The book, “Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words” is where one can find the cornet story, and it also allows us to look deeper into this Black/Jewish relationship showcased and approved by Cooper and Brackman. Armstrong wrote to his “best friend” Glaser in 1955, begging him for his own money. It should be noted that Armstrong is the one who generated ALL of the revenue in this Black/Jewish relationship. Glaser NEVER played any instrument, much less at the prodigious level of Louis Armstrong, but he nevertheless held the purse strings for the great trumpeter.
Armstrong begs Glaser for “a little chance to govern myself.” He lightens the potentially offensive request by adding: “I just love your checks in my pockets—‘Oh' They look so pretty. ...” A puppy-like Armstrong told Glaser that the Black man should “always have a White Man (who like you) can and will put his Hand on your shoulder and say—‘This is “My” ******' and, Can't Nobody Harm' Ya.'” Armstrong refers to Glaser as his “Boss Man” and signs off his letter as “Your Boy.” He wrote that he “loved” Glaser because “He seemed to understand Colored people so much.”
Armstrong was certainly a powerful cultural figure, but the legacy of slavery, the reality of Jim Crow, and the forces of White supremacy forced him into a subservient and fawning “friendship” that—like so many merchant/sharecropper associations—was characterized by financial exploitation. Armstrong, beaten down by racism, his mind twisted by a grotesque self-hatred, bitterly attacked his own Black people in his private writings; often in the same breath he professed a profound admiration for the Jewish people.
He truly was among those who were deceived into believing, as Mr. Muhammad taught us in Message to the Blackman, that Whites and especially Jews have “the same kind of heart of gold, love and mercy.” But both volumes of The Secret Relationship affirm the Messenger's words of wisdom: “[T]he white race knows better. They have kept it as a secret among themselves, that they may be able to deceive the black people.”
Damn Louis c00nstrong