This is one of a series of poems exploring the life and work of jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong.
After Louis Armstrong
The melody sounded like twinkle twinkle’s
great uncle oompah loompah: “I see trees
of green . . .” Label wasn’t seeing the same
green cause they only offered me 5 c-notes,
which was just a bunch of skimpy blue notes
record execs tossed my way. See, Daddy-O
this was the late 60s and so was I, chronic/
logically, speaking. I’d recently been subjected
to a drop-dead trumpet discussion. Quack’s
saying I had to cut it out. Cut what out?
My playing? Might as well sever my tongue
because that’s what my horn had come
to be. I sat mute imagining them imagining
my throat a backed-up toilet. Maybe a soup
spoon fell in it, then them putting a mute
to its proper use, driving a plunger into
my wind pipe, thinking they’re unclogging
some stopped up crap, not realizing my throat
was just congested with musical nuances. See,
they didn’t just want my sound altered or
softened they wanted it gone: my horn’s
shit and sweet talk; its chatter, shout
and ramble. My “Hello Dolly” felt more
like “Goodbye Daddy,” after that.
But that’s when that “What a Whatever . . .”
that sheet music started crackling in
my palms, got me thinking about Corona,
my neighborhood. (“I see friends shaking
hands . . .”) I took union scale so strings
could be attached and sessions squeezed in
to get the fruit juice out of the music: the tang
and the rind. No horn. no scat. Just me crooning.
And for once I stuck to the melody like off-white
sticks to rice (and maybe a few beans, too).
My voice a bullfrog, midleap, a rusted, gutbucket
ribbit, beneath it them strings: mosquitoes gliding
just out of reach of my croak. They were thinking
my tongue was sizing them up for supper
but it just wanted to unleash a song.
Think about it, between takes, my lips
wasn’t wondering if them strings
(beans or otherwise) would be part
of some banquet. No my tongue just
wanted to backflip and interrogate
my throat: “What’s so Wonderful? These
lyrics are like Pops’ Benedict Arnolds?
All them 1-nighters? He had pneumonia
a few months back.” Still, my voice: a castle
of passion recording those 12 inches
of optimism; in that studio, that uterus,
nurturing that embryo, giving birth to that
ballad. But instead of from between my legs
(with them very close veins) it came from
between my lips; instead of pounds and ounces;
we weighed it in minutes and seconds. 2:09
to be exact. We snipped the umbilical
cord on the Tonight Show. (“I hear babies
cry. I watch them grow.”) Some called
my newborn mushy, claptrap schmaltz
and mugly—meaning musically ugly—
but I brought my baby on-stages and back
stages, cuddled my bundle of joy. Breath
fed it ’til it climbed to the top of the British
charts. English mothers and fathers made
babies listening to my baby. 600,000 copies.
My baby became my may I kiss the bride
ballad; my: I now pronounce you man
and music. And after that my lips
stopped scolding my throat as I sang
“bright blessed days . . .” Honestly, every
night before I’d hit the stage I would
crouch in the wings, inhale an entire
audience through the bell of my horn,
their every breath; then, spend the next
hour and change blowing it back to them
as syncopated air. “Now I sing just
as well. What A Wonderful World.”
Because it truly was. “Oh yeah!”
Copyright © 2019 by David Mills.
