[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong House Museum

[Robert Ringwald]

Louis Armstrong House Museum

What a Wonderful House
In Queens, the Louis Armstrong House Museum trumpets its namesake anew
by Will Friedwald
Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2010

Louis Armstrong has been gone for nearly 40 years, but there's still little doubt
that he is regarded as the single most important figure in jazz, and perhaps all
of American music. This may be why Armstrong is always contemporary: Just this week,
the world delighted to the spectacle of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin re-creating
Armstrong's 1950 hit "Blueberry Hill" (and lest you doubt where he learned it, Mr.
Putin sang Armstrong's specific arrangement).
The man known to millions as "Satchmo" is in the news again this week thanks to a
pair of announcements by the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens. The
Armstrong collection was opened in 1994, and the 107th Street house itself, where
the trumpeter lived from 1943 until his death in 1971, was opened to the public in
2003. Up to now, the archive has been housed at Queens College, and has been described
as the largest collection devoted to a single jazz musician anywhere in the world.
At a press conference at the Armstrong house last week, the museum's director, Michael
Cogswell, announced that ground will be broken in the spring of 2011 on a new visitors'
center to be located on the other side of 107th Street. The building, which will
be completed in 2013, will house the entire Armstrong library and include an 80-seat
space for musical performances and educational purposes.
Said Mr. Cogswell, "The world is more interested than ever in Louis Armstrong."
The library includes material not only from Armstrong and his wife, Lucille Armstrong,
but also from Phoebe Jacobs, who helped found the Armstrong Educational Foundation
(the organization that supports the museum) in 1969, and Jack Bradley, an avid jazz
researcher and photographer who gathered and took thousands of photos of the Armstrongs
through the decades.
"Can you imagine if Louis were here today with all that's going on?" asked Ms. Jacobs,
who was a close friend of the Armstrongs.
"Oh yeah," Mr. Cogswell said. "He'd be doing iTunes and garage band, all that."
Mr. Cogswell also announced that the Armstrong collection is now searchable online
at
http://louisarmstronghouse.org/
 . The total inventory includes, by his estimate, more than 5,000 audio recordings
(from 78s to tapes to CDs), 15,000 photos, 100 of the Armstrongs' personal scrapbooks,
papers and correspondence, and six of Armstrong's trumpets. The collection is searchable
by medium (films, press clippings) or by topic (Armstrong with Dizzy Gillespie, Armstrong
in a Santa suit) and by many other means. The sound recordings are catalogued online,
although you'll have to visit Corona to actually hear them, owing partly to copyright
issues.
The project's archivist, Ricky Riccardi, the author of the forthcoming book "What
a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years," concluded the press
conference with a few recorded excerpts of what he called "a Christmas day in the
life of Louis Armstrong" from 1950. In one of roughly 650 private tapes, we hear
Armstrong harmonizing along with a Christmas song by Nat King Cole, responding to
Mahalia Jackson and Dean Martin, and dueting with General, his bulldog.
The most miraculous moment on the tape, however, foreshadows the ending of John Coltrane's
"A Love Supreme" of 14 years later. The Coltrane classic climaxes with the sound
of two tenor saxophones, one overdubbed atop the other; likewise, this 1950 tape
includes a sequence in which Armstrong plays along with his own recording of "Back
o' Town Blues," and for a minute or so, we hear two Louis Armstrongs at once. Call
it "Satchmo Supreme."
-30


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
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