As part of its seminar series, Satchmo SummerFest 2015 yesterday welcomed Jewel Brown, the last surviving member of Louis Armstrong‘s All-Stars. Brown spoke about how she got her start as a singer (“a jazzy blues singer or a bluesy jazz singer,” depending on who’s talking) and her days travelling the world with Armstrong and his band.

As dynamic a storyteller as she is a performer, Brown kept the rapt attention of anyone lucky enough to be in the audience with her funny, colorful history.

She began by describing her early exposure to music, remembering bright moments shining the floors with her siblings, rags on their feet, dancing to the Victrola.

“Baby, that old shotgun house used to rock,” she laughed. To boot, they got the floor so clean that when her mother came home, she “could look down and see up her clothes!”

Their rural life was difficult, however, and watching her parents’ struggle was “heartbreaking, at a young age.” She felt she had to grow up fast. One night at age nine, she vividly recollects saying a prayer that God would give her some way to help her parents.

The next day, she had a sort of epiphany and realized she wanted to be a singer when she grew up. Soon afterwards, she began singing in public. She won the $25 prize nine weeks in a row at a weekly juke joint contest and by the end of her run, local bands were lining up to have this fourth grader sing with them. Her career took off from there.

“I feel like like I’ve been appointed to do this,” she stated.

At age 15, Brown graduated high school with enough money to buy her parents a new house. (And that was only her paychecks; she was making enough to keep all the tips herself.)

“You’re gonna have to excuse my lingo,” she warned, “but we moved from Shit Hill to Sugar Hill. And that’s the Holy Gospel truth.”

She was hired to sing with organist Earl Grant in 1957 after sitting in with him in California. Soon afterwards she was booked to sing regularly at Jack Ruby’s Dallas nightclub (yes, that Jack Ruby, the man that shot Lee Harvey Oswald)–already a popular venue that became even more so with Brown on the bill.

She chuckled over the fact that her biggest career break was thanks to a falling-out with Ruby, who turned out to be a greedy employer that tried to take advantage of her labor. Despite the fact that the club was making good money, Ruby tried to lay into her tips as well, and tensions came to a head when he demanded half of a one hundred dollar bill some moneyed gentleman had given her.

“[Ruby] said, ‘If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have that hundred dollar bill’,” Brown recounted, “and I said, ‘Well, it looks like if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have a packed house every night’.”

She tactfully extricated herself from the situation, a move that might have seemed risky to someone with less confidence in the value of her work.

“Jack Ruby did me a favor,” she smiled, and the rest of her story proves she was right. Working elsewhere, she was spotted by the right people and offered a choice: sing with Duke Ellington? …or sing with Louis Armstrong?

She had to decide on the spot and chose Armstrong, first of all because his smaller ensemble meant greater earnings for each bandmember, and second, because Ellington didn’t like to fly and got to all his far-flung tour destinations by boat.

Her snap decision was one of the best she’d ever made.

“There wasn’t a night no place in the whole wide world that wasn’t packed for Louis Armstrong,” Brown grinned.

They traveled the world, mesmerizing audiences near and far. They even performed behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin, and the acclaimed 1965 performance was screened at the festival in two installments.

Yesterday’s seminar featured showcased a “teaser” from that show, with a young Brown singing “Lover Come Back To Me” in black and white to a German crowd. Her cheeky, energetic performance and powerful vocals were striking, and it was disorienting to have a star from such a different era sitting in the same room, with the same bright energy and stage presence.

In addition to all the fun they had performing and the excitement of travel, Brown found Armstrong and his manager, Joe Glaser, to be extremely fair and pleasant to work for. When Glaser had to put the tour on hold for nine weeks for medical reasons, he gave every single ensemble member nine full paychecks and a round trip ticket to wherever home was.

Brown remained with the band just about eight years, until her mother had a stroke and she decided it was time to go home and help her dad.

“I had a mom and dad that gave everything to their children,” she explained, “and I felt it was time to give back. Simple as that.”

She worked various jobs while back in Houston (including opening a barber and beauty shop with her brother and doing upholstery work) before becoming an insurance agent. In insurance she discovered a new-found talent. She received the highest accolades from her company every year she worked there and was ranked #69 out of 2,000 agents.

She’s been out of the business for years now, but that doesn’t seem to stop people from continuing to call her up. The conversations usually begin with something like, “Ms. Brown, I need some insurance, I don’t trust nobody but you.”

Lately, Brown has been back onstage and involved with several musical projects, including the Heritage Hall Jazz Band here in New Orleans. She performed as part of the Ella & Louie Tribute Band at this year’s Satchmo Fest.

To what does she owe all of her various successes?

“You do right, and the Lord will provide,” Brown said. “He brought me through every bit of it. All you gotta do is watch it come through, and it’ll happen.”

Here’s a video of Brown performing with Armstrong and his band: