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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 30, 2009

TT: Man and legend

March 30, 2009 by Terry Teachout

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, which will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on December 2, is now listed on amazon.com.
POPS%20COVER.jpgThis is what the dust jacket will look like. The picture is by Philippe Halsman. It was taken in 1966 at a photo shoot that also produced the better-known image that accompanied Life‘s cover story on Armstrong.
In case you’re wondering, I couldn’t be happier with the design for Pops. Not only does it have tremendous visual impact, but Halsman’s photo is one of the few pictures of Armstrong taken by a professional photographer that captures something of the interior complexity to which I allude in the prologue:

The legend of Louis Armstrong is not the whole story, just as there was more to him than the grinning jester with the gleaming white handkerchief who sang “Hello, Dolly!” and “What a Wonderful World” night after night for adoring audiences. “To friend and foe alike,” the trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton wrote, “there was, deep below the surface of companionship and bonhomie, an impenetrable wall in which every stone was an enigma.” His disposition was not always cloudless, either, though he preferred not to share his occasional sorrows with strangers. Armstrong taped dozens of his private conversations during the last quarter-century of his life, and these tapes, which until recently were inaccessible to scholars, show that his personality was tougher and more sharp-edged than his fans knew. Off stage he could be moody and profane, and he knew how to hold a grudge. “I got a simple rule about everybody,” he told a journalist. “If you don’t treat me right–shame on you!”

I’ve done my very best to penetrate Armstrong’s inviting yet enigmatic surface in Pops. I hope you find the results illuminating.

TT: Noise in the system

March 30, 2009 by Terry Teachout

It’s crunch time on Broadway–new shows are now opening back to back–and crunch time for me as well, what with The Letter and Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong making their way down the pipeline. The result of all this nonstop activity is that I’m in a more or less constant frenzy, against which my body rebelled last week. Like many respectable gentlemen of a certain age, I get kidney stones on occasion, and one of them took an untimely bow midway through the preview of Eugène Ionesco’s Exit the King that I reviewed in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal. Much to my surprise, I managed to pay attention to what I was seeing and write about it before going to bed, but I was knocked out for the next couple of days and had to cancel a trip to Washington as a result.
As always I jumped back on the horse–I saw Irena’s Vow, Happiness, Hair, and Reasons to Be Pretty this weekend–but for the moment I don’t have a whole lot of time or energy to spare, so forgive me if I post a bit irregularly this week. I shall return!

TT: Almanac

March 30, 2009 by Terry Teachout

“As a priest, I’ve learned that people only cry over what they’ve lost, or missed getting, and I’m surely no exception to that.”
Jon Hassler, A Green Journey

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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