[Dixielandjazz] Fwd: Louis Armstrong's New Orleans

[Bill Haesler]

Dear friends,
To celebrate Louis' real birthday, here is an article sent to me by my 
mate Denis King, the Australian Dance Bands list moderator.
Kind regards,
Bill.

> 'A Legacy Worth Saving.
> It takes a trained eye to uncover the historic treasures in Louis
> Armstrong's old neighborhood'
> by John McCusker
> New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 3, 2007
>
> With little competition for the entertainment dollar in the dog days
> of summer, and a savvy mix of attractions, Satchmo SummerFest has
> emerged as a major event on the Crescent City festival calendar. For
> three days, starting today, one can take in all things Louis
> Armstrong, from performances of the music he defined, and redefined,
> to lectures about his life and legacy.
>
> This year, there will be a void amid the second-lining and
> celebration: historian and festival organizer Tad Jones. The author
> and historian, who died from a fall at home on New Year's Day, was
> working on a promising biography of Armstrong. It was to be limited
> to the years Louis lived in New Orleans, from 1901 to 1922, allowing
> Jones to go deeper, providing the back story to the back story to the
> back story.
>
> Jones is best known as the man who discovered that Armstrong's true
> birth date was Aug. 4, 1901, and not July 4, 1900, as Satchmo
> claimed. A disgusted fan pointed at him one day and said, "You're
> that white man that stole Louis' birthday." He laughed it off, but
> confessed that it stung.
>
> He approached such long held assumptions with healthy skepticism. He
> learned that Armstrong's birthplace at Jane Alley was not the
> tenement described by many writers, but his grandmother's home.
>
> He traced Armstrong's family back several generations, found
> relatives and listened to their stories. He was relentless. I ran
> into him one Saturday morning at the Main Library on Loyola Avenue,
> looking through century-old tax records. At one time houses were
> taxed by the number of chimneys, and he wanted to know how many
> chimneys there were at one of Armstrong's relative's homes. He was
> that thorough.
>
> Jones loved New Orleans and wanted to write a book that would, in
> part at least, present an Armstrong that locals would recognize as
> one of their own. Something sorely lacking in other works about the
> horn player.
>
> Now he is gone and his book will never be.
>
> His legacy, however, does live on in those with whom he shared his
> discoveries, including local landmarks associated with Armstrong.
>
> While many of Armstrong's haunts are gone, it's still possible to
> take your own tour of the city -- a tour that Jones used to offer
> during Satchmo SummerFest.
>
> The two most important Armstrong addresses were obliterated during
> the 1950s urban renewal, including his birthplace on Jane Alley
> between Perdido and Gravier streets. It now sits under the Orleans
> Parish traffic court building, still closed after being damaged
> during Hurricane Katrina. His childhood home was roughly at the
> corner of Perdido and Liberty, now the front lawn of City Hall.
>
> It's best to start in the 400 block of South Rampart Street where it
> crosses Perdido Street. This intersection was so important to early
> jazz that two of the most popular songs in the canon are "South
> Rampart Street Parade" and "Perdido Street Blues."
>
> It was here that Buddy Bolden, who many agree was the first jazz band
> leader, blew his cornet around 1900. The Eagle Saloon, which still
> stands at the corner, may have been one of the first places where
> jazz was performed. When Armstrong moved into the neighborhood around
> 1907, he thrilled at the music he heard. He got a job working for the
> Karnofskys, a Lithuanian Jewish family that had a number of
> businesses in the neighborhood, including the Karnofsky shop that
> still stands at 427-31 S. Rampart St.
>
> Satchmo used to ride on the wagon with one of the Karnofsky sons and
> blow a toy horn to let people know they were coming. After work, he
> would eat dinner with the family and they would sing together in
> Lithuanian. Armstrong wrote that he had no idea what the words meant,
> but the Karnofskys put the love of music in him, teaching him to sing
> from his heart.
>
> They also gave him an advance on his wages to buy an old cornet at
> the Itkovitch Pawn Shop a few doors up. It's now a parking lot.
>
> Still standing between the Karnofsky shop and the Eagle Saloon is the
> Iroquois Vaudeville Theatre, possibly the first stage on which
> Armstrong ever appeared. He competed and won a talent contest there
> as a youngster.
>
> On New Year's morning 1913, Armstrong stood at Rampart and Perdido
> streets and fired a gun in the air in celebration. He was arrested
> and remanded to the Colored Waif's Home, which used to stand at City
> Park Avenue and Conti Street across from where Bud's Broiler was
> before Katrina. It was torn down after the Milne Boys Home on
> Franklin Avenue replaced it in the '20s.
>
> Armstrong got his first instruction on the cornet while living at the
> waif's home.
>
> The Rampart Street buildings, which Jones had researched so
> carefully, are most associated with the dawn of jazz and the
> ascendancy of Louis Armstrong, but there isn't even a plaque to mark
> the area.
>
> Now that Jones is no longer here to give his annual tour, there is
> one less person striving to preserve this rich history.
>
> And that's a shame.
> _____
>
> At 2 p.m. Sunday, a panel discussion titled "Tad Jones Remembered"
> will be held at the Old U.S Mint.
>
> --- End forwarded message ---