"SOME ENGAGEMENT":

About to embark on a southern tour for the first time, Louis Armstrong was leaving behind the comfort of the police escort that kept him safe in Chicago. He needed a bodyguard and decided to hire a friend from his past, drummer "Little" Joe Lindsey. Armstrong was once the cornetist in Lindsey's Brown Skin Jazz Band, one of his first professional experiences as a musician. He also invited his down-on-his-luck New Orleans friend--and "one of the all-around gamblers of that period"--"Professor" Sherman Cook to be his valet and serve as something of a personal secretary. New Orleans was his eventual destination and it would help to have two homeboys to keep him safe in the south.

Kentucky was the first stop for what was billed as "Louis Armstrong of Screen, Stage and Record Fame and His Okeh Recording Orchestra"; multiple advertisements played up Armstrong's appearance in Ex-Flame, further proof of the importance of this film at this point in his career. They played a dance date on May 15th at the Club Madrid, the night before the Kentucky Derby, and followed that with a "Kentucky Derby Ball" in Louisville.

"We were the first colored band ever to play that, and that was some engagement," saxophonist George James recalled. Collins had to take gigs wherever he could find them, which meant following the Kentucky sojourn by traveling back up north to Detroit to play opposite McKinney's Cotton Pickers at the Graystone Ballroom and Jean Goldkette's Orchestra at the Blue Lantern.

Armstrong's reed-heavy band cooked on stage, and in guitarist Mike McKendrick they had a good "straw boss" to discipline the members and make sure they were always ready when they needed to be. Bassist John Lindsay of New Orleans (no relation to Joe) joined in Detroit, a solid addition who locked in with drummer Tubby Hall to form a potent rhythm team. But what the band really needed was a music director and in Detroit, they found one in trumpeter Zilner T. Randolph.

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