“The Greatest Photo Taker”: Remembering Jack Bradley Part 39–Rehearsal for Kapp Session February 1968

Happy New Year, everyone. We’re starting 2024 just as we closed 2023, with part 39 of our ongoing series paying tribute to the friendship between Louis Armstrong and Jack Bradley. Today is a special day to publish a new entry as Jack Bradley himself was born on this date 90 years ago! We miss Jack tremendously and hope that this series honors his memory appropriately.

It’s a new year for Louis, too, as our last post ended at Christmas 1967 when Armstrong and the All Stars began an engagement at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. As mentioned last time, Louis and Lucille invited the All Stars to their suite on New Year’s Day and Louis played their recent recordings of “Willkommen” and “No Time is a Good Good-Bye Time” as he wanted to add them to their repertoire before performing them on The Hollywood Palace on January 13, 1968. After an engagement in Chicago, Louis finally returned to New York, where he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on January 25, 1968. Bradley wasn’t there, but did report in his March 1968 Coda column, “Later in January Louis was on the Tonight show where he sang Welcome and Mack The Knife, accompanied by Marty Napoleon and the NBC studio band. After all these years Louis finally got the ‘honor’ of actually sitting down next to Johnny Carson and getting some words in. He broke it up — naturally.”

This doesn’t have anything to do with Jack but since this series has also become a chronological narrative of Armstrong’s movements in the 1960s, here’s the watermarked audio of this Carson appearance, taken from a reel-to-reel tape sent directly to Louis after the broadcast:

Armstrong wasn’t in New York very long, leaving soon after for Italy, where he took part in the Sanremo Song Festival in early February 1968, an appearance we discussed in this post. Almost immediately upon arriving back in the United States, the All Stars performed in Pittsburgh and Potsdam, Pennsylvania, engagements filmed by NBC for an episode of The Bell Telephone Hour–more on that in a bit. A few nights later, Armstrong was reunited with Jack Bradley at a private event Bradley wrote about in Coda:

“On February 11 Louis and the group played at the N.Y. Hilton’s grand ballroom for IBM. There was no one else on the bill — just Pops, the All Stars and Jewel Brown; they did 35 minutes and Pops was instructed not to do ‘That’s My Desire’ (supposedly because of questionable lyrics!!) and vocalist Jewel Brown was asked to wear a high necked gown (what’s with IBM?). The stage was flanked by two huge 20 foot square photographs of Louis projected on the screens (the cover of Louis Armstrong Favorites, Columbia lp).”

Apparently, Bradley was asked not to take any photos of the concert itself, but he did take some photos backstage of Armstrong posing with some of the IBM executives:

We have correspondence between Bradley and IBM as he was able to sell them multiple copies of each image–good for Jack. IBM also presented Armstrong with a gift: a case of new Bach trumpet mouthpieces. Again, Bradley was there to snap a couple of photos of Louis with his new gift (which he eventually gave away to Israeli trumpeter Yacov Uriel in 1970, as mentioned in this post):

Before the evening ended, Armstrong invited Bradley to a rehearsal for an upcoming recording session for Kapp Records to be held on February 20. Armstrong was a hot commodity again and multiple record labels lined up to pay Joe Glaser’s fee for the chance to record a single with Louis. There was ABC-Paramount, which produced “What a Wonderful World” in August 1967, then Brunswick, who did multiple sessions in October and November 1967, and United Artists, who had Mitch Miller in charge of their December 1967 session. Now Kapp Records–the label mainly responsible for putting Louis back on the map with “Hello, Dolly!” back in December 1963–wanted to reclaim a piece of the Pops action.

Since Kapp helped write the Louis-Does-Broadway playbook, it was no surprise that they would try to work the old “Dolly” magic again. George M, a musical on the life of George M. Cohan, was set to open on April 10, 1968 starring Joel Grey. Kapp would present Armstrong with “Rose (A Ring to the Name of Rose)” to record in February, timing its release for the opening of the musical. They even sent Louis the sheet music:

And they even had reliable Dick Jacobs write up an arrangement for it in his usual style with the All Stars augmented by banjo and a choir; here’s Louis’s part:

Kapp also asked Louis to record Fred Ebb and John Kander’s “Life of the Party” from the score of the Broadway musical The Happy Time, which opened on January 18, 1968. If you recall from this post, Louis already recorded the title track of that production for Brunswick on November 1. Brunswick did the “Dolly” trick of releasing it the same week the show opened, this time as the flip of “Willkommen”; Cash Box magazine named the single as one of their “Picks of the Week” in their January 20 issue. And though the reviews for The Happy Time were mixed, initial box office was strong enough for Cash Box to refer to it as a “new hit musical” on February 24. Thus, Kapp was probably excited to have Louis record “Life of the Party” as the flip for “Rose.” (Though in the long run, The Happy Time would end up losing a million dollars; Hello, Dolly! it was not.)

This probably seems like an awful amount of backstory for a single you most likely have never heard of. Why haven’t you heard of Louis’s version of “Rose”? Because it doesn’t exist.

The All Stars assembled at Nola Rehearsal Studios on 57th Street sometime in mid-February to go over “Rose” and “Life of the Party.” Jack Bradley would be there–the reason for this post–but so would NBC’s camera crew on behalf of The Bell Telephone Hour. The producers were following around Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charles Lloyd for a program that would air on April 26, 1968 as “Jazz: The Intimate Art.” The Bell Telephone crew had already filmed the All Stars in action in Pittsburgh and interviewed Louis at his home in Corona, Queens. Now they would just shoot some footage of Louis rehearsing for the Kapp session and their segment would be complete.

The saga of Louis Armstrong is filled with tall tales like “Did you know Louis HATED ‘Hello, Dolly!?” which isn’t quite true (full story here). And it’s filled with questions like, “Why in the world did Louis record some of the commercial junk he was asked to? Couldn’t he say no?”

At Nola Studios, Armstrong hated “Rose” and said “no” to recording it–and NBC’s cameras captured the whole thing.

Before we get to Jack Bradley’s photos from the rehearsal, we’d like to share the finished Bell Telephone Hour piece, which is on YouTube courtesy of Franz Hoffman. The quality isn’t great but you’ll see color footage of the All Stars–Louis, trombonist Tyree Glenn, clarinetist Joe Muranyi, pianist Marty Napoleon, bassist Buddy Catlett, and drummer Danny Barcelona–doing a bit of “Sleepy Time Down South” at the start.

At 1:09, it switches to Nola Studios; that’s composer George David Weiss–of “What a Wonderful World” fame, among many other hits–on piano and Buddy Catlett sitting at the drums as Louis chats with Tyree Glenn. After a bit of Louis in his Corona, Queens den, the footage goes back to Pittsburgh for a swinging version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” For the never several minutes, we see the All Stars in action on “Saints” and later, “Dolly,” juxtaposed with more interview clips of Louis at home, in a relaxed mood.

But finally, at 8:40, we get to the main event: Louis rehearsing for the Kapp date. It starts with him running down the melody of “Rose” as arranger Dick Jacobs looks on. George David Weiss is still on piano, perhaps hired to help rehearse the band in learning two new tunes. The band tries “Rose” but at 9:28, Louis waves them off and the narrator tells us that he’s having trouble mustering up enthusiasm for it. After a touching, sad remembrance of Joe Oliver, we go back to the rehearsal, where Louis is still not happy with “Rose.”

(Note that at 11:58, Louis looks at the chart for “Rose” and jokes that Jacobs wrote “Ying” instead of “Ring”–turns out it wasn’t a joke! Scroll up and check the second line of Louis’s part; someone used a pencil to turn “Ying” into “Ring.”)

At 12:15, another man appears and talks to Louis about trying another tune. Originally I thought it might have been a Kapp executive–likely Mickey Kapp–but it also might be song publisher Frank Military, who was then working with a lot of Broadway scores, including The Happy Time, and whose name was stamped on the music for “Life of the Party.” As All Stars pianist Marty Napoleon looks on, George Weiss launches into a full-blown performance of one of his compositions, “Kinda Love Song”–a composition he had yet to write down. Louis likes it, calling it “a very good number” and “relaxed.” There’s a murmur about “Joe”–most likely Glaser–and Jacobs offers to write a chart that night if Louis wants to do it.

At 13:54, Louis asks Weiss to play it again and says, “We’ll try to feel something”; note Marty Napoleon now at the drums. For a rough run-through, Louis pours his soul into it and puts the final nail in the coffin of “Rose.” Here, now, is the complete Armstrong segment from “Jazz: The Intimate Art”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7OyJbgHmuQ

Somehow, it appears that Jack Bradley eluded the NBC cameras, but he was definitely present and as a bonus, brought along color film! Here’s how Bradley captured the above rehearsal, beginning with Armstrong and Glenn in conversation:

Jack was known for not wasting a lot of film and picking and choosing his shots with care, but when he caught Louis seated in a relaxed state, he took a few extra photos for good measure:

Armstrong, Muranyi, and Glenn going over the music; notice the commercial sheet music for “Rose” with the blue cover on the music stand:

I’m not sure what Louis is doing in this next series of photos–I think he might be adjusting a microphone wire for the television shoot–but in the background, you can glimpse part of Danny Barcelona’s head, Marty Napoleon, Dick Jacobs with his back turned to the camera, band boy Bobby Buster, Tyree Glenn sitting down, an unidentified man, and Dr. Alexander Schiff:

A joyful shot of Danny Barcelona and Louis; February1968 would mark Danny’s tenth-anniversary in the All Stars:

Valet Bob Sherman joins the conversation and seems to be holding Louis’s coat:

Not sure who the man in the white shirt is back there:

Looks like the rehearsal of “Kinda Love Song” with the mystery man/possibly Frank Military/possibly Mickey Kapp next to Louis:

A great behind-the-scenes photo of the NBC cameras at work:

Bob Sherman is collecting the sheet music; all of the parts are still in our Archives:

And if you recall the moments from the video where Marty Napoleon took over the drums (something he clearly liked to do as Jack caught him in the same position during the rehearsals for the Italian sessions in December 1967), here are two photos:

That concludes what went down at Nola Studios in February 1968 but there was still a recording session to take place on February 20. It appears Jack Bradley wasn’t at the actual session so we don’t have any more photos to share, but we do have the music.

Though we’re now at Kapp Records, it’s a typical Dick Jacobs affair with the All Stars–Joe Muranyi especially makes his presence felt–“enhanced” by guitars and a choir. A mystery xylophone player was brought in for “Life of the Party,” which has Louis refer to himself in the third person–as “Lou-is”–twice; again, Kapp returning to the old “Dolly” formula. Louis sounds like he’s having fun but there’s no trumpet and overall, it’s a pretty forgettable affair:

“Kinda Love Song,” for an eleventh hour rescue, though, is positively charming. George Weiss tweaked the lyrics to make it more autobiographical and Louis even has a touching spoken section in the middle. The closing “That’s how I want the world to remember me by” is pretty special, too, considering we’re getting close to the end. This song is as under the radar as it gets but I think it’s a hidden gem:

Poor Kapp records, though, they got the short end of the stick in the end, paying Joe Glaser for the opportunity to possibly have another “Hello, Dolly!” with “Rose” only to have Louis himself outright reject the tune. We don’t have any business papers or contracts but it does seem like the way out of the mess was for Glaser to allow Kapp to release two separate singles. Thus, “Life of the Party” came out with Louis’s 1964 recording of “You Are Woman, I Am Man” from the Hello, Dolly! LP as the flip side, while “Kinda Love Song” was paired with Armstrong’s 1964 recording of “Someday You’ll Be Sorry” (Glaser was no dummy, as that was an Armstrong composition and Glaser controlled the publishing, meaning extra royalties).

Kapp rushed out “Life of the Party” in time for it to be one of the Cash Box “Picks of the Week” in its March 16, 1968 issue. “Easy swing session in the popular Armstrong style marks the latest bright offering for the hornman’s catalog,” the magazine stated. “Lively pace, cute & humorous vocal and fine orchestral touches turn this highlight from the ‘Happy Time’ score into a nifty change-of-pace pop side with plenty of easy listening and middle-of-the-road appeal. Sparkling track.” The single cracked the bottom of Cash Box’s “Looking Ahead” chart a month later, but soon disappeared. Kapp ended up sitting on “Kinda Love Song,” finally dumping it without fanfare in February 1969.

There wasn’t much time to ruminate over the Kapp session as Louis would be back in the studio one week later for yet another recording session for yet another label. This time, the label was Buena Vista Records and the project would be an LP, Disney Songs the Satchmo Way. Jack would once again be present for a rehearsal and the first recording session and we’ll have those photos in part 40 of this series.

Happy 90th Birthday, Jack Bradley!