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to that as Joe Oliver's band marching by another funeral and another reason for a
party. That was only a kid. We was playing ball and Joe Oliver
hit a note so high we had to hold our ears, but nobody was
holding the ball. Yep, this high note broke our ball. How about
that? Even as a kid, however, follow that band everywhere and marching,
marching, and it stop for rests. That's when Joe would let me
hold his arm, showed me how to put my mouth to it, how
to hold a note as magic. There are a lot of music cats when
I was a kid, But Joe Oliver, boy, he was the baddest
some bitch on the cornet. Believe that mine, what a punch that man
had. He could shout a tune and he had a hard as big as
a whale. Old Joe, closest thing to real Daddy that I've ever had.
Even now, when I blow, I think at times and things from
out of the past. You know that gives me an image of the tune,
like like moving pictures passing in front of my eyes. Yeah, a
town a chick somewhere back down the line. You know an old man with
no name you've seen once in a place you don't remember, cat who swings
and stretches out his hand and passes young boy in the head warmly. That's
Joe Oliver, King Oliver to me, this is part two of Pops.
Na Wilson is Pops The Remarkable Story of Jazz Legend Lewis Armstrong, a six
part audio experience from Drop Biscuit Studios. Joe Oliver He had a piano player
named Buddy, and Buddy got himself a beautiful new white suit, Dame.
So one night Buddy comes to wake in a suit. He's about to sit
down at the kennel when King Oliver pulls out of his mouth a big sloppy
water chewing tobacco right sticks it on Bud his chair. Well, you just
know, Buddy set his ass right on that red queue and tobacco right,
white suit, and all took about a half an hour before it to happen.
Buddy started to feel it, you know, wiggling around, and stood
up and turned around and looked. They all laughed it off. Boy,
King Oliver, he apologized, but that white suit He's just good to resist.
The poorer you are, the harder you have to work well. I
was poor and dute, and I worked harder than hell. There's the jack
bottle. We find old rags, bones, iron bottles, anything, and
we sell it for cold for the fire evenings. We take those buckets and
cold to the horse. See standing in those doorways, almost naked in those
silk bloomers right for a quarter extra, entered them cribs and start them fires.
Don't you peak sideways at me? Boy, just start that fire.
I go door to door with two Karnovski boys. Karnovskis, but a wonderful
family. I was only seven when I worked for them. H they were
poor and Jewish from Russia, and the white folks. Boy ain't treated them
in an awful way, just awful. But I worked with him. I
ate with them. I even bought money from him from my first carnet.
There it is, sitting in the window of that pond, job blessed by
the Angels, a cornet five dollars. Let me ask you a question.
Have you ever wanted something more than you wanted to take your next breath?
I mean wanted that bad? That's how much. I wanted that hard then
I didn't let it go for days. I wouldn't even take my eyes off
of it. It would become my reason for living. That's what I remember
about the Kardarski's or Jewish family. The white folks hated. They were always
warming to me, always kind to me. What a difference that made to
me. You know, a kid just starting off in the world, I'm
saying, ain't that it is cocaine, buddy Martin? Well, I knowing
them in short pants and now here we were teenagers. I came up behind
him, slow like quick, put my hand over his eyes. Guess who,
he said, dip up? Where you been? Listen, cap,
I've been locked up at the colored home. That's home they ever was,
by the way, And now what I do for some Wake at that?
His eyes lit up. Wake, Oh you won't wake. Go to Henry
Ponce's Honky Talk right across the street. There they need a horn player,
and all you got to do is put on your long pants and play the
blues for the horns and huzzle all night, coming with a big stack of
money. And when you play what they want, they'll call your sweetheart and
buy your drinks. And get your tips. Well that sounded like every to
me at the time, so that's what I did. Hello, mister Ponce,
my name is Lewis Lewis Armstrong, and your search for horn players over.
And that's how it came to be that I played the horn for whores
and johns and the mafia folks that kept him in lying. There was the
time in my life. One night I looked out with me. It was
the King Oliver himself. Hey, King, remember me, sure, dude?
He said not to close me and King Oliver he sit down and listen
to me play, and then he'd blow a few for being showing me all
the right things to do. See, I mean, this cat knew all
the right things. So what's it like to spend your nights with the roughest
cats of Storyville. Well you better spend those nights with a bodyguard. And
that's how I came across Black Benny. Now Black Benny. He was a
fighter, I mean a real prize fighter, and the bouncer and the ladies
man in crowded places, Benny would handcuff us together so I wouldn't get lost.
And if there was any trouble from Red Devil, or cheeky black if
the hard drinking horse started swinging the razors around, and they did, black
Manny was there to make it all right. Now, I said. Benny
was a ladies man, right, so naturally his advice meant a lot to
a boy at my age. Got something to tell you, pops. He's
saying, what, Benny, what is it? You're listening close? Yeah,
Ben, it's bet it out. Bops always have more than one woman.
Women is crazy. Your best defense is this safety in numbers. I
took that lesson to heart. Maybe that was a bad idea. You know.
I saw a lot of fight in my day, but one fight puts
them all to shame. And there weren't no fight between men neither. Mary
Jack the Bear. She was a big house of a woman and she was
the baddest hoole in New Orleans team and not saying a lot. See Mary
Jack the Bear just caught the eye of sweetest by Alberta. Now al murders
in love with Mary Jack's pimp, Joe bright eyes following. But Joe he
dropped her like a hot potato. See, but she still had eyes.
M Well, Mary Jack gonna have words with her. Here it comes I
know you were blood that only sleep with Pope White rash. Burda says you,
low trash. Your man told me he was through with you. It
must be your husband money was given me. Well, now that was a
mortal insult, and everybody in the mile of all directions knew it. And
then all hell broke loose, just kicking and spitting and punching the name,
calling Mary Jack the bear. She took out a long knife and sliced up
Alberta's face. Well, Alberta, she pulls out her own knife and she
stabs and marry Jack's face kept the PROTICTU and the two of them they just
punching and slashing until both of them fell on the side of them. Well,
they both spent the night in the hospital, but married Jactor Bear.
She never came out alive. Amura She was okay, but face was so
marked up with U like a score card. Stayed that way for years.
Oh Lord, please save your son from crazy prostitutes for knives and raisors.
Violence was everywhere when I was young, even close to home. One of
my mama's pappies was named Albert. Now Albert's team. He knew his way
to a good drunk my mama. He called her a black bitch. He
slapped her so hard she fell into the canal, and then he just walked
away. Me that her mama's face was bloody, she was hype, she
was wet, she was crying, and Albert he just walked away. I
never saw him again. I never forgave him either. And if I saw
him today, trust me, will be his last day on this ice.
How could he walk away if I liked that? There's a lot of things
you expect from a fifteen year old boy, but adopting the baby's probably not
one of them, even when the baby's your kidding. Now, my cousin
Flora, she did whatever she wanted, wrapped her and her teenage friends.
And there was this old white man who used to have all these colored girls
up to an old ramshackle house of his right. Well you can guess what
happened next. I watched Flora get bigger and bigger until a fine, fat
little baby arrived. Clarence was named. I know what you're thinking, how
can we let this old white man hate these young colored girls. But see
he was a white man. If we had tried to get him arrested,
the judge would have thorn us all into the street. Baby two, I
just won, right, Clarence, I like that nag. This voice.
Day was the windiest New Orleans and tea slates were fine off rooftops just rain,
boring down hard home finally wet, gold and exhausted. There was Flora
lying in the bed. The bed me and my sister and my mama all
share there. I saw a baby, Clarence, and it took all the
gloom out of me. I was the man of the house. Nobody else
could take care of him. Right See, I would love this boy like
my own, no matter we had so little for ourselves and even less to
share. The Lord will provide. That's what my mama said. It had
to happen. On any block in my neighborhood, Storyville, you could find
two things, han'k you don tip brothels, more than a dozen brothels on
one block. And where there's horse, there's pimps. Lots of hors lots
of pimps. How do I look, Mama? He just grunted that grunt
that means you're a fool boy. And maybe she was right, because I
Lewis Armstrong was go ahead. And to be a pimpo. Now I just
needed me a horror. Excuse me, ma'am, I'd like to represent your
skills in a professional manner. How does that sound? My apologies, ma'am.
Excuse me, ma'am, I'd like to represent your skills in a professional
manner. How does that sound? Oh? Boy, how value coming me?
And I'll show you myself what you want me to spend a night with
you? Oh? Man, no, I wouldn't think of staying away from
my mom and my little sister, not even for one night. Well that
set her off. Good you think I'm playing at you. Don't want to
do that, man, No, no, you don't want to do that.
Good for the knife and stab stab stabbed at me. My shoulders bloody,
and my head was spinning, and my feet were moving as fast as
lightning. Out of there. Well, when I got home, Mama she
did gonna look at me. She saw the blood on my shoulder, and
boy, eyes got wide and full of fire. She marched out, God,
please let this night in. But nobody flat on their back dead.
Oh I'm watching that hoole pin to the wall with my mama's fingers wrapped around
her neck. Don't you ever bother my boy again, she said, and
she meant it. He don't want no more. You needless to say.
That was my first and last experience as a pen. Now you already know
I worshiped the ground that Joe Oliver, King Oliver played on smells great,
Miss Oliver. Joe. He used to invite me to his house for supper.
Who was a powerful man, Joe, and as wife, Oh,
she was a powerful good cook, miss delicious. Thank you, Miss Oliver.
After dinner, Papa Joe had a surprise for me, lewis from here.
I got something that for you, a gift for me. Listening me
told me you're fine horn player, and one day you're gonna be almost as
good as King Oliver, almost as good. But I've had this old horn
kicking around the house, and uh, I can't even get rid of it.
Maybe you can take it off my hands. Well, I looked at
that horn. It was it was a battle old hand me down, and
I tell you it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I don't
know what to say, King Joe, he said, you can call me
Joe. Well, I prized that horn, that beautiful thing. I guarded
it with my life. I played it for years. I have it still.
Acts of kindness like that you don't forget, not ever. Sometimes the
end strolls in like a little lamb. Sometimes the end blows like a mighty
lion. Or November twelfth, nineteen seventeen, the end came all right.
Prostitution was officially declared illegal. The Storyville. Everywhere you looked, black folks
were moving out. The horse and pimps, and of music that they would
swing to. That's that's what Storyville was. The blood and the veins of
New Orleans. No horse, but it will say, no breathing. At
night. The sound of New Orleans is quiet, rows of empty cribs,
ghost down. It wasn't the end of hooking, of course. I mean
ain't never gonna be. In the day some horns they went underground, in
the bootlegging, all in a smaller scale, you know, and outside of
the public eye. None of it were good for horn players, though,
one of the mafia honky tonks, stay off of me, a steady gig
boy. I jumped at it. The money was pronounced, but I didn't
care. I held up that horn and kissed it. Mama, I'm home.
I made fifteen cents, That's what I told her. Well, my
sister wakes up out of a dead sleep, but she says, you blew
all night for fifteen cents. And even my mama had to admit maybe my
day job hauling cole wasn't so bad after all. I don't mind fifteen cents.
Fifteen cents like a pot of goal to me, me and my sweethearn.
Now listen, playing a tunk in those days means playing for gangsters and
hustlers, gamblers and pimps. Right, some days, I opened up my
eyes and saying to myself, thank you Lord for helped me survive another night.
While I'm on that band stand blowing, some cat in the crowd pulls
out of forty five and pointed at at before Slippers. Look out, slippers.
Well, Slippers pulled out his own gun and shot the man in the
belly and then beat the living hell out of the brand we even stopped,
just another night. Wasn't my time to die, man, boy, wasn't
my time to die? Everybody has a voice. Time you take one too
many drinks, then it becomes too too many. Then it's way too many.
Right, I was dead drunk first time ever, my friends told me
they carried me home, but I got no memory of it. My mama
she wrapped cold towels around my head, put me to bed, and the
next day my head was still ringing like a steeple bell. Mama, I'm
sorry. Well she took one look at me, and what she said next,
I'll never forget son. We have to live your own life. I
mean, I would not dare scold you for taking a few nips. Your
mother drinks all liquors. She won't sometimes she gets pretty tight. I don't
mind saying only I know how to carry my liquor and you don't. Well,
that's when she got the craziest of all her ideas. Son, tell
you what suppose you and I make all the honky Thompson one night, then
I can show you how to enjoy good liquor. Why could I say no,
I'm gonna rink with my mama. And so the night of education began.
So focus was the first stop, the Spanos down the street. There
the bartender was so excited to see a mother and son making the rounds of
the thomps that he kept boring and whiskey down into our stomachs. Boy,
and my guts felt like they was kicked by a mule. And all the
while my mama was talking about, boy, here's how to hold you all
liquor. Yes, ma'am, Well, we were both pretty tight at this
point, and there's a lot of joints still on the list. Out of
the corner of my eye, I saw it. It was Slippers again,
Slippers, This is my mama. Mama, he Slippers, Well, that
cat was so taken he couldn't have been kinder. Shared whiskey all around,
and with every shot, Slippers got a little more decent. You know.
Man. He said that boy or should really go up north and play with
the good hornblowers. It was the craziest thing I never heard. Leave New
Orleans. Flippers, you out of your mind, play with the really good
hornblowers. We kept hobbing, one joint after the next. Finally, after
my mama fell flat on her face, we were escorted home. Oh.
I lay in bed for a long time looking at the ceiling. My head
was swimming, and not just because of all the whiskey. Kept thinking about
what Slippers was talking about to my mama. But I ever leave New Orleans,
the only home I've ever known what I ever played with the really good
hornblowers. But next day came. I survived the night of carousing with my
mama, and she survived too. Thank the Lord, boy, she said,
I am now convinced that you know how to hold your liquor. Well,
if I had a short with buttons, I do believe they would have
busted right off. I smiled a big smile. I was not a boy
no more. My mama told me, Louis, you are a man.
But now that I was a man, what next? I'm still shoving cold
and make ends meet. See you, still blowing my horn. But soon
something's gonna happen, something that steals me away from New Orleans and puts my
horn and my smile in front of the whole world. That's next time on
Pops. This has been part two of Pops. Rina 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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