“The Greatest Photo Taker”: Remembering Jack Bradley Part 42–Ford Commercial and Tonight Show Appearances

Today’s post in our ongoing Jack Bradley series is a bit different as we’re going slightly backwards before moving forward. After 41 parts, I have used every detective tool in my arsenal to keep this series flowing in strict chronological order but I recently made a mistake and have to own up to it (offering lots of bonus materials to make up for it, I hope!).

Our previous post focused on Louis’s March 26 session for Brunswick and closed by previewing an appearance on The Tonight Show on March 28, from which I thought we had dozens of photos from, as that’s how I catalogued them over a decade ago. It turns out, we do have dozens of photos of Louis on The Tonight Show–but they’re from his January 25 appearance, two months earlier! We already shared audio from that episode and will do so again, as that January 25 show will now make up the bulk of today’s post.

But first, since we’re already going backwards, another mystery solved! In my recent post on Louis’s Italian sessions of December 1967, I didn’t mention that the role of film containing Jack Bradley’s rehearsal photos also included several photos from a mysterious recording session. There was a choir, possibly being conducted by the omnipresent Dick Jacobs:

Clark Terry was sitting in on trumpet, as he would on the first Italian session; here’s Clark with Joe Muranyi on clarinet and guests road manager Ira Mangel and tenor saxophonist Big Nick Nicholas:

And there was Louis, no trumpet in sight, wearing an outfit I hadn’t seen in any of the other session photos:

These had also been catalogued as being from the Italian sessions–but those didn’t have any vocal choir. I thought to myself perhaps it was a commercial date but without any concrete evidence, I left the photos on the cutting room floor until the mystery could be solved.

It turned out to be a humiliating lesson for me as I didn’t immediately go straight to the source: Jack Bradley’s Coda column, which reported, “On December 6 Louis and the All Stars recorded radio commercials for Ford. They were augmented by a bass guitar and vocal group with arrangements by Ronnie Roullier. Names of the tunes were All Roads, Ford Country and A Man With Better Ideas.” That seemed to settle it but it wasn’t until I recently went through one of Joe Muranyi’s tapes that I got confirmation. Joe must have known it was going to air as he tape recorded a chunk of WINS news radio and got the commercial, which features the unmistakable sound of Clark Terry’s trumpet–here’s the audio!

The very next thing on Muranyi’s tape? The Italian session master takes. So with that mystery solved, here’s a few more photos Jack Bradley took of Louis at this Ford date:

That takes care of the Ford commercial session of December 6–now, onto Louis’s January 1968 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. We have some wonderful photos to share but even more excitingly, we have audio of Louis hanging in his dressing room with Jack Bradley and his longtime girlfriend Jeann “Roni” Failows. We’ve mentioned before that for all the time he spent with Louis, Jack rarely had a tape recorder going. This sadly coincided with the years when Louis’s tape recording habit fell by the wayside so there’s precious little of Jack and Louis on tape for much of their friendship (“The Slivovice Interview” from 1965 being the welcome exception).

But Bradley finally changed that a bit in August 1967, bringing a tape recorder to Framingham, Massachusetts where the All Stars were performing, recording concert selections and hotel room conversations (such as the one heard here). He put the tape recorder away after that stay, but brought it back out for the Tonight Show dressing room hang, capturing 20 minutes of a relaxed Louis in conversation, in addition to warming up on trumpet. We have a lot of photos to share but we’ll kick off with the audio so you have something to listen to while looking at the photos:

And here’s a blow-by-blow of the audio, which opens with Bradley futzing with the microphone, before you can make out Louis mentioning his mother Mayann “slapping the shit” out of him back in New Orleans. It’s difficult to hear, but there’s talk about “ofays,” “looking at her buns,” and cops arresting black people, all in New Orleans. Jeann asks Jack why he’s looking in Louis’s cup and Louis says, “That shows your mind is faster than your lines.” At 2:55, Louis starts warming up on trumpet, which we used way back when in one of our first “That’s My Home” posts on Louis warming up.

At 4:46, Louis and Jeann talk about “Van,” “a good looking cat”; not sure who that is. Louis talks about Carol Channing and her “funny-looking costumes.” Louis talks about playing in Fort Lauderdale, flying down in a helicopter to meet Carol Channing; his first time in “a chopper.” Jack asks if Louis “digs” helicopters, but Louis says he prefers “big planes” so he can “lay around in there.” At 6:30, Louis talks about Otis Redding dying in a plane crash on December 10, 1967. After lamenting all of Redding’s success and how he was now dead, Louis quotes himself in “Cabin in the Sky”: “Give a man money and watch him act funny.” Louis talks about Rochester losing all of his money on horses (including one named “Burnt Cork”). Louis would rather put his money in the bank, but “these cats,” as soon as they get money, want a plane or a yacht or a car. Louis mentions Stepin Fetchit needed two Cadillacs and had a Japanese boy pulling him around in a rickshaw.

At 8:50, Louis talks about pop singer Jimmie Rodgers, who was involved in a bad car accident on December 1, 1967. He then talks about “Roy Campanella, juiced” become paralyzed in an accident and Meade Lux Lewis dying in a car accident. Jeann tells a story about Jack lousing up a Meade Lux Lewis record date by telling Lewis he should sing and when he started, “he was the world’s worst” singer and wouldn’t stop. Louis says Lewis got fat “all at once” and talks briefly about the movie New Orleans. At 12:24, Jack says drummer Jimmy Crawford called and asked about Louis because “he loves you.” Louis compliments Crawford (“nice boy”) and asks if he’s working. Jack says he’s been out of work for a month and is no longer playing for the show “Hello, Dolly!” Louis says he could read “fly specs” on music paper. Jeann starts talking with another woman, who was supposed to get a picture of Louis and Jack and “ruined” it by getting carried away by seeing Louis. Jeann mentions the dentist Doc Sklow, who had whiskey and Louis Armstrong records in his darkroom (Jeann never went back to him–“too wild”).

Finally, at 16:59, Louis mentions he thinks George Kirby is also on the Tonight Show that night. A woman talks about Kirby impersonating J. J. Johnson’s trombone style on Merv Griffin’s show, before mentioning an episode where Merv got hung up playing the piano. She asks if Carson is frustrated about anything, a somewhat odd, probing question to ask Louis, who only knew Carson from their TV appearances. Louis answers by praising Carson for “filling in those gaps” during conversations. Louis then praises Mike Douglas, leading Failows to compliment the week he spent co-hosting Douglas’s show in 1964. After talking about that week, when Louis and the All Stars played nightly at a boat show, Bradley stops the tape.

That’s the tape; the highlight is probably Louis warming up as it’s pretty subdued otherwise, yet I think it’s worthwhile to just hear Louis relaxing with friends and making small talk. His 1950s tapes are usually filled with jokes and with the sound of Louis being the life of the party, but in 1968, he sounds tired, conserving energy for his appearance. All of this comes out in the photos Jack took during this conversation; here are some of the best ones from the dressing room:

Failows can be seen in these next two:

Bradley also took a number of wonderful photos of Louis’s rehearsal with the Tonight Show band, led by Doc Severinsen, seen in the center of this photo, with All Stars pianist Marty Napoleon in the background:

Here’s Doc conducting:

Considering how quiet and Louis looked and sounded while resting in his dressing room, he sure turned on the joy once it came to making music, with Doc by his side:

In these next photos, Louis is going over something with the string section, still looking quite jolly:

No Louis, but here’s Doc going over the music wih Marty Napoleon:

Louis warming up:

Looks like they’re getting Louis in place for where he would perform once on air:

For good measure, Jack also got a shot of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, also guests on that evening’s program:

It’s possible that those last few shots were from the taping, but I’m not completely convinced because Jack soon found himself in a different part of the studio, closer to the action, and he was able to snap many more images of Louis in performance that feel like they’re from the actual broadcast and not a rehearsal. (Alas, video has not survived of this appearance.) Because of that, we’re now going to share the audio of Armstrong’s appearance on this episode to again serve as a soundtrack for the following images. Jack did manage to record a tinny copy, most likely from a monitor backstage, but The Tonight Show did send Louis a copy of the appearance on tape in much better quality so that’s what we’re sharing now.

Louis performs his latest Brunswick single “Willkommen,” sounding great on trumpet and vocals (with that “cassoulet” finish). According to Bradley’s Coda column, “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.” Indeed, Louis is on fire, matching Carson’s wit, telling some of his “good old good ones,” and winning lots of laughs throughout before closing for a swinging version of “Mack the Knife.” (Louis even breaks the band up with his line after playing a quick warm-up phrase, “That’s the scales–the fish will come later!”) Here’s the audio, watermarked for copyright protection:

And now Jack’s photos from this closer vantage point (though he didn’t get any of Louis on the panel with Johnny, these are still pretty special):

That finally concludes a long look at Louis, onstage and off, during his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on January 25, 1968, courtesy of Jack Bradley’s camera and tape recorder.

Now, to go back to the original confusion, Louis did appear on The Tonight Show on March 28, but for whatever reason, Jack wasn’t there or if he was, he didn’t bring his camera. Also, for another mysterious reason, it’s the only episode from this period that NBC didn’t send to Louis on reel-to-reel tape….well, perhaps they did and perhaps Louis “lost” it. This episode was guest hosted by Sammy Davis Jr. whom Louis got along with professionally but wasn’t exactly his biggest fan, never forgetting how Davis criticized him during his Little Rock comments in 1957. Also, Louis called “Cabaret” and “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” two songs Joe Muranyi told me Louis only called when his chops were feeling good and they are up–for maybe 90% of each performance. On “Cabaret,” Louis twice aims for a note that doesn’t come out as planned, causing him to momentarily lose his footing, though the rest of his solo is strong. On “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” he plays a sensational solo, only to run out of gas in the last four bars, which are pretty sad to listen to as he searches for a satisfactory close. Thus, perhaps Louis wasn’t interested in preserving a copy of this appearance, though audio of both songs came out on an Italian compilation several years ago. For the sake of completeness, here’s “Cabaret”:

And here’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On”:

Louis would be back on The Tonight Show for the third time in 1968 on April 22, but this time smack dab in the middle of a major run at The Latin Quarter, his first nightclub appearance in New York City since 1961. Jack Bradley would be present and would take many, many photos, perhaps enough for two parts–we’ll start sharing them next time!