Word: armstrong
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...venerable band that played for them consisted of long-silent musicians gathered from Louisiana rice paddies and the Pullman cars. Its leader, spare as a lath, was 63 -year-old, silver-haired Willie C. ("Bunk") Johnson, onetime teacher of Louis ("Satchelmouth") Armstrong, and the greatest jazz trumpeter of his not quite bygone day. When Bunk and his old friends rode out on the classic New Orleans stomps, the San Francisco crowd knew it was getting the fragrant, free style syncopation it had come...
...nearly 15 years Bunk Johnson had not played. His story had followed a familiar pattern among U.S. Negro musicians. In the spacious days before World War I, Bunk used to "call his people home" with his own New Orleans boys-the Original Superior Band. Louis Armstrong, who followed Bunk around, carrying his trumpet, was only one of the many Negro trumpeters and cornetists (Tommy Ladnier, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Buddy Petit, Punch Miller) who learned from Bunk. And Bunk, who could play any tune in any key without stopping to think ("sharps and flats they never bothered...
About five years ago a Pittsburgh jazz enthusiast named William Russell heard from Louis Armstrong that Bunk Johnson was still alive somewhere in the Deep South. Once Bunk was found at his old home in New Iberia, La., he became a voluble correspondent. He slowly pecked out his careful letters on an old typewriter. Says he: "You can sit down with a cup of coffee and a cigaret and be sure you won't go to sleep because that little bell keeps waking you up." Bunk kept insisting in his letters that if he had a trumpet...
...held top honors in the race among smaller U.S. airlines for sensational prophecy. In full-page newspaper advertisements P.C.A. announced that it had filed with the Civil Aeronautics Board an application for a transatlantic air route to Europe, using gigantic floating seadromes (cost, $10 million each; inventor, Edward R. Armstrong), spaced at 800-mile intervals as sea-based refueling stations...
...good enough show to assure old Henry a 15-round title fight with the champ this summer. But it was not good enough for the judges. When they pronounced Jack the winner, the crowd booed enthusiastically, less from conviction than as a tribute to game Henry Armstrong and his publicity staff...