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His two recordings for Columbia Records, Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954) and Satch Plays Fats (all Fats Waller tunes) (1955), were both being considered masterpieces, as well as moderately well selling. In 1961, the All Stars participated in two albums, The Great Summit and The Great Reunion (now together as a single disc) with Duke Ellington. The albums feature many of Ellington's most famous compositions (as well as two exclusive cuts) with Duke sitting in on piano. His participation in Dave Brubeck's high-concept jazz musical The Real Ambassadors (1963) was critically acclaimed and features "Summer Song", one of Armstrong's most popular vocal efforts. Perhaps most touching is Armstrong’s pure and undying affinity for his neighborhood. The house is a gem frozen in time, as if the Armstrongs have just stepped out.
A jazz ambassador
Headed by the same architecture firm who built the Louis Armstrong house in 1910, the project broke ground this summer and will include a state-of-the-art exhibition gallery and a 68-seat jazz club when completed. It’s set to open in 2019, and we can’t wait to return when it does. Armstrong continued touring the world and making records with songs like “Blueberry Hill” (1949), “Mack the Knife” (1955) and “Hello, Dolly!
Community
We also provide access to Mr. Armstrong’s extensive archives, develop programs for the public that educate and inspire and host performances with multi-disciplinary artists from around the world. Armstrong was performing at the Brick House in Gretna, Louisiana, when he met Daisy Parker, a local prostitute, and started an affair as a client. He found the courage to look for her home to see her away from work. Not long after that fiasco, Parker traveled to Armstrong's home on Perdido Street.[86] They checked into Kid Green's hotel that evening.
Concerts, Trumpet Classes and Community Events
There are also recordings of Armstrong talking to friends and practicing trumpet so it’s almost as if the jazz great is still haunting his former abode, although the experience is more educational than supernatural. His wife, Lucille, continued to live in their home on 107th Street in Corona, Queens, working to ensure that it became a National and New York Historic Landmark. Lucille expressed the desire for the home and archives to become a museum honoring her husband. They established the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation (LAEF) which helped to facilitate this process and continues to work today as a force for jazz education. After Lucille’s passing in 1983, she willed the home and its contents to the city of New York which designated the City University of New York, Queens College to shepherd the process.
Armstrong’s improvised solos transformed jazz from an ensemble-based music into a soloist’s art, while his expressive vocals incorporated innovative bursts of scat singing and an underlying swing feel. By the end of the decade, the popularity of the Hot Fives and Sevens was enough to send Armstrong back to New York, where he appeared in the popular Broadway revue, “Hot Chocolates.” He soon began touring and never really stopped until his death in 1971. As his music progressed and popularity grew, his singing also became very important. Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing, but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it with the first recording on which he scatted, "Heebie Jeebies". Armstrong did, thinking the track would be discarded, but that was the version that was pressed to disc, sold, and became an unexpected hit.
Inside the Meticulously Maintained Home of Jazz Legend Louis Armstrong
LAHM is in the midst of a dramatic physical and programmatic transformation marked by the opening of the new Louis Armstrong Center, including a 75-seat performance space, a state of the art multimedia exhibition, and the Armstrong Archival Collections. The Center will allow us to live the Armstrong values of Artistic Excellence, Education and Community through programs such as Armstrong Now! With the Louis Armstrong House Museum and Archives currently closed because of Covid-19, we thought it would be beneficial to offer virtual tours of each location here on our new “That’s My Home” site. In 2018, videographer Michael Paras filmed Director of Research Collections Ricky Riccardi giving tours of the Armstrong House and Garden, as well as our Archives at Queens College. We’d like to offer to this video to give a glimpse inside our locations as we await the day we can safely welcome visitors around the world back to Queens.
Caples Jefferson Architects designed the 14,000-square-foot building, staying mindful of the Armstrongs’ love for their community and their neighbors on the block. In addition the interior of the house was renovated to their taste.[7] Ornate bathrooms, and the kitchen was not originally part of the house. Paintings and souvenirs were given to Louis Armstrong on tour from Asia, Europe to Africa. These gifts[8] have found a home of their own on dressers, night stands, shelves and walls.
Podcast: The Louis Armstrong House Museum
Experience the magic of jazz maestro Arturo O’Farrill, a pianist, composer, and educator whose career has spanned continents and genres. From his roots in Mexico to his rise in the New York jazz scene, Arturo has collaborated with legends like Dizzy Gillespie and Harry Belafonte, earning accolades including multiple Grammy Awards. LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network. After three years of arranging, preserving, and cataloging, Cogswell opened the Louis Armstrong Archives to public in May 1994. The following year, Queens College, named Cogswell as the Director of the Louis Armstrong House, tasking him with raising the funders and overseeing the restoration of the Armstrong House so it could be open to the public, fulfilling Lucille’s dream.
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New Louis Armstrong Center showcases a life in music and a love for Queens - Gothamist
New Louis Armstrong Center showcases a life in music and a love for Queens.
Posted: Fri, 07 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
He was able to access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for Black men. In addition to the preserved rooms, the house features an exhibition cataloguing Louis Armstrong’s life and achievements and an ever growing collection of objects related to the musician, donated by family and friends. Even Armstrong’s compendious record collection is preserved at the site. The Louis Armstrong House may have been a home to the jazz musician, but now it is a living, talking record. The many years of constant touring eventually wore down Armstrong, who had his first heart attack in 1959 and returned to intensive care at Beth Israel Hospital for heart and kidney trouble in 1968. Doctors advised him not to play but Armstrong continued to practice every day in his Corona, Queens home, where he had lived with his fourth wife, Lucille, since 1943.
Forms a vocal quartet with three other boys and performs on street corners for tips. The Karnofskys, a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, hires Louis to work on their junk wagon. Purchases his first cornet with money loaned to him by the Karnofskys. Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 4, 1901. He was raised by his mother Mayann in a neighborhood so dangerous it was called “The Battlefield.” He only had a fifth-grade education, dropping out of school early to go to work.
Edward R. Murrow, who has traveled to the Gold Coast with Louis, includes the visit in his documentary Satchmo the Great. Records with blues singers Bessie Smith, and Clarence Williams, among others. In November, quits Fletcher Henderson and returns to Chicago.
In 1983, his widow Lucille willed the building and its contents to New York City for the creation of a museum and study center devoted to Armstrong’s career and the history of jazz. Armstrong appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, usually playing a bandleader or musician. His most familiar role was as the bandleader cum narrator in the 1956 musical High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm.
Billed at the Dreamland Café as “The World’s Greatest Jazz Cornetist.” On November 12th, Louis makes his first recordings as a leader of his own group, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. While in the Waif’s Home, Louis receives musical instruction from the band director, Peter Davis, and eventually becomes leader of the Waif’s Home band. The Center is the permanent home for the 60,000-piece archive of Louis and Lucille Armstrong, and it houses a 75-seat venue offering performances, lectures, films, and educational experiences. Please arrive 15 minutes early to secure your seat, as admission is on a first-come, first-served basis. For those eager to delve deeper into LAHM’s cultural offerings, guided tours are available starting at 1pm, with the last tour departing at 5pm.
The museum offers daily guided tours to visitors from around the world and features a variety of programs, including concerts, lectures, and seminars. Johnny Collins becomes Louis’s manager, against Rockwell’s objections. Performs at the Roof Garden of the Kentucky Hotel in Louisville, making Louis the first black American to do so. Makes a triumphant return to New Orleans—his first visit since he departed in 1922. Records “When It’s Sleepytime Down South,” which becomes his theme song. In 1922, King Oliver sent for Armstrong to join his band in Chicago.
The longtime residence of the famed jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader, it is a midcentury interior design treasure hidden behind a modest brick exterior. Armstrong had nineteen "Top Ten" records[125] including "Stardust", "What a Wonderful World", "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Ain't Misbehavin'", "You Rascal You", and "Stompin' at the Savoy". "We Have All the Time in the World" was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it was featured on a Guinness advertisement. Was important in introducing into the mainstream of popular singing an Afro-American concept of song as a lyrical extension of speech ... The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club.
Strolling through each room slowly, we were given the unique opportunity to see how he lived and where his genius was fostered. Appears on many television shows, including The David Frost Show, The Dick Cavett Show, The Tonight Show, and a television special with Pearl Bailey. Records the poem “The Night before Christmas” in the den of his Corona home. (It is his last commercial recording.) Performs for two weeks in the Empire Room of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Makes a major tour of Africa (Cameroon, the Belgian Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and many more countries), as part of a four-month tour sponsored by the U.S. Records ten selections with Duke Ellington in 1961, their only collaboration in the recording studio.
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