“Louie (My Darling) ZING”–Inside Alpha Smith’s 1926-1931 Scrapbook

In our previous post, we shared Louis Armstrong’s 1954 Ebony cover story, “Why I Like Dark Women,” in which Armstrong offered his reflections on all four of his wives. He spent the least amount of time on wife number three, Alpha Smith, and we alluded to the reasons behind Armstrong’s bizarre claim that Alpha was deceased, even though she was very much alive at the time he wrote it–Alpha cheated on Louis and was never forgiven.

Yet her presence is felt throughout our Archives and we feel it’s worth doing a deeper dive on Alpha to provide more details on maybe the least known of Armstrong’s four wives. (An obvious challenge to that statement would be Armstrong’s first wife, Daisy Parker–there are no known photos of Daisy at all–but Daisy and Louis were married in 1919 and separated by 1920, while Alpha was by Louis’s side sporadically beginning in 1926 and full-time between 1931 and 1942.)

Thanks to websites like Ancestry.com, we’re able to piece together a few bits of information on Alpha’s early years. According to her death certificate, she was born on September 16, 1906; that same document claims she was born in Illinois, but multiple census records were consistent in that she was actually born in Indiana. Her mother Florence was apparently born in 1886 or 1887 but after stating that she was born in Indiana in the 1920 census, Mrs. Smith changed her birthplace to Kansas in the 1930, 1940, and 1950 records.

Alas, with such a common surname as “Smith,” it’s almost impossible to find much information on Alpha’s mother; Ancestry.com yields zero results for women named Florence who were born in Kansas around 1886, lived in Indiana in 1910, and moved to Chicago by 1920. The 1910 census isn’t of any help but finally, Florence Smith and her daughter Alpha turn up in the 1920 census, living at 5504 South Everett Ave in Chicago:

The 33-year-old Florence Smith was divorced–making it even harder to find any information on Alpha’s father–and was working as a “pantry girl” at a hotel. Later documents claim that Alpha had at least one year of high school education, but at some point in the 1920s, she began working as a dancer–and soaking up Chicago’s vibrant jazz scene.

In December 1925, Louis Armstrong began doubling, working with his wife Lillian Hardin Armstrong’s band at the Dreamland Cafe and performing in Erskine Tate’s symphony orchestra at the Vendome Theater. The only time Louis really divulged the details of his early days with Alpha was in a series of handwritten notebooks he made for Belgian author Robert Goffin in the mid-1940s. The original documents are at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University so we cannot reproduce them here, but fortunately, they were transcribed and included in the 1999 anthology Louis Armstrong In His Own Words so it’s worth quoting a long excerpt now. Here’s Louis:

“I met Alpha During the time I was working there [at the Vendome]. Alpha was a little cute young girl 19 years old when, she used to come to the Vendome The­ater twice a week. They changed pictures there twice a week. People used to come from all parts of Chicago to hear that Band + see the Pictures. Alpha used to sit in the Front Row every time she came. And She would sit Right where I could get a good look at her. And she had big pretty eyes anyway–I couldn’t keep from Diggin Her. There were times when Lil would be in the Vendome at the same time as Alpha.– Well­–On those nights we couldn’t Flirt so much.” 

“The whole time I played at the Vendome, Alpha and I began to get Thicker + Thicker. We would meet–after the show was out. For awhile I did not have but the one job–The Vendome. So quite naturally I had a lot of time to be with Alpha. Of course it was unbeknowing to Lil. ­I tried to keep from wedging into Alpha too Deeply–Knowing I was Still married to Lil–And Alpha was so young.–and Fine with it. Then too I thought about how Lill–had been Running Around with one of the Chi­cago ‘Pimps’ while I was at work. So as we colored people used to say–is just as good for the Goose as it is for the Gander–meaning–if Lil could enjoy some one Else’s Company, I could too.”

At this point in the narrative, Louis quoted the advice he received in New Orleans to always have another woman on the side, even if he was married–advice he definitely followed in the decades to come. He and Lil loved each other very much–Lil is the true architect of his stardom–but by early 1926, they were beginning to fight more and more, even on the bandstand. This led Lil to break up the Dreamland band, alluded to by Louis in the above passage as the time in the spring of 1926 when he only worked one job with Tate. At home, Lil was spending more time correcting Louis’s grammar and yelling at him for matters such as putting his hat on their already-made bed and using the wrong fork at dinner.

Truthfully, Louis and Lil probably should have got a divorce right then and there, but instead, Louis began living this double life, spending as much time with Alpha as possible whenever he and Lil were at odds. (And yes, he and Lil patched matters up frequently and even bought property in Idlewild, Michigan, where they took multiple vacations in 1926, 1927, and 1928, so they still had plenty of close moments, too, not to mention the recordings they made and the songs they collaborated on in this period.)

With Lil slowly pushing him away, Louis found himself attracted to Alpha’s less controlling ways. “Alpha was a fine gal,” he wrote. “She was a poor girl–not near as Fortunate as Lil was when I First met her–Maybe the one reason why Lil + I didn’t make a good go of married life together.”

At this time, Alpha was working for a white family, the Taylors, in Hyde Park, watching their baby and their home. The Taylors approved of Louis, who later wrote, “So the Taylors saw a bright future for, Alpha by taking me for her Sweetheart. Even if I was a married man.” He next met Alpha’s mother and hit it off with her immediately. “Mrs. Florence Smith,” he wrote to Goffin, “from the first introduction I had to her l could see right then and there that I could like her and I would like to be around her. She was so Friendly–and pleasant–And could tell some of the Funniest Jokes. Right off the Bat–I fell for Alpha’s Mother and tried to stay as long as I could whenever I was invited to their apartment. I must have been seeking some kind of comfort in life–Lil and I had one of the finest homes in Chicago at the time I was Sweethearting with Alpha. But still with all of that swell Home, Lil, and I had–There was not happi­ness there.”

Alpha introduced Louis to the Taylors as “my new Boy Friend” and soon became infatuated with him. This led to her buying a scrapbook, in which she placed clippings, photographs, advertisements, ticket stubs, and more, chronicling both their love affair and her “Boy Friend’s” burgeoning stardom. Alpha began populating her scrapbook sometime in 1926 and finally filled it up in 1931–the year Louis and Lil formally separated.

It is to our good fortune that Alpha didn’t tear up the scrapbook after she and Louis parted ways. Not only that, but she carried it around from Chicago to London to Paris back to Chicago and eventually to Harlem, which is where she was living when they got divorced. The best part is Alpha let Louis keep the scrapbook and Louis kept it safe in his Corona, Queens home until his passing in 1971…fourth wife Lucille Wilson–the woman Louis left Alpha for–kept it safe until her passing in 1983…and it was one of the major discoveries when Queens College took over the Armstrong Archives in 1991, 65 years after Alpha started it.

This post is already longer than I anticipated but if you’ve made it this far, you will be rewarded as we share the digitized contents of this entire priceless artifact. Chronology is out of whack and there are lots of unidentified faces, but it’s the definitive way to share the story of not just the early, on-the-fly romance of Louis and Alpha, but to also give precious glimpses into Alpha’s mysterious life.

To set the scene, here’s the cover:

We immediately begin at the ending, with a series of clippings related to Armstrong’s appearance at the Albee Theater in Cincinnati, Ohio in October 1931, part of a prestigious vaudeville booking that took place soon after Lil and Louis separated that summer. (In fact, according to trombonist Preston Jackson, Cincinnati was the scene of a “spot of bother” when Lil showed up hoping for a reconciliation, caught Louis with Alpha, and caused a scene that required police intervention.)

Page 2 includes more from the Albee (I’m a big Laurel and Hardy fan so the notion of seeing a Laurel and Hardy film on the big screen and Louis live is definitely a time machine-worthy moment). But then we go back in time to an ad from January 21, 1930 for an appearance by “Louie Armstrong” at the Music Hall in New Haven, Connecticut; the line about it being his “first and last appearance before European Tour” is a bit of a fabrication as Armstrong wouldn’t make it to Europe until July 1932.

But then we get three tantalizing undated clippings. The first mentions two Harlem theaters, the Lafayette and the New Douglas; Louis was there in 1929 but Alpha didn’t join him at that time. The next one notes Louis winning over a female fan with his performance of “Mississippi Mud,” a big hit for Paul Whiteman in 1927 that Louis must have been performing in Chicago at that time. And finally, the last one is worth quoting in full: “Little Flossie Alexander is having a jolly time at the Zeppelin Inn, also her pal, Alpha Smith. I’m sure you all know she’s Louis Armstrong’s weakness.” The Zeppelin Inn was in Chicago at 31st and Indiana; it’s fascinating that Alpha could be mentioned in print as Louis’s “weakness” in Chicago in the late 1920s when he was still very-much married to the very-much respected Lil.

But now we have the first souvenir of an Alpha-and-Louis outing, the opening of the Shady Rest restaurant on May 28; on the bottom, Alpha has written, “Darling and I went Sunday, May 29, 1927.” To put Louis’s life in perspective, he had just finished recording the vaunted Hot Seven sides (with Lil) on May 14 and his mother Mayann had just moved to Chicago because she was ailing and would eventually pass away in July. But on May 29, Louis made time to go to the Shady Rest with Alpha:

Then it’s over to California in 1930, for a fun ad promoting Armstrong’s recording of “I’m a Ding Dong Daddy (from Dumas)” paired with a clipping for Sebastian’s Cotton Club in Culver City, Armstrong’s home base from July 1930 through March 1931:

Louis Armstrong is not present on the next few pages, but since Alpha is the focus of this post, it’s worth sharing them as they contain snapshots of people who must have been important parts of her life–perhaps the woman with the dog is her mother?–but alas, their names have been lost to history:

The next clipping is of Claire Townsend, a Chicago dancer who was heading to Hollywood after being discovered by King Vidor, director of the 1929 film Hallelujah; Townsend was, presumably, a friend of Alpha’s:

Alpha also saved a clipping about a party thrown by Mrs. Sheldon J. Armstrong, no relation (that we know of) to Louis:

Next, an advertisement and article related to a Cotton Club revue from 1930. This was the Chicago Cotton Club and the review featured many Armstrong associates including dancers Brown & McGraw and vocalists Blanche Calloway and Mae Alix, in addition to future bandleader Lucius “Lucky” Millinder, then using the nickname of “Venable,” ostensibly a nod to the popular Black Chicago choreographer Percy Venable. In a passage quoted way below, Louis mentions that Alpha used to dance in one of Al Capone’s nightclubs with Lucky Millinder so it can be assumed that she was one of the “12 Ebony Dancing Demons” in the show, which also featured the aforementioned Clara Townsend:

Three more snapshots of unidentified women in Alpha’s life:

But now Armstrong reenters the scrapbook in a big way, with some stunning clippings from 1927 about Armstrong joining Clarence Jones’s Metropolitan Orchestra in September of that year, plus a fantastic advertisement for Armstrong’s Stompers at the Sunset Cafe as “Hottest Since the Chicago Fire.” The article on the death of drummer Ollie Powers is from 1928 (Powers died on April 14 that year) and the little advertisement for the “Ace High” revue is from Armstrong’s return to Chicago in February 1930:

There are some more clippings from 1928 hiding under the middle article, so here’s a scan of those:

The next page is squarely from the year of 1927, containing articles about the publication of the books 50 Hot Choruses and 125 Jazz Breaks, a Dave Peyton Chicago Defender article about Louis joining Clarence Jones, and the obituary for Louis’s mother, Mary Armstrong, who passed away in July 1927. There are also two smaller clippings from 1928 about Louis performing with Floyd Campbell’s Orchestra in St. Louis and performing at the Congress Hotel with Carroll Dickerson’s Orchestra. My favorite clipping is the one-liner, “Say what you want but Lots-A-Papa sure can eat Chitterlings.”

More precious clippings from 1927, including mentions of Louis leaving Erskine Tate in April of that year:

Three more photos; I believe that might be young Alpha on the right:

This next page might be my favorite as it offers multiple written descriptions of Armstrong on stage in late 1926, winning just as much applause for his comedy and showmanship as he did for his trumpet playing:

The clippings from 1926 and 1927 continue on the next page, including an advertisement for the Hot Five recording of “You Made Me Love You”:

The next page jumps ahead in time again with clippings from 1929 about Louis taking “New York by storm” with his rendition of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” as well as notices of a May 18, 1930 return to the Savoy in Chicago followed by the trip to California where he would eventually play with Les Hite’s band. The photos of Louis swimming are a lot of fun; that’s drummer Tubby Hall in the photo on the top left. This is most likely Blue Island, Illinois, as Louis wrote to Robert Goffin, “And I used to love to take [Alpha] out on Sundays and we would Drive way out to Blue Island, or, etc.- Bill Bottoms (Joe Louis’ Ex-Dietitian) was the owner of a Road House out there and Alpha­–Me–Tubby Hall whom was the Drummer in Carroll Dickerson’s Band at the time, and his girl, the Four of us would drive out in my Bran New Ford Car with the yellow wire wheels and have dinner out there. And Alpha would look like a Million.”

The next page includes a stained print of the photo of Louis that appeared on those two 1927 folios of his “hot choruses” and “jazz breaks.” Alpha seemed to juxtapose it with a later publicity photo for his 1930 engagement at the Savoy Ballroom, showing how her man’s appearance had changed in the those years. Alpha also saved an article about a discrimination incident that took place at Sebastian’s Cotton Club while Louis was playing there in the 1930. But perhaps most interesting is the article in the upper left corner might be the very first newspaper telling of the Armstrong saga, adding a couple of years to his age and giving Joe Oliver the credit for leading the Waif’s Home boys’ band; other than those white lies, though, it’s nice to see Oliver prominently mentioned, as well as quick references to Armstrong’s other employers, including Fate Marable, Ollie Powers, Fletcher Henderson, and Erskine Tate:

We now turn to the wild year of 1931, when Armstrong was caught in the middle of a manager’s war in Chicago, threatened with extortion, and eventually held at gun point by Frankie Foster, all of which is chronicled in the article on the left. There’s also a short article about Armstrong being honored by the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club during his summer home in New Orleans. The photo is a gem, with Louis and Zutty Singleton posing in a Coney Island boat (ironically named “Lucille”), along with their chauffer, “Too Sweet,” dedicated and signed by Louis “To Alpha.”

New Orleans was where Louis and Lil officially separated. Alpha must have joined Louis almost immediately and soon began collecting clippings from Louis’s summer back home:

We now go back to 1929 for a “Louis Armstrong Electrifies” review of Louis’s final Chicago performance in May 1929 before he headed to New York. Once in New York, Louis broke it up at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem, as documented here:

If you look closely though, the Lafayette article on the right is obscuring something; a closer look shows two ticket stubs–one for “Louis darlin’”–from the Blackstone on Wednesday, May 6. A little digging shows that on this date, the Blackstone hosted a performance of the popular “bright comedy,” “That’s Gratitude,” written by Frank Craven (the script can be purchased here).

The next page sticks to 1929 for a long review of Hot Chocolates on Broadway written by “Lady Nicotine”:

The Erskine Tate clipping eclipsed the photo of Louis so here’s a better glimpse of that one:

Yes, the clippings on the next page are sideways but that’s only because we couldn’t help but focus on the dynamic ad for Louis’s OKeh coupling of “Basin Street Blues” and “No,” released in early 1929:

The clippings on this next page are all about Louis’s returns to Chicago in 1930, but it’s the publicity photo in the center that is the main focal point:

Louis’s 1929 trip from Chicago to New York was an eventful one, with stops off at Niagara Falls, car accidents, and more craziness. Louis had a camera with him and sent Alpha from snapshots from the road, which are featured on the next page:

Armstrong’s first major publicity photo was taken in 1926 after the release of the first Hot Five recordings. It takes up a full page in Alpha’s scrapbook and is a gem:

Back to the 1929 trip, Armstrong sent Alpha a photo of Niagara Falls, along with a souvenir canoe:

The flip side of the label shows that Louis must have purchased it in Baldwin, Michigan:

Boxing was one of America’s national pastimes in the 1920s and Louis, a lifelong fight fan, attended bouts whenever he could–often with Alpha by his side. She kept two tickets to the Jock Malone-Langford Walcott fight, which was supposed to take place at Logan Square Baseball Park on June 3, 1927, but rain caused it to be postponed until Tuesday, June 7 (Alpha noted Malone won by decision and marked her ticket as “Alpha” and Louis’s as “Darlin’s seat”). And if you wanted to know how Louis celebrated his birthday on July 4, 1927, Alpha saved a ticket stub for the Tiger Flowers-Maxie Rosenbloom fight at White Sox Park and noted “Darling played at fight.” (The “World’s Greatest” clipping is just another one from Louis’s 1930-31 time in California.)

Then it’s back to the 1929 trip from Chicago to New York with two more snapshots from the road, one once again featuring “Too Sweet” the Chauffer, the other of “2 Real Buddies in N. Y.,” Louis and Zutty Singleton. (Yet another California clipping is in between.)

Three more from the 1929 trip; the middle photo is of three Carroll Dickerson sidemen, trombonist Fred Robinson, drummer Zutty Singleton, and tubaist Pete Briggs:

Three more images from Niagara Falls, all with Louis’s handwritten descriptions (I like “Niagara Falling”):

Then it’s back to 1927, where Louis found himself being featured in an OKeh Records ad. Next to that is the program for a performance of “Lucky Sambo” at the La Salle Theatre, which was attended by Louis and Alpha on March 30, 1927:

And for those interested, here’s the inside of the program:

The next page has a long article on Louis’s final engagement at the Savoy in Chicago in May 1931, along with one about his success in New Orleans the following month. The ticket stubs chart more of Louis and Alpha’s adventures but each requires some detective work. The tickets in the top center are for a production of The Little Show at the Selwyn on Friday, May 30, 1930, featuring Clifton Webb, Fred Allen, and Libby Holman (as well as the songs “Moanin’ Low” and “Can’t We Be Friends”). Under that are two tickets for the Sells-Floto Circus, which was held at the Chicago Coliseum on April 16, 1931. The tickets on the lower left are for a production of Fine and Dandy (“The biggest and funniest of all musicals”) with Joe Cook at the Erlanger Theater on May 31, 1931:

Some quick mentions of Louis are in the following 1931 clippings, which also offer some nice looks at what else was happening on the Chicago stage and airwaves in this period:

Armstrong’s big Chicago comeback in April 1931 took place at the Show Boat, subject of the following ad:

We are now firmly in New Orleans in the summer of 1931 for the next page, which is filled with clippings and one snapshot of a super-sharp “Louie” in white suit, white hat, and white shoes:

There’s a few more New Orleans articles on the next page but the bulk are devoted to the extortion plot Armstrong found himself in the middle of in 1931:

For completeness, one of the hidden articles:

A few more New Orleans articles, as well as a notice about his appearance in Houston that followed:

A long detailed on the “sensation” caused by Armstrong’s return to New Orleans, which some mentions of Peter Davis, Armstrong’s first teacher:

A little tattered, but here’s a striking advertisement for Armstrong’s appearance at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago on May 14, 1931:

Several small clippings on Armstrong at the Show Boat and Savoy in Chicago in the spring of 1931:

More on Louis’s “farewell” show at the Savoy:

The obscured article is from England, hoping Armstrong would travel over there; perhaps Armstrong’s manager Johnny Collins was paying attention as Armstrong would indeed go to London the following year:

Two highlights on the following page: another snapshot of Louis (“My little boy!”) in his white suit in New Orleans the menu for the “Louis Armstrong Dinner” being served at the Ritz Cafe in Memphis, Tennessee on October 7, 1931. Armstrong and his band had been arrested the night before but were presumably released in time to attend the dinner and take back this souvenir menu, in which every meal is named after a member of Armstrong’s orchestra or entourage:

After Memphis, Armstrong embarked on a major tour of midwest vaudeville houses, as booked by Johnny Collins, reflected in the ads above and below. I also love the caricature ad, which lists his most popular songs of the moment: “Peanut Vendor,” “I Surrender Dear,” “Shine,” “Tiger Rag” and “Chinatown, MY Chinatown.” “Chinatown” is the outlier, as Armstrong wouldn’t record it until November 1931, in the middle of the vaudeville tour, so he was most likely already playing it in his live performances:

We leave Louis momentarily for two more pages of family snapshots; again, I think that’s young Alpha on the right side of the second page:

One of the highlights of Louis’s return to New Orleans was when he sponsored a baseball team, the Secret 9, a group of sandlot players who got to play the New Orleans Black Pelicans at Heinemann Park on August 16 and 17, 1931–here’s an ad for the game!

Back to Memphis, a program for Armstrong’s October 7, 1931 performance at the Ace Theater is found on the next page, along with a few ads for his vaudeville appearances in Ohio later that same month:

In case you’re curious, here’s the inside of that program:

At some point in 1931, Alpha spent some time in Monrovia, California, where she took a photo of a passing airplane:

The following page has another photo from Monrovia of a woman–I think it’s Alpha–and “Somebody’s Baby.” But on the other side of the page are two heartbreaking poems of love lost, one about forgetting a love, the other about “smile-covered tears” and surrounding one’s self with “bitterness.” It’s not possible to psychologically analyze something like this almost one hundred years later but Louis himself referred to some issues in California in his notebooks to Robert Goffin. Louis claimed that he was with Lil the entire time, but she was spending more time with her masseuse, who Louis claimed did more than just “massage her hips.” He continued:

“So while I was out at the Cotton Club out in Culver City–Alpha came out there too. The Lord Must have sent her out there to me.–As surprised as I were, that she came–I was Glad to see her also. Alpha said she love me so, she happen to be thinking strongly about me in Chicago. And after she had finished doing her Show out in Cicero Ill., which she was a chorus girl, in Al Capone’s Night Club–Lucky Millinder was the Producer. Alpha said she was so Blue from thinking about me, and missed me so “terribly much,” that she Boarded a Train for California. And before she knew it–she wuz in California getting off the train. Now after she arrived in California she gotten Scared–lost her nerve–and thought that I’d get sore with her for coming way out there. But I was so glad to see her again, which I hadn’t for months and months. I just couldn’t help but say to her–‘Now that you are out here you might as well stay and I’ll find you a room’–which I did.”

Thus, it appears Alpha had to play it cool and spend some time alone in California, hence her exploring the state and taking lots of photos without Louis in them–and perhaps collecting sad poems because of the situation she found herself in:

While in Monrovia, Alpha took many photos with Louis’s friends Barney Green and Luther Gafford, the latter of which was better known by the nickname of “Soldier Boy.” Here are two pages of such photos without Louis;

And going out of order, there was one page later in the scrapbook with more photos from Monrovia so it’s worth sharing here:

The next page has more clippings of Louis at the Albee in Cincinnati and the Greystone Ballroom in Detroit; Louis wasn’t part of it, but I can’t blame Alpha for saving the ad for the Battle of Music–what a lineup!

We also have many more ticket stubs to analyze, this time from New York in November 1931. On November 19, Louis and Alpha headed to the Ziegfeld Theatre, where they caught the Ziegfeld Follies and a screening of the Eddie Cantor film, Glorifying the American Girl. On the ticket stubs, Alpha wrote, “Our first night in New York City. Oh boy!” On November 20, Tony Canzoneri defeated Kid Chocolate for the Lightweight and Jr. Welterweight titles in front of, what one newspaper called, one of the “noisiest” crowds at Madison Square Garden–including Louis and Alpha. The Paramount Theatre ticket is ripped in such a way that the date is lost, but in November 1931, a production of Frank Wallace’s Touchdown was breaking box office records at the Paramount so that’s a good bet.

The only single ticket stub on the page is in the lower left corner, one ticket for a matinee of The Green Pastures at the Illinois Theater in Chicago on November 4, 1931. Why one ticket? Because Louis was playing a vaudeville bill all day at the Palace in Chicago and Alpha must have needed a break (Louis also recorded “Star Dust” that same day). Here’s the page:

Again, one for the Laurel and Hardy fans in the crowd, another ad from the Albee Theater in Cincinnati in October 1931:

The latest clippings in this scrapbook are found on the following page, opening with a famous run at the Royal Theater in Baltimore where Armstrong personally paid for a load of coal to be delivered and given out for free to needy families during a particularly harsh winter. After an article noting that Armstrong’s band was being endorsed by Conn instruments, Louis and Alpha returned to Madison Square Garden on January 22, 1932 to see Billy Petrolle knock out Eddie Round in the sixth round:

Alpha not only saved ticket stubs to boxing matches and theatrical events, but she also saved the pullman receipts for Louis’s vaudeville tour of the fall of 1931, along with some more clippings:

Some more pullman receipts are found on this page:

The next page is devoted to a large photograph of an unidentified man–wish we knew who it was (no notes on the back side, alas):

And now we must again put on our psychologist’s hat as there’s really no other way to read this page without interpreting it as a view into some of the cracks in the relationship between Louis and Alpha. There’s another poem about how “our love is gone,” a cartoon looking for a friend who “will weep with me,” a newspaper health column about the dangers of “excessive anger” and a column, “Meditations of a Wife,” about the “apathetic” nature of kissing from most men:

Continuing on this front, the next page features a dialect poem, “Cahvin’ a Tu’key” and another love poem, “Where Love Takes the Count”:

But then we come to the page we have used as the spotlight image for this post: beautiful silhouettes of Louis and Alpha:

And now a look into the lighter side of the relationship, though this might be the controversial part of the post. On the right side, a “permit,” signed by Alpha (as “Mrs. A. Armstrong”) allowing Louis to “go where he pleases, drink what he pleases and when he pleases, and I furthermore permit him to keep and enjoy the company of any lady or I want him to enjoy life in this world, for he will be a long time DEAD.” It’s placed above a similar risque card certifying that Alpha is about “to enjoy sexual intercourse with” Louis and states she is “above the age of consent, am in my right mind, and not under the influence of any drug or narcotic.” It even ends, “Furthermore, I agree never to appear as a witness against him or to persecute him under the Mann White Slave Act.”

Somehow a terrible quality version of this page ended up on Facebook and I was tagged by people shocked that something like this could exist–but I just see them as gag cards filled in by Louis and Alpha and nothing to be taken seriously. It’s most assuredly tasteless, but I do think these are novelty cards and not something Louis had women regularly sign (though discographers will note that the date, December 13, 1927 is the same day Louis recorded “Hotter Than That” and “Savoy Blues” with the Hot Five–and Lil.) On the other side of the page is an invitation to a banquet celebrating Louis and comedian Johnnie Hudgins on February 14, 1930, and a tiny clipping about Louis in California:

Next is a photo of two men, one playing banjo, taken in Los Angeles in that 1930-1931 period; the man on the left looks familiar so I wonder if they are musicians in the Vernon Elkins or Les Hite bands:

We have reached the final page of the scrapbook and it’s a doozy. On the left, Alpha in Monrovia, our first glimpse of her wearing a fur (is that a fox?). On the right, an absolutely charming shot of Louis in Los Angeles, which Alpha has notated as “Louie (My Darling) ZING”–which we had to steal for the title of this post:

That’s a perfect place to end this post, but it’s far from the end of the tale of Louis and Alpha. We have many more photos to share and will save those for the next installment.