[Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong - New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 29, 2015

[Robert Ringwald]

She Snagged Satchmo: Peek Into Louis Armstrong’s New York Love Nest


by Keith Marshall

New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 29, 2015


At the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York, tour guide Hyland Harris sometimes seems to channel the bigger-than-life jazz musician who lived here for decades with wife Lucille. Harris tells how Armstrong, a New Orleans native, would tour up to 300 days each year, then return to discover Lucille’s latest redecorating projects. Her extravagant alterations helped to put a bold, personal stamp on the couple’s modest brick house -- now a National Historic Landmark -- in the Corona neighborhood of Queens.


“He’d come home, and Lucille would have torn out a wall or put up more wallpaper,” Harris said. “The amount of patterned wallpaper is overwhelming. This is the only historic house I know of where you need to wear sunglasses inside to protect your eyes.”


Lucille bought the house in 1943 as a surprise for the world-touring musician, who had never settled down.


Today, the neighborhood feels like a foreign country, predominantly Latin. On a recent visit, Caribbean music could be heard over the hum of a vintage window air conditioner in Armstrong’s second-floor, wood-paneled den. Shelves and cabinets with glass doors held reel-to-reel tape recorders and boxed recordings of Armstrong’s musings and practice sessions. Among the audio documents, museum staffers discovered tapes of the couple’s daily life in the house -- a narrow brick place that they shared with numerous dogs, but no children.


Each box was covered with scraps of paper or memorabilia that Armstrong, a pack rat, couldn’t bear to discard. Armstrong pulled many of the scraps off the den wall, where he’d post any item that mentioned him. The clutter infuriated Lucille, but she allowed it.


“This is just a regular Queens ‘Archie Bunker’ home,” Harris said. “It looks like the home of a working man with a wife who loved shiny things. The den was the one room in the house that he could call his own. Louis said he didn’t ask for much in life, and this is the room Lucille gave him. He let her have the rest of the house.”


When researchers started sorting things out after Lucille’s death, Harris said, “it was kind of like finding King Tut’s tomb. When you grow up poor, you tend to keep things. It was a real treasure trove. His whole life in this house, it’s right here in this room. What we know about Louis and Lucille’s life here, well, there’s no serious scholarship about this. We just listen to Louis’s tapes.”


The subjects of those tapes range from a recording of the couple discussing what they’re eating for dinner to the audio of the television coverage of Martin Luther King’s funeral, which Armstrong captured by holding a microphone in front of a small TV set. Interspersed are the musician’s comments about the funeral. On his desk, a binder displays his handwritten notes on the broadcast, evidence of Armstrong’s archival passion and attention to detail.


Throughout the house, speakers play illuminating bits from Armstrong’s reels. One of the most amusing is his discussion of a portrait that singer Tony Bennett painted of Armstrong. He signed the painting with his real last name, Benedetto, which, as is evident in the tape, Armstrong had trouble remembering and pronouncing. But his pride in the portrait was obvious.


The tour includes much more than Armstrong’s office den, however.


In the downstairs bathroom, which was featured in a 1971 Time magazine article about celebrity bathrooms, gold fixtures and marble are reflected by wall and ceiling mirrors.


The kitchen also is a period piece. Its pristine, mid-1960s style comes through in every detail: a custom Crown range, built-in appliances and shiny blue plastic cabinetry.


“If the bathroom is Liberace-Hollywood, the kitchen is The Jetsons-Spaceage,” Harris said. “Even the pipes in the bathroom are gold plated. Some say it’s so fancy because Louis never had a proper bathroom when growing up; others say it reminded him of bathrooms in the fancy hotels when he was on tour. The kitchen shows the influence of the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing, just a couple of subways stops away. And the stove was custom crafted for Mr. and Mrs. Louis Armstrong.”


The Armstrongs relaxed in a garden created in a vacant lot they acquired next door to the house. When Satchmo returned from a tour, he’d buy ice cream for the neighborhood kids -- his “little ice-cream eaters” -- and invite them inside to watch TV on a tiny set, one of the first in the area.


This was the only home Armstrong had. He adapted to all Lucille’s renovations and lived in it until his death in 1971. As he said in one of his recordings, “When I think of ‘It’s a Wonderful World,’ it brings me back to my home in Corona, where I live.”



Photos and video:


http://www.nola.com/homegarden/index.ssf/2015/07/louis_armstrong_satchmo_house.html 

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The reason Mayberry was so peaceful and quiet was because nobody was married. Andy, Aunt Bea, Barney, Floyd, Howard, Goober, Gomer, Sam, 
Earnest T Bass, Helen, Thelma Lou, Clara, and of course Opie, all single. 
The only married person was Otis, and he stayed drunk.