Satchmo’s Shadow:
An Excerpt from Satchmo at the Waldorf
Terry Teachout
Author’s Note: Writing the biography of a perform-
ing artist is like standing in the wings to watch a
play. You see what the public sees, only from a dif-
ferent perspective. Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong,
Mein 2009 biography of the greatest jazz musician of
the twentieth century, is about the much-loved
genius-entertainer who made millions of people
feel warm inside–but it’s also about the private
Armstrong, who swore like a trooper and knew how
to hold a grudge. The fact that Satchmo (as he liked to
call himself ) had two sides to his personality doesn’t
mean that the public man was somehow less “real”
than the private one. Like all geniuses, Armstrong
was complicated, and that complexity was part of
what made his music so beautiful and profound.
Biography is about telling, theater about show-
ing. Having written a book that told the story of
Armstrong’s life, it occurred to me that it might be
a worthwhile challenge to try to show an audience
what he was like offstage. This was the seed from
which Satchmo at the Waldorf grew. What turned it
into a full-fledged play was the idea of having the
same actor double as Armstrong and Joe Glaser,
Armstrong’s mob-connected white manager. (At a
later stage in the writing of Satchmo at the Waldorf, ICH
decided to have the actor play a third “character,”
Miles Davis, who appears in two short scenes.) You
can’t have a play without conflict, and the trick to
making a one-man play dramatic is ½nding a way to
make that conflict palpable, even visible. When I
wrote Glaser into Satchmo at the Waldorf, it was as
© 2013 by Terry Teachout
doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00242
135
TERRY TEACHOUT, drama critic
for The Wall Street Journal, is the au –
thor of Satchmo at the Waldorf (2011),
which premiered in Orlando, Fla.,
and was produced in 2012 at Shake –
speare & Company of Lenox, Masse.,
Long Wharf Theatre of New Ha –
ven, Conn., and Philadelphia’s Wil –
ma Theater. He received a Gug gen –
heim Fellowship to support the
completion of his latest book, Duke:
A Life of Duke Ellington (2013). His
other books include All in the Dances:
A Brief Life of George Balanchine
(2004), Pops: A Life of Louis Arm-
strong (2009), and The Skeptic: A
Life of H. L. Mencken (2002). He has
also written the libretti for three
operas by Paul Moravec: The Letter
(2009), Danse Russe (2011), and The
King’s Man (2013).
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An Excerpt
aus
“Satchmo
Bei der
Waldorf”
though Armstrong’s shadow had suddenly
appeared on stage, dark and threatening.
All at once I had my villain, the Iago to
Satchmo’s Othello–though, like all the
best villains, Glaser isn’t nearly as simple,
or evil, as he looks.
Satchmo at the Waldorf takes place in
Marsch 1971 in a dressing room backstage at
the Empire Room of the Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel in New York, where Armstrong per –
formed in public for the last time, vier
months before his death. Much of what
he and Glaser say in the play derives from
things that they said in real life, und das
way in which both men talk onstage is an
accurate portrayal of their habits of speech,
right down to the last four-letter word.
But the play is still a work of ½ction, al –
beit one that is freely based on fact. It’s an
attempt to suggest the nature of their per-
sonal relationship, which was so fraught
with tension that no mere biographer,
obliged as he is to stick to the factual rec –
ord, could hope to do more than hint at
its endless subtleties. Fictionalizing that
relationship has freed me to speculate
about things that I cannot know for sure
but have good reason to suspect. Gordon
Edelstein, the director of Satchmo at the
Waldorf, told me that he believed the play
to be about “love–and betrayal.” As soon
as he said that, I knew that he understood
what I was trying to do.
This is my ½rst play, and unlikely as it
may sound, I never gave any serious
thought to trying my hand at playwriting
until I sat down to write the ½rst draft of
Satchmo at the Waldorf early in 2010. Ich bin,
after all, a drama critic by trade, Und
though a fair number of critics have writ-
ten plays, it doesn’t happen very often.
We inhabit the world of theory, Und
rarely if ever do we have occasion to dirty
our hands with the theater’s ruthless
practicalities. Now that I’ve done so, ICH
think that I’ve learned to appreciate them
more fully than ever before. Kenneth
Tynan, the British drama critic, was kid-
ding on the square when he said that a
critic is “a man who knows the way but
can’t drive the car.” The ½rst draft of
Satchmo at the Waldorf was a carefully
drawn road map. The ½nal version is–I
hope–a journey.
***
GLASER You know the schvartzes,
they’re all lazy or nuts, and at ½rst I
thought maybe Louie was just another
one of them lazy schvartzes. Cause right off
he says he wants to leave all the business
to me. The idea is, I pick the guys in the
band, get the jobs, book the travel. I pay
all his bills off the top of the take, then we
split what’s left right down the middle,
½fty-½fty. Mit anderen Worten, Joe Glaser does
all the work! I might as well have been
doing his fucking laundry! Know what he
told me? “I don’t care about being rich,
Herr. Glaser. You be rich. I just wanna play
my horn.” (Incredulously) Jee-zus Christ.
What kinda guy don’t wanna be rich?
But I gotta say, I was wrong about Louie.
He wasn’t lazy–he was smart. You think
about it. He’s out on the road every day
with the musicians, those fucking prima
donnas. You think he wants to piss ’em
off? Hell, NEIN! So I hire the guys, I decide
what to pay ’em, and that means when
somebody wants more money, Louie can
sagen, “Hey, Pops, ain’t got nothing to do
with the dough, you go talk to the boss.”
Smart. And once we really got going, ICH
worked him like a dog. Kept him on the
road three hundred nights a year. And did
he complain? Not once.
Course it was always ½rst class with the
All Stars. Top clubs, top cash. Work ’em
like dogs, treat ’em like kings, that’s the
way to run a band. And Louie trusted me,
right down the line. Cause he knew what
136
Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & Wissenschaften
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he was good at, and I knew what I was
good at–and he knew what I was good at.
The lights change.
ARMSTRONG You a colored man, Du
always gonna wonder ’bout white folk.
May think they like you, think you in tight
with ’em, but then you look up and all of
a sudden, they someplace you can’t go.
Now some white folks, you know they cool
soon as you meet ’em. But the majority of
white people? Two-thirds of ’em don’t
like niggers, but they all got one they just
crazy about. (Rolling his eyes and grinning
maliciously) Every white man in the world
got one nigger they just love his dirty
drawers. Fuck all the rest of us. You think
I don’t know that? Shit. What you think
my life been like? I done played in ninety-
nine million hotels I couldn’t sleep at–
and that was up north! Down south wasn’t
no hotels for colored. Find a boarding
house or sleep on the bus, piss in the
bushes. No place to eat, neither. Use to
stock up in the grocery stores, come out
with a loaf of bread, can of sardines, big
hunks of baloney and cheese, then we’d
eat it in the bus.
Sometimes we go round to the back door
of them white restaurants got colored
cooks. Knock on the door and say, “How –
dy, fellas, what you got for old Satchmo
tonight?” And they’d say, “Well, hello,
Dort, Satch! Come on in, take a load off.”
They always give you what you want long
as the boss ain’t looking. Ate me a lotta
½ne T-bones off of them big wooden
chopping blocks, standing right there in
the kitchen. (Ironisch) Satchmo the
Great, standing in the kitchen.
(Shrugging it off) Course you know it ain’t
always like that. White people, they ain’t
naturally meaner than colored–they just
been on top too long. And good white folk
did everything decent for me. Play in my
band, buy my records, come to my shows.
Kept coming when the colored started
listening to rhythm and blues and that
bebop shit, didn’t care about old Satch no
mehr. NEIN, white folks never did stop com-
ing to see me. (Gesturing to the audience with
visible amusement) And it don’t look like
they gonna. They looove my music.
Hier, Jetzt, looka this.
He reaches into his shirt and pulls out a Star of
David hanging on a pendant around his neck.
Star of David. Jewish star. Herr. Glaser, Er
done give it to me. (As if revealing a secret) Er
Jewish, you know. I wear it every day cause
the Jews, they been so good to me. Maybe
that’s why I trusted Mr. Glaser–he was a
Jew, and the Jews never let me down.
Down in New Orleans there was this Jew-
ish family, the Karnofskys. They was junk
peddlers done come over from Russia. ICH
worked for them when I was seven years
alt. Did odd jobs. And they didn’t treat
me like no butler or nothing. Pat me on
my head, tell me I’m a good boy, treat me
warm and kind. Like family. Use to sit at
they table like I was one of they own. Eat
that good Jewish food, teach me them
pretty Jewish songs. We’d bring the junk
wagon in and they’d say, “Little Louis,
you worked hard today, gonna be too late
for you to get your supper when you get
heim, so you just sit right down here and
eat with us.”
A pause.
They even loaned me the money to buy
my ½rst horn. Beat-up little cornet down
at the pawn shop. Thought it was the
prettiest thing I ever saw.
The lights change.
GLASER You know my father was a doc-
tor? He wanted me to be a doctor, zu.
“My son, the doctor.” Did the bar mitzvah,
got the fountain pen. Even took violin
Terry
Teachout
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142 (4) Fallen 2013
137
An Excerpt
aus
“Satchmo
Bei der
Waldorf”
lessons! Only I couldn’t hack the straight
life. Too slow. So I said fuck it. I started
selling used cars, managed a couple of box –
ers, met a guy who knew a guy, and next
thing you know, I’m running the Sunset
Club for Al Capone. A nice Jewish boy,
working for the wops. But I always liked
Al. When he said it, you could take it to
the bank. And I liked the whole setup. ICH
mean, shit, who wants to be a doctor?
What I like is to push a button and things
happen–right now. I like making deals.
And I love to see the other guy blink.
That’s why I come on so hard. Du weisst.
(Barks) “Fuck you, you little cocksucker!”
(As before, casually) That kind of thing.
Cause people don’t expect to hear you
talking like that in an of½ce on Park
Avenue. Makes ’em sit up and take notice.
You know the way we do business? Mit
a pistol stuck up the other guy’s nose. Der
Chicago way. But the best way is when
the other guy thinks you gotta pistol, Und
that you really would stick it up his nose if
he gave you any shit. And once you work
for Al Capone, for the rest of your life that’s
what people think. “Hey, I fuck with this
guy, I could get my legs broken.” Even now.
Every time I yell at ’em, they piss blood.
A pause.
Und dann . . . they do what I want.
That why I call myself “Louis,” not
“Louie.” Mr. Glaser, he call me “Louie.”
White folks all call me “Louie.” The an –
nouncer here, he call me “Louie” every
night before the show. That’s O.K., call
me what you want, but I ain’t no god-
damn Frenchman, ain’t no Creole, ain’t
no “Louie.” I’m black. Black as a spade
flush. Woke up black this morning, black
when I go to bed, still gonna be black
when I get up tomorrow. Don’t like it,
you can kiss my black ass.
A pause.
But you know what? I don’t think folks
wanna hear all that angry shit when they
lay down that good money to come hear
me play. They ain’t paying for me to make
’em feel bad. I’m just an old ham actor–
blow a tune, tell a joke. I’m there in the
cause of happiness. Like when I play the
blues, maybe I’m thinking about one of
them low-down moments, like when
your woman don’t treat you right. Hell of
a thing when a woman tell you, “I got me
another mule in my stall.” But when I
sing about it, I smile. Make you smile.
Herr. Glaser, he done taught me that. Got
right in my face and said, “Gotta tone
down the jazz, Louie.” Told me to smile
real big and swing that music lightly and
politely.
The lights change.
The lights change.
ARMSTRONG Good white, bad white.
Good colored, bad colored. Down in New
Orleans, them light-skin colored, ihnen
Creoles, they think they hot shit, look
down on the rest of us like we was dirt.
Jelly Roll Morton, he like that. Had that
diamond in his front tooth. Used to swan
around saying, “Don’t call me colored–
I’m one hundred percent French.” But
you know what? He still had to eat out
back in the kitchen, just like me.
GLASER I knew how to present Louie.
Those other dumb-putz managers he
hatte? None of ’em had a clue. When I
came along, he was still doing all the
crazy jigaboo stuff. Smoke that dope, get
out on stage, sing that mush-mouth jungle-
bunny mumbo-jumbo, play a thousand
high Cs in a row. Fine for the jazz fans, Aber
how many jazz fans are there? You gotta
play to the crowd. Let the people know
you ain’t some goddamn spook with a
razor in your pocket.
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So Louie comes to me and says, “Help
me, Herr. Glaser. Tell me what to do.”
(Speaking directly to the dressing-room chair
as though Armstrong were sitting in it) And I
sit him down and I say, “Look, Louie, Du
wanna work for me, here’s the deal. Für-
get the critics, forget the musicians. Stop
blowing your brains out playing all them
goddamn high Cs. Ain’t no money in it.
That voice of yours–that’s where the
money is. Play your cards right, do what I
sagen, one day you won’t even have to play
the trumpet. You can just stand up there
and sing. You’re an entertainer. Just like Al
Jolson or Sophie Tucker. So start playing
for the public. Sing so people can under-
stand the words. Wave that handkerchief
and smile like you don’t gotta care in the
Welt. Do that, you’re gonna make ten
times as much money.”
Didn’t give me any backtalk. Not about
Das, not about nothing. NEIN, he said,
“That’s what I’m gonna do, Herr. Glaser,”
and he went right out and did it . . . Und
now look at him. Man’s a goddamn
money machine. And you think anybody
bought “Hello, Dolly!” to hear him play
the fucking trumpet? Nobody gives a shit!
They don’t care about jazz–it’s Louie they
Liebe.
Terry
Teachout
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142 (4) Fallen 2013