The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation donated the Armstrong archives in the 1980s and provided the funds to purchase the lot on which the new Center sits. CUNY and Queens College officials, working with state and city legislators and executive offices, led the advocacy for the funding of the $26 million building across the street from the original Armstrong home. Funds were awarded by the Office of the Governor, the New York State Senate, New York State Assembly, Office of the New York City Mayor, Office of the Queens Borough President, and the New York City Council. The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) led the construction project. The staff and board of the museum for the past 15 years, including former Director, Michael Cogswell, worked tirelessly to ensure the new building’s success.
The Louis Armstrong House Museum
Performs at the Sunset Café with the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra. Meets Joe Glaser (who will later become Louis’s manager). Briefly leads a band, Louis Armstrong and His Stompers, at the Sunset Café. Records “West End Blues” on June 28, 1928, which is today considered one of the most famous recordings in early jazz. William Armstrong abandons the family during Louis’s infancy.
HISTORY
The 1930s also found Armstrong achieving great popularity on radio, in films, and with his recordings. He performed in Europe for the first time in 1932 and returned in 1933, staying for over a year because of a damaged lip. Back in America in 1935, Armstrong hired Joe Glaser as his manager and began fronting a big band, recording pop songs for Decca, and appearing regularly in movies. A widespread revival of interest in the 1940s in the traditional jazz of the 1920s made it possible for Armstrong to consider a return to the small-group musical style of his youth. During the concert, Armstrong and Teagarden performed a duet on Hoagy Carmichael's "Rockin' Chair" they then recorded for Okeh Records.
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At Queens' new Louis Armstrong Center, an archive comes home - NPR
At Queens' new Louis Armstrong Center, an archive comes home.
Posted: Thu, 06 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Following Louis Armstrong’s death in 1971, Lucille spent 12 years as a widow in the same house. When she passed away in 1983, she left everything to the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Inc. and the house to the City of New York. No one has resided in the building since then and its furnishings remain very much as they were. Today, the Museum is administered by Queens College, which also holds the research collections of the museum. The jazz musician’s impeccably maintained home in a modest New York City neighborhood is a testament to his — and midcentury design’s — legacy.
Appears at the Nice Jazz Festival, the first international jazz festival. Makes his television debut on one of the first television broadcasts; the show is called Toast of the Town (later to be known as the Ed Sullivan Show). Continues to record with the Hot Five (and with the Hot Seven in May, 1927).
Hotter Than That
In the 1959 film The Five Pennies, Armstrong played himself, sang, and played several classic numbers. He performed a duet of "When the Saints Go Marching In" with Danny Kaye during which Kaye impersonated Armstrong. He had a part in the film alongside James Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story.
Tours
Also seek out their sequels, Ella and Louis Again and Porgy and Bess. For details on availability and pricing, please visit our Group Tour Page and click on the form. Don’t miss this opportunity to witness the fusion of cultures and rhythms as Arturo O’Farrill and ALJE ignite the stage with their passion and artistry, all in celebration of International Jazz Day.
Life Without Light: Creatures in the Dark With Sarah McAnulty
Among its steadfast champions was the museum's former Board chair, philanthropist Jerome Chazen, who died last year. That their dream finally came to fruition, after more than two decades of hopeful planning, is a testament to the strength of that vision — and the efforts of those who carried it forward. "We're thankful for the community that raised us up," says Regina Bain, Executive Director of the House Museum. "It's all in the spirit of Louis and Lucille — because they made such an impact on this community, and on this block, that people wanted to fight for this space."
Legacy
Louis spends the first years of his life living with his paternal grandmother, Josephine Armstrong. After age five, Louis lives in a two room house near Liberty and Perdido Streets with his mother and sister, Beatrice (who was nicknamed Mama Lucy). On New Year’s Eve 1912, he was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. There, under the tutelage of Peter Davis, he learned how to properly play the cornet, eventually becoming the leader of the Waif’s Home Brass Band.
He returned to performing in 1970 but it was too much, too soon and he passed away in his sleep on July 6, 1971, a few months after his final engagement at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Advance ticket purchase required to visit the new Center and the historic house. Tickets are non-refundable, but can be re-scheduled if guests have contacted the museum before the start time of their tour. The 20th century produced no shortage of legendary instrumentalists and vocalists but Louis Armstrong is the only figure who completely changed the way people played music on their instruments and he completely changed the way people sang. Perfecting the concept of the improvised solo, popularizing the use of scat singing, defining the concept of swing–those are just some of the ways Louis Armstrong changed jazz, and American popular music–during his lifetime.
Still, after revolutionizing jazz in the 1920s, Armstrong was in the vanguard of black entertainers who crossed over to white mass culture, leading an integrated band, appearing in movies and becoming a regular first on radio and then on television. At its heart, “Pops” is about one of the 20th century’s most interest- ing and enduring popular per- formers, with a compelling life story to match. One week later, 52 years to the day, we made that little kid in the baseball uniform’s sign come true and opened the Louis Armstrong Center to the public! Now that you know this seemingly long but actually brief history of how we got here, visit LouisArmstrongHouse.org and book your tickets to see the Armstrong House and the Armstrong Center today, just as Louis and Lucille would have wanted it. At the time of her death, Lucille was in Boston, attending an annual tribute to Louis at Brandeis University.
By the time of his death in 1971, the man known around the world as Satchmo was widely recognized as a founding father of jazz—a uniquely American art form. His influence as an artist and cultural icon is universal, unmatched, and very much alive today. The Armstrong Corona campus is a Queens-based hub for inspiration and learning, economic development and tourism. For local neighbors, city, national, and international visitors, the new campus will permanently establish Armstrong’s legacy as one of the most influential figures in American and Global History.
Armstrong appeared on the October 28, 1970, Johnny Cash Show, where he sang Nat King Cole's hit "Ramblin' Rose" and joined Cash to re-create his performance backing Jimmie Rodgers on "Blue Yodel No. 9". Armstrong was a gifted composer who wrote more than fifty songs, some of which have become jazz standards (e.g., "Gully Low Blues", "Potato Head Blues" and "Swing That Music"). Louis Armstrong was already a worldwide star — a seasoned headliner with a Hollywood profile — when his wife, Lucille, surprised him with the purchase of a modest house in Corona, Queens, in 1943. He got his first glimpse of the place fresh off tour, rolling up in a taxicab. (He invited the cab driver to come in and check it out with him.) "The more Lucille showed me around the house the more thrill'd I got," Armstrong later wrote. Exit on the north side of Roosevelt Avenue, and take the stairs on the left.
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