Author Archives: Ricky Riccardi

Happy New Year and welcome to the first “That’s My Home” post of 2026….and the tenth (and final!) in this ongoing series inspired by the centennial of the first Louis Armstrong Hot Five session of November 1925. Our previous two installments were bonuses of sorts, with Part 8 devoted to sharing audio of Louis listeningContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 10: Later Reissues in the LP and CD Eras”

Hello folks and welcome to our final post of 2025! It’s been an exciting year as we’ve covered a lot of different stories here on the Louis Armstrong’s “That’s My Home” site, including on sharing hundreds of photos from Louis’s appearances on the Timex All Star Jazz Shows of the 1950s, more looks into theContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 9: Louis Armstrong House Museum Concert”

Happy Holidays, folks! Here’s a bit of a surprise installment of our Hot Five series, something to sit back, relax, and listen to while hopefully taking some time off at the end of this crazy year. (By the way, if you’d like to catch up, all of our Hot Five posts can now be accessedContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 8: Louis Spins Records for the Voice of America, July 1956”

Welcome back to the next installment in our series of posts inspired by the first Louis Armstrong Hot Five recording session of November 12, 1925. We’ve come along way since the initial posts and have ended up chronocling the impact George Avakian’s Columbia Records album reissues of the 1940s had on the reputation of thisContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 7: Columbia Long-Playing Albums of the 1950s”

Last time out, we told the story of George Avakian, who, while still a 21-year-old student at Yale, was hired by Columbia Records oversee a series of jazz reissue albums. Louis Armstrong’s 1920s sides had become coveted collector’s items in the years following their release and Avakian had grown frustrated with how difficult they wereContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 6: Columbia Records Reissue Albums of the 1940s”

In our (very long) previous installment to this series, we told the tale of how the records Louis Armstrong made with the Hot Five and Hot Seven in the 1920s were extremely influential to those who heard them…but there were a lot of people who didn’t hear them at the time of their release becauseContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 5: George Avakian and the Release of “King Louis””

In the previous post of this series, we shared many of the advertisements and clippings devoted to the Hot Five, as saved by Louis Armstrong in a pair of precious scrapbooks from the 1920s. Armstrong was obviously proud of his success as a recording artist and, as the story goes, these records changed jazz historyContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 4: Contemporary Coverage of the Hot Five 1926-1940”

Welcome back to a very exciting third installment in our ongoing Hot Five Centennial Celebration series. If you’d like to catch up, here’s a link to Part 1, which detailed the birth of the Hot Five, and here’s a link to Part 2, in which we broke some very exciting news about Lil Hardin Armstrong.Continue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 3: The Scrapbooks”

On Saturday, November 8, 2025, I co-hosted an afternoon event at the Louis Armstrong House Center dedicated to the impending Hot Five Centennial. I’ve given many Archival presentations since the Armstrong Center opened in 2023, often alternating with Matthew “Fat Cat” Rivera (of Hot Club of New York fame), who handles our Listening Sessions. WeContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 2: Archival Presentation and Listening Session”

The annals of music are filled with iconic band names. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Metallica. It happens less frequently in the jazz world, which tends to favor the individual, but even then, some phrases have had lasting power: The Blanton-Webster Band. The Old Testament. The Jazz Messengers. But it all started 100 years agoContinue reading “Hot Five Centennial Celebration Part 1: Birth of the Hot”