Good Words

When Louis Armstrong was on the road, which was most of the time, he carried with him a taping system that was high-tech for its era.  It included recordings of his favorite music as well as tapes he made himself while touring.  The process occupied much of his time when he was not playing.

The Louis Armstrong Museum in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, NY (which is well worth a visit) has been releasing portions of those tapes.  Most recently is this recording of Armstrong reciting Abraham Lincoln's address at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863.  We don't know what prompted him to make the recording in 1958 but it is fitting for a man who escaped from poverty and abandonment in New Orleans early in the 20th century to become one of the most famous and well-liked people in America.

The electic nature of Armstrong's tapes is demonstrated by the other items on this one, described by the Museum as:

  . . chock full of music–Count Basie’s April in Paris, Coleman Hawkins’s The Hawk in Paris, Berklee College’s Jazz in the Classroom, an Alex Welsh broadcast, a Willis Conover Voice of America broadcast on Armstrong, a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby single, Patti Russo and more–but it’s the Lincoln speech, delivered between the end of the Basie album and Hawkins’s “Chiens Perdus Sans Collier (The Little Lost Dog),” that’s most memorable portion of the tape.

This link will take you to the recording.  It's worth 2 1/2 minutes of your time.