National Press Club in History: Satchmo’s last notes

For half a century, few people had more influence on American jazz than Louis Armstrong. As National Press Club member Matt Schudel wrote in the Washington Post, “With his bright, clear trumpet and his ebullient, gravelly voice, he more or less defined how jazz is meant to be played and sung. Everything he did is of interest to musicians and scholars, and few American lives have been better documented.”

But until 2012, few people knew that one of his last recordings was made at the Club at a presidential inaugural party.

Vernon Louviere, of Nation’s Business magazine, was inaugurated president in 1971. A native of New Orleans, Louviere knew how to throw a party.

Celebrities present that night included singer-actress Diahann Carroll, Cajun TV chef Justin Wilson and British talk-show host David Frost, who was master of ceremonies.

But the biggest name of the evening -– even bigger than David Frost -– was Louis Armstrong, revered in the music world as “Satchmo.”

Louviere “loved all things related to New Orleans,” his daughter, Amy Louviere, told Schudel. He took his oath of office as Club president by placing his hand on a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

Before his Club appearance, Armstrong had been in poor health for more than two years. Doctors had told him to stop playing the trumpet, but against their advice he kept practicing at his home in Queens, N.Y. By the late summer of 1970, Armstrong had regained enough strength to blow his horn in public again.

He appeared in Las Vegas, on a few television shows and in a British documentary before coming to Washington on Jan. 29, 1971, at Louviere’s invitation. Louviere’s four children attended the black-tie gala with their parents and got to meet Armstrong.

“I remember he was very full of life,” recalled Amy Louviere, who was 11 at the time. “He was trying to get me to smile for a picture and was joking around. The whole evening seemed overwhelming. I heard years later that people called that the best inaugural ball they ever had.”

Club member Kim Gregory, an engineer with CBS News, knowing that Armstrong would be performing, brought some state-of-the-art field audio recording equipment to capture the event. The Club produced an album of the night’s affair that included all of Armstrong’s music and Louviere’s swearing in. It was filled out with a later performance by a band led by Armstrong’s longtime musical partner, trombonist Tyree Glenn.

During a 20-minute performance, Armstrong and his band performed five numbers, and he played trumpet only on the first two, “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” and “Hello, Dolly!” Armstrong told an off-color joke at one point and sang three other tunes, “Rockin’ Chair,” “Boy From New Orleans” and an abbreviated version of “Mack the Knife.” He recorded the autobiographical “Boy From New Orleans” -— which he performed only in the final year of his life -— just one other time.

The title of the album — “Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours” — derives from how Armstrong often signed letters and autographs. At one point in his performance, he referred to the “good Creole food” at the Club dinner. Recipes for more than 39 dishes were included with the album.

About 300 copies of the album were produced, and were distributed only to attendees of the event. On July 6, 1971, a little more than five months after his Club appearance, Armstrong died at age 69.

“About the only time I saw my dad cry was when he died,” Amy Louviere recalled. “That evening meant a lot to him.”

And that’s where the story could have ended; a few copies of the album appearing from time to time on eBay.

But decades later, several Club members, including one-time music producer Dan Doyle and the Club’s executive director, William McCarren, led an effort to put the recording back into circulation.

It took years to iron out the legal rights to the recording, but on April 24, 2012, it was released with great fanfare at the Club by the Smithsonian Institution’s Folkways recording label as a compact disc as well as on iTunes. “There was a realization that we had a little jewel of his life’s work,” D.A. Sonneborn, associate director of Smithsonian Folkways, told Schudel.

“I’ve always lamented that it was never commercially available,” said Ricky Riccardi, an archivist for the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York and author of “What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years.” “He changed music with his voice and his horn and pretty much created the vocabulary of American music. Knowing that he was giving it his all onstage for one of the last times in his career is a testament to this great genius of American music.”

McCarren summed it up this way to Schudel: “To have him looking back, well aware that there weren’t going to be too many performances after this one, it seems to me he reaches out to you and looks back on his life. That’s an enormously powerful moment.”

This is another in a series provided by Club historian Gil Klein. Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 111-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington, society, journalism and the Club itself. Many of these events were caught in illustrations that tell the stories.