THE NATURAL:

Armstrong's own unpublished and uncollected writings found their way into print with the publication in 1999 of Joshua Berrett's Louis Armstrong Companion and Thomas Brothers' Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings. These books showed him as he was, not as others wished or imagined him to be, and the bluntness with which he spoke his mind from beyond the grave gave the lie to a half-century of abuse that Ossie Davis, who acted opposite him in A Man Called Adam, summed up in a reminiscence of their brief acquaintance: "Most of the fellows I grew up with, myself included, we used to laugh at Louis Armstrong. We knew he was good, but that didn't save him from our malice and our ridicule. Everywhere we'd look, there'd be Louis--sweat popping, eyes bugging, mouth wide open, grinning, oh my Lord, from ear to ear....mopping his brow, ducking his head, doing his thing for the white man." Davis changed his mind after meeting Armstrong, concluding that his horn was "where Louis kept his manhood hid all those years...enough for him...enough for all of us." But if he had ever felt the need to hide it, he did so in plain sight, and the admiring musicians who knew him best never doubted that he was not just a man but a miracle. Some, like Teddy Wilson, emphasized his artistry: "I don't think there has been a musician since Armstrong who had all the factors in balance, all the factors equally developed. Such a balance was the essential thing about Beethoven, I think, and Armstrong, like Beethoven, had this high development of balance. Lyricism. Delicacy. Emotional outburst. Rhythm. Complete mastery of his horn." Others spoke of his humanity. "As I watched him and talked with him, I felt he was the most natural man," the pianist Jaki Byard said. "Playing, talking, singing, he was so perfectly natural the tears came to my eyes." But all agreed on his greatness, and marveled that such a being had walked the earth.

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