From Everbody's Louie, an article about Louis Armstrong, also known as Pops
One night near the end of Pop’s ten-day Atlantic City run we dallied in his dressing room long past midnight, having a little taste, while on video-tape heavy weight contender Joe Frazier repeated his brutal knockout of George Chuvalo. Freshly toweled by Bob Sherman, wearing a faded robe and a handkerchief tied around his head so that he resembled Aunt Jemimah, Pops bounced around the cramped room, grunting and grimacing as gloves thudded against flesh, sucking in air and occasionally throwing an uppercut of his own..
After he dressed we walked along the Steel Pier, dark now except for a few dim lights on the outer walkway. The noisy crowds had been dispersed and the gates locked; a few sleepy night watchmen prowled the shooting galleries, fun-house rides, and endless rows of concession stands. Strolling the walkway, we could hear the ocean boiling beneath us. Pops peered up at a tall tower from which a young blonde on horseback plunges into a giant tank of water three times each day. He shook his head. “Ain’t that a hell of a way to make a living. And them cats in there fighting on the box – beating each other crazy for the almighty dollar. Pops, some people got a hell of a hard row to hoe.”
We paused at the end of the pier jutting into the Atlantic; Pops lit a cigarette and leaned on a restraining fence to smoke. For long moments he looked up at the full moon, and watched the surf come and go. The glow from the cigarette faintly illuminated the dark old face in repose and I thought of some ancient tribal chieftain musing by his campfire, majestic and mystical. There was only the rush of water, gently roaring and boasting at the shore. “Listen to it, Pops,” he said in his low, chesty rumble. “Whole world’s turned on. Don’t you dig its pretty sounds?”
Larry L. King, Harper’s Magazine, November 1967
