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You wouldn't believe it if I told you. It comes from honky tonks and
speakeases. It's got magic, voodoo, the Lord and Rifa, redbeans and
rice, light and darkness and triumph. Hard to believe because it's so I
don't know it impossible, right, but it's all true every word. And
a poor boy from the district travels around the world today just blowing us on
and people ever read a smile and of Lord news around the world the year
nineteen sixty, preaching the gospel of New Orleans jazz to every corner of the
world. It's such mo Lewis Armstrong Hoops, as he likes to be called,
one of the foundational figures in modern jazz. Here he is being carried
in royal style during his tour of the African Congo. I always say a
note is a note in any language. Reports say Armstrong's presence actually stopped a
war East catty fight God shooting at each other then and we started playing.
Well, they all stopped fighting, sat together, rifles on their shoulders,
having a grand die. Yeah. And then we left and then Shoo started
up again. When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with Lewis Armstrong,
Jay z and Beyonce, Bruno Mars and Frank Ocean, Lebron Kanye, I'm
usher none could exist without Pops. Well, when I pick up that all,
and that's all the world's behind me. Yeah, And I don't concentrate
on nothing but it. That's my living, that's my life, that's my
voice. Love. I loved them notes. That's why I try to make
up light to. I suppose you have to start the New Orleans around nineteen
hundred, I noticed, I said, around nineteen hundreds. I was never
good for years. But that town New Orleans, sweet and spicy like a
good old jummer liar. Oh it smells, and that jack the jasmine,
guardenias, magnolias beautiful. The block where I was born was the most crowded
street you ever saw. Folks of all sorts, just church people, hustlers,
gamblers, prostitutes, cheek pimp steves, and lots of children. My
mama was fifteen and I came along on the night I was born. She
used to tell me, and there was a big shooting scrape and the Alis
and h a foss of July folks celebrating the shotguns and pistols and uh whatever
weever they could find. Right, she told me that somebody got killed that
knife. One man had to die to make room for another to be born,
when she said, and making face for me that night and into the
world, I came to sound the shotguns and hollering my mama, may Anne.
She didn't know my daddy too well be the did I. He never
had time to tell me nothing. He was out there too busy chasing Jabiz
when you can find him. Well. The blow ups came and went and
short in my papa, and a few years later I heard tell they went
together again. Meanwhile, I was sitting over to live with my grandmother Josephine.
Yeah, somebody at the door. I was like, my daddy up
and left again. Man was sick, awful sick. This man took me
to see her, to take care of her as best I could. At
age five or six, my mama's placing story ill one room. Today.
You call it a shock. She called it home, Mama, Mama.
She looked up at me like it was the first time she ever saw me.
Oh, this bryce my little face. She grabbed my hand real tight.
I'm so sorry, she said, I'm so sorry. I'm not done
what I should buy you. Mama's gonna make it up. I remember she
was crying. She's crying a lot in those days. So she said in
the rampart street to buy fifty cents of me bread, red beans and rice.
Yes, I love that good old home again. And I tell you
this is what it would take to make a well again. Zee. I
can take it as I tell you about it. Now you know most of
my life. I signed all my letters red beans and rice and yours.
Knew his arms wrong. Mamma got better and moved me back in Willie.
My daddy was back by then for a while. A lease and low and
behold. I had a sister, Three of us in one room. It
would happened all hours, day and night. The knocking. Me and my
little sister. I called the mama Lucy. We'd stay out of the way
when the strangers came. It's my stepfather. He had a lot of stepfathers.
They come and go a lot. They spend time with man in her
bed, and then they leave. I couldn't keep drag of them. Must
have been dozens. All I had to do was to him my back and
a new pappet would a pair buff. Mama says, you've been laying ends.
Meet me and Mama Lucy. We would hear a noise and would cover
our ears. It was one room. All three of us donned go to
sleep. Mamma LuSE him well. I didn't much get into trouble as a
boy until that day in nineteen twelve, last day of the year, New
Year's he It took all I had to open up that chest, my mama's
wood chest. I knew what was in there, and to night was the
night to play with it. One of my bappies kept the gun in there,
and there it is. Lots of boys had cat pstols in those days,
and this was better than some toy six shooter. I loaded it with
blanks, and me and my friends when walking down the street, saying it
that was across the street, Go get him, dip up, my friends
said. So I pulled my Bappi's revolver from my bosom, raised my arm
high up in the air and let it go. Boy, that kid across
the street was so frightened me cut out. It was out of sight.
Like a drag rabbit where my friends started. This was the funniest thing in
the world. Do it again, and do it again. I reloaded my
gun and raised it up over my head again. That's when I felt two
strong arms on my shoulder. It was cold out there that night, but
I broke out into a sweat that was even colder. I watched my friend's
cutting run. Now I tooint around to see this tall, old fade detective,
who've been watching me shoot that gun? Please, mister, don't arrest
me. Please let me go back to my momma. I won't do it
no more. Well, he wasn't having none of that. Now. You
might think being locked up was a bad thing, and I suppose it is.
But I'll tell you something right now. You wouldn't be hearing me today
if I hadn't shot off that gun and spent the next few years in reform
school. I mean it was called the Colored Waves Home for Boys. We'd
get up in the morning with the bugle and spend the day drilling with wooden
rifles, cleaning buildings, learning skills. By nine o'clock shop we'd hit the
hay boy. I can still smell the honeysuckle trees. In the evening air,
you couldn't run away from the waist, so neither. Everybody got caught
and was back within a week. One night, while we were all asleep,
a boy tied together about a dozen sheets. He creased his body so
he could slide through the wooden bars. He slowly lowered himself to the ground
and disappeared in the morning. When the keeper's discovered he was missing, they
had one thing to say, it'll be back soon, and you know what
he was. The months passed, and I had my mind set on one
thing, and one thing only. The wave song had its own brass band,
all the sounds that band would make, and the fun those boys had.
Every night I would fall asleep dreaming about playing in that band. But
would they ever have me. I was raising such a bad company. I
had to be worthless, That's what I thought. Maybe that's what they thought.
Every day i'd watched the band play, I'd sit on a rock a
few yards from the music, closed my eyes and I could feel it deep
in my soul and music. The band's director, a man named mister Peter
Davis, would watch me, and one day I guess he had quite enough,
say boy. He was calling out to me, Misa, Yeah,
you you ever playing a band? No, sir, I said, why
don't you take this old bugle and see what you can do? Well.
I wasn't accustomed to kindness like that, and I think I was a little
bit too stummy to say no. And that old bugle was the most beautiful
thing in the world. I blew it all day long. By the summer
of nineteen thirteen, I wasn't just with the band. I had become the
foist chair on the cornets. Oh that place, it changed my life.
That place was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, being music married
it at home. The most important figure in twentieth century jazz, the first
jazz man to appear on the cover of Time, born in the era of
Jim Crow. He's the first African American who have featured billing in a Hollywood
movie, the first to host a sponsored national radio broadcast, and the first
to have his contracts specified that he would play no hotel that would not accept
him as a guest. What we play is life? Would you an idea
about my 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 Pops on iTunes, Spotify, drop
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