Leave It All Behind Ya

Palermo is a great guy to talk to on the phone. He gets excited talking about Pops, talking about "Mr. Hauser--he was the father of modern nutrition!" His voice rasps, shades of an Italian accent filter in and out. I spoke with him three times, at the end of each conversation, he said, "Ciao!"

"Do you know who also took Swiss Kriss? Greta Garbo. You've heard of her? I took care of her [Kriss needs] for over 20 years; she was like my mother. She was Gayelord Hauser's friend. I met her November 7, 1952. She was the most wonderful, noble person you'd ever wish to meet. She was fantastic! She just wanted to be left alone. She never said, 'I want to be alone.' She said, 'I want to be left alone.' She was very careful about what she did, and Swiss Kriss is good, so she used it."

And then Palermo is back to Louis.
"He even had an argument on the radio once with Tony Randall, who was interviewing him," says the successor to the father of modern nutrition. "Tony Randall made fun of him that he was taking Swiss Kriss. And Louis blasted him, he really blasted Tony Randall!"

Here's what an actual physician, Phoenix health/nutrition guru Art Mollen (who has a jogging path named for him at Arizona Biltmore), has to say on the subject of Swiss Kriss:

"I've never heard of that Swiss Kriss, but all of [those ingredients] act as a natural laxative." It seems that there really was something to Armstrong's theory of cleaning out.

"Back in the '20s, '30s, even back to ancient times, laxatives were used because they were thought to be a purification for the body," the doctor informs us. "The thing about taking a laxative and having increased movement through the bowel, it decreases the amount of time that any fecal material will actually be in thebowel and allowed to beabsorbed through the intestines and potentially become carcinogenic. Strictly colon cancer is what we're talking about. From that standpoint, it can be helpful."

But let the warning label begin here.
"An excess of laxatives can be dangerous to your health, and I think that should have to be a consideration and a caution for anyone who even considers taking a laxative on a regular basis," Mollen says.

I forgot to ask him what effect a really ferocious poop-prodder might have on trumpet playing.

If there's one guy who can give up the lowdown on Armstrong's Krissmania, it is Dan Morgenstern. He is the director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. He's written countless books, articles and essays on jazz, has one of the world's largest collections of Armstrong 78s, and was a good friend of Pops in his later years.

Plus, he's the kind of guy who picks up on the second ring of a cold call, the kind of guy who, when I mentioned the names "Louis Armstrong" and "Swiss Kriss" in the same sentence, laughed and said, "Hang on, lemme turn the music down.

"Louis was a laxative fan most of his life," says Morgenstern. "Prior to discovering Swiss Kriss, he had something called PlutoCR> Water that he recommended to everybody, but once he found Swiss Kriss, that was it."

Forsake all others ...
"It came in little envelopes, and Louis always carried a stack of these, and if you got a letter from him, sometimes there would be a little envelope of Swiss Kriss in there. ... Some people mistakenly thought--because it looked a little bit like it--that it actually was pot. They were disappointed when it wasn't; it looked a little bit like reefer."

No kidding. A friend of mine who happens to enjoy the wicked substance was inmy kitchen the other day, and I pulled out a little baggy stuffed with fine, green Kriss.

"Check this out, man," I whispered, taunting discreetly. For the seven seconds it took him to figure out what it wasn't, he looked, well, he looked like he was about to shit.

Morgenstern continues.
"Once in a while, he would pull a thing on somebody he was friendly with on the band bus, if the person didn't know about Swiss Kriss. Louis would say, 'Hey, man, take some of this. It'll make you feel good.' Then he would watch with great delight and interest as this person obviously had to go, you know? Then they would stop the bus--they'd be out on the road someplace--and the guy would go in the bushes! Pops would get a kick out of that."

Morgenstern admits that he took a quick ride on the Kriss bandwagon. "I tried it a few times, but I've never been much of a laxative fan. I did it so I could say to him that I did try it; it'd make him happy. ... He really swore by it, and he recommended it to everyone. He used to sign his letters 'Swiss Krissly Yours,' and he had a thing he would send to people that was about dieting."

Indeed he did, a "thing" titled "Lose Weight the Satchmo Way." This consisted of: