Midweek Music Break: Louis Armstrong, “There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York”

Louis Armstrong’s public persona so often seemed so happy-go-lucky, so ingratiating, that the song “There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York” — from the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess — seems to fit him like a glove. It comes across as a bouncy, jaunty tease. Without the context of the surrounding plot, here’s what we hear: a gentleman with a sly sense of humor is kidding a lady friend of his. If she’ll only come away with him to the big city, he seems to say, their life will be perfect: he’ll spoil her with finery, they’ll strut and smile and be happy in their “swellest mansion.” The very arrangement, and Armstrong’s solos, bespeak flirtatious temptation. And if this rendition of the song included Bess’s response, we could read it, too, as a funny, scornful toss-of-the-head, shaking-an-index-finger refusal:

You low, crawlin’ hound! Get away from my door, I tells
You, leave it, you rattlesnake. Dat’s what you is,
A rattlesnake!

[Below, click Play button to begin There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:56 long.]

[Lyrics]

Great, right? You can almost see the high life and the sheer fun this couple would have out on the town…

But in context with the actual storyline, the situation is bleaker: Bess has lost two of the men closest to her — the first, Crown, a brute murdered by the second, Porgy, who gets led away by police for questioning. In despair, she’s visited by an acquaintance named Sportin’ Life: a dope dealer, who offers her some “happy dust” as a way out of her misery. And then he tells her that she and he, Sportin’ Life, could make for New York and have a big life — a boat’s leavin’ soon! After all, he beguiles her, Porgy is probably going to be put away for years…

And even then, given that last stanza, we might think, Good for her! for her turning that hound, that rattlesnake away from her door.

But that’s not the end of the story: ultimately, Bess succumbs to Sportin’ Life’s temptation. She takes the drug, and she does go away with him — to a future, we are given to understand, of rather greater ugliness than the one Sportin’ Life has painted for her.

As it happens, Porgy is jailed for only a few days; unaware of the drama that’s unfolded in his absence, he returns to Catfish Row to take up life (as he imagines) with Bess. Here’s the scene from the end of DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel Porgy, on which the opera is based. He confronts Maria, a mutual friend, regarding Bess’s whereabouts. In this version of the story, Bess has yielded not to “happy dust” but simple booze, and she’s been “ganged” by a half-dozen men not to New York but to Savannah, the nearest city. (Note that the dialect is written in a version of English tinged with coastal South-Carolina Gullah.)

“Where’s Bess? Tell me, quick, where’s Bess ?”

…Maria tried to speak, but her voice refused to do her bidding. She covered her face with her hands, and her throat worked convulsively.

Porgy clutched her wrist. “Tell me,” he commanded. “Tell me, now.”

“De mens all carry she away on de ribber boat,” she sobbed. “Dey leabe word fuh me dat dey goin’ tek she all de way tuh Sawannah, an’ keep she dey. Den Serena, she tek de chile, an’ say she is goin’ gib um er Christian raisin’.”

Deep sobs stopped Maria’s voice. For a while she sat there, her face buried in her hands. But Porgy had nothing to say. When she finally raised her head and looked at him, she was surprised at what she saw. The keen autumn sun flooded boldly through the entrance and bathed the drooping form of the goat, the ridiculous wagon, and the bent figure of the man in hard, satirical radiance. In its revealing light, Maria saw that Porgy was an old man. The early tension that had characterized him, the mellow mood that he had known for one eventful summer, both had gone; and in their place she saw a face that sagged wearily, and the eyes of age lit only by a faint reminiscent glow from suns and moons that had looked into them, and had already dropped down the west.

She looked until she could bear the sight no longer; then she stumbled into her shop and closed the door, leaving Porgy and the goat alone in an irony of morning sunlight.

Not exactly what we’d expect to follow on from this perky musical sample, hmm?

The idea of escaping with someone else has appealed to songwriters for decades. To get a taste, find a Web site which lets you search song titles — or search your own music player — for titles containing the simple word away. Here’s Norah Jones, not doing the saucy-temptation thing but just beseeching you, heartsplittingly, to come away with me…: