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The House That Satch Built
by Terrell Kent Holmes
Many jazz-loving New Yorkers and visitors to the city do not know that an unassuming but significant part of jazz history is just minutes away from midtown Manhattan. From 1943 until his death in 1971, trumpet legend Louis Armstrong lived with his wife Lucille in a house nestled in quiet, working-class Corona, Queens. The area suited Armstrong's unpretentious nature perfectly. It was a place where he could relax after touring, invite his neighbors and famous friends over for parties or ...
Continue ReadingLouis Armstrong
by Tim Kirker
1901 - 1971When speaking of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby once commented that he was “the beginning and the end of music in America. Though Armstrong didn't single handedly create jazz, he did steer it through five decades of development, breathing structure and imagination into its fiber. In the process he helped change the American cultural landscape. Armstrong was an exceptional trumpeter and singer. His articulation and range on the trumpet were revolutionary and he ushered in soloing to ...
Continue ReadingTour of the Louis Armstrong House Museum
by Bob Jacobson
When Louis Armstrong came home from a road trip one day in 1943, he handed the cab driver the address of the new home his wife Lucille has picked out as a surprise, the first home he had ever owned. Since the house they pulled up to was in a racially-mixed neighborhood, Louis thought the cabbie was either lost or playing a trick on him. But then Lucille, who'd bought the modest two-story, clapboard-shingled house in working-class Corona for $3,500, ...
Continue ReadingThe Essential Louis Armstrong
by Colin Fleming
Louis Armstrong The Essential Louis Armstrong Columbia Legacy Recordings 2004
A potentially unwieldy concept, the compilation--woe the artist whose work spans decades and styles at the prospect of the two-disc catchall.
As with Bob Dylan, George Gershwin, and Miles Davis, we must number Louis Armstrong among those truly ill-served by the roundup approach to popular music, a musician whose stylistic innovations were spread across fewer idioms, perhaps, but whose career ...
Continue ReadingLouis Armstrong: An Extravagant Wife
by Jim Santella
Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Wife Laurence Bergreen Books On Tape ISBN 0-7366-4103-3
Velma Middleton sang with Louis Armstrong and his all-star band throughout the later years of his varied career. Her velvety-smooth voice lent itself to the trumpeter’s forlorn blues, as well as to his genuine show of love for singing to an audience. Together, they stoked a relationship that gave the world album upon album of happy music. They could swing, ...
Continue ReadingLouis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life
by Jim Santella
Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life Laurence Bergreen 1997 ISBN 0-7366-4103-3
Laurence Bergreen paints both a comprehensive and factual summary of the life of Louis Armstrong. He backs up what he says with quotes. Armstrong was a writer. He kept copious notes. The artist bought his first typewriter in 1922 and wrote on it just about every night. Those personal recollections, coupled with those of musicians with whom Armstrong worked, make for a very substantial ...
Continue ReadingLouis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life
by Joel Roberts
By Laurence Bergreen Broadway Books 1997, 0-553-06768-0
The history of jazz began with a gunshot. On New Year's Eve 1912, young Louis Armstrong, then singing for spare change with a street-corner quartet, “borrowed" a .38 revolver from one of the many “stepfathers" who regularly visited his mother. In keeping with a time-honored New Orleans tradition, he fired the gun in the air to welcome in the new year. A police detective standing nearby arrested Louis for ...
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