on the time Louis Armstrong appeared on the Johnny Cash Show televised at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium.
It also features a brief video clip of Armstrong and Cash improvising on Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel No. 9."
Like just about everything else Wolfe ever wrote, it's full of little insights about American music ... in this case, the commonality between black and white musical traditions in the South. Like this:
The Armstrongs were escorted to a room where a press conference had been set up. The first few questions involved Armstrong’s health, and whether he was planning on retiring.Wolfe also mentions the 1957 incident when the White Citizens Council (or someone) set off a bomb when Armstrong played at Chilhowee Park in Knoxville.
“I told somebody not long ago that I’m going on one more world tour before I call it quits,” he said. “They said, ‘Okay, we’ve got you booked somewhere in East Siberia and see how that turns out.’ I said, ‘That’s all right, man, I hear they got a lotta babes up there, so go ahead and book me.’ But I’ll tell you this: If I do retire, I won’t go back to driving a mule.”
When the laughter died down, talk turned to the new album, Armstrong’s first to feature country songs and a country back-up band. Produced by Jack Clement, Johnny Cash’s longtime friend and producer, the album was due to be released in a few months; instead of the classic Hank Williams/Eddy Arnold repertoire, it included a strange mixture of Nashville products like Claude King’s recent hit “Wolverton Mountain,” the David Houston cheatin’ song “Almost Persuaded,” and the innocuous “Running Bear” by J.P. Richardson (a.k.a. the Big Bopper). Was Armstrong making a statement by recording white, working-class music? “There’s no such thing as black man’s music and white man’s music, as far as I’m concerned. It’s all music, daddy. Now that’s putting it in black and white. It’s all music. It’s all about love.”
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