When I was a boy, my father bought me a statuette of W.C. Fields. I liked it fine and managed to hang onto it for a number of years, though I remember wishing even then that he’d given me the Louis Armstrong statuette from the same series. They were made by a company called Esco (which still exists, as I recently discovered). Needless to say, the statuettes long ago became collectors’ items, but I forgot about them until I saw a photograph of the Satchmo model in Gary Giddins’ Armstrong biography. As soon as I saw it I knew I wanted one of my own, and the desire grew stronger when I started writing Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong.
A Satchmo statuette turned up on eBay the other day, and I bought it on the spot. Those who know what Armstrong looked like in the flesh won’t need to be told that it is an extremely faithful depiction of the way he appeared on stage, with only a slight, self-evidently affectionate dash of caricature added by the anonymous artist. (It’s considerably truer to life than the po-faced, hyper-respectful Armstrong statue erected a few years ago in New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong Park.) It turns out that Esco’s Satchmo is coveted by collectors of black memorabilia, and I can see why: I’ve never seen a rendering of Armstrong that did a better job of conveying his irrepressible joie de vivre.
I’ve placed my latest acquisition on the corner of my desk, where I expect it to fill me with inspiration from now to the day next March when, God willing, I finish Hotter Than That and ship it off to Harcourt. No, it isn’t art, not in the Teachout Museum sense, but it does make me smile, for which there is ever and always much to be said.