HOW ACCURATE IS “A WONDERFUL WORLD: THE LOUIS ARMSTONG MUSICAL”?

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By CHIP DEFFAA

The lights go down in Broadway’s Studio 54.  And the theater is filled with the electrifying first notes of “West End Blues.”  We’re hearing the trumpet cadenza that Louis Armstrong created back in 1928.  And it is thrilling.  Armstrong’s original recording established that he was, beyond question, the jazz world’s king.  He played with an authority and rhythmic freedom that commanded attention.  In 1928, he was a revolutionary artist, showing countless musicians the direction to take;  countless musicians followed him.  And as Armstrong’s creation is being played “live” in Studio 54 tonight,  nearly a century after he first recorded it, we can’t help but become followers, too.

I’m attending a critics’ performance, just prior to the official Broadway opening night (November 11^th 2024) of “A Wonderful World: The Louis  Armstrong Musical.”  I’m excited to see this highly anticipated new musical about Armstrong (conceived by Andrew Delaplaine and Christopher Renshaw), which has been in development for several years.

The lights come up on stage and we see James Monroe Iglehart portraying an older Louis Armstrong, preparing to give a concert that will be a summing up of his 70 years of life. And as he begins  talking, he engages us.  Iglehart is not doing an imitation or impression of Armstrong, but he is capturing enough of his essence to bring Armstrong  vividly to life for us.  His voice, warm and gravelly and wise, suggests a life well-lived.

He begins telling us of his youth  in New Orleans.  His voice seems to lighten just a bit now.  His body language changes ever so slightly, too.  He seems to be getting younger before our eyes.  And the music comes up—“Basin Street Blues” and “Bourbon Street Parade.”  And now we’re in New Orleans, early in the 20^th century.  And we’re feeling it.  And we’re smiling.

It’s more than just the good old music (arranged and orchestrated with zest and appropriate period feel  by Branford Marsalis); it’s the totality of what we’re experiencing.  It’s the dazzling set design by Adam Koch and Steven Royal, and the costumes by Toni-Leslie James, and the lighting by Cory Patak.  And the sound design by Kai Harada is first-rate; everything feels so natural; nothing is over-amplified.

 When Iglehart picks up his horn, an unseen professional musician  is actually doing the trumpeting for him, but the illusion that Iglehart himself is playing is perfect. And now, we totally buy it all; he’s young Louis Armstrong  at the start of his career.  He beckons us to come along with him, and we do.

The show’s sheer vitality is irresistible.  And Iglehart—perhaps best known in the theater world for his Tony Award-winning role as the Genie in Disney’s Broadway production of “Aladdin”—is giving us a very human, and very memorable, performance.  He really does a remarkable job, capturing  Armstrong’s inflections, expressions, and spirit.  And I’m so glad I saw him.  (An alternate, James T. Lane, will be playing the demanding role of  Armstrong on Monday and Wednesday performances.)  There are fine contributions from supporting players Dewitt Fleming Jr., Jimmy Smagula, Gavin Gregory, Dionne Figgins, Jennie Harney-Fleming, Kim Exum, Darlesia Cearcy,

  The 30-song score—drawn from songs associated with Armstrong–includes such great numbers as “Dinah,” “It’s Tight Like That,” “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?,” “When You’re Smiling,”  “Hello, Dolly!,” and “What a Wonderful World.” (I might add, there are plenty of other Armstrong-related  numbers that I wish had been included in this musical, but there’s a great deal to relish just in the songs I’ve mentioned.) Daryl G. Ivey leads a nine-piece band, with Alphonso Horne and Bruce Harris handling the trumpeting, that is a treat to hear.

Some musical numbers are positioned brilliantly in the show to have maximum impact, including “I’ll be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You” (which Armstrong, in one scene,  cheerfully, subversively  dedicates  to some racist Southern policemen), “Up a Lazy River” (the gentle sentimentality of the song juxtaposed with a lynching), “What Did I Do to be So Black and Blue?”  (which Armstrong always performed to devastating effect,–and Iglehart nails it).  I loved, too, the smart way they’ve positioned Armstrong’s “Back O’Town Blues”—so that the song is suggesting to  us, accurately, that Armstrong (who was married four times) had more women in his life than the ones he married.  The song gains greater impact from smart context-placement.

So many of the numbers in the show are swung with such ease and such joy, I defy anyone not to respond with a smile.  In one early scene, a musician is playing a record that he says is “the latest craze.”  And we hear Al Jolson’s classic original 1920 recording of “Avalon.”  The musician says he wishes the band could play that number tonight but they don’t have the sheet music.  Armstrong says they don’t need sheet music; he shows them what to do, and they’re soon performing the number with timeless charm and grace.  I was beaming.

“A Wonderful World,” like most shows, has its share of flaws, too.  There were significant historical inaccuracies and omissions that bothered me, and I’ll discuss some of those in a bit.

 But for most theater-goers, I think  this show’s strengths will far outweigh the weaknesses.  The show captures well many key moments in Armstrong’s life. (And I loved the well-crafted scene in which Armstrong meets Lincoln Perry—portrayed to perfection by Dewitt Fleming Jr.—who discusses the realities of racism in Hollywood.)   I like the way the show mixes darker moments with lighter ones.

 I hope the show, which  held me from beginning to end, enjoys a long run.    The audience, at the critics’ preview performance that I attended, responded enthusiastically.  And Lord knows, Louis Armstrong was such an extraordinary artist, he deserves to be celebrated in a big, bright, splashy Broadway musical.

As a jazz devotee, I have some specific complaints about this musical that many theater-goers who are not jazz devotees may not have. And I’ll share some of my complaints in a bit.  But there’s so much to savor in this show, I’ve chosen to  note its  good qualities first.  I’ll get to my reservations shortly.  But I liked so much of this show  and will be returning to see it again.  And James Monroe Iglehart is giving the performance of a lifetime.

My criticisms about “A Wonderful World” are meant to be constructive.  I’d like the show to be as good as possible. Armstrong deserves it.  I might also add, Armstrong is one of my all-time favorite artists and has been since, at age nine,  I first found a vintage Armstrong 78 rpm record among my parents’ and grandparents’ old records in the basement.  Eventually I collected every Armstrong recording I could  find  He could create magic at every stage of his career.

 

In this article,  I’d like to discuss not just how “A Wonderful World” works as theater, but also how accurately it tells Armstrong’s story.

Let me mention one thing that I really like about this show.  Aurin Squire, who wrote the libretto, has a terrific ear for dialogue. (I’m looking forward to seeing see more of his work.)  And the dialogue, in the show’s best scenes, crackles with life.  Here’s a taste…. Armstrong, having moved from his home town of New Orleans to Chicago, is  telling someone how much he misses the women of New Orleans.  Asked if they’re soft and delicate, Armstrong answers: “No, they’ll poison your tea, stab you in the back, and steal a lock of hair to put a voodoo hex on you… but they’re ladies about it.”  He misses, too, he says, the “sweet ‘n’ smoky, chicory swamp smell” of his home town.  And when he’s told that New Orleans had “poverty, mosquitoes, and crocodiles,”  he responds simply: “Alligators.  We ain’t have no crocodiles.” Wonderfully evocative–and wonderfully rhythmic–dialogue.

So much of the dialogue feels just right—it’s natural, conversational, and perfectly fitting the characters speaking the lines—that the occasional awkward moments stand out as if they’d been grafted onto the script by another writer.  Let me give an example or two of scenes that didn’t quite work for me.

The lines in which bandleader Fate Marable, for whom Armstrong is then working, tries to describe Armstrong’s style (circa 1920) are confusing and don’t really tell us anything.  It makes little sense to have Marable say: “I don’t know what this is. It’s big band Dixieland style music”—especially when Armstrong is seen playing in that scene with only a small group, not a big band,  And it doesn’t help to have someone then ask Marable, who’s just stated that he doesn’t know how to describe Armstrong’s style: “What style are you boys playing?”  That’s muddled writing and should be cut.

Here’s a more significant gaffe.   Pianist Lil Hardin, Armstrong’s second wife, is seen as pushing her husband to make more of himself. (And in real life, she did indeed push her husband to make more of himself.)  But she’s not just pushing him.  Speaking of herself, she tells him, rather didactically: “I AM the greatest.  But no one wants to hear that.  When I say you’re the greatest, people won’t laugh.  Hell, people want to believe in you.  So, if I can’t make it, at least I can help you get there.”

To me, that doesn’t sound like a real conversation between a woman and her husband. It’s preachy.  It sounds like a speech to the audience in which the playwright wants a character  to publicly announce her motivation.  It feels like the playwright is trying  to send a message (in too obvious a way)   that  sexism can prevent women from reaching their potential.   But the scene, as written and performed,   did not ring true to me.  I don’t  believe that  Lil Hardin ever said to her husband, “If I can’t make it, at least I can help you,” much less that he then agreed with her statement.  That scene  feels contrived, tendentious.  (And in real life, I might add, Armstrong was well aware that Lil’s musical abilities were nowhere near as great as his own.)

The playwright doesn’t just depict Lil Hardin as a helpingLouis Armstrong, but as making artistic decisions for him, controlling him.  And that definitely does not ring true.  The script has her telling him, in 1923, to quit King Oliver’s big band to go on the road with a five-piece band of his own.  Why a five-piece band?  She tells Armstrong: “We go smaller. Easier to travel on the road.  King Joe has got so many musicians he spends half his time managing them.  Five people.”  Armstrong protests: “Five people?!? You can’t play New Orleans jazz with five people.”  She insists: “Five people, and we already got two in the band: you and me.  So, we only need three more.”  She’s calling the shots here, telling him what size band he’ll be touring with. The show would have us believe that Armstrong then  does exactly what she’s ordered him to do.

The problem with this scene—which emasculates Louis Armstrong—is that it never happened.  Armstrong didn’t leave King Oliver in 1923 to go on the road with a small group, following orders given to him by Lil Hardin.  After he left King Oliver, he performed in public for the next two dozen years almost always with big bands.  And when he finally did take his own big band on the road, I might add, it did not include Lil Hardin. He left her behind.

Armstrong didn’t begin touring with small groups (his famed “All Stars”)–and then only due to economic necessity–until the late 1940s, many years after he divorced Lil.  In the 1920s, of course, he made  celebrated small-group recordings (his “Hot Five” and “Hot Seven” recordings)—but those were recording bands, put together just for recording sessions; they were not his working bands.  Their small size was dictated  by how much record companies were then willing to pay.  The part in “A Wonderful World” about Lil Hardin  encouraging her husband to leave King Oliver to become a star in his own right is true; but the suggestion that she dictated what type of band he should have is absurd.

All biographical shows take some artistic liberties, and I’m fine with that so long as they serve some greater purpose, and illuminate some larger truths.  But that scene is hard to justify.  It is historically inaccurate and it makes Armstrong seem weak.  (I might add that in his own writings Armstrong comes across as much stronger and more heroic than he does in this musical play. Over the years  I’ve interviewed many musicians who knew Armstrong—Clark Terry, Buck Clayton, Doc Cheatham, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Bob Haggart, Marty Napoleon, Arvell Shaw, etc., along with Armstrong’s own erstwhile neighbors—and they all remembered a man stronger, happier,  and surer of himself than the Armstrong we see in this show.)

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One other scene in the show  that did not ring true for me was a scene, late in Armstrong’s life, in which his fourth wife, Lucille—after many, many  years of marriage—has apparently just discovered that he’s had extramarital liaisons.  She puts her foot down, declaring that if he keeps “running around,” their marriage is over.  He then gets down on his knees and begs her forgiveness, saying: “I’m sorry, Lucille.  Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”  She says: “I need you to think of someone other than yourself.”  He promises her: “I’m fine with your new rules because I’m going to be a new man.  I’m going to do exactly like you said. Imma change.”  That dialogue made me cringe. The writer of those lines may have wanted Lucille to come across as  strong, setting the terms of their marriage, to which Armstrong then obediently complies.  But that’s some writer’s imagination of how things should have happened, not an honest representation of Armstrong’s marriage.   And it conventionalizes Armstrong.

 I knew various musicians who toured with Armstrong.  For countless years, he toured seemingly nonstop.  Lucille did not want to accompany him on all of those grueling one-nighters; she usually chose to stay back in their comfortable home in Queens, New York.  Armstrong was not about to live like some celibate monk throughout all of those years on the road.  He had  outside sexual liaisons during his years of marriage to Lucille, continuing a lifelong pattern. She knew that  he didn’t feel bound by promises of monogamy.  (His involvement with Lucille, who became his fourth wife, started while he was still married to his third wife, Alpha, just as his involvement with Alpha began while he was still married to his second wife, Lil; and his involvement with Lil began while he was still married to his first wife, Daisy.)  And there were always going to be plenty of temptations for a popular musician on tour.

 But sexual encounters on the road, for the most part,  did not mean all that much to Armstrong; his wife, Lucille, as musicians put it, “was the one he went home to,” the one he bought great gifts for when he came home from his tours.  And she was aware of his extramarital activity.  There was a tacit understanding.  In Lawrence Bergreen’s definitive biography, “Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life,” Bergreen quotes Armstrong as explaining to one of his friends: “Know what I always tell my Lucille?  Pay no mind to all them chippies, honey.  You just remember you my one an’ only missus.”

There are lots of ways couples can make a marriage work.  Throughout Armstrong’s life, Bergreen notes, Armstrong never limited himself to having just one woman in his life.  And Armstrong said many times in his life, as Bergreen also noted, that making music was his top priority; his trumpet, not his wife, came first in his life.

“A Wonderful Life” also has Lucille discovering that Armstrong has fathered a child out of wedlock, and then declaring to him: “Baby’s going to need food and clothing.  Mother’s going to need assistance.”  Lucille is depicted in the show as being the adult here, telling her husband to take responsibility.  In reality, according to Bergreen’s biography, Lucille thought Armstrong was being played by the woman who claimed he was the father of her child, and did not think he should be paying her anything when there was no proof the child was even his.  (And since Armstrong had not ever gotten any of his four wives pregnant, Lucille had some reason to be skeptical that he had gotten some supposed girlfriend pregnant.) But Louis Armstrong chose to provide support.

Some artistic liberties are to be expected in any biographical show or film. Writers often have to create composite characters and compress events for dramatic purposes; that’s standard practice.  And you can take a certain number of liberties while still communicating essential truths.   But this show, in my opinion, takes too many liberties.  And small mistakes—if too many are made—can have a way of adding up.

  Let me mention another spot or two where “A Wonderful Life,”  I feel, would have been better off sticking to the facts.

To its credit, the musical  accurately shows the gutsy way that Armstrong, in 1957, publicly called out President Eisenhower for not doing enough to combat racial prejudice in the South; Armstrong pulled no punches in voicing his anger about racism in America.  It enraged Armstrong when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus sought to preserve segregation in public schools–even though the Supreme Court had ruled it illegal–and President Eisenhower, in Armstrong’s opinion, dithered.  Armstrong  told a reporter that the President could go to hell.

It took courage on Armstrong’s part, to speak out the way he did in 1957.  (All performers—especially Black performers—were urged by their managers to avoid controversial political speech, lest they antagonize potential fans.)   The musical shows us Armstrong’s outrage over racism.   And I’m glad it does.

But then–the musical would have us believe–Armstrong could not get bookings anymore.  The musical dramatically shows Armstrong’s manager, Joe Glaser, vainly trying to get Armstrong gigs; but now, because Armstrong has spoken out, everyone Glaser calls hangs up on him!  No one wants to hire Armstrong!  Glaser can’t get Armstrong concert bookings or anything else.  We see Glaser vainly pleading, begging everyone he knows to give Armstrong even the tiniest of jobs: “Listen, I…I need a favor. I’ll take anything. I’ll take a toothpaste jingle for Louis.”  But everyone Glaser calls  hangs up the phone on him.

It’s all very dramatic. And I’m sure many audience members—not to mention reviewers—accepted what the show tells us happened here as being factual.  (The reviewer for “Variety,” the showbiz Bible, wrote that  when Armstrong “spoke out about the horrific treatment of the Little Rock Nine in 1957, he was blacklisted in Hollywood for several years.” )

But the truth is… that never happened.    Armstrong continued to give acclaimed concerts, make club appearances, perform vibrantly in films and on TV, and record acclaimed albums. Oh, some disc jockeys briefly stopped playing his records, waiting to see how the public responded to his comments criticizing the US government for not doing enough to advance civil right.  And one college in the deep South, in that Jim Crow era, canceled an Armstrong concert.  But these were minor blips, and they did not affect his career.  He chose not to do one State Department-sponsored foreign tour; Benny Goodman went in his place.  He did another State Department-sponsored tour a couple of years later.

But Armstrong  was not “blacklisted” after speaking out in 1957.   He continued to work nonstop, year after year,  for as long as his health permitted.  In 1958, for example, he made the terrific motion picture “The Five Pennies” (released in 1959)—his best film work to date. That same year, he recorded a memorable album with Ella Fitzgerald for one label, and an album of spirituals and such for another label.  In 1960, he made one album  in tribute to King Oliver and another album teamed with Bing Crosby.  In1961, he made two albums with Duke Ellington, and so on.  He did one major television show after another:  “The Steve Allen Show” in 1958, the “All-Star Christmas Show” in 1958, the “Timex All Star Jazz Show” three times in 1958-59, “The Bing Crosby Show” in 1959, “This is Your life” in 1960, etc. He toured tirelessly, often playing 300 dates a year. No artist worked harder.   He was unstoppable.   And he was a principled man.  His All-Stars were always racially mixed.  He turned down bookings in the Jim Crow South if he was told he could only appear with an all-Black band.  (For many years he avoided his home state, Louisiana, altogether, because Louisiana held onto policies against racial mixing for so long.)

I do not know why the musical could not have stuck to the truth in its scenes about Louis Armstrong and civil rights.  The reality is that by 1957, Armstrong  was such a beloved  American institution that he could sharply criticize the President, and speak out strongly against America’s  treatment of its Black citizens, and his career continued to thrive. His public stayed with him.  And by his courageous example,  he  helped inspire others to speak out.

  I don’t know why the creators of this show chose to invent this fiction that Armstrong was blacklisted because he spoke out against racism; it’s as if they’re  trying to portray Armstrong in this musical–as much as possible–as a victim.  Why?  Why not show Armstrong’s strength, his resilience, and the unshakeable bond he formed with the public?

And if you’re going to show—correctly—Armstrong’s fury in 1957 with the US government for not doing enough for the cause of civil rights, you ought to also show Armstrong’s subsequent public approval when Eisenhower finally sent federal troops to Arkansas to ensure that schools were integrated; that’s part of the story, too.  Armstrong sent Eisenhower a telegram saying: “If you decide to walk into the schools with the little colored kids, take me along, Daddy.  God Bless you.” That should be in the play as well; but it’s not.

The show has a long sequence about Armstrong’s experiences in Hollywood.  They have some good, important points to make about the racism Armstrong found when he arrived in Hollywood, how Black actors were expected to play subservient characters, and were often treated like second-class-citizens.  And Dewitt Fleming Jr. (whom I’d enjoyed so much portraying Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in another musical, “The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas,” earlier this year) is excellent playing the Black actor known to movie-goers as “Stepin Fetchit” (real name: Lincoln Perry).  His words to Armstrong on making the best of unfair situations are wise and they ring true. And Fleming’s dancing in this scene is a joy.  I liked that scene a lot.

But the Hollywood sequence eventually comes to feel heavy-handed because it gives the impression that Armstrong experienced only shabby, demeaning racist treatment in Hollywood, that—once again—he was primarily a victim.

 I’d have preferred a more complete, honest, and nuanced account.  Armstrong was indeed hurt that he did not feel fully welcomed as person when he went to Hollywood, that stars who were friendly with him on movie sets did not invite him to their homes.  And in his early film appearances, he was, alas,  often cast in stereotypical, subservient roles.  That was the reality of the period.

 But in time Armstrong eventually got to contribute first-rate performances, with dignity,  in important film musicals—like “The Glenn Miller Story,” “High Society,” and “The Five Pennies”—simply playing himself.    He was justly proud of his work in such major motion pictures.  He was paid well.  And  top industry pros worked hard and with care to showcase him brilliantly.  All of that was part of  Armstrong’s Hollywood experience, too—but it’s not shown in this musical.

The musical would be richer if it gave us a fuller, truer sense of Armstrong’s life, rather than suggesting he simply suffered in Hollywood.

Armstong’s work in “The Five Pennies”—the  delightful film biography of jazz cornetist Red Nichols—was incandescent. Armstrong was never captured better on screen.   For this film, Oscar-nominated songwriter Sylvia Fine (Danny Kaye’s wife) wrote special lyrics for “When the Saints Go Marching In” for Armstrong and Kaye to sing.  (Reedman Heinie Beau and pianist Bobby Hammack—who were sidemen and arrangers for Nichols in that period—were hired to work as arrangers on “When the Saints Go Marching In.”)  The duet on “the Saints” that Fine and co. created for Armstrong and Kaye was just perfect—a high point in that terrific film (and in the film careers of both Armstrong and Kaye).  Armstrong and Kaye also performed that marvelous  special version of “The Saints” (which Sylvia Fine devised, and copyrighted under the title of “The Five Pennies Saints”) on Kaye’s television show.

In the musical “A Wonderful World”—as part of the sequence showing how badly Armstrong was supposedly always treated by Hollywood—Armstrong sings “When the Saints Go Marching In” with a white performer (a made-up character called “Charlie,” identified only as a “crooner”).  The white performer is stiff, he doesn’t swing; we’re  being told that Armstrong’s being teamed with a notably lesser white performer.  And they go into a version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” that is clearly derived from Sylvia Fine’s clever original version.  Oh, the names of musicians listed in the special lyrics may be different here, but the concept, the format, the wit, the overall feel, have all been swiped from Sylvia Fine’s creation.  In the Broadway show’s version, as in Fine’s original, Armstrong gets a laugh by responding to one singer’s name with “Gesundheit!”  More laughs come when the other singer starts imitating Armstrong  and Armstrong comments on what he’s doing; then there are the mock complaints that the singing is now “too high,” now “too low.”     It’s all borrowed, without any kind of attribution or  credit, from Fine’s creation (and that was  the sort of special material that Fine was unsurpassed at writing).  Only here it’s being done less well than it was done in “The Five Pennies,” and Armstrong is depicted as having to work with a much weaker white artist.   But why?  That’s not factual. Armstrong’s duets with Danny Kaye worked very well.  So did  Armstrong’s   various  memorable duets (in film, on the radio, and on TV) with  Bing Crosby (who fought to get Armstrong into his pictures).  (Crosby and Kaye were the two major white artists with whom Armstrong  did duets onscreen.) Armstrong, Kaye, and Crosby were all great talents with great rapport, and great admiration for one another. The scene in the musical showing Armstrong being forced to duet with some lame white performer on “The Saints” doesn’t ring true, and the duet on “The Saints” in this musical  isn’t nearly as effective as it was in the film “The Five Pennies.”  It rubbed me the wrong way.

There are other musical missteps in “A Wonderful World.” For example, Armstrong follows his mentor and idol, King Oliver, from New Orleans to Chicago, to join his band.  That’s an important moment in jazz history.  Armstrong first began to make a name for himself  when he joined Oliver in Chicago in 1922, recording in the next year such classic Oliver compositions as “Canal Street Blues,” “Chimes Blues,” and “Dippermouth Blues” (named in honor of Armstrong).   It would be logical to have King Oliver playing one of his own famed compositions in this scene.

But for some wholly inexplicable reason, they have Oliver—1n 1922—playing instead one of Duke Ellington’s signature compositions, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if Ain’t Got that Swing” (which was written a full 10 years later in 1932).  That makes no sense.  And it bothered me a lot. Ellington was an unknown  in 1922.  King Oliver was just about at his peak.  Why not have an Oliver number here?  The show then compounds the error by having Amstrong tells Oliver, admiringly: “Man, I ain’t never heard music like that.”   Armstrong is depicted as being almost in awe of what Oliver is playing.

Armstrong may have started as, in effect,  a student of Oliver’s, but he soon eclipsed his teacher.  “A Wonderful World”  does not make clear Armstong’s tremendous importance as an artist. He was the first major soloist in jazz history.  No musician in jazz history ever exerted a greater influence than Armstrong.  (As one of his sidemen, clarinetist Joe Muranyi,  put it, in one of my jazz books, “Armstrong was the fountainhead.”)  The musical concepts Armstrong  developed in the 1920s and early ‘30s, influenced countless musicians;  everybody began trying to swing music the way he did.  As both an instrumentalist and a vocalist, Armstrong profoundly influenced the direction that music took.  Ellington’s composition “It Don’t Mean a thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing” is built upon the musical foundation  that Armstrong laid down; it would not have existed without Armstrong.

I don’t expect a terrific playwright, like Squire, to necessarily be an expert in jazz history.  Not do I expect that of this show’s director, Christopher Renshaw; co-directors James Monroe Iglehart and Christina Sajous; or dramaturg Faye Price. (An awful  lot of hands worked on this show!)  Nor do I expect it of choreographer Rickey Tripp, associate choreographer Aurelia Michael,  or tap choreographer Dewitt Fleming Jr., all of whom have done excellent work.   They’ve created an entertaining show, rich with music,  that anyone could enjoy.  And it’s warmly recommended.

But the show would be much stronger and truer to history if some of its flaws could be fixed.  I also wish a way could have been found to include more of Armstrong’s  trumpeting—like his widely admired solos on, say, “Potato Head Blues,” “Wild Man Blues,” or “Gully Low Blues” from the 1920s or “Swing that Music,”  “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” or “Jubilee” from the 1930s; they’re masterworks, and they make clear his unsurpassed skill at constructing and executing jazz solos.  I’m not sure if you could find trumpeters who could carry off –eight times a week–Armstrong’s soaring trumpet fantasies like his 1930s versions of “Swing that Music” and “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue.”  But it’d be worth trying, if only to more fully represent Armstrong’s work as an artist.  (You’d also need to hire a few more musicians  if you want to properly represent Armstrong’s big-band work; this musical has for example,  just one reedman, not a reed section—which is fine when you’re evoking small-group performances; but one reedman can  never sound like a section.)

 I have a feeling the  creators of this show appreciated Armstrong’s pop side more than his jazz side.  I like both sides; but I wish the show did a better job of presenting  Armstrong’s strengths as a jazz musician.   I loved hearing Armstrong’s great trumpet cadenza on “West End Blues” at the start of the show.    But I wish we could have heard the whole number from beginning to end–including Armstrong’s soulful wordless vocal–not just that classic credenza.  It was a bit frustrating for me to hear only that superb introduction, when Armstrong performed the whole number so magnificently.  You can’t simply slice-and-dice  a performance that Armstrong conceived as a cohesive whole.

The score of “A Wonderful World” includes songs  like “Kiss of Fire,” “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” “I Double Dare You,” and “Got a Bran’ New Suit” that were popular, but don’t reflect Armstrong’s  importance as an artist as well as some of his jazzier numbers would have.

The show, generally speaking,  places more of an emphasis on Armstrong’s  singing than on his trumpeting.  You’d never know from this show what a tremendous impact Armstrong had as a jazz musician before he ever sang his first popular song.  Audience members watching this show who do not already know Armstrong’s story well will not know why Armstrong was so important in jazz history. The show does not clearly explain or show his contributions.

There are some scenes in the show that at present are pretty good, but with only a little tweaking would pay off much better.

For example, Armstrong loved to tell the story of how, when he was recording the song “Heebie Jeebies” in 1926, he accidentally dropped the sheet music so he could not continue to sing the actual lyrics.  Without missing a beat, he always said, he then began improvising nonsense syllables instead.

That scene is included in the musical “A Wonderful Life.”  But the most important thing– just why that moment was significant–is not told.  The average theater-goer would have no idea, just from watching the scene in the musical, of why Armstrong’s recording of “Heebie Jeebies”  moment mattered.  But we’re pretty much  witnessing the birth of jazz scat-singing.  And that information needs to be conveyed.

Oh, there were other instances, prior to that date, of singers occasionally including nonsense syllables on records.(George M. Cohan even wrote some songs that featured nonsense syllables.)   But it was Armstrong—with his groundbreaking, highly popular and influential recording of “Heebie Jeebies” (and other popular Armstrong records in that spirit that followed)–that put scat-singing on the map, that established scat singing as an essential part of jazz.  And Armstrong  confidently placed his nonsense syllables with the same rhythmic freedom that he placed his notes in his trumpet solos.  Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Jon Hendricks and others would, in subsequent years, build on the foundation Armstrong was laying down that day; but their scat  singing would not have existed without his.  The “Heebie Jeebies” scene in “A Wonderful Life” will have greater impact if  the audience understands what they’re witnessing.

The show concludes with Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World.”  Here,  as always, James Monroe Iglehart sings effectively. I enjoyed his singing and acting tremendously throughout the show.  But the scene could—and should—have much greater impact than it does at present.  The song does not land nearly as powerfully as it should.

“What a Wonderful World” is a great song; Armstrong’s famous original recording is terrifically satisfying.  Armstrong sings with such complete conviction, sincerity, warmth, and authority, we can’t help but feel moved.  We believe every word of that poignant song.  We feel him reaching out, in a sense, to embrace the whole world.  And that really is Armstrong.

But in this musical, at present, the song “A Wonderful World” feels almost tacked-on, almost like an afterthought.  We’ve been waiting to hear the song all night.  It is, after all, the title song of this musical.  It is an Armstrong-associated song that everyone in the audience knows.  We can see in the Playbill that it will be the final musical number.

This show has Armstrong sharing with us his life story.  This song  serves as his final statement on life.  And everything that’s happened in the show has to build up to this song.  The song should have an inevitable quality;  we should believe  that, given the life we’ve seen the main character live in this musical, this song is the way he must feel at this point.

But the musical has given us a Louis Armstrong who has so often been a victim of  bad treatment, and has so strongly voiced bitter outrage, that the sweetness of this song doesn’t feel like a logical outgrowth of what’s come before.

I mean, this musical has Armstrong—just two songs before he sings  “What a Wonderful World”—singing a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that drips with acid.  The musical has Armstrong bitterly singing:

“OH SAY, CAN YOU SEE

BY THE PROUD BULLSHIT LIES

WHO SO GALLANTLY LYNCHED

AT THE TWILIGHT’S BURNING CROSS,

WHOSE BROAD KLANS AND BRIGHT REDNECKS

THROUGH THE PERILOUS FUCKS,

 O’ER THE RAMPARTS THEY BEAT,

TORTURED, WHIPPED, US INTO THE GRAVE.”

And those words carry a lot of weight.  Theater-goers might reasonably assume Armstrong must have said these sharp words; but they’re the playwright’s words, not Armstrong’s.

If the musical wants us to believe that this stringent, furious version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” expresses what Armstrong was really feeling late in his life, then the musical  has to do a lot more to get us to believe, just a couple of songs later, that Armstrong went around saying to himself—sincerely and without irony– “WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD.”

The world he’s lived in—as depicted in this musical—doesn’t seem all that wonderful.  If we’re expected to fully buy the final song, it needs to be set up better.  We need to believe that Armstrong’s final statement on life would be this upbeat. His philosophy of life needs to be presented better.   This musical isn’t setting up that final song as well as it should.  Armstrong, in real life, possessed great strength, great optimism, and an extraordinarily generous spirit—more so than we’re shown in this musical.

Even so, I was glad to hear “What a Wonderful World,” which so many of us know so well.  And I was singing along in my head, as Iglehart sang the heartfelt lyrics.  And he was coming to my own favorite lines in the whole song…. and those lines, to my surprise, were cut.    I couldn’t believe it!

  I mean, it bothered me that “West End Blues,” which opens the show, was given the slice-and-dice treatment.  But now “What a Wonderful World,” which closes the show, was also getting the treatment.  These are the lines that they decided to cut from the song:

“I HEAR BABIES CRY,

I WATCH THEM GROW.

THEY’LL LEAR MUCH MORE

THAN I’LL EVER KNOW,

AND I THINK TO MYSELF,

‘WHAT A WONDSERFUL WORLD.’”

You need those lines!  They remind us of the whole cycle of life; they connect Armstrong with the gentle innocence of babies.  And Armstrong sang them so humbly, so tenderly.

But they’ve been excised from the song in this show.  Why?  Why cut those eight bars?  The song simply isn’t quite as satisfying in this condensed form.   Can’t two of Armstrong’s signature numbers be rendered whole?

There’s much I loved in this show.  But its shortcomings troubled me.

Why?

 Because Armstrong matters.  He was one of the most important and influential creative artists of this 20^thcentury  This musical fails to show why he was important, what his contributions were.  He was a trailblazer as an instrumentalist and as a vocalist.  In his career, he broke new ground, artistically speaking, in many ways.  He also helped break down racial barriers.  It made news at the time—although it’s not mentioned in this  musical—that in city after city, he was the first Black artist to appear in key theaters.

And he was a bigger person—wiser, stronger, more generous in spirit—than the character shown here.

A lot of money has been invested in this show since its first incarnation was presented by Miami New Drama in 2021.   Respected, savvy  producers—including Carl. D. White and Martian Entertainment, , the John Gore Organization, Remmel T. Dickinson, Vanessa Williams, Thomas E. Rodgers Jr. Irene Gandy—have joined with Roundabout Theater Company (Scott Ellis, Interim Artistic Director)—to bring this highly anticipated show to Broadway.  Armstrong is such an important figure, a well-done show about him should have a great future life—in New York, on tour, regionally.  This show could be the basis for a great—and long-overdue=film musical someday, too.   But get the facts right!  Numerous errors—small and large—gradually add up. With all of the time and money put into this project, I’m surprised they didn’t bring in an expert on Armstrong and early jazz history to advise.

It’s a good show.  And—despite its flaws—more entertaining than most shows that open on Broadway.  But Armstrong deserves the greatest possible show.

–CHIP DEFFAA