his posture and adopts a white accent and becomes, briefly, Armstrong's longtime manager and business partner, Joe Glaser. That tough talking former Chicago gangster is treated respectfully here, for good reason: Although Glaser was notoriously connected to Al Capone, he also made Satchmo an international icon.

When black jazz musicians migrated from the South to cities like Chicago and New York, Mafia-run clubs offered them the exposure they couldn't find in so-called "respectable" white venues. Armstrong's relationship with Glaser was necessarily complicated, but Armstrong remained grateful to his manager. In the play, Armstrong remarks that he didn't mind turning over business decisions to Glaser because "I don't want to worry about paying the drummer on Friday, I just want to make music."

About his famous grin, which was denounced by Davis and others, Armstrong says, "I smile because I want to make folks happy and I want to see them smile back."