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was just overwhelming. Me. I'm a country boy. This is Chicago.
Oh, it was just overwhelming. So many people, all the colored people,
they come up from New Orleans meeting their families. Or I'm a fish
out of water for sure, truck, but yes, that's me. He
wanted to know if I'm a young man who's here to joy King Oliver's bad.
Yes, sir, Yes I am. This is it Lincoln Gardens,
good lord, lobby is so big and hardly wait to see the band stand
listen to that. Oh my god, I don't know if I'm gooding at
to play in that band. I just stood down. Good move. Maybe
it's not too late to go on. This is part four of Pops.
Rino Wilson is Pops The Remarkable story of jazz legend Lewis Armstrong, a six
part audio experience from Drop Biscuit Studios. It's Papa Joe and it's next words
with music to my ear is come on in and hear you a little dump
some bitch. You're waiting for your black ass all night. Well, it's
good to see you tube. Papa Joe. Listen, he told me,
I found a boardinghouse for you. Okay, it's a room and a private
bath. What's the private bath? You would have thought that I had asked
him if that was a nose on the front of his face. Listen to
get dump some bitch. Don't be so damn dumb. No complaints here seeing
my house. We didn't have a private bathtub, let alone a private bath.
I was liking Chicago already. What was Chicago like in those days?
It was everything to access fancy clothes and furs and diamonds and theaters and gangsters
machine guns. That was Chicago. Cooch, liquor, booze. It was
all illegal and it was everywhere glamorous against the law. Who didn't want that?
Yes, uh, we were all lawbreakers. And if you were blowing
in a hockey tonk or speak easy, we were working for gangsters. Let
the good times roll. We're hoisting with Papa Joe and his brand. Now
there's some serious blowing. I can't tell you, but this was like for
me. Imagine your greenhorn like men and all of a sudden you're you're rapping
with Jay Zor or Duncan Lebron, right, It's the best feeling in the
world. I tell you. Joe was first calling that our second. I
could learn from him and play off him forever. We were taking a break.
It was somebody Papa Joe wanted me to meet. He was gonna be
our new piano player. Hi, I'm Lewis Armstrong. I missed what she
said next. I was too busy filling my eyes with her. Oh.
She was an attractive, brown, skinting girl, proper sophisticated, not at
all like the girls I knew. I'm sorry, what was your name again?
It was Little Little Hardened. I'd like to tell you it was love
at first sight, but when she set eyes on me, what she saw
was a fat little man with bad clothes and bad hair, and she wasn't
too shy to say so. Still, we both loved jazz, and jazz
loved us back. It didn't take long before Joe all of its New Orleans
Creole jazz band featuring Little Hardening. Yours truly was the hottest jazz band in
Chicago and one of the most important in the country. Me and Little we
took up together. Soon enough, she understood music. Maybe she'll understand Lee.
Have you ever had a moment where you've seen something with your own eyes
that was so amazing it sticks in your memory forever. I saw that happen
one night at Lincoln Gardeners. King Oliver's band was blowing the woof off.
Oh that's Freddy Keppard. He's a horn player that can't be beat. In
fact, the Greek jelly Roll Morton said, his reach is exceptional, both
high and low, with all degrees of power, great imagination, and more
tone than anybody. What's upon the time Joe Oliver had beat Freddy in a
cutting contest. It's like a rap battle today, but with horns. And
now Freddy was out for revenge, but not on Joe. I saw him
walk up to Lewis, Boy, let me have your trumpet? Did he
just ask the man for his trumpet? Lewis handed over his precious horn.
Well, Freddie blew and he blew and he blew that ball was fine.
He handed the one back to Lewis. Your turn, he said, go
get him, Bops, go get him. Thoughts did that boy ever blow?
He blew like he was determined, He blew like he was angry.
He blew like he was gonna wipe the floor. As the jackass and teach
you a lesson he'll never forget. I swear Louis was blowing. No nobody
had even heard before LUs. We didn't even know existed. I counted two
hundred high season a road at night. Who does that? Nobody before?
Nobody sense? From the corner of the stage, I could see Freddy.
He was slinking out. Luis smiled a great smile. He waved his horn,
and he took a deep bow. Wow. Why isn't everybody in the
world here to hear this? Before our eyes and our ears? This young
horn player was creating the future or chazz. Now, in those days,
everybody didn't have a car, all right, almost nobody had a car.
But Little she had a car, and boy was she prided out Old Hudson.
Now she was just learning the drive, and she invited Papa Joe and
me to cruise down that she can avenue with her. So it's supposed to
make that noise. Little and she wasn't laughing either, not at all.
But me and Papa Joe we were int this. We'd like to help you,
Little, but we don't know how to drive neither. Again, she
wasn't laughing. That was the last time I drove with her. She kept
asking, but we kept walking. Let me tell you something, My whole
life change. We put our music on the wax cylinders and later records.
Papa Joe, why are we doing this? Who's gonna see us perform live
if they can buy music on wax. These record companies just want to create
ball wax so as to sell ball record players. Well, Baba Joe was
right and I was wrong. The recording companies did want to sell more record
players by selling more music on wax. Or something else happened, and it
surprised us. All wherever our music was sold, people were buying it,
and not just colorful white people too. Race records, they were called,
But all races love them all of a sudden. People who had never heard
us before, people who live in in places we had never been. They
all knew about us, and they were loving what they held. In the
white neighborhoods. They'd keep our music and crates behind the counter. Those poor
white folks will have to whisper over the counter and asked for him. Hey,
you got that King hansant with Lewis Armstrong. You do, I'll buy
it, but don't tell nobody. We didn't know it at the time,
but being on the bandstand every night of the week, all year long,
that's not what would make us famous. That's not how we'd be remembered.
It was those recordings, the ones set down in the steaming hot closet side
studios. Those recordings would be our legacy to the world forever. Another night
at Lincoln Gardens just shows the about to start. I got my hond in
my hand and I wiped my forehead with my handkerchief. That's when I saw
her. She was moving slowly across the dance floor like she was lost.
A short lady stout the big bundles in each hand. Mama, Mama,
what are you doing in Chicago? Well, she said she heard I was
sick and low and starving to death, and so she hopped the train in
Chicago. Now, I want none of those things, but I was awful
happened to see her anyways. Mama, I want you to meet the boys
in the band one by one. I made the introductions, and she was
smiling all over her face. I don't believe I ever saw her stand so
tall. She was beaming a bushel of pride. That's what it was.
That's what it had to be. My mama. She always felt she gave
me nothing, but she gave me all. This ain't that beautiful, Mama,
Baba Joe. It's me Lewis. Hey, Baba Joe. UH need
to talk to you. You have a minute? Okay? Thanks? So?
Uh you know Little she told me something that you said and uh I
said or that food talk. Baba Joe would never say that. You say
that you knew I could play better than you, and that is as long
as you keep me with you, I won't get ahead of you and you'll
still be king. Did you say that? Did you? You know I've
been with you for a while now and always play in the second chair of
your fast and Uh never ask him for nothing. I wasn't due. One
thing I am doing is being told the truth. One thing I'm doing is
being treated with respect. Now. I've loved you. I looked up to
you forever all my life. Beauti father I wish I had. Why would
you go out of your way to keep me behind when I've given you everything
I got? Little told me more? Who keeps your money? He asked?
He keeps it? Well, he's skimming off your share. In the
shares for everybody in the band. He's cheating you from your mouth to God's
air? Is that true? Are you cheating me? I can tell from
your face it is true. I don't know what to say. I don't
know what to think. Little told me one more thing. She said,
you can swing better than King Oliver. You deserve to be voice trumping and
not in Papa Joe's band. Stop playing like Papa Joe. Play like you,
so Papa Joe. I'm gonna play like me from now on. Goodbye,
good luck. I'll miss you. I had spent almost three years that
chict. I was in my twenties and I was done with King Oliver's band.
This was a telegraph. It is from New York, Harlam Fletcher Henderson.
He was the most famous band leader in New York, and he wanted
me to join his band as his voice trumpet. It was the chance of
a lifetime. Maybe I fall flat on my face. I didn't know.
Sometimes you can't know time. You just have to put one foot in front
of the other and hope and pray and listen to your heart. My heart
was beating so loud it was making my ears ring A quick now there was
one corner of New ye Off that was hotter than all the rest. Every
joint was jumping. All the black artists and musicians found that way there one
way or another. It was a beautiful spot, full of life style of
music. Every night the high class white folks would go uptown and see the
black musician singing, blow and dancing and change the world. That spot,
that corner was harder. I was in the audience that night that Fletcher Henderson's
band played at the Rosland Ballroom. It was the first night with the new
cant on the trumpet, Lewis Armstrong. I have to tell you, nobody
had heard anything like it before. He was hitting notes and nobody else could
here. Oh my goodness, people stopped dancing and came around or listen to
him. He just let it go like like we needed to get their people
in the audience at all, and he just let it stream out of your
heart. He was playing so strong. People could hear him. I'm Gon
Street just passing by. They had to come in. They had to see
it, and he had for themselves. The next night we were standing room
only. World got all over town about the hot new horn player at Rosalind.
He played, he'd seen, he jumped all over the stage, He'd
delivered sermons. He'd have some glasses of rodes, the whole nine yards.
He was more than a horn player, more than a musician. He was
a real entertainer. And the crowd, all of New York just ate it
up. Everyone on the street was talking with the pope this guy. People
wanted to walk like him, talk like him. Shit, people wanted to
beat him. Dear Live. It's a whole new world out in New York,
but it ain't half a world without you. I think it's time for
me to come back to Chicago. Fletcher Henderson, he's a it's a five
man and all, but he ain't gonna share credit for nothing. I could
hit these notes nobody else can hit, but he hardly ever lets me do
it. And they're singing. He won't let me sing nothing. I'll do
anything for him musically, but he don't feel the same. You don't care
for me too much. I think if I have to choose between Fletcher's band
and my wife, I'm choosing my wife every time. So keep the nightlight
on. I'm coming home, red beans and rice to yours. Lewis.
Hey, Fletcher, and I'm talking with you for a minute now. Fletcher
must have known what I was gonna say. He was bracing himself in his
fine tuxedo. Me. I was sick, just pushing the words out of
my mouth. Fletcher, thank you so much for all your kindness. I'm
gonna have to leave the band to go back to Chicago in the morning.
Goodbye. Well, that's what I wanted to say. That's what I wanted
to come out of my mouth, but instead my eyes were swimming and my
belly was doing somersaults. So when I opened my mouth, something else came
out all over his nice, clean tuxedos. Shot in the morning, I
was on the train in Chicago and Fletcher Henderson's shirt was at the Cleaner's News
around the world. Chicago rolls out the red carpet for the grand return of
Lewis Armstrong. Build us the world's greatest trumpet player. His name is on
the lips of every music fan in America. Even musicians say he's in a
class by himself. I was just trying to sing and play from the heart,
that's all. Okay. Studios wanted to make some records, so they
reached out to me. They were gathering musicians and paying fifty dollars a piece
just for us to come in and blow. No rehearsals, no prep just
come in and blow. Okay. The studio was smaller than a bread box.
But man, oh man, we were playing that thing, all five
of us, and it was hot. We called ourselves the Hot Five.
That's it. Here's my fifty dollars, thank you, sir, and off
we went. We didn't know it at the time, but the music we
made that day, thanks to those records, the Hot Five would become the
single most influential combo when the history of jazz. How about that? How
about that? Now? When you're work in the nightclubs in Chicago in those
days, one way or another, you were working for mister al Capone.
Now, I'll say what you will about the album. To me, he
was a nice, little cute fat boy, like some professor would just come
out of college to teach or something. He was a good tipper. So
prohibition or not, Ill made sure the liquor was flowing to the clubs,
and the clubs made sure to hire musicians like me. I said, many
was a night when the police would bust down the club. You got used
to lining up and climbing aboard the patrol wagon. Fact, we were so
often standing room only on that wagon. Whenever I hear the police were in
the house, I just run to get a seat before they all filled up.
Unlike busses and trolleys, police wagons are one place where color folks can
sit right up front. This next part is hard to talk about, even
all these years later. He's still Mama, It's okay. I'm here,
harden of the arteries, they said, I brought up to Chicago make sure
she had to find his doctors in the best care. But sometimes she try
and try and try, but you just can't hit that ic. Make it
easy, MoMA, Yeah, oh, my hand, my MoMA. She
began her life and daughter of a slave property, and she had lived a
life long enough to see her son, her boy, light up Chicago like
a star. Then equal any man anywhere you dakened up with my my hand.
I held it close. She opened the eyes wide, gave me that
smile. I'd do anything for son. You're a good boy, she said.
You treat everybody right. We have a good heart you can't miss.
Then I grip got real loose and the light left eyes, my heart,
my soul, my spirit, my mama. What's gone? My world was
changing up ahead the crash of the stock market, and I tore that brings
America's music and yours true egg to the world. That's next time on Pops.
This has been part four of Pops. Reno Wilson is Pops. Pops
is distributed by Drop Biscuit Studios Executive producer Mike Agavino. Pops is written by
Mark Ramsey, with sound design and production by Jeff Schmidt. Please subscribe to
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