“Wonderful World” – a poem by Dan Thompson

December 15th, 2025

National Archives of Norway, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Louis Armstrong; October, 1955

___

Dan Thompson reads his poetic biography of Louis Armstrong

Wonderful World

Dear Louis Armstrong
(Louis Daniel Armstrong) …
The Most Reverend Satchel Mouth …
Gatemouth, Dippermouth, Satchmo, Pops …

After all these years …
all these years of your being in my background,
your presence behind my youthful school days,
behind my dearly departed
boyhood and young-man trumpet teachers –
Mister Ledwith, Doctor Schultz
(Pete Ledwith, Herb Schultz) –

There.
You.
Are.

Dear Louis:
Everyone who cares to know
can know today about those years
when you were a well-known figure.

But I have to start this appreciation
with those less familiar earlier years –
before you were known to anybody else
(other than your mother
and a very few others
and the N-O-L-A-P-D) –
and I have to wonder …
How in the name of Heaven did the Goodwill Ambassador happen?

For there you were:
arrested and sent to the Home at age nine,
nothing more than just another
highly unlikely and unlucky number
to the Forces of Law and Order.

Your pa flew the coop when you were no more
than only a few months old,
leaving your mother – and you and your sis –
in very dire financial straits.
You grew up quick in the poor part of town –
the ’hood they called “the Battlefield” –
selling newspapers when you were seven,
and hustling in other creative ways –
the full extent
of your formal education
ending after only fifth grade.

But you were out working as soon as you could …

delivering coal at the age of ten
for the kindly Mister Karnofsky –
your youth allowing your entry into
the inner precincts
of those ladies of the night
who needed that fuel like anyone else …

and singing those four-part
street-corner harmonies
with other harmonious,
wayward young men …

and selling good food
thrown out by hotels …
and hunting for trinkets
to sell to junk dealers …
and running those errands for all and sundry
but especially Mrs. King Oliver …

Construction Worker, House Wrecker,
Milk Deliverer, Dishwasher,
even – for a limited time –
a Banana Boat Unloader …

ANYTHING …
to make a little change.

Growing up in the toughest ’hood
on the mean streets of New Orleans,
the odds were SO LONG against your making anything productive of your life.

And then your most famous
run-in with the law,
when you fired-off a firearm,
shooting at the sky,
celebrating a brand-new year
at Rampart and Perdido Streets
on December 31st, 1912 …

A poor young Black kid,
firing off a .38 that belonged to one of his “step daddies” –
I shudder to think how it might have gone
if the law men had been
just a little more …
trigger-happy.

But praise the Fates!
No one got shot.
I assume the cops could easily see,
you had no Evil Intent.

Still,
youngsters firing-off loaded guns
for no good reason around a crowd
isn’t really the done thing.

You were arrested and sentenced again
to the Colored Waifs Home,
where “second time’s the charm”
(or so it turned out)
and the rest (as they say) is History.

The Home had a musical marching band –
giving young men with way too much time
on their sometimes-troublemaking young-man hands
something to do,
something productive –
focusing their energies,
channeling their talents.

So much could have been different.

What if the Waif’s Home
HADN’T had a band – as indeed it had NOT
during your first visitation?
What if you’d been sentenced to a
different institution?

What if the cops had shot you dead?

What if you hadn’t even been arrested?
What if you’d been a very good boy
on that particular New Year’s Eve,
and NOT gone ahead and fired off a gun?

Had any of those things that actually happened
been even
ever-so-slightly
different,
the course of American popular music
would have been notably altered –
because you,
Dear Louis,
Mr. Louis Armstrong,
remain the Fountainhead for what happened after –
after the advent of
SATCHMO!

You were not the first –
certainly not the only –
and in the beginning
you were
just a beginner …
but very quickly your talent shone.

Your playing soon taught everyone else –
even those jazzmen who played other instruments –
how to do more with those improvised solos.

Your playing –
your phrasing, your general approach –
taught the vocalists how to sing.
Your influence spread out in all directions,
overwhelming ALL the usual barriers –
color …
culture …
class …

You were so electric,
you positively charged
with your rambunctious energy
that Wide White World
of the safely middle class
who usually paid no special attention
to whatever the Black Folks
did for recreation.

A lifetime of too many musical achievements
for easy recitation in written-down verse,
let me begin with your barrier-breaking –
such as, for instance:

In 1924
you were a part
of the first Black jazz band
to perform at New York’s famous Roseland.

In 1936
your autobiography saw print –
the first to be written by a jazz cat.

In 1937
you were the first Black American ever
to host a national radio broadcast.

In 1949 –
the first jazz musician
of any creed or color
to appear on the cover
of Time magazine.

In 1952 –
the first honoree inducted into
the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

In 1960
you got your own star
on the famous Hollywood Boulevard.

And then, in 1964
you made the greatest
of popular comebacks,
thereby breaking ANOTHER record:
the oldest artist to have a hit record
when you knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts
at the age of sixty-three.
(No mean feat, that!
Those boys from Liverpool had occupied
the Number One spot for fourteen weeks
with three different Number One hits.)

It also earned you a Grammy Award
in 1965
for “Best Male Vocal Performance.”

“Hello, Dolly!” was not greatly loved
by jazz aficionados,
but your “Dolly!” stayed in the Hot 100
for longer than any other record that year,
ringing the registers full of cash
and making you ever-more famous.

But DAMN the suits!
For just as soon as something works
they hit
Repeat –
again and again and again …

You had ALREADY become a star
of the big-time vocal variety –
but “Dolly!” insured
you would never be seen
as “just” a trumpeter ever again –
and the suits wanted more of the same.

So often blinkered are the businessmen
that when you gave them a big-time song
that would ring the registers yet again,
El Presidente of ABC
(who had dropped-by to snap some promotional photos)
actually tried to stop the session.

This man was ANGRY because
what you were doing
was NOT what he had expected.
(Musicians have a saying
for these situations:
“Man, that dude has NO EARS!”)

But the session producer
(who co-wrote the song)
physically booted the Boss from the studio –
surely the singular time in his life
the Big Cheese was treated
in such a HARSH fashion.
He never forgot the humiliation,
and so refused to promote that ballad
that was nothing at all like “Dolly!”
(upbeat and happy and snappy).

But it went to Number One in Britain,
where it stayed for thirteen weeks –
the biggest-selling single in ’68! –
and was a big-hit song in other countries as well.

The song was released again in the U.S.,
but once again the president killed it,
refusing to put any money behind it.

The musicians involved in that fraught session –
and most especially the people “with ears”
who refused to let Top Dog interfere –
the composers, the arranger,
and the engineer who owned that Las Vegas studio
must have known they were making history …
and lived to see the vindication
of their WAY-outrageous,
VERY courageous
over-the-top
audacity.

Twenty-one years
from the time of that singular
2 AM-to-6 AM,
late-night-to-early-morning
Gambling Town recording session –
which started AFTER
you finished your last set
at the no-longer-there
Tropicana Hotel –
EVERYONE,
even including that man
who got himself bodily removed from the studio,
lived to see that wonderful song
finally fully embraced here at home
when it was included
to stellar effect
in the big-time, big-budget Hollywood hit
Good Morning, Vietnam.

You alone,
Dear Louis A.,
did NOT live long enough to see
the late-breaking payoff –
did NOT live to see your last great standard
eventually chart in the United States
when they finally released it again
(for the third time!)
with finally the proper promotion behind it
a couple of decades later –
TWENTY-ONE YEARS
after that extraordinary
way-too-crazy
late-night-to-dawn-of-day recording session
which –
in addition to the president’s pounding on the door
and shouting his damn fool head off –
suffered two other bizarre interruptions
because of a shrieking and piercing whistle
that was blown by a nearby train –
spoiling the earlier takes …

You were,
by that time,
a bigtime star
and certainly did NOT
have to put up with ALL THAT –
but you’d made a promise
to the record producer
that you would record
the ballad he’d brought you.

You did so … at the only available time.

For you, it wasn’t the usual gig.
You played not one note
on your world-famous trumpet –
and you sang with a studio orchestra
instead of your regular All-Stars.

At least the musicians
got paid “overtime.”
But not you, Dear Louis.
The budget was small.

In order to pay for the orchestra players,
you did the whole thing
for the lowest-scale wage
the musicians’ union would allow to be paid:
the very-far-from-princely sum
of two hundred fifty dollars.

But after the tracks were finally laid down
and after the orchestra players had left,
your Armstrong All-Stars returned to the studio,
and you and your band and your golden trumpet
recorded a couple of peppy numbers
before you jazz-cats all went out
to breakfast in Vegas together –
EVERYBODY still riding the wave
of that good-time Armstrong energy.

***

You were known to jazz fans overseas
quite early on, in your career.
You went to England in ’32
and played for Britain’s King George V –
only the first of your blistering gigs
enjoyed by Old World royalty.

In Copenhagen in ’33 –
ten thousand fans at the railway station,
breaking through the barricades
to get a fleeting glimpse of you
as you stepped off the train.
(And while we’re at it, let’s thank the Danes
for giving us all the first film footage
of Louis Armstrong – LIVE! – in concert.)

Later you did tours for the State Department
(“America’s Goodwill Ambassador”)
which took you to all sorts of interesting places
that never in the usual course of events
could have hosted the great Louis Armstrong –
tours to the Middle East and Africa,
East Asia and Latin America.

In Ghana, one hundred thousand Ghanaians
gave you a rapturous welcome
(which was somewhat more than the fifteen hundred
expected by the State Department).

And in the Congo in 1960
the people carried you high aloft –
a sedan-chair throne –
to the central
stadium
of the city now called
“Kinshasa.”
You even played in Nigeria …
during the civil war.

And though you were not especially known
for frequently airing political views,
you surprised the world when you spoke up –
and said the president “had no guts.”

Such a pointed critique
of the five-star general
(whom everyone knew from World War II)
for not doing more in ’57
to end our apartheid
did NOT go down well –
or at least it didn’t in SOME quarters.

But about a week later
Old Ike gave the order
and the Army’s 101st Airborne Division
was sent to make sure that those
Black kids in Little Rock
could rightly attend public school –
the catalyst being just three words from you.

The Eisenhower Administration
couldn’t have been TOO very sore –
for the very next year
upon your return from one of those
Goodwill Ambassador tours
you were stuck in line at the Idlewild Airport,
soon to be busted by airport security –
for surely they’d find the three pounds of weed
you’d stowed in your traveling bags.

You’d returned before from a couple of tours
as America’s Goodwill Ambassador –
and BOTH of those times you’d been “waved through” customs.
No need to check the Ambassador’s bags!

This time was different.
They wanted to search you …

But then, Glory Be! and Good Gracious Me!

Your savior just happened,

by chance, to appear,

in the person of Vice President
Richard M. Nixon,
who saw you just standing there, waiting in line,
awaiting inspection by airport police
of your pot-holding traveling bags.

He hollered a greeting and called out a question:
Louis, why are you standing in line?
You told him they needed to check your bags.

Well, Damn!
Richard Nixon grabbed your bag with the Mary Jane
while calling out,
No need to check the Ambassador’s bags!

That man was lovely that one time.
He NOT only SAVED you
from being arrested,
but served as your
voluntary
temporary
porter
while doing the job of an unwitting drug mule…

or so goes the urban legend.

That man would become the American president,
loudly declaring a War on Drugs –
“Public Enemy Number One” –
in June of 1971.
He later created the DEA,
but WAS he,
at least on THAT ONE DAY,
an international drug trafficker,
toting dope …
for Louis A?

***

In spite of your serious problems of health,
we can safely say that nonetheless – overall –
ALMOST everything ended well
for you, Dear Louis Armstrong –
your final appearance a weeks-long gig
at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria –
a lifetime away from little-boy Louis
who sang for pennies while growing up
on the mean streets of New Orleans
(who had to sometimes hide those pennies
inside his mouth so that big-boy bullies
wouldn’t steal them from out of his pockets).

Dead at the age of sixty-nine in 1971,
your four-thousand-word obituary
printed by the New York Times
began on the paper’s front page.

The president of the United States,
who was, by then, one Richard M. Nixon,
agreed that your body would lie in state
at the Seventh Regiment Armory –
on Park Avenue, New York City,
where twenty-five thousand adoring people
came to the ancient fortification
to pay you their final respects.

The listing of those who were
honorary pallbearers
was nothing short of incredible:

Governor Nelson Rockefeller,
New York Mayor John Lindsay,
Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Carson, Guy Lombardo,
Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie,
Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin,
Earl Wilson, Alan King, David Frost, and Dick Cavett …
and your very good friend and fellow axe-man –
Mr. Bobby Hackett.

And yet, your funeral service in Queens
was most peculiarly subdued.
The neighborhood Congregational Church
could only hold five hundred souls –
all of them specially invited for you.

But the spillover crowd outside the church –
two thousand folks (or so they say) –
didn’t specifically capture, either,
the spirit you’d hoped would be present that day.
You got the sendoff you really wanted
later – down in New Orleans.

Duke Ellington gave you the best epitaph:

He was born poor, died rich,
and never hurt anyone along the way.

But even AFTER you’d “passed on,”
the honors continued to pile up …

In ’72 –
too late for you! –
a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In ’78
your name gained entry
to the Big Band and Jazz
Hall of Fame.

In 1980
New Orleans unveiled
your statue in Louis Armstrong Park
(which rightly includes Congo Square –
that mythic place that makes the claim
to be the place where jazz was born).

In 1990
you were inducted –
as one of those “early influences” –
into that wild Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame.

They even named an ASTEROID after you …
in 1991.

Two dozen long years after you left us
“to blow some tunes with Gabriel,”
finally the United States government –
WAY too long after the fact –
honored you with a postage stamp
in 1995.

In 1997
you were the initial inductee
to the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame.

And then there were all of those retrospective
“Best of the Century”
determinations
that included you among the worthies
at the turn of the new millennium.

Time, Variety, and Life magazines –
all of them included you
among the Top One Hundred People
who changed the twentieth century.

And NPR had three of your songs –
including the famous “Dolly!” –
appearing among the Top One Hundred
Musical Works of the Century.

Around this time
New Orleans unveiled
ANOTHER memorial Armstrong statue –
this one at Algiers Ferry Landing
at the end of the Jazz Walk of Fame
(a pedestrian promenade that runs all the way
to Mardi Gras World –
just around the corner from
the heart of the Establishment:
the N-O-L-A Convention Center).

In 2001 –
during the celebrated
Satchmo Centennial Festival –
they even renamed the airport.
Now it’s called the Louis Armstrong
New Orleans International Airport.

Seems old New Orleans
was doing its best
to finally make some partial amends
for being so segregated back in the day –
so segregated that even though
you loved that town in many ways,
you refused for years to play there …

Your monumental Hot Five and Hot Seven
recordings you made in the 1920s
were designated for preservation
by the nation’s
National Recording Registry
at the Library of Congress
in 2003.

In 2004
they placed your name
in the Nesuhi Ertegun
Jazz Hall of Fame
at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

In 2007
they placed your name
in the Louisiana Music
Hall of Fame in Baton Rouge.

In 2017
they placed your name
in the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

Even a musical-theater show,
based on your own
very singular story,
had its premiere in 2021
way down in Miami, Florida.

And what about all those recordings you made?

Thirteen songs in the Grammy Hall of Fame –
one with Bessie, one with Ella,
and one with Earl “Fatha” Hines,
and even one with the man who’s been called
the Father of Country Music
(when you recorded with Jimmie Rodgers
“Blue Yodel #9” –
a song you reprised with Johnny Cash
on television forty years later).

You also had NINETEEN Top Ten hits –
which is really quite something for a jazzman.

And what about all of those moving pictures?

You appeared in more than forty films,
in half of which you played the role of
Mr. Louis Armstrong.

And finally, what about Armstrong the author?

You’d bring a typewriter on the road,
and often after a late-night gig
you’d peck away at your Remington 5 …
until the light of dawn seeped through
the curtains of your hotel room.

Scholars of music as well as musicians
forget that you were a Word Man too.
Your writing paraphernalia included
not only your famous typewriters.
You also carried a dictionary
when you were out on tour,
and also, always, had in your bag
a well-thumbed, handy compendium
of synonyms and antonyms …
at which I’m left to wonder:
How many other serious musicians
were as serious about writing
as you?

When you rode that Illinois Central
northward –
your mythic pilgrimage
to Chicago
to join the King in ’22
at the ripe old age of twenty –
you brought your trumpet
as well as your typewriter …
which shows that quite early –
as well as your musicking –
you were also, always,
busily scrivening …

which ultimately amounted to
a published body of work, to include:
magazine pieces and newspaper articles
(reportedly more than a dozen published –
including two for the Esquire mag
and one for the Jazz Review ),
two volumes of autobiography –
no ghostwriter needed for you! –
a book of jokes,
an eighty-page essay
about your relationship
with the Karnofskys,
numerous unpublished memoir pieces,
and more than ten thousand letters! …

to say nothing of thirty hit songs.

Has there ever been a more prolific
provider / producer / purveyor / surveyor
of written words in the English language
amongst the guild of music makers?

There’s only one way to briefly convey
the breadth of your
incredible
professional
accomplishments:

No other jazz musician, ever,
has had your impact on popular culture.

***

So, yes, Dear Louis …
After all these years of your being in my background –
your presence behind my youthful school days
mostly chalked up to your
superstar status as a pop-culture icon –
your artistry is more apparent to me
with every passing year,
especially when I compare
America’s own vernacular music
Before Armstrong to After …
and have finally taken a good long look
at my ancient Louis Armstrong Song Book
(which I looked at only cursorily
when I was young and unaware).

Yes, Dear Louis,
after all these years –

You’re.
Still.
Here.
.

___

Dan Thompson (PhD) is a U.S. Army veteran and former editor and professor whose poetry, personal essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in scholarly as well as literary journals (including, within the past year, issues of Feral, Canary, Eclectica, Black Coffee Review, Rat’s Ass Review, and Jerry Jazz Musician, among others). In an earlier life, he worked as a music producer for educational videos and as a disc jockey at a country music radio station.

Watch the 1933 film of Louis Armstrong performing the Harry Akst/Sam M. Lewis/Joe Young composition “Dinah”