"Music Is Music"

Jazz Master Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong is seldom at a loss for a word, and when he can't find one to suit him, he makes one up. Last week Satchmo was cashing in on his gift of gab by putting it onto paper. With three Armstrong articles due for publication in the U.S., he was also pecking away at an autobiography. A sample of loose-jointed Armstrong prose (and his own weird punctuation), as free & easy as his New Orleans trumpet, tells how he gave a young Italian singer a boost on his European tour last year:

"So the evening of the concert I was warming up my chops getting ready to lay all that good fine jive like Muskrat Ramble to Lazy River and on down the line -which 'killed em..... I noticed that everything I'd run down on my trumpet -this kid would sing it and I mean he really would sing it..... So when I finished the tune I wheeled around to Ray and said -'Gate' during my concerts I want you to come out and sing Stormy Weather..... 'Oh Gawd' -that kid almost turned 'my colour (as they spell it 'over thar').... He said -'Mee sing with your band?... I said 'Er'wa -'Yea Man' -Now 'tare out over there in the corner and warm your pipes up so's they'll be fine and mellow when I call you........

"That kid was in the wings with his little ol, sharp self--all smiles every time I'd casualy looked over in his directions as if to say 'how 'ya doing' Gate?.... He'd give me that assurance knod as if to say -'Man' everything's under control... And beleive me it was... When Ray finished singing Stormy Weather with us pushing him in that fine soft slow style -Ump -he had to take five bows. So you see--music is music and a note's a note--in any language... So if you hit them right on the nose they're bound to enjoy it."

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