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chapter 2 “I done forgot the words” Versioning Autobiography For Louis Armstrong, discussing his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings for Esquire was nothing out of the ordinary. Writing and typing were part of a daily encounter with the past. Two letters from his vast epistolary output elucidate the nature of this encounter. In 1952, he wrote to Betty Jane Holder about his work on Satchmo: I have to write between shows . . . And you can imagine, trying to write, and shaking hands with your fans at the same time. . . . But I managed to get in there, just the same. . . . So, you can tell everybody, that Ol’ Satchmo, has ‘Octopus hands . . . I have my tape recorder right here by my right side, which I have, pretty near all of my recordings, on reels . . . So, when I listen to my records, I can get food for thoughts, since I’m writing my life’s story. . . .1 Armstrong conveyed a similar scene to Marili Mardon a year later: “Why—in my dressing rooms—I just about do a dozen things at once, unconsciously —f’rinstance, giving an interview, to some wiseguy who barged in just at the time I’m typing some of my life’s story, and right into a real deep chapter, that I didn’t want to lose, and probably wouldn’t ever get a hold of that particular phrase again. Ya dig?” A few years earlier, he had already informed Leonard Feather: “My dressing room was so crowded at all times, until every time I made an attempt to write a paragraph they’d look at me so wistfull until I’d stop writing automatically.”2 At least four photographs document Armstrong’s disposition toward daily writing. They provide a visual frame for his life narratives as self-referential performances that invite the reader to witness the very moment of textual production. The best-known of the photographs was taken by Pop66 sie Randolph in the dressing room of New York’s Basin Street Club in 1955. It shows Armstrong at the typewriter as he is reading a letter or maybe even proofreading one of his own letters. He is facing a mirror, and the connection with autobiography as a genre of self-re›ection is readily apparent. Also visible is his trumpet in its case, as well as a scrapbook he used for his photo-collages. An earlier snapshot was taken by an unknown photographer in the early 1940s, and like Randolph’s photograph, it recalls the famous title formula of many slave narratives, “written by himself,” which is announced in texts such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845). Here, we see Armstrong typing in the kitchen of the Band Box, a Chicago nightclub, his trumpet resting behind him on a shelf.3 The third and fourth photographs, which were taken by Dennis Stock in 1958, depict Armstrong at the typewriter in his den at home in Corona, a place he frequently describes in his writings. Again there is a mirror, this time behind him, as well as photo-collages that include publicity shots from the 1930s and a photograph of Joe Glaser (who, in a sense, is watching over his shoulder). A musical dimension is also visible; the desk lamp to Armstrong’s left is shaped like a trumpet. Providing a verbal interface for these images, Armstrong wrote in a letter in 1967, “Daddy—here I am ‘sitting at my ‘Desk (“5. A M) in my den—at home in Corona,” and in the “Forward” to his Joke Book, a collection of jokes, sayings , and toasts he circulated among his friends, he noted: “Well folks . . . here I sit at this little Ol Typewriter of mine getting ready to write you the Forward of my book. [. . .] It’s actually real early in the morning . . . I’ve just gotten in off the road playing those hard ass one nighters.”4 The excerpt from Armstrong’s letter to Betty Jane Holder attests to the mnemonic power he ascribes to his own recordings. As the sonic traces of musicking—people and places cast in sound—they jumpstart his memory. The music, it seems, already contains episodes and experiences from his life, and by listening to his recordings, he relives these moments and translates a sonically encoded self (autos) and its life (bios) to writing (graphe): from recording to page via the medium of the typewriter. For readers of his correspondence, musical resonances...

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