Monday, April 29, 2024

Jazz History Comes To Life In Corona

louis armstrong house

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.

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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.

Fraunces Tavern Museum

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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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.

Work during hard times

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.

Louis Armstrong Center opens in Queens, NY - Wallpaper*

Louis Armstrong Center opens in Queens, NY.

Posted: Tue, 31 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Untapped New York unearths New York City’s secrets and hidden gems. Discover the city’s most unique and surprising places and events for the curious mind. Image from the Louis Armstrong Museum courtesy of Shore Fire Media. The Conservancy would like to thank the staff at the Louis Armstrong House Museum and our tour guides David Reese, Curator and Jennifer Walden Weprin, Director of Marketing.

The Armstrong Center

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.

Norman Granz then had the vision for Ella and Louis to record Porgy and Bess. On various live records he is called "Louie" on stage, such as on the 1952 "Can Anyone Explain?" from the live album In Scandinavia vol.1. The same applies to his 1952 studio recording of the song "Chloe", where the choir in the background sings "Louie ... Louie", with Armstrong responding "What was that? Somebody called my name?".

The Louis Armstrong Center Celebrates the Heroic Jazz Trumpeter - The New Yorker

The Louis Armstrong Center Celebrates the Heroic Jazz Trumpeter.

Posted: Fri, 21 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

HISTORY

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.

louis armstrong house

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.

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.

Performs in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. Has heart attack in Spoleto, Italy and is briefly hospitalized. Appears on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the Bing Crosby Oldsmobile Show. Six-week concert tour with Benny Goodman cut short after Goodman becomes ill. Portrays Bottom in the musical Swingin’ the Dream, a jazz version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Begins a six-month engagement at the Cotton Club (New York).

Today, the house serves as a historic museum that presents concerts and educational programs. An archive of writings, recordings and memorabilia is also available to the public for research, bringing the history of jazz to life. One of the world’s most renowned jazz musicians and entertainers; Louis Armstrong lived in this modest Queens home from 1943 until his death in 1971.

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.

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.

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Louis Armstrong, the King of Queens The New York Times

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