It was 2am in Las Vegas when Louis Armstrong stepped into the United Recording Studio. His midnight show at the Tropicana casino had only just ended.
Armstrong had been making records for 44 years, but the one he would make in the early hours of this particular August morning in 1967 would become his signature song – at least to those too young to remember or care for his pioneering jazz recordings of the 1920s and 30s, or his work with Ella Fitzgerald in the 1950s. But the making of What a Wonderful World, and its release in the United States, was far from wonderful.
It was written by George David Weiss – a prolific composer, arranger and lyricist whose other credits include The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Can’t Help Falling In Love – and Bob Thiele, a producer and head of the Impulse records label famous as the home of John Coltrane. With orchestration by arranger Tommy Goodman, the song was intended as a balm for troubled times as the Vietnam war and the struggle for civil rights divided America.
Though there has been talk that it was originally intended for Tony Bennett, Thiele insisted Armstrrong was the only choice, with his huge profile and his ability to appeal to north and south, black and white. “We wanted this immortal musician and performer to say, as only he could, the world really is great: full of the love and sharing people make possible for themselves and each other every day,” he said.
Plus, although he was now an old and ill man – he had suffered his first heart attack in 1959 and the one that killed him was only four years away – the man they called Pops was hot. Disdaining jazz innovation, his vaudevillian side had led to his biggest commercial success to date, the title song of the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly! It was a number one single in May 1964.
Armstrong loved the new song. “There’s so much in ‘Wonderful World’ that brings me back to my neighborhood where I live in Corona, New York,” he said in 1968. “Everybody keeps their little homes up like we do and it’s just like one big family. I saw three generations come up on that block… hat’s why I can say, ‘I hear babies cry/ I watch them grow/ they’ll learn much more/ then I’ll never know.’ And I can look at all them kids’s faces. And I got pictures of them when they was five, six and seven years old. So when they hand me this ‘Wonderful World,’ I didn’t look no further, that was it. And the music with it. So you can see, from the expression, them people dug it. It is a wonderful world.”
Recording did not go smoothly. The studio, on Industrial Road – now Sammy Davis Jr. Drive – had train tracks to its rear and not only did microphones pick up the rumble of freight trains as they passed, takes were twice ended by loud whistles. But human intervention, in the shape of Larry Newton, the then president of ABC Records, was even more dramatic.
Only present to organise publicity photographs of his star, Newton was horrified to hear a thoughtful, slow-paced number when he had expected an upbeat swing track like the smash hit of three years earlier. When his pleas for a new arrangement were ignored, Newton became so furious that he tried to physically stop the session. The man who had payed for the recording was thrown out of the studio by the band as they attempted to carry on. Though Newton was left out in the cold, he was keen on making his presence known, and some false starts followed when had to be canned after Newton’s persistent yells and banging could be heard in the background of the track.
Though there were initial thoughts of giving up, Armstrong’s presence within the studio served to bring the various artists together, letting out a laugh that echoed through the studio space at the ridiculousness of the situation.
His laugh soon was picked up by other members of the orchestra and spread about the room, until the entire studio was in hysterics. Weiss had previously observed Armstrong’s talents for bringing people together, and nowhere was that more present than in the room, as the band decided to carry on regardless of interference. It wouldn’t be until 6am that the track would finally be concluded, Armstrong offering to personally pay the band additional revenues for going overtime out of his own earnings, taking away only the basic $250 for his time. Louis and the band shared breakfast that morning, alongside Weiss, Thiele and arranger Artie Butler, who also worked on the session. He later wrote: “At the end of our breakfast, Louis grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me over and kissed me on the head and said Artie it’s been a real pleasure working with you and laughing with you.”
Still furious over the record’s release and being locked out of the recording studio, Newton pulled all advertising from the record, essentially dooming it to obscurity in the USA. Thiele, whose ultimate boss was Newton, was encouraged to change his credit to the pseudonym George Douglas, inspired by the names of two of his real life uncles. On its initial US release in 1968, the record sold less than a thousand copies thanks to Newton’s corporate meddling, though would be saved from total obscurity by a UK issue thanks to EMI, ABC’s European distributor.
Unlike its American release, the single was a smash hit in the UK, reaching number one in the charts and staying there for 13 weeks. Following this EMI demanded an album release, which would similarly tank in the US due to Newton’s meddling but enjoy success in the UK. Despite having clear evidence of the record’s international success, Newton was keen to have the last laugh on Armstrong, refusing to re-release the record until Armstrong’s death in 1971. In the USA, the song wouldn’t be recognised for the masterpiece that it was until 17 years later, when it served as part of the soundtrack for the film Good Morning Vietnam.
The film’s director Barry Levinson considered various songs but ultimately settled on the beautiful melody to soundtrack a sequence capturing the horrors of war. Residential areas and farmlands are bombed by US troops, adding a sickening double meaning to the phrase “and clouds of white” as an infant runs terrified to its mother’s side. A US soldier’s harrassment of a Vietnamese woman on the street is contrasted by the lyrics “I see friends shaking hands”. Finally we are brought back to Robin Williams’ character in the studio, singing peacefully along to the ballad, far away from the war that inspired it. Re-released once again, the song finally went gold in America.
Despite its troubled creation, What a Wonderful World stands as a testament to the power of music to touch our hearts and to the genius of Louis Armstring. Ironically, he did perform the song in a more upbeat manner in the year before his death, on the album Louis Armstrong and His Friends with an arrangement by the great Oliver Nelson. The reworking also includes a new, spoken introduction in which Satchmo concedes rha some people might not find the world too wonderful after all. However, he says, “Seems to me, it ain’t the world that’s so bad but what we’re doin’ to it. And all I’m saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we’d give it a chance. Love baby, love. That’s the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we’d solve lots more problems. And then this world would be a gasser.”