[This story is modified from my first novel. The title of the novel is also the name of the national radio show — Renaissance Radio — co-hosted by the six main characters. Here, in a Chicago radio studio in 1929, three of the characters interview the world’s leading musician, Louis Armstrong, and the pioneering thinker in psychology Otto Rank (who’d recently broken with Sigmund Freud). Armstrong and Rank never met in real life, but bringing them together in the novel struck me as a good way to express something essential that couldn’t be expressed any other way. The character Riis Evans narrates the story. — Mike]
My friend Troy Edwards flips a switch to begin this segment of the broadcast and speaks into his microphone.
“Dear listener, we have something quite exceptional, quite special, for you, for today’s program. It is my privilege to introduce you to our two fine guests this evening. Ladies and gentlemen, together in person in this world for the very first time, Doctor Otto Rank and Mister Louis Armstrong.”
Otto shares a microphone with me while Louis shares a microphone with Mary. The heart of our show goes something like this:
Louis: “Doctor Rank, I’m very glad to meet you.”
Otto: “Likewise. Hullo Mister Armstrong. Mister Weber, good to see you again. Mister Edwards, you have known Mister Armstrong for a while, eh?”
Troy: “Yes. It’s been my honor to know Louis since he arrived in Chicago in 1922.”
Louis: “Jazz is instilled in Troy. And he’s really up on things, by the minute. Troy has the fire, the get-up-and-go. That’s why we’re chummy. That’s why we’re kicks to each other.”
Troy: “So Doctor Rank, what do you think of Louis Armstrong here?”
Otto: “The ultimate creative productive individual.”
Mary: “Definitely.”
Me: “Is he tied to his age?”
Otto: “He most certainly is.”
Me: “Doctor Rank sees Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Goethe, and Holderlin as working with the material of their age. Michelangelo needed the marble, Da Vinci needed the knowledge of anatomy, Rembrandt needed the advances in oil painting techniques, and Shakespeare needed the insights of the Renaissance and the Reformation – all before their genius could flower.”
Mary: “Like Louis building on the music that came before. Tell ‘em about your childhood influences in your hometown, Louis.”
Louis: “I was born in the Back ‘O Town. I can remember in New Orleans, when I was a little boy around ten years old. My mother used to take me to church with her and the Reverend used to lead off one of those good ole hymns. And before you realized it the whole congregation would be wailing – singing like mad and sounding so beautiful. I being a little boy who would dig everything and everybody, I’d have myself a ball in church, especially when those sisters would get so carried away. Man, those church sisters would begin shouting and swooning. Of course, if a sister started to pass out, one of the deacons would rush over to her and grab her, hold her in his arms, and fan her until she’d come to.”
Mary: “They sing like mad in the Sanctified Church. Have a direct experience of the Spirit, get carried away with the deeply felt melodies and vigorous rhythms. Shout, clap, stomp, dance, get lost in uninhibited ecstasy. Sing with their whole body.”
Troy: “A beautiful thing.”
Mary: “It went back further. To slave songs. ‘Go down, Moses.’ The call and response of the slaves. To work songs. Back and forth. Responsive. In the late 1800s, all the freedmen and freedwomen had musical ears trained to be open to interaction. They expected interaction.”
Troy: “Someone’s music major at Fisk has been paying off ever since.”
Louis: “Mary’s sharp.”
Mary: “Louis, did you participate in your share of funeral processions in New Orleans?”
Louis: “Many a time. All the way to the cemetery. Marching along, playing with feeling from our hearts. Always a brass band, of course.”
Troy: “You were free. The police never break up a funeral, eh? Funeral parades are freedom rising.”
Mary (half-singing): “What a friend we have in Jesus.”
Louis (singing): “What a friend we have in Jesus. Uh-huh! In the sweet by and by.”
Louis, Mary, and Troy (singing): “Oh when the trumpet sounds its call . . . I want to be in that number!”
Louis: “And after the grave, leaving the cemetery,” (singing) “just a little while to stop here.”
Mary: “Sacred hymns of sorrow – soft, lilting laments.”
Louis: “And everyone’s eyes commenced to watering. Such feelings deep down in our hearts, including my little ole heart.”
Troy: “No wonder the beauty of your songs can haunt the angels.”
Otto: “You are familiar with New Orleans, Missus Edwards?”
Mary: “My parents were Creoles who grew up in New Orleans.”
Louis: “Across Canal Street. All my folks were roundabouts. They unloaded the banana boats on the wharves.”
Mary: “The other side of the tracks. Creoles didn’t let their children play there.”
Louis: “But we players crossed Canal Street, if we were good enough. Came over and taught you Creoles how to swing. Nice lessons for you.”
Mary: “We Creoles were mixed-race folks freed by the French and Spanish before the Civil War. We all had sheet music and were well-trained in notes, scales, keys, and chords.”
Troy: “European musical skills.”
Louis: “The Creoles excelled at their waltzes.”
Mary: “And ragtime, Louis, we excelled at ragtime. What you had in New Orleans was a coming together of those African and Caribbean frenzied chants and swaying to the rhythm with the French, Spanish, and British instrumental music of the cornet, woodwinds, bass, and bugle. In New Orleans, the improvisation of Africa and the instrumentation of Europe met, mated, and spawned jazz music.”
Me “Fascinating. Just as in your analysis, Otto. Cultural works circulating, certain forms ready at hand.”
Otto: “I see, I see.”
Me: “So jazz comes from the Old Sanctified Churches?”
Louis: “And the string-band ragging we did in our ratty brass bands – playin’ for pennies out on the streets of New Orleans.”
Otto: “And then began to emerge your music, Mister Armstrong, from the interplay between the currently prevailing outlook and culture and your personal outlook and expression.”
Louis: “You can call me Louis, Doctor Rank.”
Otto; “And you can call me Otto, Louis.”
Louis: “Otto is figuring on me and I’m doin’ the same thing by him. I dig Otto’s conception of people and life.”
Otto: “Within a broad outlook, a genius comes along and creates something new.”
Mary: “There are two levels of music. The fixed, foundational level and the variable, interactive level. There’s what’s fixed and there’s what’s variable. In the Sanctified Church, in his street band, in the lawn parties and dance halls of New Orleans, Louis learned to tap into communal emotion and rhythm and then spontaneously express his individual voice.”
Louis: “A youngster like me, I practically made my own way, I – Mee – Louis Armstrong. That’s what I call Will Power – personified.”
Troy: “Louis embodies the willed affirmation of the self against all outside pressures.”
Louis: “My, my, what a thing to say. Mind you, just plain wishing is nowhere. You gotta have get-up-and-go. Savvy?”
Troy: “Savvy.”
Otto: “You are actively, consciously creating yourself, Louis. Shaping and reshaping yourself. You are continually building yourself anew as the person you desire to be.”
Louis: “Otto, we both came to a conclusion in the same moment. Although I phrase it a little differently.”
Otto: “The times shape Louis and Louis shapes the times.”
Mary: “In the Sanctified Church, Louis learned to get the rhythm and then freely interpret it. In church and on the streets, Louis learned to expect dialogue, to anticipate it, to stay open to it. In his music, he responds to the social situation with dynamic creativity. What are you doing now, Louis, but creating melodic responses to various social formations?”
Louis: “I’ve jumped at the opportunities to keep the ball rolling, as far as jazz is concerned.”
Me: “Jazz has that communal tradition, yet with plenty of room for the virtuosity of the individual musician. The improvisational solo is a flight of individual identity.”
Otto: “When jazz music is improvisational we can directly observe the creative process. And jazz best expresses the dynamic rhythm of modern life.”
Troy: “Each Louis Armstrong solo, it pours out of you, Satchmouth, out of your trumpet, so precise, so robust, so passionate. You make us laugh. You make us weep. You leave us shaking our heads in wonder.”
Mary: “Louis has an innate sense of musical logic. But he’s like most musicians. He doesn’t talk much about music. He’s too immersed in music – in harmony and rhythm – to give a verbal explanation of what he’s doing.”
Troy: “And your mind is so quick, Louis. You choose superior notes, which produce superior lines, and you combine that with a high quality of tone and a sure sense of swing. You rag that tune, Louis. You invent. You create. You color and embellish notes as you vary your vibratos and your shakes.”
Louis: “Sure enough.”
Mary: “Louis, you are the master improviser. You interpret each phrase in a way that makes it personal. And I see what you’re doing, ultimately, Louis. You’re making melody the dialogue with the fixed level. You master the harmony and then you subordinate it to the fixed and variable model.”
Louis: “Mary, sometimes you knock me out. When I pick up that horn the world’s behind me and I don’t concentrate on nothin’ but it. That’s my livin’ and my life. I love them notes. That’s why I try to make ‘em right. You see?”
Otto: “I see.”
Louis: “The minute I walk on the bandstand, people know they’re going to get something good. I see to that.”
Otto: “You have a fullness. You have a surplus. Then, when you create, you use the whole of yourself.”
Louis: “What we play is life. You blow who you is.”
Otto: “Aha! I see! And because you create from your fullness, the dance, with its rhythms of the infinite in time and space, can lead each person who dances through a rebirth.”
Me; “Otto, tell us something new about yourself.”
Otto: “I love Huck Finn.”
Me: “What?”
Otto: “Mark Twain’s character, Huckleberry Finn. I totally relate to him.”
Troy: “Surprising.”
Mary: “A German, a leading thinker in psychology, loves Huck Finn.”
Me: “What do you like about Huck?”
Otto: “His free and adventurous spirit, of course. But it’s more than that. He’s such a humorous and mischievous boy. He’s rough-hewn, homely, freckled, and tattered. I relate to that. He also has an inventive streak.”
Mary: “Love it.”
Otto: “Huck Finn also catches fish with his bare hands. When I was a boy in Germany I caught fish in a shallow river and I took great pride when I was swifter than the fish.”
Louis: “Otto, you’re a swell cat.”
Otto: “Thank you, Louis.”
Louis: “Now, I gotta head over to the Savoy for tonight’s performance. God bless ya, friends, and God bless yours. Nightie night.”
After the show, the four of us and my wife Carmen arrange to go out to a Black-and-Tan cabaret. Otto is astonished, even bewildered, as we watch White and Colored people dance together like they’re possessed – wild and spontaneous yet graceful and elegant. He murmurs and mutters and seems lost. Finally, we hear one thing he’s saying over and over: “a new world, a new world”.
In the cabaret, the lights are dusky, the drinks flow freely, and the happiness is genuine. Otto’s eyes grow wide. He stays wide-eyed. He’s mesmerized.
Otto drinks two glasses of champagne. He puts his piece of peach in his champagne glass, as most people do in Vienna.
The music is making the floor tremble. “As you step out on that floor, Otto,” I tell him, “the rhythm unleashes you. It unleashes us all.” He nods.
Carmen leads Otto out to dance. His whole body’s stiff. He’s got clay feet. He’s tripping over himself. He’s confused. Otto’s first dance is a dizzy mess. But then he begins to saunter about as if he’s learning to walk again. By the third dance he’s beginning to forget himself. The dancing is giving him true joy.
When he returns to our table with Carmen and sits down he seems amazed that he’s danced for seven songs. “I am tempted to prescribe it to my patients!” he declares. “Go dance at a cabaret!”
Great piece Mike.
It’s such an interesting idea to have two people who have never met have a conversation- and the natural and real-feeling way in which you did it was wonderful.
I really enjoy: Otto, you're a swell cat.
As well as the Huck Finn reference!