Louis Armstrong and the Great Sphinx: When Satchmo went to Egypt
There are two enduring images of foreigners amidst the Great Sphinx of Giza’s ancient awe.
The first is Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 19th-century oil on canvas depicting Napoleon Bonaparte during his Egyptian campaign, the other is jazz legend Louis Armstrong serenading his wife, Lucille, with his signature trumpet while the mythic creature towers behind them. It’s a pretty far-flung corner of the world for even an artist as big as Satchmo.
Only ventured sparingly to this day – Sting, Mariah Carey, and the Grateful Dead count key shows in Greater Cairo – Armstrong indeed undertook a brief visit to the United Arab Republic in early 1961, the country’s official name during its union with Syria, when the jazz heavyweight performed his one official show. While counting a solid 40 years of live dates behind him across North America and Europe, just how did Armstrong manage the logistics of reaching Egypt?
Well, it helped having Uncle Sam foot the bill. At the height of the Cold War, the US State Department conceived a novel propaganda bludgeon against the USSR’s communist challenge by sending out ‘jazz ambassadors’ across corners of the globe yet to be subsumed into America’s cultural orbit, roping in the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, and Duke Ellington and funded to perform high-profile shows across Africa, the Middle-East, and the Eastern Bloc. The States nearly twisted Armstrong’s arm to play in the Soviet Union itself, before his last-minute cancellation in protest to Arkansas’ Little Rock Crisis.
Yet, the US got their way eventually. With State Department cash and Pepsi-Cola sponsorship, an exhaustive leg of dates would be duly met by Armstrong and his All-Star band as they embarked on their ambassador duties in October 1960, playing in 27 cities across countries including Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Congo-Léopoldville during its political crisis, with just a month’s break for his band during December while their leader shot the Paris Blues music drama.
Battling fatigue and a backing band on the verge of mutiny, the tour went on, entering Egypt on January 27th, 1961, playing a commercial show the following evening at Cairo’s Ewart Memorial Hall at the city’s American University, and treating children to an impromptu show at a nearby orphanage earlier in the day.
After wining and dining at their formal reception with the US ambassador, the country’s top archaeologist, Kamal el-Mallakh, saw to it to introduce Mr and Mrs Armstrong to the wonders of the Great Sphinx of Giza, where the couple were immortalised and ‘Ambassador Satch’s was cemented in his legacy.
Everything about that fateful snap still glows with charm to this day, from its impeccable composition, Lucille and the Sphinx both looking across to Satchmo’s masterful trumpet blast, and the evident romantic cheer the couple still shared nearly 20 years in, Armstrong’s Gaza snap isn’t just a defining document of the ‘jazz ambassador’ era, despite its Cold War machinations, but looks set to stand as the enduring picture of the Dixieland maestro’s entire legacy.
The old couple seemed to enjoy their Gaza souvenir. As discovered in their private scrapbook back home in New York’s Queens, Armstrong scribbled “Dig us” next to their Egyptian portraiture.
