A sweet article from The Nation on Louis Armstrong and his legacy. The photo above is from a collage made by Armstrong for the cover of one of the many boxes used to store his hundreds of hours of tapes.
The author, Ethan Iverson, writes about Armstrong's tapes:
Already an inveterate letter writer, Armstrong started recording home audiotapes in 1950. On the road during that decade, doing hundreds of one-nighters a year, Armstrong toted around a custom-made steamer trunk with two tape recorders and a record player. He would record anybody and everybody while goofing off in his hotel room.
While he slowed down the relentless taping for a time in the 1960s, Armstrong came back for a last act from 1969 until his death in 1971, partly because Lucille bought him two state-of-the-art Tandberg reel-to-reel machines. Armstrong spent hours and hours in his study, creating roughly 200 mix tapes on the Tandbergs and writing down annotated playlists.
The total collection in the Louis Armstrong Archive numbers more than 60,000 items, including books, records, tapes, photos, letters, and scores.
Iverson provides a warm appreciation of Armstrong's place in American musical history. More than a place actually, Louis was a pivotal figure. Read the article and enjoy some time with the great man.
I visited his home, now a museum, in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, a few years ago and highly recommend it. Earlier this year, the Louis Armstrong Center opened across the street so another visit may be in order.
I also learned that in 2012 the only film of an Armstrong recording session was discovered in a storage facility. From 1959, it's I Ain't Got Nobody. Accompanying musicians are Danny Barcelona (drums), Mort Herbert (bass), Billy Kyle (piano), Trummy Young (trombone), and Peanuts Hucko (clarinet). The song was composed in 1915 by Roger Graham and Spencer Williams. You can find all my Armstrong posts by clicking on the Armstrong tag at the bottom.
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