Talking with Tim

Astounding.

As one may expect, there’s a great back story to this 1970 clip. I cannot make you read Charles Wolfe’s Oxford American essay about Armstrong’s relationship with country music and this video clip in particular. But hopefully I can get you interested with this snippet:

“Then Cash himself, cracking a rare grin, moved in and sat and talked with him about Jimmie Rodgers, one of Cash’s heroes. Yes, Satchmo remembered backing him on ‘Blue Yodel No. 9,’ and yes, it would be fun to try to recreate it. So with Cash playing Rodgers and Armstrong playing—well, himself—the pair brought the audience back to 1930. Cash and Armstrong swapped choruses on the old blues standard—Cash doing a swaggering vocal, Armstrong playing a dynamic, elegant series of trumpet breaks, in spite of the fact that his doctors in New York had told him to stop playing for good.”