Louis Armstrong in Nelson and Duke Ellington in Trail

If the greatest name in jazz history performed in Nelson, how many people would turn up? Try 700.

That’s how many people were in the crowd to see Louis Armstrong at the Civic Arena in Nelson on April 7, 1952 — although the less-than-capacity crowd probably had less to do with public apathy than how quickly the show came together.

The man responsible for bringing Armstrong to town was D’Arcy Scott, an ambitious CKLN disc jockey, recently arrived from Calgary. Someone connected with a touring circuit suggested Armstrong wanted a stopover between Vancouver (where he performed several nights and a matinee at the New Palomar club, concluding on April 5) and Calgary (where he was due to perform on April 8 at the Stampede Corral). Scott quickly made arrangements to have him come to Nelson. The show was announced with only two days’ notice.

Ads from the Nelson Daily News, April 1952

Armstrong arrived in Castlegar the morning of the performance on a Canadian Pacific flight with singer Velma Middleton, drummer Cozy Cole, bassist Dale Jones, clarinetist Barney Bigard, pianist Marty Napoleon, and trombonist Russ Phillips. Also with them were Vancouver nightclub legends Joe and Ross Filippone, acting as promoters and publicity agents.

Nelson mayor Joe Kary officially greeted a “tired and beat” Armstrong, who murmured “spaghetti” in his gravelly voice as they posed for photos together. (When Kary died in 2008, one of those pictures was displayed at his funeral.) “It’s beautiful in this country,” Armstrong told the Nelson Daily News. “I’d love to spend a month here, just holidaying.” He also “pondered over” a collection of mineral samples in the lobby of the Hume Hotel. D’Arcy Scott was there to record the official welcome and interview Armstrong, which he broadcast on CKLN that afternoon and evening. Sadly, the tapes weren’t preserved for posterity.

Nelson mayor Joe Kary welcomes Louis Armstrong to Nelson. From the Nelson Daily News, April 8, 1952

Despite the last-minute advertising blitz, as people filed into the arena that evening, it became apparent the crowd would be smaller than for a regular season senior hockey game. (The arena was probably booked less for its size than lack of a more suitable venue. Famous Players had both the Civic and Capitol Theatre leases, and severely restricted their use for live performances.)

Michael Fraser, who was in the crowd that night, recalled in 2001 that as the band warmed up, D’Arcy Scott “quickly arranged a live hookup to the radio station. That, plus some word of mouth, got more people there to enjoy the real thing, but it was still a pretty sparse evening.” Fraser offered two more reasons for the modest crowd: it was a weeknight (a Monday) and Armstrong’s brand of jazz may have been regarded as old-fashioned by that time.

Those who did go, however, saw a legend in his prime. Armstrong “‘wowed’ hep-cats ... with his ‘hot’ trumpet, his hilarious comedy numbers and ad-libbing” in a “never-to-be-forgotten show,” the Daily News reported.

Crowds roared when he turned a common trumpet into the hottest item in show business. And did the fans love him! They gave him no rest, shouting for his famous Blueberry Hill, done up in Satchmo-style. Crowds poured from the seats to mill around the stage when Velma Middleton took the spotlight. A big little miss, decked in sequins and satin, she comes in triple-pleasingly-plump size and wowed them in a duet with Louis, That’s My Desire.

Shouts of “More, more, more!” followed Cozy Cole’s drum solo, and the audience roared in response to Dale Jones’ solo in I Don’t Want Nobody.

Armstrong himself was emcee, “his ad-libbing a masterpiece in showmanship.” He thrilled everyone “with a sweep of rhythmic patterns through all his numbers. A constant rising tension was felt throughout until that final high note came pouring from his lips.” But most of all they loved his voice. That and the “ever-present Satchmo smile,” which did “a lot to make Louis the master in his profession.”

The show was recorded by CKLN manager Alan Ramsden, who told me in 2007:

I had to go talk to Louis at the Hume Hotel and make the arrangements. He was quite happy with that. We set it up and I recorded the whole performance. When it was over, he said could you bring it to the hotel? We lugged this great big old tape recorder up to his hotel room and he listened to a little bit of it and said “Oh, that’s great. Just give me the tapes. They belong to me.”

Ramsden felt he had no choice but to comply. “There was no suggestion of paying for it or anything. I knew from the Copyright Act we had no right to do anything with them. We couldn’t have played them or anything. He left here with a full set of tapes of his performance in Nelson.” (The Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York has about 650 of his home-recorded reel-to-reel tapes. Alas, an archives assistant told me the Nelson concert is not among them.)

Alan Ramsden, 2008. (Greg Scott photo)

Ramsden didn’t think the recording would have sounded that great anyway. “It wasn’t anything he would turn into a record. The sound in the old Civic Arena was pretty godawful. Another thing that made it absolutely miserable: there was still ice in there and they had the old wooden floor down. It was pretty damn cold.” Even so, Ramsden recalled, “Louis used up at least a dozen handkerchiefs.”

He added Armstrong “was a very charming fellow. Not miserable or mean or selfish. He didn’t appear to be like ‘I’m the great Louis Armstrong.’ He was friendly and interesting — especially with hicks like us!”

Another interview for CKLN was recorded by Jim Carney (twin brother of future journalist and senator Pat), who hosted a jazz show on the station and wanted Armstrong as a guest. As Jim recalled in a memoir, prior to the show, he, Pat, and a friend, “wangled our way into the Hume Hotel’s dining room, me with a wire recorder. Louis was having his dinner, accompanied by a gentleman … dressed in a natty dark suit.”

Louis was vigorously attacking a steak, but confronted by three teenagers asking such earnest questions, he was incredibly welcoming and forthcoming. Several times, when I felt the time had come to leave the man to his dinner, I would begin to close down the interview, only to have Louis wave his steak knife and, still chewing, continue on with more thoughts and words of advice.

The three of us were planning to travel to Vancouver that fall to enroll at the University of British Columbia. We also hoped to attend the Duke Ellington concert at the Palomar Supper Club … When we mentioned this, the dark-suited man took out a business card and pen and wrote on the back of it “Admit three to Duke Ellington concert” such-and-such a date, signed it and handed it to us. We left the Hume Hotel floating on air!

(The dark-suited man was one of the Filippone brothers, who ran the Palomar.)

For Armstrong, who was at the peak of his career, Nelson was just another of the 300 shows he did each year, and he didn’t seem to mind the smaller crowd. “They didn’t come here hoping to get a lot of customers,” Ramsden said. “They set up a deal for a fixed fee — $5,000 or whatever it was. We did a lot of free advertising because it was a rush thing and because D’Arcy put it all together.”

(A few years later D’Arcy Scott organized another show for the Civic Arena starring Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, but moved it to the Cominco Arena in Trail.)

The Nelson show wasn’t Armstrong’s only visit to West Kootenay. He returned on Sept. 15, 1960, when he was bumped from a Canadian Pacific flight from Calgary to Penticton.

Armstrong, Middleton, and the rest of the band boarded without reservations, en route to a gig in Kelowna. When the plane landed in Castlegar, they were forced to get off because their seats were already sold. The Kelowna Jaycees, who sponsored the concert, then chartered three or four Cessnas for the band, while their 43 pieces of luggage went by car. During the wait, Armstrong chatted with locals at the airport.

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Duke Ellington was supposed to play in Nelson too, a couple of years later. The Daily News of March 8, 1954 reported the Civic Centre Commission was hoping to book him for a night in May. But just like the Johnny Cash show a few years later, the concert was moved to Trail instead. Ellington became one of an astounding list of performers to appear at the Cominco Arena in its early years, also including Lionel Hampton and Spike Jones.

Ellington’s concert took place on May 4 of that year and this time the crowd was pegged at 1,000. Ellington’s orchestra played for four hours, “ranging from hit parade tunes to jazz classics,” according to the Trail Daily Times.

Less than half the audience danced, most preferring to sit in the grandstand or gather around the bandstand listening to such musicians as Don Clark, on the drums, Catt Anderson on the trumpet, and the maestro himself on the keyboard. Highlight of the evening’s performance came when Jimmy Grissom, vocalist for the band, sang the haunting melody Flamingo.

Clark received an ovation for a “frenetic” drum solo. (Orchestra members may have also included Ray Nance, Britt Woodman, Paul Consalves, and James Hamilton, but it’s unclear.) Other songs on the setlist: Mood Indigo, Solitude, and Squeeze Me But Please Don’t Tease Me.  

A now-defunct website devoted to Duke Ellington carried a post from a man whose friend was there, which closely mirrored the newspaper account:

My friend remembers people dancing to some of Ellington’s numbers, including his parents, but many people stood at the edge of the stage and listened. His most vivid memory is a drum feature that roused the crowd to a frenzy. The drummer had two bass drums, my friend said, and by the time he finished his torrential solo his pant legs had slid up above his knees.

A few months after the Trail show, the Civic Centre commission was reported to again be negotiating with Ellington’s band, this time to appear in Nelson on Nov. 8, but it never happened.

With thanks to Ron Verzuh