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Last week, we took you inside of Louis Armstrong’s home as he met with producer Bob Thiele in March 1970 to begin preparing to record an album to be issued in time for what Armstrong believed to be his 70th birthday in July. Armed with recordings by Harry Nilsson, the Beatles, Leon Thomas, the PlasticContinue reading “50 Years of “Louis Armstrong and His Friends” Part 2: The May 26, 1970 Session”

For the second straight week, “Satch’s Tracks” is covering one of Louis Armstrong’s own albums, but today’s is a special choice as it was 50 years ago today that he finished recording what was his penultimate studio album, Louis Armstrong and His Friends. And though the theme of these Virtual Exhibits is “That’s My Home”Continue reading “50 Years of “Louis Armstrong and His Friends” Part 1: The Preparation”

We took this Monday off for Memorial Day but we still have plenty of virtual exhibits from the past two months for you to dive into. Two of our most popular ones were explorations of Louis’s record collection and of his collages. In this week’s installment of “Hanging With Hyland,” Hyland Harris talks with RickyContinue reading “Hanging With Hyland: Louis Armstrong’s Record Collection and Collages”

This is the fifth installment of Satch’s Tracks, our weekly exploration of what’s in Louis Armstrong’s record collection, and the first one to feature one of Armstrong’s own recordings. It probably won’t be the last because Armstrong was one of the few artists who delighted in listening to his own music and a fairly comprehensiveContinue reading ““Isn’t That Wonderful?”: Louis Armstrong Town Hall Concert”

On Monday, our Archivist Sarah Rose published this excellent Virtual Exhibit on the life of Louis Armstrong’s fourth wife, Lucille “Brown Sugar” Armstrong. For this week’s installment of “Hanging With Hyland,” we asked Hyland Harris to talk a little bit more about Lucille’s role as Louis’s wife and her impact on his legacy. Hyland mentionedContinue reading “Hanging With Hyland: Lucille Armstrong”

Louis Armstrong had four wives, but it was his last and longest wife, Lucille, that bought the house in Corona and brought him to the community the Louis Armstrong House Museum still calls home. Born in the Bronx, Lucille Wilson Armstrong started working in show business in the 1930s during the Great Depression to helpContinue reading “Brown Sugar: The Story of Lucille Wilson Armstrong”

Louis Armstrong might be the most influential cornetist/trumpeter of the 1920s but a strong case for second place could be made for Bix Beiderbecke. Though his tragic death at the age of 28 turned him into a cult figure, his cool, lyrical style of playing still sounds timeless today and is the reason why BeiderbeckeContinue reading ““Satchmo Always Loved Bix”: Jazz As It Should Be Played”

Last week, Adriana Filstrup published “Our Neighborhood”, a virtual exhibit about Louis Armstrong’s relationship with the community of Corona, Queens featuring many samples of Armstrong’s writings about the place he called home for the last 28 years of his life. Still, one of our most frequently asked questions is “Why Corona?” For the second installmentContinue reading “Hanging With Hyland: Why Corona, Queens?”

[Warning: This post contains audio excerpts with graphic language and is not appropriate for younger readers.] In September 1957, Louis Armstrong put his career on the line by speaking out against the injustice taking place in Little Rock, where Governor Orval Faubus sent in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine African American school childrenContinue reading ““I’m Still Louis Armstrong–Colored”: Louis Armstrong and the Civil Rights Era”