Louis Armstrong High Society Film (1956) 

Sharing this story as will be celebrating the film High Society on Saturday December 6th, 2025 at a special Sinatra Event. 

THANK YOU TO RICKY RICCARDI OF THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG MUSEUM FOR SHARING THIS SPECIAL LOUIS STORY! (especially in Louis own words:)ky Riccardi of the Louis Armstrong Museum. He kindly shared about Louis, who appeared in High Society along with Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Celeste Holm, and Grace Kelly.

On February 6, 1956, Louis was resting a home nursing an eye infection, brought on by the cigarette holder he used while filming High Society. For take after take, he had smoke blowing into his eyes, until he actually had to go the Eye and Ear Infirmary and take a couple of weeks off! But while resting at home, he made an audio tape for French jazz historian Hugues Panassie and his partner, Madeleine Gautier. Armstrong recaps his activities, which I'll transcribe below:

"After New Year's night, we were on the Ed Sullivan program, the next afternoon we caught the plane for Hollywood. In Hollywood Monday night, Tuesday morning I was on the set at 8:45 rehearsing for the music of High Society, myself and the band—my band. Of course, we did everything to try to get Velma in but after all, it was one of these pictures that was already set, you know. Mr. Glaser tried to pull all kinds of strings and I got with Johnny Green and Bing Crosby and all the bigwigs, we tried to figure out a scene, but you know, sometimes a picture is already set. So Mr. Glaser put her on half salary and she had to hang around two weeks in California anyway, even if she came back to New York, because we had a concert in Pasadena two weeks from the time we went out there. And then, quite naturally, California is our home, too. I mean, everywhere we go, we've been there so many times, she has a million times. Her boyfriend came over from Las Vegas every weekend. Las Vegas is closer than New York, you know, Las Vegas and California. So she was straight with Pompei city! She was very much pleased, you know—you dig what I'm saying? [Referring to sex, haha - skipping some Velma talk and discussion of Pasadena concert]

"Now, for the picture, it's made for us cause we open it up with a bus scene. It's a satire on this jazz festival up in Newport. And it seems as though we're in this bus, going up there to play this festival and as we go up that road among those fine homes, you know what I mean, that's when I start telling the boys [sings part of "High Society Calypso" a capella]. You know, one of them things? We sing it among ourselves. That's in the beginning of the picture and you talking about a bunch of cats—you know your boys, how they can ham up a thing! They're all trying to steal that scene! [Laughs] Trummy Young mugged so much, folks, even when the director was explaining that scene, he was mugging listening! [laughs] Oh, we had the greatest laughs, everybody trying to steal scenes, you know? Even when Bing got on the stand doing this big number, I had to tell him to lighten up. You can tell from the music he's wailing—I'm going to play it for you after awhile!"

This was several months before High Society was released, but Louis was excited to share the music from the score, so later in the tape, he shared demo acetate recordings of "High Society Calypso," "I Love You Samantha," "Little One," "Now You Has Jazz," the fast version of "I Love You, Samantha," and the closing swing version of "Here Comes the Bride."

I've transcribed Louis's statements and he goes through the records, with a script in hand (wish we still had the script!):

Getting back to this picture, High Society, I'd like to play some of the rehearsal records that they give you to remember what you recorded so when they put the camera on you, you're straight, you know? So I have these records here and I'm going to run them down for you, let you this music, which is very beautiful, I think. Of course, I told you, we open the picture, we're sitting inside of this bus going to this big home and we're happy, you know, and I'm sitting in the middle in the backseat, the camera right on me, grinding. Finally, I start this song, singing, in terms of calypso music. [Starts reading the script] "The purpose of Armstrong's presence in this once bashful playground of the wealthy, a certain amount of the background of our story is revealed in this musical dissertation." Ump ump, big word, huh? "Terminating with the arrival of the bus at their destination." See, and as we get out of the bus, we ham it up, we see this beautiful home, I say, "Man, look at this!" I say, "Will you dig that big old rehearsal hall?" and blah blah blah. And Trummy says, "Man, that's a big pile of bricks but I ain't going in there, I don't have my library card!" And this butler comes out with his dried prune face and quite naturally we're all happy go lucky—I even got a hat on. And here's this cat, standing erect. "Are you the musicians?" I say, "Yeah, daddy, that's what the man said," you know, blah blah blah. "Who should I tell them is out here?" something like that. Talking about Dexter—that's Bing, you know—I said, "Tell Dexter, Satchelmouth." And he turns around, just as erect, and says, "Will you follow me, Mr. Satchelmouth?" [laughs] That killed me, man! And we go in this out and turn it out, see? So the first thing we'll play is, "Calypso, High Society," that's the first one we sing in the front of the picture. And we'll do it just like we did in front of the camera. Quite naturally, after we finish this song, I say, "End of song, beginning of story," and then they go on, see, with their lines and blah, blah. And all through this story, they've got this music, see? And the next one will be "Samantha" which Ben—Bing, see. I keep calling him Ben! The boy who was my stand-in, who stands in front of the camera while I was relaxing, his name was Ben! I keep calling Bing Ben--Bing will kill me! Anyhow, we had a lot of fun and everybody was so wonderful. 

Grace Kelly, she was just a doll. And Frank Sinatra, regular as ever, you know. Quite naturally, Bing was right in there with us, telling jokes on the set. Everybody, Johnny Green, the director, I think the whole MGM lot was in our corner. So here we go."

At this point, Armstrong played all the records in a row. After "Calypso," Armstrong comes back on the mike and says, "I'd like to mention before 'Samantha' that this line, 'Charlie Knickerbocker,' he's this great society columnist here in New York. So I say 'Charlie Knickerbocker we're going to be, in high society,' you know what I mean. I thought I'd hip you to that. You might know him, he's a young boy. Okay, here goes 'Samantha."

After "Samantha" and "Little One," Armstrong says, "Here comes the big number in the picture for Bing, 'Now You Has Jazz.' Yeah, 'Now You Have Jazz.' This is the big number. This is the number that old Bing really works—all of us works."

Before "Here Comes the Bride," Armstrong says, "Since we're closing the picture, this is what we played." At the end, he says, "Well, that's it. That's it folks. It's been such a pleasure, I'm almost speechless cause I just want to say a whole lots through here. Thanks for listening and God bless you. This knocked me out."

Armstrong then closed the tape with another replay of "Here Comes the Bride" and just the conclusion of "Samantha." It's pretty fantastic! As soon as High Society came out and became a hit, Louis added the "Calypso" to the All Stars' repertoire first--the earliest version I have is February 1957--and soon after added "Now You Has Jazz"; the earliest version I have of that one is coincidentally from the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival! Both were mainstays of Armstrong's live concerts until 1964 when he finally phased them both out, replacing them with more recent hits like "Hello, Dolly!" and "So Long Dearie."