Elizabeth defends Armstrong. “During the difficult times of the civil rights movement, Americans needed an escape, a memorable smile and someone to offer comfort,” she says. “Armstrong took on that role, but understandably drew some scorn and backlash from jazz artists who were at the forefront of the movement.”
Riccardi adds that Armstrong was also a contributor to the civil rights movement when he was out of the spotlight. “He donated a lot of money to Martin Luther King,” Riccardi says. “When New Orleans passed a law banning racially integrated bands from performing in public, Armstrong refused to return for almost a decade. He was also one of the first African-American entertainers to sign a contract that stated he would not play there unless he could stay in a hotel.”
Armstrong also incorporated advocacy into his music, making it part of a compelling entertainment package. In a BBC recording, he dedicated You’ll Never Walk Alone to “all the mothers who have sons in Vietnam.” He had previously performed the song in the United States in solidarity with segregated audiences. Armstrong described one performance in Georgia as “a show of solidarity with black people.”[most] “The most moving song I’ve ever seen,” I sang as the audience began to sing along. “I nearly cried onstage. We really struck something deep within each and every one of us.”
A complicated legacy?
But perhaps the track that best expresses his philosophy is “What a Wonderful World,” the penultimate track on Louie in London. At the time, some critics discounted the simplicity of the song’s message; The New York Times called it “sentimental ramblings.” But in a spoken-word introduction added to the song a few years later, Armstrong explains: “It seems to me that it’s not the world that’s bad, it’s what we’re doing to it that’s bad. All I want to say is what a wonderful world could be if we only gave it a chance.”
This attitude ultimately won over some critics. “I misunderstood him,” Dizzy Gillespie admitted after Armstrong’s death. “I thought I was [Armstrong’s] His ability to smile in the face of racism shows he is not going to allow even the anger he feels at racism to take the joy out of his life and erase his beautiful smile.”
Others remained ambivalent: Miles Davis repeated his criticism after Armstrong died—”I hated the way he had to smirk to ingratiate himself with tired white people,” he wrote in his autobiography—but Davis still had to acknowledge that Armstrong “opened a lot of doors for a guy like me to walk through.”
