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He had long since graduated to the “big leagues.” African American entertainers found steady work on the circuit, pulling one-nighters in embattled, segregated times. State Department crowned him its International Jazz Ambassador.īut Armstrong made his bones playing the so-called Chitlin’ Circuit, a loosely-connected network of Black nightclubs and tiny performance venues in the South. White, middle class America had the affable trumpeter in its focus because of his co-starring appearance alongside Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly in High Society, one of the biggest box office hits of 1956. No one was injured, and Armstrong kept the 3,000-strong crowd’s spirit up by quipping “That sounded like a drunk falling out of the balcony.” And then he played another tune.īut the whole lamentable situation bugged him. Arguably the best-known jazz musician in America, he was playing to packed houses, and in the Jim Crow South – where the audiences were almost always segregated – he’d endured death threats, and bomb threats, and one day in January several sticks of dynamite exploded outside a Knoxville auditorium while he was onstage with his combo. Louis Armstrong was on one wild ride in 1957.

– Trumpet player Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong said yesterday he’s given up plans for a government-sponsored trip to Russia because “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell … it’s getting almost so bad, a colored man hasn’t got any country.”

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