The brown-skinned man with the golden horn pursed his scarred lips, blew
a short stream of incredibly high, shining notes and then carefully
laid the trumpet down. “There's a thing I've dreamed of all my life,”
he graveled, “and I'll be damned if it don't look like it's about to
come true—to be King of the Zulus' Parade. After that I'll be ready
to die.” This week few mortals were closer to heart's desire than Jazz Trumpeter
Daniel Louis Armstrong. At 48, he was on his way back to the town where
he was born, to be monarch for a day as King of the Zulus in New Orleans' boisterous
Mardi Gras. For the first time in its
33-year history, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club had gone out
of town for its carnival king. From its cross-section membership in the
past had come Mardi Gras kings who were porters, shopkeepers and
undertakers, but Trumpeter Armstrong was big-time royalty, even a world
figure. Many jazz experts, who can be as snooty and esoteric as
existentialists or the followers of a Bach cult, solemnly hail him as
the greatest musical genius the U.S. has ever produced. In the five-and six-man combinations in which Armstrong has worked much
of his life, he has had to earn that kind of praise—and without the
carefully arranged six-and eight-horn brass choirs of the big bands to
smother sour notes for him. Playing without written arrangements,
bending the melody around on his own, then blending in with the others
when the clarinet or trombone soars off on the lead, Louis has wrung
raves even from longer-haired critics. The New York Herald Tribune's
Virgil Thomson once said that Louis' style of improvisation made him “a
master of musical art comparable only to the great castrati of the 18th
Century.”* Just Follow the Crowd. Among Negro intellectuals, the Zulus and all
their doings are considered offensive vestiges of the minstrel-show,
Sambo-type Negro. To Armstrong such touchiness seems absurd, and no one
who knows easygoing, nonintellectual Louis will doubt his sincerity.
To Jazz King Armstrong, lording it over the Zulu Parade will
be the sentimental culmination of his spectacular career, and a bang-up
good time besides. As stubby Louis Armstrong speaks of his role on
Shrove Tuesday , his expressive eyes shine with excitement and
amusement. Dressed in long, black-dyed underwear and grass skirt and
wearing a green velvet cape and gilt cardboard crown, the King sets out
on a riotous 20-mile, all-day parade. He winds through the streets of
the Negro district, stopping at the shops of parade sponsors, holds
court, sees that his loyal Zulu subjects are refreshed with beer and
potato salad.
