Word: satchmo
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Jerry Herman originally wrote it just as a production number to get Carol Channing onstage in the second act of his Broadway musical. Then Louis Armstrong's recording hit the counters. Typically, Satchmo gave it a rasping rhythm and lowdown authority-qualities it never had in the original-and his single recording knocked the Beatles right off the top of the bestselling lists. Both Republicans and Democrats wanted to cash in on the song's popularity, but Dolly Producer David Merrick, a loyal Democrat, gave the tune exclusively to Johnson for Hello, Lyndon! and threatened to sue Barry...
Harlem's Golden Age began. "Meat was cheap and home brew was strong," wrote Historian Lerone Bennett. "Duke Ellington was at the Cotton Club and Satchmo was at the Sunset, God was in heaven and Father Divine was in Harlem." Those were the days of speakeasies with names like Glory Hole and Basement Brownie's Coal Bed, of stompin' at the Savoy and vaudeville at the Apollo, of "rent parties" where guests paid 50? or $1 to help the host pay his rent and got all the food and drink-and sometimes sex-that they could manage...
...frantically planting trees to stop mud slides. Then public funds appropriated for the project mysteriously started turning up in private pockets; eight top Walker Hill officials are currently under arrest or investigation for embezzlement and bribery. So bad was Walker Hill's credit rating that Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong, whose band got $60,000 for playing the opening two-week stand, "didn't even think of making plane reservations to come here until our fee cleared the bank back home...
...Champ Floyd Patterson, Baseball-Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson, Singers Marian Anderson. Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole, Lena Home and Johnny Mathis, who was the only one of the bunch to place among the 35 Negro millionaires. One famous name missing from the list: high-living Horn Man Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong, 61, who once earned $20,000 a week tooting a trumpet with what came to be known as his "million-dollar lips...
...army to keep its Soviet equipment under wraps, treated the Queen to an essentially British military show. At the national welcoming ceremony, more than 100,000 people jammed the square; only one other Ghanaian crowd had ever approached the strength of the throng-not for Osagyefo, but for Satchmo Louis Armstrong...