My Show Of Shows: The Night Louis Armstrong Redeemed Athens
By Susan Percy, Eldredge ATL Guest Contributor
A brisk February evening in 1965 was not a bad time to be a 20-year-old University of Georgia student heading to the Georgia Coliseum for a concert, but it was truly special when the featured performer was the legendary Louis Armstrong. He would be the first Black entertainer to perform on campus since the university had lifted its now-hard-to-even-imagine ban on Black performers – and certainly the biggest name in a long time.
Fraternities, which typically owned their properties and were not subject to the ban, frequently had Black bands at their functions – think Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts or Piano Red; other organizations likely had Black groups at off-campus events as well. But this was, by my recollection, the first university-sponsored event for a nonwhite performer in many years. He packed the 8,000-plus capacity venue, since enlarged and renamed Stegeman Coliseum.
The ban, ironically, resulted from a Louis Armstrong UGA appearance in 1957 that had aroused the ire of Georgia’s state legislature, which tried unsuccessfully to keep the entertainer off campus. Subsequently, though, the infamous ban was put in place, to the dismay of students anxious to hear and see performers playing something besides parent music.
Prior to this evening, student leaders had worked long and hard to persuade the administration to remove the ban; the Red & Black, then the school-affiliated newspaper (now independent) that I worked on for most of my time in college, editorialized against the ban. Finally, the efforts were successful.
So the Feb. 16, 1965 concert was huge because it was historic, a student victory and a breaking down of one of the many barriers that needed to be broken down, three years after Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes integrated the school, over the objections, no doubt, of many of those who also had a problem with integrated entertainment.
And huge because it was Louis Armstrong, a mega-star known to anyone who ever turned on a radio back in the day when that was how people listened to music. College kids were happily absorbing all kinds of artists and sounds – the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Supremes. But Louis Armstrong was something special. His “Hello, Dolly,” which knocked the Beatles out of the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the year before, had been on the airwaves almost constantly. When it finished on one station, you could find it on another. If you could hear it without singing along, you needed someone to put a mirror up to your mouth to see if you were still breathing.
The Athens campus was hardly a bastion of progressivism in the mid-60s, but opening up its venues to nonwhite performers had little to do with politics – perhaps hard to believe now when virtually nothing is free of politics — and everything to do with asserting independence from an older generation trying to perpetuate outdated social norms and “protect” students’ delicate sensibilities from whatever winds of change might blow in with music played by people whose
skin color didn’t match their own.
“We clapped, we shouted and we connected – with him, with each other, with the evening. It was a shared experience of the most wondrous kind.”
Students described the ban as “stupid” or “ridiculous.” There was nothing liberal or conservative about being glad to see the ban lifted. It was simply about freaking time.
And this was a night for music. Joyous, upbeat, cool music performed by an icon of entertainment. A Black man playing for a white audience.
Somewhere, behind the scenes, there were probably gray-faced authorities engaging in a little hand-wringing, mumbling that it was too soon, worrying because – well, that’s what they felt was called for. Did all that add a little frisson of enjoyment for all the students filing into the coliseum, the girls in their Villager blouses and wrap-around skirts, the guys in their Gant shirts and neat khakis? Sure. The idea that this was something the grown-ups weren’t entirely comfortable with amped up the evening’s excitement.
But, mainly, it was the music. It was Louis Armstrong. Lord, the man could play a trumpet better than anyone else has before or since. And sing. That gravelly voice could deliver lyrics in a way that made any song belong to him alone.
He owned the audience the minute he stepped out on stage that winter night so many years ago with his signature white handkerchief. And we were ready to be owned.
We clapped, we shouted, we savored every number – old favorites and jazz staples, some familiar, some new to our college-kid ears. And we connected – with him, with each other, with the evening. It was a shared experience of the most wondrous kind. And I swear he, the veteran of Lord-knows-how-many performances in Lord-knows-how-many places, was visibly moved by the reception.
He closed out the evening with a beyond-rousing rendition of “Hello, Dolly,” elevated from its show-tune origins to something entirely different, an anthem, if you will. The standing ovation he got, with its explosion of applause and cheers, brought an encore. Then another. In my mind, it almost went on forever.
Armstrong told the Red & Black afterward that he had not had a reception like that in 10 years, and I was proud then and am proud now that he got it in my home state, on my college campus, from my friends and me. We were united that night. We were one. Everybody felt it. No other performance I’ve seen or heard has ever produced that same feeling for me. Something had happened, something good, something memorable.
So did everybody in the audience who shared that feeling hold on to it and use it to build a life of selfless social activism? Did we all become nobler people joined together in working for a better world?
No.
But we heard some fine music and we shared a fine evening. That’s a lot. And not too many years later Athens took its place as a first-rate music town. Is there a connection? I’d sure like to think so.
Susan Percy, a former editor of Georgia Trend Magazine, is a proud graduate of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia and a member of the Grady Fellowship.
Richard L. Eldredge is the founder and editor in chief of Eldredge ATL. As a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Atlanta magazine, he has covered Atlanta since 1990.