“The Greatest Photo Taker”: Remembering Jack Bradley Part 36–Roseland Benefit and Brunswick Session

Our previous post dealt with a memorable few days Louis Armstrong spent making the rounds with Jack Bradley in Chicago in late October 1967. In it, we discussed a mysterious All Stars rehearsal that appeared to be for an upcoming Brunswick recording date. That turned out to be the case but it wasn’t until researching this post that we discovered that session itself was supposed to be held in Chicago but was called off by Armstrong himself. Here’s an excerpt of Earl Wilson’s syndicated gossip column: “Louis Armstrong gave up a recording date in Chicago to appear at a musicians’ benefit at Roseland.”

Thus, Armstrong and the All Stars left Chicago in time to perform the musicians’ benefit on October 30, shifting the Brunswick session to a New York location and a date of November 1, 1967. Jack Bradley was back in New York at that point and would have his camera present at both events.

Armstrong couldn’t say no to anything that would benefit his fellow musicians, such as trombonist Sandy Williams, a monster player in the 1930s with Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson’s orchestras, who had fallen on hard time and was forced to give up playing by the 1960s (read his 1968 interview in Stanley Dance’s The World of Swing for a sad portrait of Williams at this time, wishing he could still play). Williams might have been down on his luck, but he sure came to life when he ran into Armstrong backstage:

Williams is holding a copy of the event’s program, which was to benefit the Musician’s Emergency Relief Fund. Williams couldn’t help asking Armstrong to sign it for him:

And here’s another great Jack Bradley photo of two top Swing Era trombonists, Williams and Tyree Glenn:

Staying backstage, let’s check in with Armstrong and Bradley’s respective partners, Lucille Armstrong and Jeann “Roni” Failows, sharing a smile:

Naturally, other folks spotted Louis and wanted their photos taken. In the following three photos, the others are looking at another camera; that, plus the fact that this a star-studded benefit concert sponsored by the Musicians’ Union makes me think these also might be performers, but I’m drawing blanks on identifying them. If they’re indeed well-known, please leave a comment to identify them!

With such privileged access to his hero and friend, Bradley couldn’t resist shooting Armstrong’s pre-show routine, beginning with a little self-manicure:

Tyree Glenn holds court and warms up:

Louis starts going through his trumpet warm-up routine (Joe Muranyi remembered Louis’s chops were a little “wobbly” that night–more on that later–so who knows what was going through his mind when he realized they weren’t responding as they did just a few years earlier):

Jeann Failows gets Pops’s ear but Louis is still fixated on warming up:

Louis pops his eyes in show biz fashion as Failows continues beaming at him. This became one of her favorite photos taken with Louis; we have multiple prints, including one donated by her nephew, Steve Failows:

Failows continues staring–notice the camera around her neck. We have a few color photos and a few images from different vantages points that we’ll share in a moment that might have been taken by Jeann:

Failows finally stands up but Louis and Tyree don’t stop blowing:

A somewhat preoccupied looking Louis:

One of Jack–or Jeann’s–rare color photos–I couldn’t have guessed he was wearing a blue suit:

Knowing his chops were shaky and seeing the pensive expression on his face on some of the above photos, it’s possible to assign a deep meaning to these photos of Louis on a tough night–but the very next image is one of him beaming so as usual, he was able to find joy wherever he went, regardless of the circumstances:

Eventually he got on the Roseland stage, where he ruled with Fletcher Henderson back in 1924 and 1925. The emcee of the evening was none other than Ed Sullivan; the backing band was Ray Bloch’s orchestra so if anyone can identify any of the musicians way in the background, let us know!

Kind of unfortunate microphone placement by Sullivan but it’s a nice photo of the two old friends, with Joe Muranyi smiling away in the background:

Finally, the All Stars got to do their thing. We’ve been living in 1967 almost this entire year so the personnel should be known by now but just in case, that’s Tyree Glenn on trombone, Joe Muranyi on clarinet, Marty Napoleon on piano, Buddy Catlett on bass, and Danny Barcelona:

Jack always managed to take some photos of Louis and Tyree’s “That’s My Desire” routine–more on that in a bit:

We also have a roll of film from a bit farther away; maybe Jeann Failows took these photos or Jack just moved. They’re a little blurry but still worth sharing–here’s “Hello, Dolly!”

And one final color photo from Roseland–indeed, that very well might be Jack in front of the stage, shooting the earlier photos with his usual setup:

Two days later, Louis was back in Decca’s studios to record four more sides for Brunswick, arranged by the very square Dick Jacobs. We covered Armstrong and Jacobs’s October 9 session in this post, which had reproductions of pages of Jacobs’s arrangements. We don’t have all of those extra touches for the November 1 session, but we do have Bradley’s photos and the released music so we’ll take it all one at a time.

The All Stars were once again present, augmented by Ernie Hayes on organ, the guitars of Art Ryerson, Wally Richardson, and Everett Barksdale, and an unidentified choir. If you recall the October 9 session, Brunswick producer Nat Tarnopol tried covering all of Louis’s 1960s bases, choosing Broadway material such as “Willkommen” from Cabaret as well as the inspirational “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” recorded a couple of weeks after the release of “What a Wonderful World.”

The November 1 session followed the same blueprint. Matters opened with John Kander and Fred Ebb’s “The Happy Time,” the title song of a Broadway-bound show then in rehearsals in Los Angeles. It would eventually open on Broadway on January 16, 1968, receiving mixed reviews before closing on September 28 of the same year. Brunswick tried the old “Hello, Dolly!” gameplan, having Louis record it early with plans to release a single around the time of the opening of the Broadway production as the flip side of “Willkommen.” Alas, “The Happy Time” was no “Dolly!” and with Jacobs’s chart piling on the corn and cloying voices, there’s not much Louis can do with it (I’ve put it in writing in the past that it might be my least favorite Armstrong recording and I think I still stand by it). Here’s the audio:

Next up, another inspirational tune, “I Believe,” a huge hit for Frankie Laine back in the 1950s. Once again, the choir comes on a bit too strong, especially with the way they’re mixed in the mastering, but Louis’s vocal is incredibly heartfelt and moving. Personally, I wrote this track off for years but after having a few kids, I listened to it one day and by the end of it, my tear ducts exploded. It might be a little polarizing, but Pops saves the day, as always:

Next up was a left-field choice, “The Gypsy in My Soul,” a standard dating back to 1937 that, as far as I can tell, was not exactly a hot choice in 1967. Perhaps Louis just liked it–or Jacobs liked it and thought it would be a good fit? It’s a fun performance, Louis sounds happy (“Hey gypsy! Come on over here, babes!” he improvises at the end), and we get eight declarative bars of trumpet, sounding good but it’s almost over as quickly as it started. Still, not exactly one for the pantheon:

With three songs out of the way, we should remember why we’re here and share some of Jack Bradley’s photos. I don’t know which song they’re working on here, but because the choir was so prominent on the first three selections, here’s a group of photos of Louis working with them and Jacobs (in the white shirt and glasses):

A couple of great studio musicians, guitarists Art Ryerson and Wally Richardson (though note that some discographies also say Al Caiola was there–any votes for Caiola here instead of Ryerson?):

Two of Jack Bradley’s guests, Jeann Failows and Armstrong-inspired trumpeter Leon Eason:

Jack also got some unique photos of Louis listening to playbacks, alongside Tyree, Jeann Failows, Ira Mangel, and others. Here I go probably reading too much into these images, but he doesn’t look especially thrilled; in fact, no one does:

But now we get to the fourth and final selection of the date: “That’s My Desire.” This site has pretty thorough charting the song’s re-entry into the All Stars’s book in the summer of 1967 as a duet between Armstrong and Tyree Glenn. Jack Bradley shot dozens of photos of it in live performance and would now do the same as Armstrong and Glenn recreated the magic in the studio. We’ll share the audio first:

Isn’t that fun? In concert, Glenn would sing the first chorus and Armstrong would then take over; for the studio version, they stuck to just Armstrong’s chorus with Glenn replicating the late Velma Middleton’s verbal responses.

If it sounds like fun, it also looks like fun–here’s a bunch of Bradley photos taken during the recording, illustrating that Armstrong and Glenn recreated their stage gestures in the recording studio!

Bradly loved that last photo of Louis looking skyward, eventually cropping it and making an enlarged print it of it; you can see it at the top photo of this post.

At some point, Leon Eason went up to say hello and Jack Bradley snapped a few photos of two of his closest friends and favorite musicians. Eason looks like he’s winking and Louis has a little twinkle in his eye as they meet:

But when Eason looks into Bradley’s camera, Armstrong appears disinterested:

Eason still kept his eye on Bradley’s camera but no longer beamed, as Louis simply exhaled smoke through his nose:

Keep that in the back of your mind for an installment that’s still about ten posts away but this moment will come back in a sad way in the future.

Alas, Bradley wasted so much film trying to get that shot, he didn’t get anything else from the date. Armstrong would go back on the road, an old-fashioned string of one-nighters, beginning in Battle Creek, Michigan the next night before heading back to Chicago to share the bill with Pete Fountain at the Chicago Civic Opera House. The All Stars would remain on the road into mid-December. We got a good response when we shared part of one of Joe Muranyi’s audio diaries in the previous post; here’s some more glimpses from the road just to paint a picture of Armstrong in November 1967.

First off, a short soundtrack to this post and the previous one: Muranyi talks about the Brunswick session (there’s a break early on as Muranyi ran out of tape), fills in details about what a “bomb” the Roseland benefit was, and finally goes back to Chicago and gives us a date of October 26 for the All Stars rehearsal at the Peoples Gas Building we shared images of last time:

Then in mid-November, Muranyi, speaking mostly from Spartanburg, North Carolina and Miami, told random stories from the previous two weeks, telling tales of the road, of the stage, relating Louis stories, painting pictures of Dr. Alexander Schiff and the other members of the entourage, and more. Muranyi really captures all sides of traveling with Louis in this period–the exhaustion, the good humor, the magical nights on the bandstand, the “bombs,” and the impossible-to-shake feeling that Armstrong was near death. The odd part is after working backwards, Muranyi stopped the tape, started again, and continued telling other stories from the same November period of time. I’ve edited out some repeated stories and other things and have broken these excerpts into two parts. Here’s part 1:

And part 2:

And here’s a letter Muranyi sent to Jack Bradley and Jeann Failows from Miami on November 13, 1967:

If you have trouble with Muranyi’s handwriting, he wrote:

Mon, Nov. 13, 1967
Jean + Jack–
How are things? I hope the jazz club is starting to shape up.
We play tonite here in Miami. We played the Grand Bahamas last nite & flew here after the gig! We were up 24 hours! Talk about exhaustion! Pops looks good and sounds good.
I’m playing Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans as a solo; Pops comes in on the release and takes it as I play over him. He sounds so good on it. In Wash. last week we played When You’re Smiling (a request) and on the out part he played to octave up high ending. Killed me. We’re also playing “Faithful Hussar.” Quite nice.
Enclosed am a clipping. I Be’s,
Joe M.

Here’s the attached clipping:

Muranyi’s letter to Bradley, as well as the audio diaries, illustrate that Armstrong’s chops were up on this tour, as he managed to play the ending of “When You’re Smiling” an octave up (if only a recording survived of that!) and had reintroduced “The Faithful Hussar” into the act. To close with some music, the Miami concert was recorded and Bradley eventually obtained a copy. Here’s an incredible version of “St. James Infirmary” from Miami that Nelson Wright has been kind enough to post on YouTube; for a glimpse of the magic Armstrong could still deliver when his chops were up at such a late date, look no further!

Armstrong finally made it back to New York City in December and once again, had to spend a few days in a recording studio. This one, however, would be unlike any other date in the Armstrong discography as he would have to sing in Italian! Jack Bradley would again be present so we’ll have those photos, plus the music, in our next installment.