Louis Armstrong: Gangsters, the CIA, and Hot Music

You know Louis Armstrong, right? Jazz icon? Satchmo? Nice guy from the movies with the trumpet? Did you know he was part of a CIA coup in Africa? Did you know he compelled a President into civil rights action? Did you know Louis Armstrong was controlled by gangsters? There’s a lot to learn about this one-of-a-kind musician in DISGRACELAND. Louis Armstrong famously served as a "jazz ambassador" for the United States. If you could choose one musical artist to represent America overseas, who would it be? Let Jake know at 617-906-6638, [email protected], or on socials @disgracelandpod. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod X https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ TikTok https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans, up to $400,000, help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 0:43Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 1:26Jake Brennan?

  This is the story of one of music history's giants. An artist so big and so influential that the word "icon" doesn't do the man justice. It's a story about a trumpet player, an accidental jazz innovator, and reluctant jazz ambassador. It's a story about a drug bust, a pissed-off president, racist southern lawmakers, a CIA coup, and it's a story about gangsters. Lots and lots of gangsters. Because this is a story about the great jazz man Louis Armstrong. Which of course means it's a story about great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

• 2:11Jake Brennan?

  That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called "Roll 'Em If You Got 'Em," MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "Tammy" by Debbie Reynolds. And why would I play you that specific slice of Princess Leia's mom's cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on September 17th, 1957. And that was the day that Louis Armstrong gave an interview that instantly changed how the public thought of him. It may have been the catalyst for the President of the United States to suddenly become involved in the civil rights movement.

• 2:50Jake Brennan?

  On this episode, a drug bust, racist politicians, a CIA coup, stone cold gangsters, and one of the greatest to ever do it, Louis Armstrong. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 3:36Jake Brennan?

  There are two ways to say Louis Armstrong's name. The first way is how I've just said it: Louis. The second way is Louis. Watch any footage, then or now, of someone talking about Louis Armstrong or Louis Armstrong, and you'll hear different people say it different ways. And even in the 1969 Barbra Streisand musical Hello, Dolly, in which he made a memorable cameo as a bandleader, he introduces himself as Louis. But still, I'm gonna call him Louis, just because that's what I've always done. And I tried doing it the other way, and frankly, it just sounds weird. So, here we go. Anyhow, I bring this up because, just like there are two ways to say Louis Armstrong, there are two ways to see Louis Armstrong.

• 4:21Jake Brennan?

  In fact, there are two Louis Armstrongs. Let me explain.

• 4:28Jake Brennan?

  The first one you're familiar with, that's the larger-than-life icon you call Satchmo, or Pops, the lifelong ambassador of jazz. The American art form born right there in his hometown, New Orleans. An art form that, in many ways, he invented, or at least was its most important early innovator. He was the giant on whose shoulders every jazz great to come in the 20th century stood. Impossible high Cs on the trumpet, that gravelly scat-singing voice, "What a Wonderful World," and all that. This is the same guy who, as the years went by and the culture shifted, and so-called "traditional jazz" took a backseat to bebop, modal jazz, and hard bop.

• 5:13Jake Brennan?

  With new strains of the art form he helped shape, now sound-tracking the civil rights movement, he stayed the same. In the minds of jazz cats such as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis became an artifact of the past, still catering to the white man at a moment when a famous black musician should be using his platform not to cater, but to dissent. "I don't get involved in politics," Louis Armstrong once said, "I just blow my horn." What Dizzy Gillespie didn't know at the time, though we'd learn much later, was that "I just blow my horn" was Louis Armstrong's code for "I survive." Louis was taught early on how to survive as a black man in a white man's world.

• 5:57Jake Brennan?

  He did this by heeding the advice of his mentors, including Joe Oliver, aka King Oliver, the famous bandleader who told Louis, "You're crying in your horn, all right, but it's the audience that should cry, not you. You have to learn to never wear the trouble in your face." So Louis hid that trouble in his horn.

• 6:20Jake Brennan?

  Which was exactly what he was doing on a particular night in 1947, the year he seriously leveled up. Going from getting paid a respectable $350 a night to commanding a staggering $2,500 every show. That's like 35 grand in today's dollars, by the way. Tonight, Louis found himself in a familiar spot, outside the club, in between sets, puffing on a joint. Getting high as hell, actually. And also, getting paranoid. Worried that a couple of cops would step out of the shadows to pinch him for communing with one of his greatest loves: marijuana.

• 7:01Jake Brennan?

  This is where the other Louis Armstrong comes in. The real Louis Armstrong. The one from the real part of New Orleans. The back of town. James Alley. Not Storyville, the red light district where black men weren't allowed to pay for sex, but Black Storyville. The city's other red light district, some three blocks away, where sex workers weren't prostitutes, as they were known in the white establishments, but whores. A small distinction in descriptors that functioned solely to degrade the black citizens of New Orleans even more than they already were by segregation and discrimination. It was in this environment of systemic racism, sex and violence, that Louis Armstrong came of age,

• 7:45Jake Brennan?

  including the years he spent in an orphanage, a fortuitous turn of events that found him joining their brass band, where his self-taught, God-given skills quickly rocketed him to cornet-player, first chair.

• 7:58Jake Brennan?

  Now, as an adult, he continued to navigate not just a racist city, but a racist world. And a little reefer went a long way. Not just in how it made Louis feel, or how it made the music sound, all those horns winding themselves around each other in harmonious ecstasy. But, and this is in Louis's own words, "It made you, quote, 'forget all the bad things that happened to a Negro,' unquote." Louis had his fair share of bad things to forget, and he hoped that tonight, he wouldn't add another one to the list as he toke'd on the joint. His manager, Joe Glazer, told Louis he had nothing to worry about. Then an arrangement had been made with the federal agents who'd been following Louis Armstrong's trail of skunky marijuana smoke.

• 8:41Jake Brennan?

  Joe Glazer had done this by setting up his other famous client, Billie Holiday, who was, at this very moment, being booked for possession. It didn't matter that Billie wasn't in her hotel room when agents searched it and found the dope. I mean, yes, it did matter that she wasn't there because legally, there was nothing tying her to the drugs, and even the shittiest of public defenders could have fought and beat the charge easily. But it didn't matter because Joe Glazer, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong's manager, had advised Billie to not lawyer up, and instead to plead guilty. One hand washed the other. Joe gave Billie to the feds. And in return, the feds laid off Satchmo, who, no offense to Billie Holiday, was the golden goose.

• 9:26Jake Brennan?

  For Joe Glazer, it was just business. For Louis Armstrong, it was survival. Louis watched Billie take the fall, and he couldn't help but think back to a time when he'd found himself in a similar situation. It was seventeen years prior, in 1930. Not in Chicago, where he'd been making his home and his name, but instead, in Culver City, California, where he was on tour with his band. This was long before Joe Glazer entered the picture. Louis was standing outside the Cotton Club, passing a joint back and forth with his white drummer. Weed, or "gauge" as Louis called it, was not yet illegal in the United States, but it had been illegal for years in the state of California.

• 10:08Jake Brennan?

  And the two detectives who suddenly came out of nowhere made this abundantly clear. They charged Louis with a felony punishable by up to six years behind bars. But Louis didn't wind up like Billie Holiday, who had her cabaret card revoked and could no longer find steady work. For this offense, Louis had nothing taken away and only served nine days, after which, he was free to go, to keep making that money, and to keep blowing his horn. And it's all because of two men who simply made their presence and their considerable influence known.

• 10:42Jake Brennan?

  At Louis' trial, the Cotton Club's bandleader Abe Lyman showed up with his brother and sat in the gallery. The judge looked out at the small crowd and locked eyes with the two men. He knew what they said about the Lyman's, that they were bootleggers, that they were cozy with Culver City politicians, and that they were even cozier with gangsters. The judge was a sworn man of the law, but even lawmen knew to tread carefully around the mob. So Louis Armstrong got that cush sentence and made his way back to Chicago, all because a couple of supposed wise guys put the pressure on just by showing up. The words of King Oliver came back to him now: "Never wear the trouble in your face."

• 11:25Jake Brennan?

  Which is what Louis did, completely unaware that this very moment was the true beginning of his private life, of the other Louis Armstrong, the one the American public was just getting to know and love. The same Louis Armstrong, who was about to fall into the arms of organized crime.

• 12:06Speaker 01

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• 12:36Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 13:09Jake Brennan?

  Chicago, 1931. Louis Armstrong sat backstage at the Showboat Club sweating from the night's feverish set. "Hot music," they called it. So hot that his heart was still pounding, his ears still ringing. He stripped down to his T-shirt with a handkerchief wrapped around his head. He was just another horn player. But of course, he wasn't. Louis didn't play like anyone else. His thrilling sound was the product of a self-taught style, and the emphasis here is on "self-taught." He had incorrect embouchure, which is a fancy word for the way you're supposed to press your lips to the mouthpiece. To put it plainly, Louis Armstrong had poor technique, technically speaking.

• 13:53Jake Brennan?

  This, of course, was a huge part of his individuality and what made him stand out, like the way he would shake his head to get vibrato instead of using his fingers, which was the norm. These things, this irregular technique, helped make him the hottest jazz man in the country. The groundbreaking records he cut with his Hot Five and Hot Seven combos just a few years earlier were hard to come by because it seemed like the music stores were always sold out. Louis's record label at the time, OK, released his music on their Race Records line, which was, at the time, the industry term for "music marketed to African-Americans," as well as their Regular line of records, which is to say, records for white people. And yeah, we know, that's pretty fucked up, but that's the way that it was.

• 14:38Jake Brennan?

  Louis Armstrong's reach was wide, and you need look no further than an up-and-coming pop singer named Bing Crosby, whose style was obviously indebted to Louis Armstrong. Louis, on the other hand, was in debt to someone else. The door to the dressing room backstage at the Showboat Club swung open, and in-walked Frankie Foster, the notorious Chicago gangster.

• 15:06Jake Brennan?

  Some said Frankie was the triggerman who took care of that Tribune reporter, Jake Lingle. And despite his clean-cut image, Lingle was dirty and on the take. A real buddy-buddy with Al Capone. A little too buddy-buddy, apparently, because he went out with one bullet to the back of his head. Died with his cigar clenched between his teeth and that day's papers still in his hands. Louis didn't have to know whether Frankie was the one who actually did Lingle because he was sure the guy had the stones for killing. Period. And now that guy with the stones for killing was standing between Louis Armstrong and the door. "Pack your bags," Frankie said. "You're going to New York to play a show there tomorrow." "What?" Louis thought. "New York? The hell he was going to New York?

• 15:50Jake Brennan?

  Louis had shows booked right here in Chicago, and he told Frankie this." Frankie responded by reaching into his jacket pocket and producing a revolver. He pulled the hammer back, and the sound of the pistol cocking sent a shiver down Louis Armstrong's spine. How about now? Was he getting through? New York City, tomorrow. Let me back up for a second. There are a few things you need to know in order to understand why one of Chicago's most feared triggermen was threatening Louis Armstrong in his dressing room. At this point, 1931, Louis was not yet managed by Joe Glazer, the guy who set up Billie Holiday on that phony drug bust, but instead, by a man named Johnny Collins.

• 16:34Jake Brennan?

  Johnny Collins was a big guy with a Hitler mustache, and, like many others working at the time in the music business, he was a gangster. Okay, maybe not in the literal Al Capone way, but in the way that he did his fair share of shady shit kind of way. In fact, Johnny Collins had weaseled his way into his current role by making some sort of below-the-table deal with Louis's former manager. Now that former manager, Tommy Rockwell, was making a stink. Either he wanted his old job back, or he wanted to get paid. He told Johnny Collins to cough up six grand, or he'd burn that fucking Hitler mustache right off his face. Collins and Louis knew that Tommy Rockwell was serious. Just like they knew that the trigger man Frankie Foster was serious.

• 17:16Jake Brennan?

  This was a guy with a direct line not just to Al Capone, but to the New York mobster Dutch Schultz. And though Tommy Rockwell always denied hiring Frankie Foster to do his dirty work, the dirty work in question being forcibly removing Louis Armstrong from Chicago and shipping him to a club in New York where Rockwell was connected. Though Rockwell did manage to get Louis kicked out of the American Federation of Musicians, or the AFM, by complaining to them that Louis Armstrong was in violation of his previous management contract. So, on top of having a gun pointed in his face, and on top of being caught in a power struggle between warring and well-connected gangster managers, Louis Armstrong was now no longer protected by a union, which meant he was out of luck when it came to negotiating

• 18:01Jake Brennan?

  wages, working conditions, etc. Faced with this extremely messy situation, Louis Armstrong and his manager Johnny Collins saw only one way out. They ran. They high-tailed it out of Chicago and headed south, far away from Frankie Foster and Tommy Rockwell and from Al Capone. Louis and his band holed up in a private Pullman train car, steam and smoke powering them all the way to New Orleans. Then by bus to Memphis, where a dispatcher at the depot told them to exit the larger vehicle Johnny Collins had paid for and get on a smaller bus with fewer amenities. And they refused, so the Memphis Police Department was called. And the cops took one look at Johnny Collins' white wife on a bus with a bunch of black

• 18:46Jake Brennan?

  musicians, and being the racist pencil dicks that they were, threw all of them in jail. And Louis Armstrong had to agree to play a local benefit show in order to be released, which he did. Not wearing the trouble in his face, all that. Instead, he delivered his message inside his music, dedicating one of his favorite tunes that night to the Memphis PD, a song called "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You."

• 19:18Jake Brennan?

  In Philadelphia, the problem wasn't racist cops. It was a couple of local goons who found their way backstage, just like Frankie Foster had done. But unlike Frankie Foster, these goons were offering Louis their protection. Louis was once again reminded of what was at stake, of the people who will be glad when he was dead, "You rascal, you." And this freaked him out. He went straight to the police station fearing for his life and asked them to lock him up for his own safety. And there in that cell, all these things weighed on his mind, as did his other problems, like his lips, which had become bloody and shredded on account of his bad technique. And then there was his estranged wife, Lil, who was demanding thousands of dollars in unpaid,

• 20:02Jake Brennan?

  quote-unquote, "maintenance money." All of which is to say, when Joe Glazer finally showed up, the man who would become Louis' manager for just about the rest of his life, it couldn't have happened at a better time. Glazer had his own direct line to guys like Al Capone, having run the gangster Southside Clubs and brothels in the past. He'd managed boxers. He was tough and feared and respected in his own way. Not that Glazer wasn't extremely problematic, because he was. He nonchalantly tossed around racial slurs. He was once given a 10-year sentence for the rape of a 14-year-old girl, but avoided jail time by marrying her. A few years later, when he found himself in a similar situation with a 17-year-old girl, his friend, Al Capone,

• 20:46Jake Brennan?

  pulled some strings to make it go away, which is what Joe Glazer did. And that's what Louis Armstrong wanted right now: to make everything go away. He needed a guy like Joe Glazer, because to survive, he needed more than the ability to hide his trouble in his horn. Joe Glazer believed in Louis Armstrong, and he was ready to go to work for Louis. And those facts outweighed the very glaring moral and ethical deficiencies of his character. This was the world that Louis Armstrong came from, and the world in which he continued to live. And starting in 1935, he lived it with Joe Glazer as his manager. Glazer paid off Louis' wife, Lil. He paid off the ex-manager, Johnny Collins, and he used his connections

• 21:31Jake Brennan?

  to get organized crime off Louis' back. Then he took out a six-figure life insurance policy on his client and got to work. As Louis later said, "Joe Glazer saved him from the gangsters." But Louis Armstrong would win his next battle on his own.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  We'll be right back after this.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star Trust Pilot Reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 22:26Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 23:01Jake Brennan?

  In January 1957, like millions of others in America, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was watching Elvis Presley on the idiot box. This was the Tupelo Boys' third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. And this time, the censors at CBS insisted that the camera only show him from the waist up. If the decision were left to Elvis, the pelvis, that camera would have gone south of his belt line to show people at home what the girls in the studio audience were losing their minds over. But this was America, not the land of the free as advertised, but the land of the carefully crafted, damage-controlled public relations image. An image that Dwight D. Eisenhower was more than well aware of.

• 23:44Jake Brennan?

  But a rock and roll singer's quivering hips weren't on Ike's mind at the moment. Neither was the upcoming inauguration in which he would be sworn in for a second term. Instead, Eisenhower was worried about how the rest of the world currently looked at America. And I'm not talking about what parts of Elvis Presley's body were being shown on TV. I'm talking about Rosa Parks, arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat, Martin Luther King Jr. busted for doing 30 in a 25, and the KKK forcing a black truck driver to jump off a bridge to his death. And despite Brown versus Board of Education, which just three years prior had declared segregation in schools to be unconstitutional, a follow-up opinion by the Supreme Court

• 24:28Jake Brennan?

  actually made it okay for some districts to ignore desegregation. Places like Little Rock, Arkansas. But I'll get to that in a minute. My point is Eisenhower knew that America's image wasn't as pretty as it was made out to be. Because America, both on the surface and deep down, could get kinda ugly. Eisenhower needed to work on polishing that image. In part by spreading the good news about capitalism as the Cold War continued to heat up. Part of Eisenhower's plan was to send jazz ambassadors out to visit the rest of the world. Essentially, the State Department would earmark tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund overseas tours of jazz artists with racially mixed bands.

• 25:12Jake Brennan?

  For the musicians, it was good money and an opportunity to see the world. For Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, it was a way to control a narrative of black and white Americans living and working together in harmony for far-flung audiences in the Balkans, the Middle East, and in Russia. Russia, in particular, was where Eisenhower wanted Louis Armstrong to go on a government-funded jazz ambassador tour later that year in 1957.

• 25:40Jake Brennan?

  At this point, Louis Armstrong was 56 years old. He was an American institution, and with the help of his manager Joe Glazer, he crossed over to white audiences, performing not just jazz tunes but pop standards. He'd appeared in movies with Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, and Grace Kelly. He was a beloved entertainer and an ideal cultural export. But most importantly, for President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles, Louis Armstrong lived by the code of the mentor King Oliver. He never wore trouble in his face. Meaning, of course, that Eisenhower could trust Louis to hang with the Soviets and not to bitch and moan about the real troubles that black Americans faced every day back home.

• 26:24Jake Brennan?

  And this is not to say that Louis Armstrong did not stand up for civil rights. The year prior, he famously refused to appear with his integrated band in his hometown, New Orleans, when the state of Louisiana passed a law forbidding black and white musicians from performing together. He also refused to perform at any venue where he was not allowed to stay, which is how he began staying in whites-only hotels, and how he found himself the first black guest ever at the Dakota Hotel in Grand Forks, Michigan, on the evening of September 17, 1957. Again, September 17, 1957. Two weeks after the governor of Arkansas, Oroville Fabbis, called in the National Guard to stop nine black students from enrolling in Little Rock Central High School

• 27:08Jake Brennan?

  in defiance of Brown versus Board of Education. Also, just one week after the Civil Rights Act was passed, the first piece of civil rights legislation signed into law by President Eisenhower. These things were no doubt on Louis Armstrong's mind this particular night when a student journalist writing for the Grand Forks Herald showed up at his room at the Dakota Hotel. At first, the conversation went as expected. They talked music, and Louis went on and on about Bing Crosby and what a great voice he had. But then the kid mentioned Little Rock, and Louis's face twisted up. His horn was tucked away in its case, and he had no place to hide his trouble, so for once, Louis Armstrong let his trouble emerge in his face,

• 27:53Jake Brennan?

  and then in his voice.

• 27:56Jake Brennan?

  You know what? He said to the college reporter. It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country. Eisenhower's got no guts. He's a two-faced politician. And that governor, Faubus, he's a no-good motherfucker. So is John Foster Dulles. That man's another motherfucker. And the way they're treating my people in the South, the whole government can go to hell.

• 28:21Jake Brennan?

  The college reporter couldn't write fast enough in his notebook. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. Because the public Louis Armstrong never talked like this. Meaning, that as far as the world was aware, the private Louis Armstrong never thought like this. But he clearly did. And as the kid kept writing, Louis started singing. "Oh, say, can you motherfucking see? By the motherfucking dawn's early light."

• 28:50Jake Brennan?

  Obviously, this being 1957, many Louis Armstrong's actual words could not be printed. He and the reporter settled on uneducated plowboy as a replacement for "motherfucker" to describe Governor Faubus. And when the story ran not just in the Grand Forks Herald, but in the papers all over the country via the Associated Press, it was like a bomb went off. Louis Armstrong's words were strong. And his stance was even stronger. A stance that resulted in his refusal to go through with the Jazz Ambassador Tour of Russia for the gutless motherfucker Dwight D. Eisenhower.

• 29:28Jake Brennan?

  The backlash was immediate. White radio stations threw out all their Louis Armstrong records. Ford Motor Company prepared to pull their sponsorship from an upcoming Bing Crosby TV special in which Louis was slated to appear. Even on the other side of the divide, Sammy Davis Jr. called out Louis Armstrong for waiting so long to do the right thing. In Louis' mind, however, doing the right thing, if it involved putting himself out there, that was dangerous. If he was on the front lines of the movement, picketing, marching, and holding a sign. If he got in a scuffle, if the cops roughed him up or he got clocked in the face. If his lips, his mouth, if they got any more fucked up than they already were, he was done. He would not survive.

• 30:11Jake Brennan?

  So saying these things to this reporter, now, in 1957, that was putting himself out there more than he ever had. And in the wake of Louis Armstrong calling out President Eisenhower in just about every newspaper in the country, something truly remarkable happened. Less than one week after the article ran, Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard. He sent the US Army's 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, and he ordered Little Rock Central High to admit the nine black students immediately. Eisenhower's action was enough to convince Louis to embark on one of those government-funded Jazz Ambassador tours after all, but not to Russia.

• 30:54Jake Brennan?

  Three years later, Louis Armstrong and his band took off for Africa to represent an America that, in his eyes, was perhaps beginning to listen and beginning to change. When in reality, America was just using Louis Armstrong for the one thing he didn't want to get involved with in the first place: politics.

• 31:33Jake Brennan?

  November 1960. Louis Armstrong, with his fourth and final wife, Lucille by his side, was just finishing a most excellent meal at a restaurant in Leopoldville, capital of the newly-independent Republic of the Congo. And back home in the States, John F. Kennedy had narrowly defeated Richard Nixon in the presidential election. Louis's one-time nemesis, the lame duck Dwight Eisenhower, at the end of his two-term run in sight, had finally persuaded Louis to be a Jazz Ambassador after all, despite their differences. Perhaps Louis believes he was the anointed president whisperer, thanks to his part in the Little Rock dust-up. Perhaps the election of JFK gave him hope for the future of his divided country.

• 32:17Jake Brennan?

  And perhaps all of this and more made Louis now feel great pride as a representative of that country. Or maybe the money was just that good. However it went down, Louis was working for Ike, a man he once called "two-faced", bringing a positive image of America to a country that had only recently thrown off the shackles of colonialism. Eisenhower intended to influence the Congo before the Commies got to them first. Part of this strategy was while Louis was now dining in Leopoldville with his wife and a diplomat from the US Embassy. Or at least Louis Armstrong was made to believe that the man in the white shirt, black tie, black jacket, and dark shades sitting across the table from him was a diplomat.

• 33:00Jake Brennan?

  Louis did not know that this man, Larry Devlin, was in fact not a diplomat. But instead, the CIA Station Chief posted to the Congo. Louis also did not know that the purpose of Larry Devlin's presence here in Leopoldville was to arrange and support the assassination of the Congo's first democratically-elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, who the US feared was sympathetic to Russia, and then replace him with Joseph Mobutu, a military man who was also anti-communist. Furthermore, Louis had no idea that at this very moment, as the dinner wrapped up and he and Lucille made small talk with a man they thought to be an innocuous agent of goodwill,

• 33:41Jake Brennan?

  just a mile from where they sat in Prime Minister Lumumba's home, soldiers affiliated with Joseph Mobutu were holding him hostage. The fix was already in. And Louis Armstrong, feeling like he was doing something good, feeling a little patriotic even, was in fact being used as a smokescreen, an elaborate cover so that the CIA and the US government could meet the right people, shake the right hands, and get the wheels turning on their hit job. Fucking gangsters, always gangsters with Louis Armstrong. Shortly after Louis's three-month tour of Africa ended, in January of 1961, Prime Minister

• 34:25Jake Brennan?

  Patrice Lumumba was tortured and executed by Congolese separatists, aided in part by the Belgian government. Later, CIA Station Chief Larry Devlin, the man who had dinner with Louis Armstrong and his wife at the Congo's capital, told a US Congressional investigation, "The coup of Mobutu was arranged and supported and indeed managed by the CIA."

• 34:50Jake Brennan?

  Louis Armstrong would never hear this quote, or know about this plot, or about the role he unwittingly played in it. Because Larry Devlin's testimony happened in 1975, four years after Louis Armstrong died of a heart attack at the age of 69. Oddly enough, this wasn't the only shocking revelation that emerged following the great trumpet player's death. In 1976, one year after Devlin's testimony, The New York Times ran a three-part investigative piece on a man named Sidney Korsak. Now, just like there were two Louis Armstrongs, there were two Sidney Korsaks. The public Sidney Korsak was a well-respected labor attorney in Beverly Hills. But the private Sidney Korsak

• 35:33Jake Brennan?

  was known as a fixer for Chicago organized crime. As The Times revealed, in the early 1960s, Sidney Korsak went into business with Louis's longtime manager, Joe Glazer. The man who had once saved Louis Armstrong from gangsters assigned control of his majority stock in his business over to Sidney Korsak, an alleged gangster. Why? In his Louis Armstrong biography, Pops, the writer Terry Teachout hypothesizes that cutting such a deal was perhaps Joe Glazer's solution to getting organized crime off his clients' back for good. Regardless of the reason why, however, it still means that for the rest of his life,

• 36:17Jake Brennan?

  Louis Armstrong's survival was handled in part by the hidden world of the Chicago mob. The very same group that had once tried to make his very life a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 36:50Jake Brennan?

  All right, discos, thanks for rolling with us in Satchmo, through Chicago, Africa, and back again. Question of the week, and it's not an easy one. Which musical artist would you choose from any generation to represent America as an ambassador as President Eisenhower chose Louis Armstrong? You can only choose one. 617-906-6638. Leave me a voicemail, send me a text and let me know. You can also reach me at @disgracelandpod as well on Instagram, X, and Facebook. Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com.

• 37:33Jake Brennan?

  If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand-new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/AtDisgracelandPod. Rocker roll.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 38:21Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 38:52Speaker 04

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• 39:19Jake Brennan?

  Hey guys, time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage. It's backed by popular demand, this five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this year, along with Zeph, and he and I will be taping a live version of DisgraceLand along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners Wise Crack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive meet-and-greets, and immersive true crime programming throughout this one-of-a-kind voyage.

• 40:04Jake Brennan?

  Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/trucrime to secure your spot.