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One hundred years ago a young teenager, Louis Armstrong, was on the verge of achieving fame in Kid Ory’s jazz band in New Orleans. By the 1950s, Satchmo was world famous as an American icon and cultural ambassador. In 1953, he shared the stage with a little 15-year-old girl in Los Angeles. Marilyn Keene, a San Antonio resident remembers the great Satchmo on his birthday.
It was raining steadily as my husband and I drove down IH-35. Our National Public Radio station played Dixieland and the announcer remembered Louis Armstrong, the famous Satchmo. I too, remembered him and our meeting.
It rained the night I played with him on a Los Angeles TV station. It was a heavy night in late winter in 1953. I was fifteen years old. Sick to my stomach and shaking uncontrollably, as usual before a performance, I was totally scared and miserable.
Satchmo was already being made up when I was ushered into the makeup room. His presence filled the area. The feeling I got was one of utter kindness and care. His broad smile was gentle and soothing as it was genuine.
His eyes embraced me, surrounded me with affection. I felt I was hugged at a distance. He began talking me through my fear. I have no recollection of what he said to me but whatever it was, it worked.
Why did he treat me with such gentle care? I never figured it out. After all, I was merely a scared little white girl who played the clarinet fairly well for my age. He could have been cruel, making fun of my terror, played with it. He didn’t and we played well together.
I played my fool heart out. I forgot myself. We communicated musically, anticipating intuitively what each of us was going to do next. I lost myself in his rhythmic patterns. I soared with arpeggios I had never before played. We were one musically. I was ecstatic. I was in heaven.
Because of him, I was temporally healed, made whole, traveled outside myself.
Here’s to the great Louis Armstrong, August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971.
Marilyn Keene is a retired professor of English at Our Lady of the Lake University. She has been a musician (clarinet, piano, organ, guitar, and flute) and a fraud investigator for the State of Texas. Married to Tom Keene, she has three children and seven grandchildren. In 1969, Rev. Claude Black told her, “You are the only white person I have ever heard who knows how to sing a freedom song.”
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Photo: Getty Images
Love this story Don!