Journalist and filmmaker Sacha Jenkins has carved out a niche for himself as a documentarian crafting titles that often touch on hip hop music and culture. This work has been seen in his 2015 debut doc Fresh Dressed, through his 2019 docuseries Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men and his 2021 documentary Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James, profiling the soul musician whose influence on hip hop is deep and far-reaching.
For his latest documentary, Jenkins dialed the clock back well past James’ heyday in the ’70s and ’80s to the first half of the 20th century. Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues is a unique profile of the legendary jazz musician told largely through archival footage and never-before-heard home recordings and personal conversations. Jenkins was tapped by Imagine Entertainment to direct the film, he said, because of his past documentary work about African American musicians.
“I guess they felt that I could be someone who has a working knowledge of music in general, who could help tell the story in a way that would bridge Louis Armstrong to a new generation of people,” Jenkins said in an interview with Realscreen.
While the majority of the voices heard in the film are of Armstrong’s era — be it audio journals that Armstrong himself recorded, footage of his interview appearances over the decades, or archival interviews with contemporaries like Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie — Jenkins made the decision to have Armstrong’s personal correspondence read by a far more contemporary voice, rapper Nas.
Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues had its world premiere earlier this fall at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was produced by Imagine Entertainment, with Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Michele Anthony and David Blackman executive producing. An Apple Original Film, the doc will premiere on Apple TV+ and in select theaters on October 28.
Realscreen spoke with Jenkins (pictured, above) a few weeks after the film’s TIFF premiere to talk about the doc’s genesis, its use of archive, and the filmmaker’s own process of discovery about Armstrong.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Given Armstrong’s influence and legacy, how intimidating was it to tackle his life and career as a documentary subject?
Sacha Jenkins: It’s intimidating in that there’s just so much footage, and so many stories to tell, and where do you go? Where do you not go? What hits the cutting-room floor? But as I learned more about him, he reminded me of the guys I grew up with. And that kind of segues into Nas. Nas and I are pretty much from the same neighborhood, went to the same junior high school, [we] have many friends in common. And when you learn about the young Louis on the streets of New Orleans, it reminded me of all the kids that I grew up with who were super-talented, super-creative, and some of them sometimes made bad decisions. Louis Armstrong made a bad decision at 14 that landed him in a reform school. But the Louis Armstrong story is the Nas story, is the Rick James story, is the RZA story from Wu-Tang. Once I understood that, he felt like a very familiar person to me. So the intimidation went away at that point.
The film is very dependent on archival material, so how did it come together in that aspect? Did you know from the start that you’d have access to such a wealth of his personal material, or was uncovering that part of the process?
SJ: Imagine struck a deal with the folks who are the ward of Louis Armstrong’s life and belongings. Those folks pointed out that Louis made these tapes in his home, documenting his feelings, his conversations with friends and family and candid stuff that you just would not expect to come from the Louis Armstrong that most of us perceive him to be. Digging into those tapes, I was just blown away by who this guy really was. He’s Louis Armstrong. He’s unbelievable, he’s amazing. There’s never going to be anyone like him, no one’s going to be as talented as him in so many different disciplines, whether it’s fine art, he made these collages, to his instrumentation, the way he played his instrument, the way he used his voice as an instrument, he was a great, prolific writer. You’re not going to find that anywhere else. And these are all things that I learned in the process of making the film.
How did the process of combing through this wealth of archival material differ from working on the Rick James or Wu-Tang Clan projects?
SJ: With Rick James, he’s also no longer with us, but I interviewed lots of people who knew him. With Louis Armstrong, it’s 90% archival with a few interviews with journalists who knew him, with Wynton Marsalis. So the difference is we’re really relying on archival to tell the story. Even Amiri Baraka talks about Louis Armstrong [in the film], but it’s archival tape of him talking about Louis Armstrong. Ossie Davis, [more] archival, talking about Louis Armstrong, putting him into context. To me that’s what’s different: it’s really in Louis’ voice, with some supporting characters by way of archival.
There aren’t any traditional talking heads in the film. Was that intentional, and did it come out of the use of so much archival?
SJ: A combination. You make these documentaries with talking heads — and I do them, I’m not better than anyone else — but I think that we just had so much strength in what it was that Mr. Armstrong himself said [on the tapes], all this really unique, unexpected, really rich material, that we felt like we just wanted that to speak for itself, and to find people of different eras who had things to say about him during the era that they’re speaking in. Again, Mr. Marsalis adds a little something, and Dan Morgenstern, a journalist who knew him, adds a little something in the modern era, but everything else was from times gone. It really makes you feel like you’re having a direct conversation with Louis Armstrong. So at the end of the film, when he says, “My life was an open book and I have no regrets,” you feel kind of sad, like “Wow, I feel like I went on a journey with this guy and I kind of know him a little bit.” I mean, I don’t really know him, but I can imagine who he really was based on the puzzle pieces that this film provides for me.
You also touch on how Armstrong’s reputation evolved and changed in the Black community, particularly during the Civil Rights era. Was that something that you knew you wanted to address in the film?
SJ: I was just learning about this guy. I came up during the era of Public Enemy and this Black consciousness in hip hop, and during that era, no one was looking to Louis Armstrong for any pro-Black messages or being strong on civil rights. The narrative was, this guy’s a sellout or an Uncle Tom, he’s always smiling for the white man, it’s not really my thing. But you learn about the guy, you learn all these things, like he makes a pilgrimage to Africa and he talks about how proud he is to be there, and he met a woman who looked exactly like his mother. And this is coming out of an America that is extremely racist, that portrays African people as savages and “less than” during those times, and even today… And then also, he’s getting booked in these fancy hotels that don’t cater to or serve or accept Black people, and he says, “If I can’t stay, I won’t play.” That’s activism, that’s making change. He has white players in his band, he’s got a broad range of people that he creates with. That was not the thing back then. That was not encouraged.
So we have to look at the times that he came up in, where he’s from. He’s from New Orleans, he’s born in 1901. That’s just a hop, skip and a jump away from slavery. In the South. Can you imagine what his life must have been like? I can’t. He himself says in the film that he saw things that made his flesh crawl, that his mother and grandmother told him things from even before he was born that were just atrocious. This is a guy who [was] basically not far from slavery who’s trying to become successful in [an] America that doesn’t really have an interest in Black people being successful, and look what he wound up doing. I equate his style of living to jiu jitsu: these tactical moves, that don’t stop him and he just goes in a different direction and is able to subdue whoever is trying to subdue him and get the success. And there’s a lot to be said for someone of his stature, coming from where he came from, being able to navigate the world the way that he did. That’s why he was a very special individual, and there will not be anyone like him ever again.
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