Play, Louis, Play!* Read online

  The True Story of a

  Boy and His Horn

  Muriel Harris Weinstein

  ILLUSTRATED BY Frank Morrison

  To my grandchildren,

  Leah, Hannah,

  Samuel, Ian, Aidan, and Riley

  The horn was an extension of Louis

  Louis’ voice was his horn

  Louis and his horn were one

  And this is their story.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Afterword

  Glossary

  References

  C H A P T E R 1

  How Did Louis Discover Music?

  There isn’t a jazzman in New Orleans who hasn’t tapped my brain about Louis Armstrong. They talk to me as if sugar’s sprinkled on their tongue. “Hey, you knew Louis like no one else. What’s the pitch, the real story?”

  These jazzmen know I know. I ought to. I was Little Louis’ horn, the first horn he ever played. He’d talk to me as if we were brothers, tell me every note in his life. Words poured out like soda pop.

  The first time I saw Louis I was in a run-down, dusty hock-shop window on Perdido, the muddiest street in New Orleans. My body was dented, my life slowly tarnishing away, when I noticed this raggle-taggle kid looking in the window. He showed up each and every morn when the sun cracked open. I bet he was about six years at most, so skinny you knew nothing was sliding into his belly. And there was nothing on his feet. No matter how muddy the streets were, he was barefoot. Well, he’d stop and eye me through the window and sigh. His sigh held so much wanting, I could feel it through the glass.

  Louis liked to pretend that he had a horn and, with his lips curling out, he’d hum and blow as if he were playing a cornet.

  When kids passed by they’d yell, “Whatcha doin’? You look like a fish face.”

  But Louis never sang a sour note. His answer danced the two-step right out of his mouth. “I’m practicin’. Can’t ya hear it?”

  The kids laughed, specially Little Louis.

  Louis’ smile traveled from one side of his face clear over to the other. Everyone said it was as wide as an open satchel. So they called him “Satchelmouth.” The nickname stuck. And it wasn’t until later that Satchelmouth was shortened to Satchmo.

  He also answered to Little Louis, Dippermouth, and Gatemouth. There were always kids who said, “Hey, that’s a put-down name. Ya won’t catch me usin’ it.”

  Louis would laugh and say, “A good nickname’s hard to find. And I’m aimin’ to keep all of them.” Yeah, he was a cool cat.

  Louis lived with his grandma because his momma, Mayann, worked cleaning houses and sometimes had to sleep over. Louis’ dad, a worker in a turpentine factory, had left the family when Louis was born. Grandma and Louis lived on Jane Alley in the Back O’ Town, the toughest section in New Orleans. It was so tough everyone called it the Battlefield.

  To make a living, Grandma took in washing and ironing. Louis helped by carrying the washboard, handing her clothespins for the clothesline, and sometimes folding pillowcases with her.

  Louis couldn’t wait for Sundays. That day shone as if the sun were wrapped inside it. He’d awake at the crack of dawn and start rushing his grandma to get to church on time. “Church singin’ fills me up better than breakfast,” he’d say. He didn’t want to miss a single hymn. The singing and clapping rhythm crawled into his little body and jiggled around there for the rest of the week. Louis was discovering music, and it became his favorite food, his favorite way of spending time.

  C H A P T E R 2

  Can a Kid, a Young Kid,

  Rescue His Family?

  When Louis told me about his life, complaints never fell from his tongue. He said they hurt his ears as much as a horn’s sour notes. Louis said he was about six when he had to leave his grandma. His momma, Mayann, was sick and couldn’t work. She had had another baby, his little sister, Beatrice. His dad had gone back to Mayann for a few months, but that old freedom itch crawled into his shoes again. That man just couldn’t stay put. And like before, he ran so fast through the back door you’d think a skunk was chasing him. So Louis had to go home and take care of his momma and Beatrice.

  Beatrice probably caught what her momma had, and together they were weaker than weeds in a hurricane.

  So Mayann sent a note to Grandma that was full of the blues. Mayann said she needed Little Louis’ help. It didn’t matter how young he was, she just needed him.

  Louis hadn’t seen his momma in a l-o-n-g time. Neither Grandma nor Mayann had cars, so they couldn’t visit each other. And they didn’t have enough coins jingling in their pockets for the trolley car.

  It wasn’t easy leaving Grandma. Louis loved her. She packed his two pairs of hand-me-down pants, ten sizes too big; sewed the holes in his two hand-me-down shirts; and put them in a paper bag. Then she dressed him in his white, Sunday “goin’ to church” suit with the fancy ruffled collar.

  Grandma said if she hugged him, she might never let him go. Instead, she stood at her front door, waving good-bye. Louis stood at the fence gate, biting his lips to keep from crying.

  That moment really stuck with Louis. He told me that story over and over, like a chorus in a song. And I know that his heart cracked like a branch on an old swamp tree when he left. Lucky thing Louis had a knack for looking at the bright side. That’s part of what made him special.

  • • •

  Mayann had two tiny rooms without electricity or running water. And if that weren’t bad enough, she had no inside toilets—only outside toilets called outhouses. They were lined up in the backyard, one row for men and one row for women.

  The sight of his momma lying sick in bed upset Louis so much that he didn’t give a hoot about inside toilets or outside toilets or even running water. He rushed to her and sat on the edge of her bed. “Momma, I helped Grandma,” he said. “And now I can help you. Help you get better. Tell me what to do and boom, it’ll be done.”

  Mayann’s face lit up. “My, you are one fine son,” she said. Then she asked him if he was strong enough to pick up one of the loose floorboards for her purse. Mayann explained that under the floorboard was a hiding place. She had to keep her things safe there because some people in the neighborhood stole to help pay the rent and buy food. It wasn’t easy making a living.

  She asked Louis to take fifty cents out of her purse and walk all the way to Rampart Street to get her medicine. It was the first time someone trusted him with such a big errand. Louis felt real grown-up.

  Walking to the drugstore was an ear-popping treat. Dance halls, bars, and honky-tonks lined the streets and music flowed out: the blues, ragtime, jazz. Louis’ ears flapped with joy. A street band jazzing up “Maple Street Rag” passed by. Louis knew they had just returned from a funeral. New Orleans bands played mournful music on the way to the grave, but after the ceremony they jazzed away with oobalie doo dop. They’d swing so high, it made you wanna dance.

  Grandma always said, “Life goes on after someone passes, so people must think of good things. And music sure is one of them.”

  Mayann’s neighborhood was as rough as the Battlefield. But Little Louis never noticed that. Music was all he heard: horns wah-wah-wahing, slow ’n’ sad drag-me-out blues, riffs on razzmatazz cornets, and jazzy beats of thumping piano keys. Their sounds, like waves in an ocean, rolled into him, flooded his ears, and flowed through his body.

  There were so many of the little dance halls called honky-tonks, it was hard to find the drugstore. His e
yes finally spotted it, a tiny place. He paid fifty cents for Mayann’s herbal syrup, and again that grown-up feeling returned. Clutching the medicine, Louis raced home with such speed his feet scorched the streets.

  “Child, you sure have fast feet,” Mayann said as Louis walked in. “You are one big blessing.”

  He gave Mayann the syrup, and she started feeling better in no time.

  Then he wanted to feed baby Beatrice, nicknamed Mama Lucy, but the cupboards were bare. There was nothing to eat. Louis finally found an old, half-full box of dried beans. Luckily, Mayann had a large pot of rainwater on the windowsill. He mixed it with the red beans and they cooked. Mama Lucy licked her lips. So did Mayann—and before you could say “Come blow your horn,” his sister and momma were in dreamland.

  When Louis heard Mayann snoring, he hightailed it outside. His ears ached to hear that music again.

  As Louis walked, his mind ragged him. Worries scurried through his head. He asked himself, How can I help Mayann? There’s no food. Tonight there were some red beans, but not another thing! And the beans were old, dried up. They needed to eat. He thought, So what if I’m a kid? I can help out. I can make money. But how?

  Then Louis heard the bands practicing. His worries drifted off like notes floating out of a horn. With the music in his ears, he leaped over muddy puddles, bare feet flying as fast as fingers on a hot trumpet. Louis thought that music was the best thing anyone could have. There was nothing better in heaven or on earth.

  Louis was in luck! As he came up to Pete Lala’s place, a dance club, he spotted a broken board in the wall, hanging down real loose so there was a big gap. Louis couldn’t believe it. All his life music had surrounded him, filled him—but except for the marching bands, his eyes had never seen a jazz group. And here, here was a real, live jazz band in all its pulsing beauty. He was dying to watch the musicians, to see how they held their instruments, to study how they stood, just to lay eyes on them.

  Louis dropped to his knees, and his ebony eyes followed the feet of the oh-so-slow dancers. Crouching, all he could see were dancing feet!

  Louis looked to the right and to the left, making sure nobody would catch him. Then he bent over and slowly crawled through the gap. Good thing he was so small.

  Inside was dark and smoky. There was a table nearby. Louis hid under it. His eyeballs glued themselves to the band.

  The musicians! Louis thought they had to be the Lord’s happiest men. How did they blow with such beauty? The cornets talked to him. He knew he had to play one. He was so caught up in the sound that when a fight broke out by the front door, Louis never heard the ruckus. This music, the music the colored musicians made, was like wings carrying him to heaven.

  C H A P T E R 3

  Can Little Louis Make Money?

  That Little Louis’ mind was always racing. Every day he’d come up with a new idea for making a buck. I still remember one spring morning when I was enjoying the sun splashing through my hock-shop window. And who do I see but Little Louis, who was about seven now, sitting on top of a horse-drawn cart with one of the Karnofsky boys. The cart was filled with rags, bones, bottles, metal and iron scraps. They rattled and peddled up and down the New Orleans streets, trading and selling. Little Louis blew a toy horn with such force, he sounded like an army bugler. That toy horn blared, “C’mon out, everybody! Lookit what we’ve got! You won’t be sorry!”

  Everyone knew the Karnofsky cart, and the minute it showed up there was a crowd waiting. The Karnofskys were a family of Russian Jews who lived on the edge of the colored section. Little Louis was like a member of their family. At night, old lady Karnofsky refused to send him home until she filled his belly with good Jewish food.

  Their evenings always ended in song. Mrs. Karnofsky, holding little David in her arms, sang “The Russian Lullaby.” It became Louis’ favorite. He joined in, and the memories of singing with them nested in his heart.

  “First you eat. Then you go to your momma,” she said each time. When the Karnofsky kids gave him a Star of David necklace, Louis said it would hang on his neck forever.

  Then I remember another morning, about a year later, when I looked out my window to see this kid standing on my corner, shouting, “EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! GET YER PAPER, MISTER!”

  I knew the voice. It was Little Louis. He’d convinced White Charlie, the guy in charge of the paper route, that he could sell more papers than any other kid. White Charlie liked him. Said Louis had spunk. He was about eight or nine then and—get this—still working on the Karnofsky cart, blowing his toy horn. He was one little hustler.

  Around this time, Mayann said Louis had to go to school. The Fisk School for Boys had no money, no library, no textbooks, no supplies of any kind to help the students. Sometimes five or six students had to share one book, and its pages were often ripped or missing. That’s because the school was segregated and the government never gave the same amount of money for supplies to colored schools as they did to white schools. So the colored kids didn’t receive enough books and, worse, the books they did have were old or outdated. Some of their teachers weren’t even teachers. They either had no training or were inexperienced.

  Still, Louis wanted to go to school. He wanted to learn. But it didn’t last long. He had so much worry about how to support Mayann and Mama Lucy that making money for food and rent was the only thought running around in his head. And since he didn’t have books to take home and study, Louis dropped out. He was in fifth grade then.

  Would you believe that when the sun opened its eye the next morning, Louis was on the corner singing in a quartet? There was Big Nose Sydney, Little Mack, Happy Bolton, and Little Louis. They sang in perfect four-part harmony, each boy singing different notes. That’s no easy-breezy thing to do. Their ears were as sharp as razors.

  Little Louis heard such wonderful harmony and melodies in his head that he improvised—that is, he made up other notes on the spot to sing along with the melody. Sometimes he even said to heck with the words and his voice flew, as free as a bird, soaring and dipping with sounds like beedle reee-eep, ooblee-ooo-dooo, and jippity jin joon. That was scat, a tricky-slicky thing to do.

  Was that quartet a hit! They sang at the docks and on every street corner. Everyone loved them. The boys passed their hats and those hats overflowed. As soon as they divvied up the money, Louis made a beeline for his house and dropped his share smack into Mayann’s lap.

  People on Perdido and Rampart streets loved Little Louis as if he were their son. Louis, full of smiles, always said hello and asked about their family or their sick uncle or their sore throat. They said he cared. He wasn’t putting on an act. And when his quartet sang, they’d come out and listen.

  Little Louis needed money so bad that he thought up things no one else did. Did he have imagination! He tried to make money through music, so he made a “gut-box,” an instrument built from a cigar box with four wires down its body. He played that gut-box while he was singing in the groups. Its twangy sound tickled his ears.

  Louis also read the daily paper to the Old Folks. Whenever Mayann complained he wasn’t in school, he said that he was reading more now by reading to the Old Folks, and it was better than school ’cause he was learning hard words. And he’d add, “Momma, my mind’s learnin’ so much ’bout the world. If my teachers heard me read they’d be clappin’ and doin’ handstands.”

  Louis had so little money he could only buy the two cheapest things to eat: fish heads and beans. Sometimes he didn’t have money even for that. But Little Louis never sang a sour note about it.

  One afternoon Little Louis walked to the fruit store. I could see him. You see, I lived in the hock-shop window, right across the street, opposite the fruit store. And there, in front of the store, was a big basket bulging with fat bananas. They were so yellow they looked painted. Boy, did they tempt Louis. There were so many that Louis must’ve figured a banana or two wouldn’t be missed. Before you could blow a note, Louis’ hand jumped out and grabbed a
small bunch—just a few. He quickly put them inside his shirt. But a policeman was watching. He blew his whistle and shouted, “Thief, STOP!”

  Louis didn’t know which way to go, left, right, or straight ahead. A second cop heard the whistle and came running. With a cop on each side, there was no place for Louis to run except into a puddle of mud. They caught him, slapped handcuffs on him, and pulled him to their station. I had a front-row seat from my window.

  Don’t ask how I felt. I wanted to tell the cops what a good kid he was, how hard he was trying to make money, how hungry he was. But I was imprisoned in that window, my glass cage, waiting for Louis to get enough money so he could set me free and blow his wonderful music.

  Louis told the police that it was only food, that his family needed to eat. He said he wasn’t stealing anything serious, like diamonds or gold. But they booked him—they wrote his name down in a file. They also made sure he knew that stealing was stealing, no matter what!

  The police let him go with the promise that he’d never do it again. The trouble was that, as much as Louis added to Mayann’s budget, the money was never enough to feed them. And it sure wasn’t enough to buy a horn, his Big Dream.

  C H A P T E R 4

  Why Did Louis Give Up

  His Horn Money?

  Mayann felt lucky she had Louis. While she never had enough food for him, she did feed him praise. She told him he was smart and full of good plans for making money. Then she reminded him that getting ahead meant work, work, and more work. Nothing was free.

  One afternoon Louis made so much money that he came home with coins in his pockets jingling like a Christmas bell. And his paper bag bulged with money— a fortune! He told Mayann that finally, finally he could buy his horn.

  “Louis,” she said, “don’t you know today’s your sister’s birthday? And my old eyes tell me you have just enough money for Mama Lucy’s birthday supper. Now we can make her favorite dish, jambalaya.”