Louis Armstrong stands near the Great Sphinx of Giza, trumpet raised towards his wife Lucille, who sits before him with the Pyramids behind her.
Taken in Egypt in 1961, the photograph has become one of jazz history's most charming images, a private serenade before the oldest audience on earth.
The picture looks like a holiday, and in one sense it was. Armstrong landed in Cairo on January 27, 1961, on the final stop of his US State Department tour across Africa, part of a Cold War effort to promote America through its music.
It remains an indelible piece of jazz history, a snapshot of African American artists navigating the genre's growing global appeal, their fractured place at home and a Middle East in the midst of seismic political change.
With August 4 marking 125 years since Armstrong’s birth, here is what you need to know about the image.
How the Pyramids photograph was made
Armstrong had arrived in Cairo from Khartoum the previous day, at the tail end of a four-month Africa tour sponsored by the US State Department that included Sudan.
After attending a reception hosted by the US ambassador, Armstrong and Lucille visited Giza with Kamal el-Mallakh, the Egyptian archaeologist and journalist.
The excursion formed part of the official itinerary, although no concert took place at Giza. The photographer is uncredited in most agency versions. The Louis Armstrong House Museum later identified Artin DerBalian as the likely photographer, based on a handwritten note in Lucille’s scrapbook crediting him with taking the picture at the Sphinx.
Why Armstrong was in Egypt?
By 1961, Armstrong was internationally famous, making him valuable to a State Department that had sent jazz musicians overseas since the mid-1950s, particularly to newly independent and non-aligned countries during the Cold War.
The contradiction in the approach was not lost on Armstrong. He had been a vocal critic of the US government’s response to racism in the American South, where segregation remained in force in many states.
Why the tour became politically sensitive?
Armstrong also managed to swerve a potential diplomatic problem in Egypt, with his visit coming two years after he played in Israel during his own commercial tour.
Performing in Israel could affect an artist’s ability to appear in Arab countries, but Egypt nevertheless admitted him.
According to the Louis Armstrong House Museum’s account of the 1959 tour, when asked by the press about the issue, Armstrong pointed to his horn and said: “That horn ain’t prejudiced. A note’s a note in any language.”
What were the spy rumours?
Armstrong’s fame also made him the subject of unsubstantiated reporting.
In November 1959, 14 months before his trip to Egypt, the American magazine Jet reported that Egyptian newspaper coverage had linked Armstrong to an Israeli espionage network operating under the cover of touring artistic companies. Armstrong responded by dismissing the accusation as “bunk”.
Five months later, Jet carried the stranger allegation that his scat singing, an improvisational hallmark of his career and a traditional part of jazz, contained coded messages. The magazine reported that Armstrong responded by sending a record and a note saying: “I don’t have to be a spy to earn a living. I have enough money blowing the horn and I have a very happy life doing it.”
