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Armstrong’s improvised solos transformed jazz from an ensemble-based music into a soloist’s art, while his expressive vocals incorporated innovative bursts of scat singing and an underlying swing feel. By the end of the decade, the popularity of the Hot Fives and Sevens was enough to send Armstrong back to New York, where he appeared in the popular Broadway revue, “Hot Chocolates.” He soon began touring and never really stopped until his death in 1971. As his music progressed and popularity grew, his singing also became very important. Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing, but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it with the first recording on which he scatted, "Heebie Jeebies". Armstrong did, thinking the track would be discarded, but that was the version that was pressed to disc, sold, and became an unexpected hit.
A jazz ambassador
Forms a vocal quartet with three other boys and performs on street corners for tips. The Karnofskys, a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, hires Louis to work on their junk wagon. Purchases his first cornet with money loaned to him by the Karnofskys. Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 4, 1901. He was raised by his mother Mayann in a neighborhood so dangerous it was called “The Battlefield.” He only had a fifth-grade education, dropping out of school early to go to work.
Louis ArmStrong House Museum
Caples Jefferson Architects' Louis Armstrong Museum Shines in Queens - Metropolis - Metropolis Magazine
Caples Jefferson Architects' Louis Armstrong Museum Shines in Queens - Metropolis.
Posted: Mon, 11 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Headed by the same architecture firm who built the Louis Armstrong house in 1910, the project broke ground this summer and will include a state-of-the-art exhibition gallery and a 68-seat jazz club when completed. It’s set to open in 2019, and we can’t wait to return when it does. Armstrong continued touring the world and making records with songs like “Blueberry Hill” (1949), “Mack the Knife” (1955) and “Hello, Dolly!
What made Maurizio Pollini a piano god? Even his late recordings are a revelation
We also provide access to Mr. Armstrong’s extensive archives, develop programs for the public that educate and inspire and host performances with multi-disciplinary artists from around the world. Armstrong was performing at the Brick House in Gretna, Louisiana, when he met Daisy Parker, a local prostitute, and started an affair as a client. He found the courage to look for her home to see her away from work. Not long after that fiasco, Parker traveled to Armstrong's home on Perdido Street.[86] They checked into Kid Green's hotel that evening.
Inside the Meticulously Maintained Home of Jazz Legend Louis Armstrong
The longtime residence of the famed jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader, it is a midcentury interior design treasure hidden behind a modest brick exterior. Armstrong had nineteen "Top Ten" records[125] including "Stardust", "What a Wonderful World", "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Ain't Misbehavin'", "You Rascal You", and "Stompin' at the Savoy". "We Have All the Time in the World" was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it was featured on a Guinness advertisement. Was important in introducing into the mainstream of popular singing an Afro-American concept of song as a lyrical extension of speech ... The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club.
Jazz history comes to life in Corona
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.
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.
No two rooms are alike — “I guess ‘Rococo’ is the word I could use without losing my job,” Harris said of the overall aesthetic — though many are surprisingly modest, especially given Armstrong’s larger-than-life presence. He is the only person ever to have hit records in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. He played behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War and in the Democratic Republic of Congo during decolonization in 1960, during which both sides of a civil war called a truce to watch him perform, then picked up fighting again once his plane took off. The gold sconces offer a glimmer of opulence, but the walls themselves are covered in a subdued, cream-colored wallpaper — the same wallpaper that covered them at least 50 years ago. It matches the upright piano standing against one wall, and the two twill couches. There’s also a small TV — one of the first on the block — that sits low to the floor, so that the neighborhood children whom Armstrong would invite over (he never had kids of his own) could sit comfortably on the floor to watch Westerns.
Marries Daisy Parker, a prostitute from Gretna, Louisiana. Lives briefly with his father, William Armstrong, then returns to his mother. Joe Oliver, one of the finest trumpet players in New Orleans, becomes Louis’s teacher and mentor. Delivers coal and sells newspapers to help feed himself, his mother, and his sister. In America, Armstrong had been a great Civil Rights pioneer, breaking down numerous barriers as a young man. In the 1950s, he was sometimes criticized for his onstage persona and called an “Uncle Tom” but he silenced critics by speaking out against the government’s handling of the “Little Rock Nine” high school integration crisis in 1957.
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.
Ballrooms closed and there was competition from other types of music, especially pop vocals, becoming more popular than big band music. It became impossible under such circumstances to finance a 16-piece touring band. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town,[66] Armstrong visited New Orleans, had a hero's welcome, and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team known as Armstrong's Secret Nine and had a cigar named after him.[67] But soon he was on the road again. After a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, he fled to Europe.
Lucille purchases a house in Corona, Queens, New York City. Louis and Lucille live there for the remainder of their lives. Ten thousand people greet him at the railway station in Denmark. Fires a pistol in the street to celebrate New Year’s Eve. A nearby policeman arrests Louis and the next day he is confined to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. Welcome to the Louis Armstrong House Museum’s first virtual exhibit experience.
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."
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