Louis Armstrong was always known as a very friendly and accommodating performer, one who put up with a lot of hardships because he loved to delight audiences.
In 1957, Armstrong surprised many by speaking out against President Dwight Eisenhower’s hesitant response to the Little Rock integration crisis, feeling that Eisenhower should have acted a lot faster in protecting African-American school children who were helping to integrate schools in Arkansas.
At the height of this disagreement and during a period of time when he was considered controversial, Armstrong appeared on the television show “Crescendo,” performing a brief instrumental version of “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen.”
Note his powerful quote of “The Star Spangled Banner”,” which symbolizes the fact that much of the trouble he was seeing at that point was due to the U.S. government.
-Scott Yanow
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