Bob Thiele on Louis Armstrong

“My most revered idols as a kid growing up were Louis Armstrong and... Duke Ellington. When I got into the record business... the first recordings I made with him were for Morris Levy's Roulette label. Louis... made my dream come truer: he brought in his little band—five pieces—and agreed to use a friend of mine on piano, Duke Ellington!”

“[I]n the mid-60s during the deepening national traumas of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, racial strife, and turmoil everywhere, my co-writer George David Weiss and I had an idea to write a "different" song specifically for Louis Armstrong... "What a Wonderful World". We wanted this immortal musician and performer to say, as only he could, the world really is great... At the time Louis's "Hello Dolly" was the biggest hit record in the country and... Armstrong was a bigger star than at any previous moment in his career. As he was constantly on tour... I went to Joe Glazer, ...Louis's manager ...With Glazer's permission and a small children's portable phonograph... I went down to Washington D.C. ...Between shows I auditioned our number ...Armstrong said, "Pops, I dig it. Let's do it! (Of course, we called him "Pops," and he called everybody "Pops.") ...Louis agreed to record it for minimum union scale (...$250 at the time)...”

“The then president of ...ABC Records ...Larry Newton ...showed up at the recording session ...screamed at me that I had to be crazy to record a ballad with strings as the follow-up to "Hello Dolly" ...Finally he wanted to cancel the date and fire the musicians and me. ...[A]ll I could do to convince Newton to momentarily leave the control room... was to tell him he would go down in history as the only man who ever threw Louis Armstrong out of a recording studio. ...[A]lmost immediately ...Newton tried to storm back into the studio. ...Frank Military ...became a human barricade ...The ensuing door-pounding ...caused Frank ...to actually begin crying and plead, "You can't do this to Louis and Bob." Miraculously ...the recording of one of the most optimistic songs ever written was completed. ...[T]he record ...in the United States ...personally sabotaged by ...Newton, was a disaster. ...In England however, it became #1 ...[and] outsold both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. It also started to become a hit in many ...European countries and ...South Africa. The EMI Corporation ...sent a telegram to ...Newton ...MUST HAVE WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD ALBUM, which meant... eight more songs in the same style... Joe Glazer advised me to forget it unless Newton paid Louis Armstrong a then undreamed-of $25,000, advance... When the pressure ...finally caused Newton to relent... Louis Armstrong completed one of the best-selling albums of his lifetime and again, posthumously, when the original single became the centerpiece of... Good Morning Vietnam...”