[78-L] Louis Armstrong

[David Lennick]

And he wasn't an embarrassment in his later years, unlike Sophie or Maurice 
(suffering through those creaky old crocks on the Ed Sullivan Show is still 
enough to cause me to avoid any of their later output). Nobody pointed a gun at 
his head and forced him to record Hello Dolly.

By the way, speaking of old crocks, did anyone catch Carole King and James 
Taylor on Letterman the other night? They're about to go out on a 40th 
anniversary tour. She looks like a senior Hadassah organizer and sounds the 
same as ever (which means she still sounds like a seagull). He looks like 
somebody standing in line for his free turkey and is down to one note, which he 
can't locate.

dl

Cary Ginell wrote:
> One more point I should make regarding Louis Armstrong. In looking at copies of old jazz magazines from the '30s and '40s such as "Down Beat" and "The Record Changer," it came to me that unlike Robert Johnson, Armstrong was a legend during most of his lifetime. He was revered by musicians and record collectors even back then. Johnson didn't become famous until a quarter century after his death, when the Columbia reissue LPs came out and British rock guitarists started listening to him. Armstrong didn't need to die first to become a legend; he was living legend for most of his career. Even Bessie Smith was washed up in the early '30s - it took her tragic death for people to realize that she was more than just a big record seller in the 1920s.
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> Cary Ginell
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