
Reefer tapes of Louis Armstrong - moonka
http://www.booyorkcity.com/secret-reefer-tapes-of-louis-armstrong/
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nsns
For anyone looking for an insider view into the crazy, early days of Jazz, I
highly Recommend Sidney Bechet's _Treat it Gentle_ and Mezz Mezzrow's _Really
the Blues_ , which also include many fascinating stories about Armstrong -
like the time he improvised the song Heebie Jeebies (about Grass)[0].

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksmGt2U-xTE&pxtry=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksmGt2U-xTE&pxtry=1)

~~~
kweinber
Miles Davis' autobiography is also an amazing, vulgar, honest and incredible
work as well. The audible audio book is especially good because the narrator
nails his raspy but dogged voice. Highly NSFW and highly recommended.

~~~
dharma1
great book. Quincy Jones autobiography is also fantastic

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davidw
Worth a read for the 30ies slang alone:

> Armstrong said: “This dick confidentially told me, he said ‘When that cat
> called us and stool-pigeoned on you, they sent me and my partner to come up
> for the assignment…when we found out that you was the one that we must nab,
> it broke our hearts. You must understand, we can get you six months for a
> roach’.

~~~
jacquesm
Interesting also that the fact that it was Louis Armstrong made them
contemplate this on a level that they would never have for a lesser god or an
ordinary individual. So much for the justice is blind mantra. Following up on
a competitor trying to harm Armstrong is already quite a nice show of
solidarity between musicians and on top of that shows the police's willingness
to have the law used in matters of economics where the party doing the
reporting (or anybody else for that matter) suffered no harm at all from the
alleged crime.

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cageface
Did anybody ever believe justice was truly blind, particularly in the US?
You've always had just as much justice as you can afford there.

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firegrind
I find it anachronistic that I'm invited to make an appointment to listen to
the tapes in New York.

Why wouldn't the museum simply publish them online ?

~~~
imjustsaying
I imagine that digitizing the analogue tapes would have a lossy effect on the
quality.

~~~
qwertyboy
It is trivial today to sample audio in a rate and sensitivity which greatly
surpass both the density of the pherromagnetic material in the tapes and the
fidelity of the original recording equipment.

Even "analogue" sound depends on the resolution of the underlying technology,
so no, there doesn't have to be any data loss.

And that's just on the philosophical level, about which our limited ears care
very little :)

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ExpiredLink
> _Music legend Louis Armstrong is recorded on secret tapes ... From December
> 1950, until his death in 1971, Louis documented his life ‘for posterity’ on
> to 750 tapes, totaling thousands of hours of recordings, now owned by Louis
> Armstrong House Museum._

This isn't just weird but mad.

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leoc
At least his laxative habit was legal and above board.

More seriously, Armstrong getting Joe Glaser
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Glaser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Glaser)
to fix his arrest problem for him is a sad reminder of how he and many other
US musicians of the time (probably the whole jazz scene?) were deeply in bed
with organised crime.

~~~
jacquesm
They didn't exactly have a legal option to get what they craved. As soon as
you criminalize something you relegate all of the 'fringe' to dealing with
organized crime.

~~~
leoc
What they were mainly after was employment as jazzmen, though: IIRC (I'm not
an expert) the main connection was originally the shadiness of many nightclub
venues, especially during Prohibition.

~~~
jacquesm
Prohibition is just another form of the same.

When the adult population of a country craves something that is (potentially)
bad for it then that's an education issue and a medical issue, not a criminal
issue.

As the son of an alcoholic I've seen up close what alcohol can do to an
individual, even so making it an illegal substance would just have jacked up
the budget _and_ risked run-ins with the law (more than there already were).

I don't smoke pot, don't drink alcohol, in general am a pretty boring person
(especially when it comes to imbibing mind altering substances in company
other than sweet tea) but I support those who do feel the need to do any or
all of the above simply because society could not function if all these people
were behind bars and every one of them has the reins of their lives firmly in
their own hands. It's all about choices and mentality, making these things
crimes is not helping anybody and simply drives the problems underground and
creates a fertile ground for organized crime to flourish on.

~~~
musername
What if it is the idea, to let criminals deal with criminals. It's a circular
reasoning if then the organizdd crime is said to be bad because it supplies
drugs, that are dangerous and should be controled. I mean, if crime was only
about drugs, the user would support the drug supply, i.e. the support. To
support the support doesn't sound very unethical. The matter that is supported
is the problem.

Sure, there is worse crime that may use drugmoney, but it might and does use
legally optained funds after laundry as well. You might argue that the drug
problem itself wouldn't flourish any less, if it was legal. I agree with the
educational and medical perspective mentioned, but the medical moral is to not
self medicate and the educational that the law is always right.

~~~
jacquesm
I can't parse all that you're writing, but to answer those parts that I
understand:

Organized crime steps in to supply a market simply because there is a lot of
money to be made, that's all that it takes. Making a substance illegal drives
up the price. If you made milk illegal tomorrow morning there would be illegal
milk available at a substantial mark-up the day after and an underground
distribution network would spring up overnight. It's simply economics.

Laundered criminal money is _still_ a problem.

The 'drug problem' would definitely be less if all drugs were legal because it
would allow those that are in need of help to apply for that help on a medical
basis rather than to have to deal with these issues either on their own or
through the justice system if and when they get caught.

The 'law is always right' is a funny one, no, the law isn't always right, it
simply defines what is legal and what is not, emphatically _NOT_ what is and
isn't right, for that we have morals and ethics, not laws.

For example: slavery was never right, even though it was legal at some point.

~~~
miah_
This has happened, with 'Raw Milk';

[http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/consumers/ucm079516....](http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/consumers/ucm079516.htm)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/the-
latest...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/the-latest-raw-
milk-raid-an-attack-on-food-freedom/243635/)

*I have no opinions on Raw Milk.

