Yahoo Movies ‘Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues’ Provides Truer, Fuller Picture Of An Entertainment Icon – Contenders Documentary
“My only sin is in my skin.” That rhyme is among the lyrics in the 1929 Fats Waller song “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue,” an eloquent and haunting evocation of the experience of being a Black man in America.
The brilliant jazz artist and entertainer Louis Armstrong recorded a version of that song. More importantly, he lived it.
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Armstrong’s private feelings about the racism and indignities he faced during his life are explored in the Apple Original Films documentary Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues, directed by Sacha Jenkins. The film draws from private audio recordings the jazz trumpeter made, including conversations with friends where he spoke openly about his experiences.
“He was a techie, you could say, and he had a reel-to-reel recorder that he took with him everywhere, but also was prominently featured in his fun room at his house,” Jenkins said during an appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary awards-season event. “He taped conversations with himself and his wife, friends, conversations with himself. And it’s very revealing.”
Jenkins added, “Media back then wasn’t what it is today. There [wasn’t] YouTube or these platforms where artists can say whatever they want and do whatever they want. He was pretty forward-thinking in knowing that one day there would be great value to what he thought, and the media [of his time] wasn’t really going to give him the platform to really share what he thought. So, it’s an amazing wealth of material that is the spine, the backbone of the film.”
Through use of those recordings, the documentary dispels the illusion that somehow Armstrong was so cheerful by nature that he didn’t feel wounded by open racism in the South, or thinly disguised racism elsewhere in the country, including Hollywood, where Armstrong made many films.
“In many ways, the way that Louis has been depicted in the media has been that happy guy with lots of energy and charisma and befriending a lot of white people and performing in front of white audiences,” said producer Julie Anderson. “And what people don’t understand is that Louis understood exactly where he was. He was existing somewhere between the Black and white world. And this is the ’40s and ’50s, surviving through ’30s, Jim Crow.”
The tightrope Armstrong walked, not by choice but by necessity, comes through in Black & Blues.
“Louis was one of the very first Black performers to start performing worldwide … in front of white audiences — massive white audiences, not just small things,” Anderson said. “He had a lot of responsibility being in that position as the first, and he knew that he had to behave in a certain way to make it all work. And I think that because of this one-dimensional presentation of Louis, people thought he was careless about the Black community, which was not true at all. He knew exactly where he came from.”
In one telling example, the film reveals that as Armstrong became more famous in the U.S., he insisted that anytime he performed at a hotel he would have the right to overnight accommodations in that establishment. Without that rider, he wouldn’t have been permitted to rest himself in the very place where he had entertained.
“At the time, no one was looking at that action as a form of civil rights activism when in fact, it was,” Jenkins observed. “But that’s the great thing about having 50 years go by and some time, some breathing room, to really think about who he was and what he meant, what he means.”
Check back Wednesday for the panel video.
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