When confronted with the transcriptions, Armstrong said, “Is that what I played? I don’t want people to think I can’t read.” Just a year before filming The Five Pennies, Armstrong recorded the Autobiography sessions for Decca which required him to read transcriptions of solos he had played 25-35 years earlier. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth as Armstrong had been reading music since his days with Fate Marable’s riverboat band when he was still a teenager. You just let it happen.” When Kaye pulls out an arrangement of his own, Armstrong looks at it with a confused look on his face, even holding it upside down at one point, making it look as if he was completely ignorant when it came to reading music. As Kaye heads up to the bandstand in an earlier scene and asks for an arrangement, Armstrong replies, “Arrangement? Man, nobody writes down Dixieland. The movie, which was loosely (and I mean loosely) based on trumpeter Red Nichols’s life is a harmless bit of sentimental fluff, with some melodrama and music numbers thrown in for good measure, but all of Armstrong’s scenes are worth watching, even though the filmmakers had to do their part to pigeonhole Armstrong’s music into the Dixieland category, something he never did in interviews.
#DANNY KAYE LULLABY IN RAGTIME MOVIE#
I failed in my efforts to have a new blog entry for every day of this week, as I got too carried away in an entry for “Big Butter and Egg Man.” I should have that one wrapped up later tonight but in the meantime, I decided to give the Itunes shuffle a quick spin to see if something would come up that wouldn’t require a dissertation and lo and behold, it chose the “Five Pennies Saints.” This was a comedic version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” performed by Armstrong and Danny Kaye in the movie The Five Pennies.
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