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Speaker 1: Taking a walk.

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Speaker 2: You still feel their spirit here, you know. Some people

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Speaker 2: say it almost feels like Lewis and Lucia. Maybe yeah,

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Speaker 2: maybe they're grocery shopping right now. Maybe they're having lunch

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Speaker 2: and we're just kind of keeping the house of warm

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Speaker 2: until they get back.

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Speaker 3: But the living room very musical room.

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Speaker 2: Above the piano is a pencil sketch of Tuscanini, the

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Speaker 2: great classical conductor. There's a Leroy Neiman painting of Jerry Mulligan,

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Speaker 2: the great baritone saxophonist. Lewis himself saw that at Hammer

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Speaker 2: Galleries in the early nineteen sixties and carried it all

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Speaker 2: the way back here to Corona.

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Speaker 4: Welcome to the Taking a Walk Podcast with your host

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Speaker 4: Buzz Night. On past episodes, Buzz has walked through the

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Speaker 4: Country Music Hall of Fame and the Folk Americana Hall

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Speaker 4: as well, and on this episode he heads to Corona, Queens,

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Speaker 4: New York, to the Lewis Armstrong House Museum with Ricky Riccardi,

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Speaker 4: the director of research collections. You'll love this tank on

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Speaker 4: a National treasure. Next with Taking a Walk and Buzz Night.

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Speaker 3: Well, Ricky, thanks for taking a walk with me. I'm

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Speaker 3: so thrilled to be. Here is a.

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Speaker 2: Beautiful day in Corona, and there's nowhere else I'd rather be,

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Speaker 2: and no one else i'd rather be with Buzz.

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Speaker 3: This could be fun.

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Speaker 5: And I consider myself very lucky as I was making

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Speaker 5: the trip out here to be doing what I'm doing,

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Speaker 5: and I think you in your career feel the same way.

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Speaker 3: I would say. So yeah.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I've been a Lewis Armstrong fan since the

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Speaker 2: age of fifteen, which was twenty eight years ago. And

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Speaker 2: we are about to walk through the front door of

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Speaker 2: Louis Armstrong's house where I have been working for the

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Speaker 2: last fourteen years.

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Speaker 3: This is magical. It almost sounds like he's practicing upstairs.

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Speaker 3: Look at this. So yeah.

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Speaker 2: Right now we're in the living room of the Armstrong

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Speaker 2: house and everything is pretty much as is. You know,

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Speaker 2: no one has lived here since Lewis Love's Armstrong. And

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Speaker 2: right off the bat, you know Lucille, the beautiful Missus Armstrong,

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Speaker 2: Lady Armstrong, her nickname was brown Sugar. She's there to

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Speaker 2: greet us, and we would not be here without Lucille Armstrong.

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Speaker 2: She was the fourth of Missus Armstrong, which is a

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Speaker 2: subject for a whole different interview, but.

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Speaker 3: Lucille and Louis.

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Speaker 2: They married in October nineteen forty two, and their honeymoon

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Speaker 2: was five straight months of one nighters. And Lucille said,

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Speaker 2: this is not what I signed up for. And so

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Speaker 2: she had spent part of her childhood in Corona, and

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Speaker 2: she was living in the Bronx at that time, but

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Speaker 2: she was friends with the Heraldo family next door. They

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Speaker 2: told her the house was for sale thirty four fifty six.

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Speaker 2: And I'm gonna let Lucille tell you what happened next.

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Speaker 3: And I told Luisa, that's get a house.

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Speaker 6: Because I was raised in house always, you know, I've

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Speaker 6: always lived in the suburbs.

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Speaker 7: So I asked aood it and he said, what do

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Speaker 7: you want a house for?

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Speaker 3: We'll be traveling. I get a hotel room.

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Speaker 6: When I wasn't about to be cooped up in the

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Speaker 6: hotel room. And so I said, this guy doesn't know

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Speaker 6: what the house is all about.

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Speaker 3: I bought the house myself.

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Speaker 6: And didn't tell him, so I've been I had had

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Speaker 6: the house eight months before I told Louie, eight whole months.

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Speaker 7: So finally I told him two weeks before we went

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Speaker 7: to go back to New York, and I told him

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Speaker 7: I said, po.

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Speaker 3: S, that's something to tell you. So he said, well, no,

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Speaker 3: I wanna be done now, I said, mightn't have.

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Speaker 7: Done anything that I don't.

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Speaker 6: I don't think you're gonna be unhappy. But what I've done?

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Speaker 6: So I said, yes, I bought a house in a little

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Speaker 6: town called Corona. He had never heard of Corona, and

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Speaker 6: I'd come from Corona. And I said, well, how why

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Speaker 6: did you pay for you to ask me for any money?

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Speaker 7: I said, what, you have to remember that I had

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Speaker 7: been working for thirteen years. I had no money saved up,

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Speaker 7: and so when I approached you about a house, and

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Speaker 7: he was.

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Speaker 6: So down on it, I didn't ask you.

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Speaker 7: And I just took my money and I put the

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Speaker 7: down thing and on the house.

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Speaker 3: And I could keep in the payments up.

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Speaker 7: So he said, you have I said, yes, that's what

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Speaker 7: knowledge you know about how you can take the payments over.

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Speaker 2: So the asking price in March nineteen forty three was

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Speaker 2: eight thousand dollars. I think the mortgage payments were about

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Speaker 2: twenty five dollars.

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Speaker 3: Of my that's amazing. I love that story. That is

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Speaker 3: so brilliant. It reminded me.

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Speaker 5: I have to say a little bit of my mother

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Speaker 5: who wanted to get a particular bedroom set and my

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Speaker 5: father would have nothing to do with it. She just

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Speaker 5: went and bought it herself, and he slept on the

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Speaker 5: couch for like a month and they didn't speak, and

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Speaker 5: she said.

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Speaker 3: Fine, that's it. Yeah, that's it. At at some point

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Speaker 3: you just have to go with the floor. It's beautiful.

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Speaker 2: And so yeah, Lucille was a cotton club dancer, so

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Speaker 2: she had a career in show business, but she actually

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Speaker 2: gave it all up to kind.

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Speaker 3: Of being missus Lewis Armstrong.

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Speaker 2: And as much as she loved the house, it didn't

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Speaker 2: hold a candle to how Lewis felt about it. The

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Speaker 2: first time he saw it, he actually didn't even believe

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Speaker 2: it was his. The cab driver pulled up and Armstrong

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Speaker 2: told the cab driver, he goes, oh, man, quit kidding,

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Speaker 2: and take me to the address I wrote down here.

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Speaker 2: And so Lucille opened the door and said come on in,

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Speaker 2: and once he came in, that was it. Because I mean,

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Speaker 2: his whole childhood was poverty, living in New Orleans, you know,

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Speaker 2: outhouse in the backyard, no indoor plumbing, barefoot, not knowing

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Speaker 2: where his next meal was going to come from. Then

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Speaker 2: he becomes a star, but he's living out of suitcases,

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Speaker 2: living in hotel rooms, living in apartments, and so this,

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Speaker 2: you know, to have an actual home. And as the

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Speaker 2: years went on, he had enough fame and enough money

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Speaker 2: that he could have lived anywhere, but he refused. This

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Speaker 2: was a working class neighborhood, an integrated neighborhood, and they

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Speaker 2: were real people, no celebrities, and lots of kids and

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Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff, and so Lewis just fell

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Speaker 2: in love with the neighborhood.

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Speaker 3: Lucille. After a while she started getting the itch, maybe

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Speaker 3: we can move to an estate in Long Island or

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Speaker 3: a penthouse in Manhattan. He would not budge, and so

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Speaker 3: the house the way we see it today.

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Speaker 2: What Lucille would do is she would call her interior

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Speaker 2: decorator every five years and they would start knocking down

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Speaker 2: walls and putting up wallpaper and chandeliers and everything else.

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Speaker 2: And Lewis was fine with them as long he would

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Speaker 2: go out on tour and come back and be like, oh, oh,

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 3: This room doesn't look the same.

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Speaker 2: But if that's the happy wife, happy life. So that

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Speaker 2: made Lucille happy, and then she really earned her stripes.

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Speaker 2: You could say, after Lewis died because she was the

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Speaker 2: one who had the house declared a National Historic Landmark.

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Speaker 2: And I found a newspaper clipping from August twentieth, nineteen

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Speaker 2: seventy one. Lewis died July sixth, nineteen seventy one, and

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Speaker 2: she's already telling the press. You know, one day I'm

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Speaker 2: going to give the house to the City of New

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Speaker 2: York and then people from around the world can come and.

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Speaker 3: See how Lewis lived.

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Speaker 2: And so she sadly didn't live long enough to see

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Speaker 2: it happen, but she kind of gave us the blueprint,

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Speaker 2: and so the house today, the.

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Speaker 3: Museum across the street. We think she'd be very happy.

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Speaker 3: Oh this is fantastic. Wow. I love how it's decorated.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's We have people who visit who aren't

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Speaker 2: even the biggest jazz fans. They just kind of want

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Speaker 2: to see a perfectly preserved late sixties early seventies home,

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Speaker 2: you know, the wallpaper, all the stuff. We get a

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Speaker 2: lot of comments. People come in they feel like it's

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Speaker 2: their grandparents' house. Yeah, and you still feel their spirit here,

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Speaker 2: you know. Some people say it almost feels like Lewis

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Speaker 2: Lucilla maybe, Yeah, maybe they're grocery shopping right now, maybe

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Speaker 2: they're having lunch, and we're just kind of, you know,

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Speaker 2: keeping the house warm until they get back.

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Speaker 3: But the living room, very musical room.

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Speaker 2: Above the piano is a pencil sketch of Toscanini, the

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Speaker 2: great classical conductor. There's a Leroy Neeman painting of Jerry Mulligan,

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Speaker 2: the great baritone saxophonist. Lewis himself saw that at Hammer

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Speaker 2: Galleries in the early nineteen sixties and carried it all

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Speaker 2: the way back here to Corona. And then there's all

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Speaker 2: the knickknacks and stuff, all everything that they would go

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Speaker 2: out on tour and bring back, you know, gondola from

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Speaker 2: Italy and oz from France, statue from Africa. So it

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Speaker 2: really is kind of like the ambassador stature room as well.

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Speaker 2: But for me, I mean, my domain are the archives.

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Speaker 2: So we have the world's largest archives for any single

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Speaker 2: jazz musician.

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Speaker 3: And the crown jewel.

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Speaker 2: Are these real to reel tapes where Lewis bought us

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Speaker 2: first tape recorder nineteen fifty and from December nineteen fifty

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Speaker 2: until the night before he passed away, he made about

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Speaker 2: seven hundred and fifty reel to real tapes, and half

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Speaker 2: of them are mixtapes where he would just grab records,

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Speaker 2: turn on the radio. He wanted to hear all kinds

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Speaker 2: of music. The other half are the spoken word tapes

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Speaker 2: where it's just him seal musicians sometimes he's alone, and

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Speaker 2: those that's the goal. And I'm going to play a

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Speaker 2: clip right now of Lewis and Lucille in this room.

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Speaker 2: You'll hear music on in the background from probably this

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Speaker 2: Grundig Majestic stereo console. But Lewis is giving the date

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Speaker 2: in the clip, and Lucille, the helpful wife, is there

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Speaker 2: to correct.

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Speaker 8: Him at home and in February twenty six, nineteen fifty

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Speaker 8: six six correction February six, nineteen twenty six, I sid Lucy,

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Speaker 8: she's fixed.

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Speaker 3: Pardon me, folks, I'm messing with my eye, you know,

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Speaker 3: flying the wall moment.

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Speaker 2: But he has the self awareness he says, pardon me, folks.

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Speaker 2: There's nobody in the room with them, and so that's

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Speaker 2: the key to me. We have a tape which we

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Speaker 2: don't play on tour, where Lewis and Lucille get into

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Speaker 2: a knockdown, drag out arguments like five o'clock in the morning,

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Speaker 2: they're both a little tipsy, and they're just going to

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Speaker 2: yell at each other, cursing at each other. Lucille does

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Speaker 2: not know he's recording it, and when she finds out

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Speaker 2: he is, she tells him to erase it, and he says, no,

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Speaker 2: it's for posterity, And to me, it's those two words

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Speaker 2: for posterity. People ask why is he making tapes, why

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Speaker 2: is he making scrapbooks? Why does Lucille keep in the house.

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Speaker 2: They knew, they knew that one day. You know, people

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Speaker 2: who weren't even born yet, like myself, you know, they

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Speaker 2: were going to be interested in Louis Armstrong. And why

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Speaker 2: not be in charge of your own story, you know,

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Speaker 2: tell your own story and your own words and let

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Speaker 2: the future come to you instead of reading books and

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Speaker 2: trying to piece together the facts.

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Speaker 3: No, he left it all for us. It's a gift.

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Speaker 3: It is a gift. So that's the living room.

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Speaker 2: We're gonna walk down the hallway here, and the next

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Speaker 2: room is the bathroom. I mentioned growing up in New Orleans,

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Speaker 2: Lewis had no indoor plumbing, and so when you see

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Speaker 2: this bathroom, it's kind of like, oh, he's come a

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Speaker 2: long way. We've got mirrors from the floor of the ceiling.

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Speaker 2: We've got gold fixtures everywhere, the gold swans, and it's

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Speaker 2: just like, yeah, that's Lucille and the interior decorator as well.

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Speaker 2: For you know, from a size perspective, maybe it's a

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Speaker 2: typical queen's bathroom.

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Speaker 3: Then you take one look at it and go, oh, no,

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Speaker 3: there's nothing typical about this. And what is that in

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Speaker 3: the corner of the Oh.

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Speaker 2: That's probably I would say, a gigantic bottle of cologne.

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Speaker 2: It looks like yeah, and we have all the original stuff.

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Speaker 2: That's the amazing thing, the fact that no one's lived here.

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Speaker 2: Everything you see from the colognees upstairs. When we go

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Speaker 2: you'll see Lucille's gloves, all that stuff. You know, it's

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Speaker 2: all laid out. It's just meticulous. We are now entering

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Speaker 2: the dining room. This is where Lewis would eat his

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Speaker 2: favorite meal. Do you know what his favorite meal was?

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Speaker 3: I don't.

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Speaker 2: Red beans and rice, pure New Orleans food. Lewis used

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Speaker 2: to sign his letters red beans and ricely yours.

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Speaker 3: And he tells a great story. When he was courting Lucille,

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Speaker 3: he said.

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Speaker 2: I took her finely manicured hand, looked her in the

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Speaker 2: eye and said, can you cook red beans and rice?

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Speaker 2: So she needed some tips from her mother. But once

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Speaker 2: she cooked her for him, you know, the rest is history.

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Speaker 2: This Asian motif in this room was actually done in

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Speaker 2: Lucille's widowhood. But it's actually kind of neat because she

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Speaker 2: must have found this painting and the translation we've been

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Speaker 2: told is heaven on Earth, and it's a painting of

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Speaker 2: a Japanese style garden and there's musicians, there's dancers, and

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Speaker 2: sure enough, Lucille being a dancer, Louis being a musician,

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Speaker 2: and next door to the house, Louis's last gift to

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Speaker 2: the world, Louis and Lucille bought an abandoned property.

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Speaker 3: And turned it into a Japanese guarden.

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Speaker 2: So that's where we have our outdoor events and concerts

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Speaker 2: and stuff like that.

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Speaker 3: So I think this is kind of summing all of

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Speaker 3: that up.

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Speaker 2: And we do have one more audio clip in this room,

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Speaker 2: and this is Lewis four days before he passed away

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Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy one, saying grace at this very.

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Speaker 9: Table, love makers, thank moved would bout to receive. That's

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Speaker 9: not about it. I see amen, I didn't see man.

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Speaker 3: I say, amen, sense of humor right to the end.

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Speaker 3: But you can't have a dining room without a kitchen.

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Speaker 3: And this is everybody's favorite room. This kind of all blue,

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Speaker 3: all turquoise jet age, World's fair jets In's kind of

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Speaker 3: kitchen of the future.

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Speaker 2: Apparently the shade of blue was Lucille's favorite. So you

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Speaker 2: got the cabinets, but you also get the clock up there,

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Speaker 2: the sub zero refrigerator, even the dishwasher down here, which

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Speaker 2: I love has daily use in parting mode for when

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Speaker 2: things get out of hand. Lucille love to keep things streamlines.

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Speaker 2: And you get the can openers mounted on the countertop,

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Speaker 2: you get the blender mounted and over there an he

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Speaker 2: guesses in these drawers, there's two hidden drawers.

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Speaker 3: One of them has paper towels and the other one tinfoil.

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Speaker 3: Look at that, and again you know, just life of

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Speaker 3: luxury here.

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Speaker 2: These were actually wooden cabinets that were lacquered piano hinges

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Speaker 2: a little.

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Speaker 3: Musical touch there as well. And the Armstrongs were both

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Speaker 3: very short.

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Speaker 2: Lewis was five to six, Lucille was five two. But

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Speaker 2: if you notice there's a chair here that flips over

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Speaker 2: and becomes a step ladder.

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Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, so they could reach all the stuff on

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Speaker 3: the higher shelves. And I have to point out these

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Speaker 3: six burner stove with a double oven and this little

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Speaker 3: placard reads custom made by Crown for mister and missus

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Speaker 3: Lewis Armstrong. Awesome. Yea.

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Speaker 2: So we've had World of Interiors magazine and all these

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Speaker 2: kind of different non jazz entities come out, and it's

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Speaker 2: just like they take one look at this kitchen and say,

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Speaker 2: oh my goodness, this is this is it?

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Speaker 3: And then of course we have some bubbly here.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, the champagne it's still you know, it's

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Speaker 2: still ready to be popped. And this room over here,

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Speaker 2: this little breakfast nook. When they actually moved in, this

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Speaker 2: was a two family house and Lucille moved her mother

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Speaker 2: in upstairs, and so Louis Lucilla just stayed to the

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Speaker 2: first floor, and so this was their original bedroom. But

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Speaker 2: eventually they turned into this little breakfast nook. I hear

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Speaker 2: the doorbell ring, and that means the next.

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Speaker 3: Tour is coming in. So let's sneak upstairs. Look the

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Speaker 3: more private side of the house. Sounds good. Could not

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Speaker 3: have timed it anymore better.

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Speaker 2: Walk past the guests bedroom with the psychedelic motif where

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Speaker 2: the day bed magically matches the wallpaper on the walls

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Speaker 2: and ceiling, and that the picture is pretty yesculate. That

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00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:33,040
Speaker 2: was originally on the cover of Life magazine. A Philip

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Speaker 2: Paulsman photo from nineteen sixty six.

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Speaker 3: This is the bedroom.

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Speaker 2: Where Armstrong always bragged about his wall to wall bed,

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Speaker 2: which is what he called his king size bed.

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Speaker 3: This is where he passed.

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Speaker 2: Away early hours of July sixth, nineteen seventy one. So

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Speaker 2: it's kind of a sacred spot for Lucille. This was

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Speaker 2: her kind of prayer corner. Over here, ever copied the

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Speaker 2: Bible print of Dolly's crucifixion, some religious figurines from around

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Speaker 2: the world. Lewis, anytime he was asked about religion, he

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Speaker 2: would say he was raised a Baptist, He wore a

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Speaker 2: Star David around his neck, and he was good friends

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Speaker 2: with the pope, so.

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Speaker 3: He had all bases covered. And what is this I

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00:16:18,560 --> 00:16:22,280
Speaker 3: wish I knew. Oh well, if it had something that

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Speaker 3: with Lewis, I got you covered.

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Speaker 2: But Lucille's little knickknacks and all that, I don't know

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Speaker 2: what we're looking at. It looks like a dog and

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Speaker 2: a couple of young people enjoying the feast. I'm sure

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Speaker 2: it had maybe again, probably something they picked up in

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Speaker 2: their travels.

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Speaker 3: But that's the thing. Up to this point, almost everything

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Speaker 3: we've seen is Lucille's fingerprints. Yeah, this is the way

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Speaker 3: she wanted it. Because Louis for the forties and fifties

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Speaker 3: into the sixties, he was on the road three hundred

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Speaker 3: days a year. He loved coming back here. But I

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Speaker 3: mean he was on it was a road warrior.

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Speaker 2: But this next room, which is the last room and

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Speaker 2: really the main event of the house, this is all him.

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Speaker 2: This is the den, This is the original man cave.

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Speaker 2: This is where he would make the real to real tapes.

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Speaker 2: He would design collages, he would cut out news clippings,

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Speaker 2: scotch tape into the boxes, and then Armstrong had a

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Speaker 2: complete archivist's mentality. Every time he made a real tape,

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Speaker 2: he would number it and then he would catalog it

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Speaker 2: so he would handwrite the contents. The TV show Martin

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Speaker 2: Luther King's Funeral, Louis Armstrong was all stars, and so

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Speaker 2: as an archivist, he made my job very easy because

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Speaker 2: he was very thorough that way.

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Speaker 3: And we have some great audio clips here.

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Speaker 2: The first clip is him in nineteen sixty five actually

349
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Speaker 2: showing off this book, and then he talks about how

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Speaker 2: Lucille gave him this room. Growing up in Orleans, they

351
00:17:56,800 --> 00:17:58,959
Speaker 2: would have slept in a room like this. But then

352
00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:01,359
Speaker 2: he talks about the important of listening to all kinds

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Speaker 2: of music, including the Beatles.

354
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Speaker 6: I was putting index Index, are all the.

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Speaker 3: Numbers and get a number.

356
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Speaker 10: And that my Lucille fixed something I never had in

357
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Speaker 10: my life before.

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Speaker 9: She gave me a room and made a den out

359
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Speaker 9: of it. You know what I mean?

360
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Speaker 11: That that that really knocked me out because he couldn't

361
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Speaker 11: afford no den and never a day.

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Speaker 3: Dude, we better sleep in that room.

363
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Speaker 11: I would have got all my table out of the

364
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Speaker 11: world and just pick out what I want to hear.

365
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Speaker 3: Well, it's not the fields good. I mean, I don't

366
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Speaker 3: ask much in life.

367
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Speaker 11: I mean because those are the the needed things.

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Speaker 3: She know that would be my life and music.

369
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Speaker 11: So when I'm in here, every record I ever made,

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Speaker 11: are I canna do looking a little bit.

371
00:18:50,240 --> 00:18:53,200
Speaker 3: And put my finger on it or my end of views.

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00:18:53,400 --> 00:18:55,800
Speaker 3: I got them all on tape and I buy records.

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Speaker 11: That's why I tell you, That's why I tell you,

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00:18:59,119 --> 00:19:02,399
Speaker 11: I buy every buy his records at every interview I

375
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Speaker 11: am and every show I do.

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Speaker 3: It's some I'll tell him.

377
00:19:06,080 --> 00:19:06,440
Speaker 8: Whatever it is.

378
00:19:06,800 --> 00:19:10,080
Speaker 10: It's a company that sends the whole show on tape.

379
00:19:10,200 --> 00:19:13,520
Speaker 3: At my house. And I the st you know what

380
00:19:13,560 --> 00:19:15,600
Speaker 3: I mean. I got the Beatles.

381
00:19:19,040 --> 00:19:19,960
Speaker 10: To think about a Beatle.

382
00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:22,520
Speaker 3: I say, they great, they they got.

383
00:19:22,720 --> 00:19:23,960
Speaker 1: Beat there, you know what I mean.

384
00:19:24,080 --> 00:19:28,840
Speaker 3: And it's all right, okay, that's all right. And then

385
00:19:28,840 --> 00:19:30,320
Speaker 3: on they got a haircut. You see.

386
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Speaker 11: Now we had to be not too pussure into one

387
00:19:33,520 --> 00:19:36,240
Speaker 11: kind of music. You got to appreciate all kinds of music.

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00:19:37,200 --> 00:19:39,400
Speaker 11: That's what I'm trying to put in your head.

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Speaker 3: Listen to all kinds of music.

390
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Speaker 2: I love that because when it's guests there, they're trying

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Speaker 2: to say, oh, if only the you know, the if

392
00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:48,200
Speaker 2: only the Beatles would get a haircut, you know that

393
00:19:48,320 --> 00:19:48,840
Speaker 2: kind of stuff.

394
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Speaker 3: He doesn't take debate.

395
00:19:50,160 --> 00:19:52,040
Speaker 2: He's like, now they got a little beat there, and

396
00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:54,800
Speaker 2: you know, listen to all kinds of music. And he

397
00:19:54,920 --> 00:19:57,520
Speaker 2: really believed that we have this record collector in the archives.

398
00:19:57,560 --> 00:19:59,920
Speaker 2: I mean, you name it King Oliver and Jillia old Morton,

399
00:20:00,040 --> 00:20:02,680
Speaker 2: of course, but he has Miles Davis. He has Stelonius Monk,

400
00:20:03,119 --> 00:20:06,320
Speaker 2: he has Frank Sinatra and Perry Como, tons of opera

401
00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:09,360
Speaker 2: and Rico Caruso. He would go to South America bring

402
00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:11,760
Speaker 2: back tango records, go to Ghana and bring back high

403
00:20:11,800 --> 00:20:12,359
Speaker 2: life records.

404
00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:15,159
Speaker 3: So he had huge ears and we have to have

405
00:20:15,280 --> 00:20:16,240
Speaker 3: some music in this room.

406
00:20:16,520 --> 00:20:20,320
Speaker 2: He loved warming up on trumpet in his den while

407
00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:23,320
Speaker 2: listening to whatever was on hystereo. And so this next

408
00:20:23,359 --> 00:20:26,240
Speaker 2: clip is him listening to an Italian singer, Ray Martino.

409
00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:30,760
Speaker 2: And first again Lewis is addressing us, the imaginary audience,

410
00:20:31,080 --> 00:20:32,840
Speaker 2: telling us where he is, where he's going.

411
00:20:33,359 --> 00:20:35,960
Speaker 3: But the Italian pop record has.

412
00:20:35,800 --> 00:20:38,600
Speaker 2: An instrumental interlude, so why not fill it with the

413
00:20:38,720 --> 00:20:41,040
Speaker 2: sounds of Louis Armstrong's trumpet.

414
00:20:43,600 --> 00:20:51,120
Speaker 10: I'm just recalling and while I'll just catch it. We'll

415
00:20:51,160 --> 00:20:55,240
Speaker 10: leave tomorrow night eleven fifteen for Miami, Florida for two

416
00:20:55,240 --> 00:20:57,040
Speaker 10: weeks not playing.

417
00:20:58,080 --> 00:20:59,320
Speaker 3: It's been my last night at home.

418
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:06,080
Speaker 2: So here's the part of the record now, Darling, cheval

419
00:21:06,119 --> 00:21:55,000
Speaker 2: ma boku. It's beautiful.

420
00:21:55,280 --> 00:21:58,720
Speaker 3: It's so beautiful. Oh, I have a smile on my face.

421
00:21:58,840 --> 00:22:00,760
Speaker 3: That is that it's unbelievable.

422
00:22:01,359 --> 00:22:04,480
Speaker 2: So did he And that's a perfect segue. This painting

423
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:06,520
Speaker 2: looking us in the eye right here. Can you read

424
00:22:06,560 --> 00:22:11,600
Speaker 2: the signature Benedetto Benedetto you know who that is, you know,

425
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:17,640
Speaker 2: artist also from Queens from Astoria, also a singer recently,

426
00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:18,959
Speaker 2: Tony Bennett.

427
00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:19,600
Speaker 3: Tony Bennett.

428
00:22:19,720 --> 00:22:23,920
Speaker 2: Yes, Tony Bennett painted that for Lewis, gave it to

429
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:27,160
Speaker 2: him in London in nineteen seventy and Lewis said, man,

430
00:22:27,320 --> 00:22:28,960
Speaker 2: you out Rembrandted Rembrandt.

431
00:22:30,040 --> 00:22:31,720
Speaker 3: Wow, that's amazing.

432
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:33,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were close friends. I mean the whole room

433
00:22:33,800 --> 00:22:36,960
Speaker 2: everywhere looking albums up there these photos you know, of

434
00:22:37,040 --> 00:22:39,840
Speaker 2: course it's Lewis Lucillo, but there's also some beautiful photos

435
00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 2: of Lewis and the neighborhood kids.

436
00:22:41,800 --> 00:22:42,800
Speaker 3: You know, they would come over.

437
00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:45,080
Speaker 2: They would see the band bus come back from a

438
00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:47,000
Speaker 2: tour and all the kids would come around like the

439
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:50,399
Speaker 2: pied Piper, and you know, Lewis would call over the

440
00:22:50,440 --> 00:22:53,359
Speaker 2: ice cream man and buy out the whole truck and

441
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:55,680
Speaker 2: invite the kids in. They would watch Westerns on the

442
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:58,960
Speaker 2: TV down there in the living room, and that's really

443
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:01,119
Speaker 2: kind of a kept him, uh in this neighborhood. So,

444
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:04,119
Speaker 2: of course, these days his most iconic songs, but a

445
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:07,560
Speaker 2: wonderful world, and people are always asking what is the inspiration,

446
00:23:07,680 --> 00:23:08,680
Speaker 2: what was he thinking about?

447
00:23:09,359 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 3: And the answer is this neighborhood in Corona, Queens. Yeah,

448
00:23:13,800 --> 00:23:14,960
Speaker 3: so wonderful.

449
00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:19,320
Speaker 10: Well, it's a zillion people dot that tune the way

450
00:23:19,359 --> 00:23:23,080
Speaker 10: I did it when I felt it, because uh, it's

451
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:25,720
Speaker 10: so much in wonderful world.

452
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 3: That brings me back to my neighborhood where I live

453
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:33,119
Speaker 3: in Corona. Uh New York whose long island?

454
00:23:33,359 --> 00:23:33,479
Speaker 11: Uh?

455
00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:35,159
Speaker 3: Everybody know where that is.

456
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:39,480
Speaker 10: And Lucialan and I ever since we married, we've been

457
00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:43,600
Speaker 10: right fas and that black and everybody.

458
00:23:43,280 --> 00:23:46,520
Speaker 3: Keeps their little homes up like we do. And it's

459
00:23:46,560 --> 00:23:47,840
Speaker 3: just like one big family.

460
00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:53,000
Speaker 10: I saw three generations going and them h and they're

461
00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:55,800
Speaker 10: all with their children, the grandchildren they come back to

462
00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:59,879
Speaker 10: see uncle sex more and I'm Lucia, Uh that's why.

463
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:02,560
Speaker 3: It's your babies cry.

464
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:11,800
Speaker 9: I watched them still alone with more than all.

465
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,119
Speaker 10: The kids, and I got pictures of him when they

466
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:16,480
Speaker 10: was five, sixtion seven years old.

467
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 3: It is a wonderful one.

468
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 9: Yeah.

469
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:21,359
Speaker 3: So that that song is his love letter to the Corona.

470
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:22,640
Speaker 3: It's it's pretty beautiful.

471
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 2: And one final clip, this is from August nineteen seventy

472
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:28,159
Speaker 2: less than a year before he passed away. It's him

473
00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:31,480
Speaker 2: sitting behind his desk, kind of summing up his entire life.

474
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:33,920
Speaker 3: We call it his philosophy of life.

475
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:38,560
Speaker 9: That's my story, folks. I guess I'm stuck with it.

476
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 9: I usually say nice things also about human beings, if

477
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 9: they deserve it.

478
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:52,359
Speaker 3: I never wanted to be anymore than I am. And

479
00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 3: what I don't have, I don't need it.

480
00:24:55,400 --> 00:25:02,240
Speaker 12: And I've always loved and I always lived a normal life,

481
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:08,560
Speaker 12: which I appreciate very much. And I've always loved everybody

482
00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:09,720
Speaker 12: still do.

483
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:12,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's that's the way.

484
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 2: That's everything simple, life so beautiful. So that's where the

485
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:19,840
Speaker 2: tour of the armstring us ends. But just to catch

486
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:22,760
Speaker 2: up on the history that was August nineteen seventy Lewis

487
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:24,679
Speaker 2: passes away in July seventy one.

488
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 3: July sixth, nineteen seventy one.

489
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 2: As I mentioned downstairs, Lucillum immediately has this vision, I'm

490
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 2: going to leave the house of the City of New York.

491
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:34,359
Speaker 2: A year or two later, she's talking about I'm going

492
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 2: to open up a memorial museum. I have all these things,

493
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 2: I've got to get them all preserved. And so she

494
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:43,280
Speaker 2: passed away in nineteen eighty three, and she did as

495
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 2: told as she left the house of the City of

496
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 2: New York, and the City of New York so, well,

497
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:48,240
Speaker 2: who's going to run this? And so they kicked it

498
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 2: over to the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Department

499
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,840
Speaker 2: of Cultural Affairs along with the Armstrong Estate, they chose

500
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:57,320
Speaker 2: Queen's College nearby in.

501
00:25:57,440 --> 00:26:00,359
Speaker 3: Flushing to administer it. So the first order of business,

502
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:06,160
Speaker 3: all the archival materials, Lewis's tapes, collages, trumpets, writings were

503
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:09,160
Speaker 3: all taken out brought to Queen's College and the Lewis

504
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 3: Armstrong Archives opened in nineteen ninety four.

505
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 2: And so the man who opened it, his name is

506
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:16,359
Speaker 2: Michael Cogswell. He was hired as thee archivist that in

507
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five he was made the director of the

508
00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 2: Armstrong House and so he oversaw a one point eight

509
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 2: million dollar restoration to turn this into a museum. So

510
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 2: this month is actually our twentieth anniversary, and we opened

511
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 2: October fifteen, two thousand and three, and so we've welcomed

512
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of people from around the world since then.

513
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 2: But you've come on the right time, because in nineteen

514
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 2: ninety eight there was an abandoned lot across the street

515
00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:46,680
Speaker 2: and Michael had division. He's like, that lot might be

516
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,800
Speaker 2: important someday, and so the Armstrong Estate, the Lewis Armstrong

517
00:26:49,880 --> 00:26:52,639
Speaker 2: Educational Foundation, they paid for it. And it was just

518
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:54,920
Speaker 2: an empty lot for years and years, and finally in

519
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:58,680
Speaker 2: the early two thousands Michael started talking, you know, I

520
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 2: think that could be a visitors sent one day, and

521
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 2: that could be the new home of the archive exhibition space.

522
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:08,480
Speaker 2: The whole thing years went by. Michael spearheaded the raising

523
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 2: of about twenty six million dollars, and every delay imaginable

524
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 2: just plagued that building. There was a zoning variance, there

525
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 2: was obviously a global pandemic. Sadly, Michael, who opened the archives,

526
00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 2: opened the house and got that almost to the finish line.

527
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 3: He passed away in twenty twenty.

528
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 2: Jerry Chasin, who was the father in law of our

529
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:33,240
Speaker 2: mutual friend Larry Miller, he was a big, big supporter

530
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 2: of the mission. He passed away last year. So it's

531
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:39,000
Speaker 2: been tough because it's been so long. I was hired

532
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:41,200
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine and told all the building

533
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 2: should be open twenty eleven, twenty twelve.

534
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 3: So it took a long time.

535
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:48,440
Speaker 2: We would not be here without Michael, without Jerry, without

536
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,920
Speaker 2: a million people who got us to this point. But coincidentally,

537
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,600
Speaker 2: on July sixth, twenty twenty three, fifty two years to

538
00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 2: the day Lewis Armstrong passed away, we opened up the

539
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:01,680
Speaker 2: Lewis Armstrong Center. And so if you want, let's walk

540
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 2: across the street and I'll show you around.

541
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 3: We'll do that.

542
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:07,680
Speaker 1: Yep, we'll be right back with more of the Taking

543
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: a Walk podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.

544
00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 3: So this is it.

545
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:20,119
Speaker 2: This is the building, twenty five years in the making,

546
00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 2: and the first thing that hits you when you walk

547
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:25,840
Speaker 2: into Lewis Armstrong Center is it's a beautiful mural of

548
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:30,159
Speaker 2: Lewis and Lucille with the great Sphinx of Giza in

549
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one and our curator, the great pianist and composer,

550
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 2: Jason Moran, he called because habit here to stay and

551
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 2: chose this image and I think it's perfect because you know,

552
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 2: this guy will conquered the world and here he is

553
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 2: with one of the seven Wonders of the world playing

554
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 2: his trumpet. But when he wanted to come home, this

555
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 2: is where he came. So you know, it's the two experiences.

556
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 2: We've got the new building, state of the art, all

557
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 2: that stuff. But then right across the street, the down

558
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 2: home house that he called his own for the last

559
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 2: twenty eight years of his life.

560
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 3: She's looking at him with such admiration. Yeah, love she

561
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 3: was his biggest fan. So right through this way over here.

562
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 2: Perfect that Lovey and Rose starts playing as we're talking

563
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 2: about Lewis and.

564
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:16,960
Speaker 3: The C's love.

565
00:29:17,640 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 2: But this is the exhibit area, and so this is

566
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 2: something that we were never able to do in the

567
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 2: house where we were just kind of stuck with the

568
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 2: house there. And so as we were talking about what

569
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 2: a wonderful world right when you walk in got the

570
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 2: gold record, which actually came out in the late eighties

571
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 2: at a time when they gave out the Gold Record,

572
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 2: the Gold CD and the Gold cassette. But then a

573
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:43,520
Speaker 2: six page letter actually more of a manuscript that Lewis

574
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 2: wrote towards the end of his life called our Neighborhood,

575
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 2: and it's just like a love letter to the Corona saying,

576
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:52,960
Speaker 2: you know how they lived here for twenty nine years,

577
00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 2: we've been living in the house. We've seen just about

578
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 2: three generations come up on this particular block one hundred

579
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 2: and seventh Street between thirty fourth and thirty seventh Avenue,

580
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 2: and he goes on and on and by getting Chinese

581
00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 2: food at the Dragon Seat Restaurant, his Cadillac car oozing

582
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 2: out of the drive. Boy, their schnauzers, trumpet and trinket,

583
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 2: and he writes, you know, when the two of them

584
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:21,000
Speaker 2: start barking together, oh boy, what a duet. So that's

585
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 2: the first thing that's you know, We've got the Sphinx

586
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:26,360
Speaker 2: in Egypt and other aside brother, then Corona on this side.

587
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 2: And then our curator mentioned Jason Moran. He had to

588
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 2: go through the entire archives and tell a story, and

589
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 2: so he chose to go with four main themes. So

590
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:40,840
Speaker 2: there's four cylindrical cases. The first case is roots and

591
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 2: so this is Armstrong in New Orleans.

592
00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 3: We have these tinted.

593
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 2: Portraits of Lewis with his mother and his sister when

594
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 2: he was about eighteen years old. Lewis's father, Willie. The

595
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 2: crazy part is these were hanging in Lewis's sister's home

596
00:30:56,720 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 2: up until the early nineteen seventies. And we have an

597
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 2: interview with Lewis's sister and when she goes, yeah, she said,

598
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 2: I just brought those paintings up to Lucille on July fourth.

599
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 2: She wants to put them in a museum, and so,

600
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 2: again Lucille's foresight. They didn't make it into the museum

601
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 2: until fifty years later, but at least they ended up

602
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 2: in Queen's But we have Joe King Oliver, who was

603
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:23,640
Speaker 2: Lewis's big mentor his wife Lil Isn't that photo his

604
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 2: second wife for Lil she was really the architect of

605
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 2: his career. The Waife's home, which is where he learned

606
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 2: how to play. It was like an orphanage, you know.

607
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 2: We have a photo at Lewis annotate. We have a

608
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:36,280
Speaker 2: brick from the Waife's home, but also his adopted son Clarence.

609
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 2: Then a photograph of Lewis on the riverboats, which was

610
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 2: kind of his music education school. He was not able

611
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 2: to go to college or Berkeley or study jazz, but

612
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 2: three seasons on the riverboats really sharpened him as a

613
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 2: reader and performer and everything else. And then each one

614
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 2: of the cases has about a ten minute video with

615
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 2: lots of archival.

616
00:31:57,440 --> 00:31:59,479
Speaker 3: Footage and narration and the whole thing.

617
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 2: The next case, I mean, this is kind of the

618
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 2: main event here, tools the tools of the trade here,

619
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 2: and of course the first thing that hits you in

620
00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 2: the middle is Lewis's trumpet.

621
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 3: Now we have seven trumpets.

622
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:17,800
Speaker 2: Oh and there's Lewis Armstrong lipsab from Franz Schwartz just

623
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 2: popped up on screen. So we have seven trumpets. The

624
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 2: one we chose, or Jason chose to put in this case,

625
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:27,320
Speaker 2: was actually given to Lewis in nineteen thirty four from

626
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 2: King George the Fifth in England. And the funny part

627
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 2: is Lewis played it for years. He was enamored with it,

628
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,240
Speaker 2: but he was also the most generous soul on the planet.

629
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:40,600
Speaker 2: And one day he was hanging out backstage with Lyman Vunk,

630
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 2: the third Trumpeter and Charlie Barnett's orchestra, and Vunk was like, man, Pops,

631
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:47,760
Speaker 2: that's a beautiful horn, and Lewis said, oh, do you

632
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:49,840
Speaker 2: want it? I need a new one, and he gave

633
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 2: away the King George trumpet. So it became Lyman Bunk's

634
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 2: prize possession. But he passed away in nineteen ninety one

635
00:32:57,280 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 2: and a few years later his wife found us, Yeah,

636
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 2: he wanted you guys to have this, and so she

637
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 2: brought it on the subway.

638
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 3: She had in a brown paper bag.

639
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 2: She got off on the seven train, handed it to

640
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:10,600
Speaker 2: our director Michael Cogswell and said, all right, thanks, So

641
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 2: I got right back on the subway. So we had

642
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 2: it restored and now it is on display. But we

643
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 2: also have a fractured copy signed by Lewis of West

644
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 2: End Blues, kind of maybe his most important trumpet solo.

645
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 3: I'm recording an interview, sorry, but yeah, he's upstate.

646
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 2: A fractured copy of West End Blues, which was probably

647
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 2: Armstrong's most important trumpet solo of his entire career from

648
00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight. But also, you know, we've got beautiful

649
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 2: portraits Lewis with the Luis Russell Orchestra in California, in

650
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 2: London nineteen thirty two, one of Lewis's scrapbook pages from

651
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty one where he would cut out newspaper clippings

652
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 2: and everything else. And also a book This is the

653
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:58,760
Speaker 2: Sweet fly Paper Life, signed by Langston Hughes that was

654
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 2: his holiday president to Lewis Armstrong in nineteen fifty five.

655
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 2: Since happy holidays to the Armstrongs, sincerely, Lengthston Hughes.

656
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:11,880
Speaker 5: Do you ever think that there were moments he was

657
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 5: really dramatically underappreciated during.

658
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:19,240
Speaker 2: His Yeah, oh my goodness. At the time of his passing,

659
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:23,239
Speaker 2: he was a household name. Everybody knew him, but I

660
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 2: don't think they knew the depth because by the sixties,

661
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 2: we're looking right at Heller Dolly right now. I mean,

662
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 2: Hello Dolly knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts.

663
00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 2: And so everybody knew the guy who smiled and played

664
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:37,560
Speaker 2: the trumpet and sang Hello Dolly went on the head

665
00:34:37,600 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 2: Salvin Show.

666
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:40,920
Speaker 3: They didn't know that he changed.

667
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 2: The rules of jazz and American popular music. And he

668
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:46,919
Speaker 2: changed I mean, you can name a million great instrumentalists

669
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:48,560
Speaker 2: and a million great singers. He's the only guy you

670
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:51,240
Speaker 2: could find who completely changed the way people played music

671
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 2: on their instruments, and he completely changed the way people sing.

672
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:58,760
Speaker 2: And so for one guy to do that, it's unfathomable.

673
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 2: But then you throw the first black pop star. He's

674
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 2: knocking down all these barriers for his race. First African

675
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:06,919
Speaker 2: American to get featured billing in the Hollywood film, first

676
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:10,319
Speaker 2: African American to host the nationally sponsored radio show, first

677
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:13,920
Speaker 2: African American jazz musicians to publish an autobiography, first African

678
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 2: American entertainer to have it in his contract that he

679
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 2: wouldn't play a hotel unless he could stay there. He

680
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 2: tells off Eisenhower and the government over the situation in

681
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 2: Little Rock in nineteen fifty seven. So all that all

682
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:29,359
Speaker 2: those sides of him were really not well known when

683
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 2: he passed away.

684
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 3: Hello Daalis, The pop hits shore.

685
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:37,000
Speaker 2: And the funny part is like the scholarship around Armstrong,

686
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 2: and the view of Armstrong doesn't really change until his

687
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 2: archives become available. Once Gary Giddens and Ken Burns, Bob o'meile,

688
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 2: Stanley Crouch win in Marsalis.

689
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 3: Once his whole.

690
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 2: Generation in the late eighties and nineties can hear Lewis's

691
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:54,920
Speaker 2: tapes and read his writings and let him kind of

692
00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:57,879
Speaker 2: speak for himself. All of a sudden they realized, wait

693
00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 2: a minute, this guy went through hell. I was the

694
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:04,680
Speaker 2: civil rights pioneer. This guy basically changed and predicted the

695
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:07,920
Speaker 2: next one hundred years of American popular music. And he

696
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 2: was down home and humble, and he was a global

697
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 2: ambassador and everything in between in a movie star. And

698
00:36:12,719 --> 00:36:16,919
Speaker 2: so it's been over fifty years since he passed away,

699
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:18,799
Speaker 2: and I feel like we're coming to grips with him.

700
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:21,799
Speaker 2: We're standing in the Lewis Armstrong Center, so we've come

701
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 2: pretty far.

702
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 3: But my personal feeling is we're still at the beginning.

703
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:27,360
Speaker 2: I think fifty years from now we should make a

704
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 2: date to do this again, because I feel like in

705
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 2: fifty years, maybe even less, maybe twenty years. But when

706
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 2: they say who are the greats, they're gonna say Shakespeare,

707
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 2: they're gonna say Mozart, they're gonna say Louis Armstrong. No

708
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 2: one's gonna bat and I in nineteen seventy one, a

709
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 2: lot of people would have batted. I would have said,

710
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,360
Speaker 2: no way, the Hello Dolly guy is on that level.

711
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:47,320
Speaker 2: But he is on that level, if not more, And

712
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 2: I think that's our job is to get him to.

713
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:53,919
Speaker 3: His rightful place. Was he criticized though, for not being

714
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 3: outspoken at the time. Oh yeah, no, that was the thing.

715
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 2: I mean, he grew up in the Deep South, went

716
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 2: through hell, and then you know, from a recording perspective,

717
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:05,919
Speaker 2: he records what did I Do to Be So Black

718
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:08,400
Speaker 2: and Blue, which is known as the first protest.

719
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 3: Song in nineteen twenty nine.

720
00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:12,120
Speaker 2: I mentioned all the barriers he broke down, but by

721
00:37:12,200 --> 00:37:15,080
Speaker 2: the fifties, when the civil rights ever is really gathering steam.

722
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:18,360
Speaker 2: You know, he doesn't want to come right out and

723
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 2: protest or march or anything. You know, he just to

724
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:24,360
Speaker 2: him he said, my music will do the talking. And

725
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:26,359
Speaker 2: so a lot of people thought he was soft on race.

726
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:28,439
Speaker 2: They thought he was just smiling to make white people

727
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:31,720
Speaker 2: happy and he didn't really know what the cause was about.

728
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 2: But meanwhile, you know, we have the tape, we have

729
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 2: the manuscripts. He was following everything. He's reading the Chicago

730
00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 2: Defendering's reading the Pittsburgh Courier. And if he felt that,

731
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:43,759
Speaker 2: you know, if he felt a draft, oh my god,

732
00:37:43,840 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 2: he had, he had the New Orleans toughness. It would

733
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 2: come out in a minute that he would just you know,

734
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 2: he could curse up a blue streak, let you know

735
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:51,720
Speaker 2: how he felt.

736
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 3: But publicly, he didn't really believe in that until Little Rock.

737
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:57,240
Speaker 2: You know, he was watching these crowds in September nineteen

738
00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 2: fifty seven spit and curse at these nine in African

739
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:01,799
Speaker 2: American students who were.

740
00:38:01,680 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 3: Supposed to integrate the Little Rock Central High School.

741
00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 2: And when the reporters asked him, he said, the way

742
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:08,839
Speaker 2: they're treating my people in the South, the government can

743
00:38:08,920 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 2: go to hell. And today, I mean, it's one of

744
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 2: the cornerstones of what we teach. It's the defining civil

745
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:18,840
Speaker 2: rights moment of his career. But at the time he

746
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:21,480
Speaker 2: was criticized, he was criticized why column and of course

747
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:24,360
Speaker 2: we're calling for boycotts and all that, but he was

748
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:27,880
Speaker 2: criticized by Sammy Davis Junior, by Adam Clayton Powell.

749
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 3: They had to them. It was kind of like, ah,

750
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:30,920
Speaker 3: you know, too little, too late.

751
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:33,040
Speaker 2: You're still playing in the South, You're still playing for

752
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:36,840
Speaker 2: in segregated audiences. And that hurt him deeply until the

753
00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 2: rest of his life. And so I think we've now

754
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:43,759
Speaker 2: properly refocused and reframed him and showed what he went

755
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:45,759
Speaker 2: through and what he accomplished and how he used his

756
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:46,800
Speaker 2: power in his voice.

757
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 3: But in his lifetime he was not appreciated for them.

758
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:53,720
Speaker 2: What was his take on Vietnam He kind of stayed

759
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 2: out of that one, but he did, I think, I mean,

760
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:00,479
Speaker 2: at a deep level he was not pro war, for sure,

761
00:39:00,719 --> 00:39:03,240
Speaker 2: but it was an interesting thing. When Vietnam is really raging,

762
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 2: he started doing You'll Never Walk Alone, which he had

763
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 2: always played on trumpet, but he starts singing it, and

764
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 2: he would dedicate it every night to all the mothers

765
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:14,879
Speaker 2: of all the soldiers fighting in Vietnam, and so yeah,

766
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 2: and you hear some of his later performances and they're

767
00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 2: tear jerkers, and so yeah, that was him in his

768
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 2: own way of Again he said he was he was

769
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 2: here in the cause of happiness, and so even in

770
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:28,880
Speaker 2: a moment like that, he just wanted to provide some warmth,

771
00:39:29,120 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 2: some comfort.

772
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:32,440
Speaker 3: You know, to the people who needed it. Wow, it's

773
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:35,799
Speaker 3: pretty special. So the third case will go real quick.

774
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 3: This is Armstrong on film.

775
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:39,880
Speaker 2: People don't know that he was in over thirty five films,

776
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 2: and so we have some poster of Paris Blues.

777
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:45,600
Speaker 3: We have Lewis and Billie Holiday and New.

778
00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:48,760
Speaker 2: Orleans Lewis and Kapin in the Sky with Ossi Davis

779
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 2: in Sicily Tyson and a man called Adam. And we

780
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 2: also have his Grammy Award which he got for recording

781
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:54,920
Speaker 2: Hello Dolly.

782
00:39:55,400 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 3: And coincidentally, we have a beautiful Gordon Parks photo. I'm sorry.

783
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 2: We have a beautiful Chuck Stewart photo of Lewis and

784
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 2: Barbara streisand holding their mutual Grammys. And a few years

785
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,240
Speaker 2: later they would star in the film Hello Dolly Together,

786
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 2: where Lewis appears in it for ninety seconds and completely

787
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 2: steals the show.

788
00:40:15,080 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 3: Of course.

789
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 2: And so Jason's fourth and final case was Armstrong on

790
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:21,719
Speaker 2: the Ambassador. I mean, by the fifties they were calling

791
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,360
Speaker 2: him Ambassador Satch and the government was watching. We have

792
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 2: his FBI file which is heavily redacted, but it includes

793
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:31,279
Speaker 2: some letters from angry fans who did not like the

794
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 2: way he criticized the government, but also some of Armstrong's

795
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 2: collages him with the Pope in Italy, one called an

796
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 2: Ambassador called satramone the Dave Brubeck album The Real Ambassadors,

797
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:46,440
Speaker 2: which Dave and his wife Iola wrote all new music

798
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 2: for Lewis in nineteen sixty one.

799
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 3: And then his passports. His first passport from nineteen.

800
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:55,200
Speaker 2: Thirty two, where he kind of looks a little, you know,

801
00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:57,880
Speaker 2: maybe in awe of you know, he's going overseas for

802
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 2: the first time. But his last passport from nineteen sixty seven,

803
00:41:01,160 --> 00:41:02,880
Speaker 2: I mean it's basically a publicity photo.

804
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 3: You know, he's been around the world and he's secure

805
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 3: and who he is.

806
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 2: And very confident and ready to go back out and

807
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 2: spread some more goodwill. So those four cases were calling

808
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:19,600
Speaker 2: permanent cases. But then Jason also was tasked. Oh yes,

809
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 2: I had a question.

810
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:23,960
Speaker 3: About the ambassador at peace. So yeah, there was a

811
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 3: period where.

812
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 5: Lewis and others would be dispatched abroad to sort of

813
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:36,520
Speaker 5: spread cultural exchange and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean

814
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:41,719
Speaker 5: it was a bit of US spreading propaganda, wasn't it.

815
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 2: Because a lot of these musicians be Lewis's band, Dizzy

816
00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:46,800
Speaker 2: Gillespie also did it.

817
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:49,040
Speaker 3: Dave Brubek's band was integrated.

818
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:52,239
Speaker 2: You know, they they had a hard time in the

819
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:56,400
Speaker 2: United States, you know, going down South, especially integrated bands,

820
00:41:56,520 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 2: and you know the black musicians who couldn't eat before

821
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 2: the Civil Rights Act and everything. But then we're sending

822
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 2: them out there as America's you know, this is our

823
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:07,720
Speaker 2: finest culture.

824
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 3: And this is the best.

825
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:11,560
Speaker 2: So there's definitely, you know, two things happening at the

826
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 2: same time that aren't quite in concert. But Lewis actually

827
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:18,280
Speaker 2: inspired that whole thing. He did a tour of Europe

828
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:21,439
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty five that got headline news.

829
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:21,880
Speaker 3: Edward R.

830
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:25,120
Speaker 2: Murrow followed him around with a camera for CBS News,

831
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 2: and then The New York Times followed him around and

832
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:30,799
Speaker 2: they did a Sunday Times cover story in which they

833
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 2: said America's secret weapon is a blue note in a

834
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 2: minor key, and its most effective ambassador is Lewis Snatchmo

835
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Adam Clayton Powell read that article and he

836
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:43,880
Speaker 2: went in and said, no, let's let's make this a program.

837
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 2: And so nineteen fifty six they started the Jazz Ambassadors

838
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 2: and Dizzey Gillespie was actually chosen first.

839
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:51,799
Speaker 3: Lewis only did one State Department tour.

840
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 2: A lot of people think he was an appointed ambassador

841
00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:57,840
Speaker 2: or that he was always on the government watch, but

842
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:01,240
Speaker 2: he only did one tour of Africa in nineteen sixty.

843
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 2: But without him, I don't think the government would have

844
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:09,040
Speaker 2: even known to send out jazz musicians. And I love

845
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:12,960
Speaker 2: that photo of him with the Pope there. Yeah, that's

846
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:15,800
Speaker 2: a later photo. That's from nineteen sixty eight. And like

847
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:16,799
Speaker 2: any musician, you.

848
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:21,120
Speaker 3: Know, Lewis has given the Pope his latest record. But

849
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:22,560
Speaker 3: he also looks very reverent.

850
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 8: You know.

851
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:26,440
Speaker 2: He liked to tell a story about the first time

852
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 2: he met the pope and the Pope said, do you

853
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:28,560
Speaker 2: have any children?

854
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:34,239
Speaker 3: And he goes, no, but we're still wailing. But that

855
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 3: might have been apocryphal.

856
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:40,400
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, and so those four k So that's

857
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:43,880
Speaker 2: the permanent exhibit, but then the temporary exhibit. This was

858
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:48,240
Speaker 2: very exciting for us because when Lewis passed away, nobody

859
00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:50,279
Speaker 2: knew that he was a visual artist, that he was

860
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 2: making collages on his reel to real tank boxes. And

861
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 2: then after the Lewis Armstrong Archives opened, all of a

862
00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 2: sudden it became a thing. You know, there's a coffee

863
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:01,480
Speaker 2: table book, was a few exhibitions, but the.

864
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 3: Tapes were very brittle.

865
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:05,879
Speaker 2: They really couldn't be exhibited for long periods of time.

866
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:09,200
Speaker 2: But finally, shortly before we open, we were seeing the

867
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 2: two hundred thousand dollars Save America's Treasures grant and we

868
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 2: were stored about eighty boxes that were really bad shape,

869
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:19,280
Speaker 2: just in time for the opening of the Lewis Armstrong Center,

870
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:22,880
Speaker 2: and so you could see his art and it's fascinating

871
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 2: because he is the subject matter of ninety five percent.

872
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 2: If it's not him, but it's Lucille or somebody he

873
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 2: was close to. But we have a collage of Lucille.

874
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 3: From her dancing days in nineteen thirty six.

875
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:37,720
Speaker 2: You know, he would cut out clippings about his band,

876
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 2: photos of him playing the trumpet.

877
00:44:40,360 --> 00:44:41,239
Speaker 3: This reel over here.

878
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:43,920
Speaker 2: This was a Christmas car. This is Lucille and Satchmo.

879
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 2: It's a cornet and he cut out every line and

880
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:51,400
Speaker 2: Scotch taped it. Louis with his mother and sister. The

881
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:53,800
Speaker 2: black and white version of the color photo. Lewis eating,

882
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:56,439
Speaker 2: Lewis singing, you know. And this was how he would

883
00:44:56,520 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 2: occupy his mind after the concert. He was just relentlessly

884
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:02,360
Speaker 2: create And we have these beautiful photos.

885
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:04,800
Speaker 3: Of him in his den, you know, surrounded by scissors.

886
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:08,440
Speaker 2: Writing autographs, scotch tape, and then this is a crazy thing.

887
00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, the Associated Press did an article about us,

888
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 2: and it was the first time a lot of people

889
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 2: had found out about us. And we got a call

890
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 2: from a guy in Canada who said, I was friends

891
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:20,880
Speaker 2: when a piano player. He was the lounge pianist at

892
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:22,719
Speaker 2: the Sands in Las Vegas, and.

893
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:23,399
Speaker 3: He shared a bill.

894
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 2: Armstrong was on the main stage and he would come

895
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:27,920
Speaker 2: and hang out with my friend, and he goes when

896
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 2: he left the Sand, and he gave him his tape.

897
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:32,279
Speaker 3: Record because my friend died, I guess, but do you

898
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:33,400
Speaker 3: want the tape? Recorder.

899
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:35,880
Speaker 2: We said fine, so you know, we paid for it

900
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:39,760
Speaker 2: and now it's in the museum e Zimbacase Lomis Armstrong

901
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 2: was the original tape recorder from nineteen fifty seven. He

902
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 2: signed it to this guy, Jimmy Lang, and the original photo,

903
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:47,640
Speaker 2: the original autograph.

904
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:51,759
Speaker 3: It's all there, wonderful, O my god.

905
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:55,520
Speaker 2: But yeah, his mind was always work, could always work.

906
00:45:55,560 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 2: And yeah, he and he talked about that, you know,

907
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 2: because his day to day routine. He would wake up,

908
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 2: you know, musician hours. He would wake up three or

909
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:05,279
Speaker 2: four o'clock and the first thing he would do is

910
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 2: get a cup of coffee and reach for the trumpet

911
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 2: and he would warm up. He'd play along with the radio.

912
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:12,680
Speaker 2: He would just make noises, long tones whatever. He would

913
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:14,920
Speaker 2: call room service. If he's on the road, get some

914
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:17,600
Speaker 2: spaghetti or something up there. He'd show up at the

915
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:20,279
Speaker 2: venue at seven o'clock. He's still warming up, still warming up.

916
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 2: Now he plays eight to eleven autographs. Now there's no

917
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 2: VIP package or whatever. He had an open door policy.

918
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:29,399
Speaker 2: Just come backstage after the show. So the band would

919
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 2: go back to the hotel and go to sleep, and

920
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 2: he'd be there signing the autographs. Now, it's midnight, he

921
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 2: gets back to the hotel. If there's a hang, if

922
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:39,520
Speaker 2: there's a party, he's going to be there. But if

923
00:46:39,520 --> 00:46:41,320
Speaker 2: there's not, if everybody's sleep under, if they're in the

924
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere, he is now revved up. And so

925
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:47,800
Speaker 2: that's when a lot of musicians fell into bad habits,

926
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:49,839
Speaker 2: but for him, it would be all right, I'm going

927
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:52,880
Speaker 2: to answer my fan mail. I'm going to catalog my tapes.

928
00:46:53,200 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll make a scrapbook. I'll write down some stories.

929
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,279
Speaker 2: And he's doing that night after night. And if he

930
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:01,279
Speaker 2: doesn't do that, we don't have an archive. So the

931
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 2: fact that he is, you know, constantly creating, constantly charting

932
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:09,239
Speaker 2: his own life, saving these clippings, saving these photographs, you know,

933
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 2: all with this kind of self awareness that this might

934
00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:14,359
Speaker 2: be important someday. And I don't know if he could

935
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 2: have dreamed of where we're standing right now, but it's

936
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 2: it's definitely what he deserves.

937
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:22,840
Speaker 5: Did he fall into any bad habits, Well, it depends

938
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 5: on your definition of.

939
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 3: Bad nothing in terms of like some of the jazz

940
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 3: players of that right, Yeah, No, I mean Armstrong, I

941
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 3: mean the newspaper said it.

942
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:35,239
Speaker 2: He kind of helped put marijuana on the map, but

943
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:37,480
Speaker 2: he actually got arrested for it in nineteen thirty one,

944
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 2: and so he had to.

945
00:47:39,320 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 3: Be very discreet.

946
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:42,800
Speaker 2: He never really talked about it publicly, but we have

947
00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 2: some of his private writings and stuff, and he was

948
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:48,680
Speaker 2: far ahead of his time and a lot of the

949
00:47:48,960 --> 00:47:51,759
Speaker 2: arguments he made to friends about why it should be

950
00:47:51,840 --> 00:47:55,240
Speaker 2: legal were the same arguments that are getting it legalized today.

951
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:58,880
Speaker 2: So he was again the trailblazer, he could say, blazing

952
00:47:58,920 --> 00:47:59,920
Speaker 2: in more ways than one.

953
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:01,520
Speaker 3: I wonder what he.

954
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:05,680
Speaker 5: Would think about the notion that gambling has become legal

955
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:06,920
Speaker 5: and marijuana.

956
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:10,400
Speaker 2: I know, yeah, because I mean it's his whole upbringing

957
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:13,560
Speaker 2: in New Orleans gambling. The cops would come and break

958
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 2: up the games and all that stuff. So I don't

959
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 2: think he could have ever imagined where things were heading.

960
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:23,360
Speaker 3: And the last thing to show you here this is

961
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 3: kind of beautiful.

962
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:27,200
Speaker 2: As I mentioned, we have the world's largest archives for

963
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 2: any single jazz musician, and in twenty sixteen we got

964
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:35,400
Speaker 2: a two point seven million dollar gramp from Robert of

965
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 2: Smith's fun To Foundation to digitize the entire archives, and

966
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 2: so these it's like a big record. As you can see,

967
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 2: there's eight different screens, and these are all curated stories.

968
00:48:47,080 --> 00:48:49,239
Speaker 2: So this is I just chose Lewis Armstrong and the

969
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:53,160
Speaker 2: kids of Corona, and you can spend hours here, you know,

970
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:57,960
Speaker 2: looking at photos and each one has a long caption

971
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 2: of Lewis and all the kids from the neighborhood. This

972
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,960
Speaker 2: one has audio of Lucille talking.

973
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 3: Which yeah, probably needs the headphones for that.

974
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:14,520
Speaker 2: So this is just one example. But other stories, you know,

975
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Africa, Passport to the World, Billie Holliday, Armstrong

976
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 2: and Ghana, the Neighbors, Selma Harada, Lose Weight, the Satchman Boy,

977
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:28,760
Speaker 2: Lewis and Duke Ellington, Lucille's life story and so really

978
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 2: you can come here in between all the stories on

979
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 2: the table, plus all the videos and the monarm you

980
00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 2: could spend over an hour in this room and then

981
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:38,239
Speaker 2: take the tour of the house and really get the

982
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:40,360
Speaker 2: full immersive experience.

983
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:43,239
Speaker 5: Are there any folks that are in the neighborhood that

984
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 5: were in the neighborhood then.

985
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 3: Not anymore, but they come back and that's always beautiful.

986
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 11: You know.

987
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:54,480
Speaker 2: We actually had the son of Lucille's hairdresser was here

988
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:57,719
Speaker 2: on opening day and then he told me that he

989
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 2: was in touch with the brothers who are in the photos,

990
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:04,280
Speaker 2: all those front steps photos. There's still ones in Georgia,

991
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 2: I think, and one is in ones in I want

992
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 2: to say Texas. But we sell coffee mugs with that

993
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:14,080
Speaker 2: photo on it, and the brothers are like, hey, can

994
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 2: you send us some of those coffee mugs? And so

995
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 2: of course, and we've had people who just show up

996
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:23,240
Speaker 2: for tours. It's somewhere. Yeah, was a four to twenty,

997
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:28,239
Speaker 2: speaking of which, Yeah, we've got a photo here he

998
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 2: talks about it. Yeah, this is the Cannabis Cup, which

999
00:50:33,719 --> 00:50:36,560
Speaker 2: High Times magazine named him the Man of the Century

1000
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 2: and they gave it posthumously in nineteen ninety nine him

1001
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:42,720
Speaker 2: getting arrested.

1002
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:44,399
Speaker 3: So that whole story is there.

1003
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:47,719
Speaker 2: But yeah, so the kids who were all five and

1004
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:49,759
Speaker 2: ten and they're now their fifties and so they keep

1005
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:53,439
Speaker 2: coming back and it's it's it's really beautiful, Rickie.

1006
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 3: Let's end with some quotes. Oh yeah, there's so many

1007
00:50:57,200 --> 00:50:57,480
Speaker 3: of them.

1008
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:01,720
Speaker 2: So well, this whole thing here, you know, this is Elephantzgerald.

1009
00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:04,399
Speaker 2: I'm recording with Louis Armstrong. She said, I was just thrill.

1010
00:51:04,920 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 2: I messed up some records because when we record, I

1011
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:09,359
Speaker 2: was so busy listening to him and looking at him

1012
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 2: because of the way he would.

1013
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 3: Sing on stage.

1014
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:13,720
Speaker 2: He would do the same thing while he was recording.

1015
00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:16,360
Speaker 2: I'd forget to come in. I'd be watching him. He

1016
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:19,200
Speaker 2: was just Louis, just for real. I think that's been

1017
00:51:19,239 --> 00:51:21,160
Speaker 2: one of the great things of all the people I've

1018
00:51:21,200 --> 00:51:23,120
Speaker 2: worked with. They're all real people.

1019
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:23,759
Speaker 3: No put on.

1020
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 2: James Baldwin writes about Beale Street upon hearing Armstrong and

1021
00:51:30,080 --> 00:51:32,920
Speaker 2: do the National Anthem in nineteen fifty eight, Baldwin responds,

1022
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 2: that's the first time I've liked that song. Miles David said,

1023
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 2: you can't play anything on the horn that Lewis hasn't played,

1024
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:45,920
Speaker 2: and yeah, we've got a whole Billie Holliday, she said.

1025
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:47,479
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing

1026
00:51:47,480 --> 00:51:47,799
Speaker 3: a horn.

1027
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 2: I try to improvise, like Lester Young, like Louis Armstrong

1028
00:51:50,600 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 2: was somebody else I admire. What comes out is what

1029
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:55,799
Speaker 2: I feel. I hate straight singing. I have to change

1030
00:51:55,840 --> 00:51:57,160
Speaker 2: the tunes my own way of doing it.

1031
00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:01,240
Speaker 3: That's all I know. Duke Ellington, he was the epitome

1032
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:02,640
Speaker 3: of jazz and always will be.

1033
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 2: Tony Bennett, the bottom line of any country in the

1034
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 2: world is what did we contribute to the world.

1035
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:12,359
Speaker 3: We contributed Louis Armstrong. I mean that it doesn't say

1036
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:13,560
Speaker 3: it well.

1037
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 5: The essence of this podcast always comes back to the

1038
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,879
Speaker 5: love of music, the stories behind the music, the people

1039
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:21,960
Speaker 5: who shape the music.

1040
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:23,560
Speaker 3: And this couldn't have.

1041
00:52:23,600 --> 00:52:27,920
Speaker 5: Been any better of a walk through the house, the

1042
00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:32,600
Speaker 5: museum and the life of Lewis Armstrong.

1043
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:33,560
Speaker 3: Thank you, buzz.

1044
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:36,240
Speaker 2: It's a special place. I mean, I know I'm immersed

1045
00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:38,840
Speaker 2: in it, but like I said, it's what Lewis deserves.

1046
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:42,120
Speaker 2: And like Jason Moran called the exhibits, you know, we're

1047
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:45,160
Speaker 2: here to stay, so we hope that people continue to visit,

1048
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 2: school groups, kids, musicians, international visitors.

1049
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:50,800
Speaker 3: Were right near the airport.

1050
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:54,480
Speaker 2: Sometimes we're the first destination when people land at LaGuardia.

1051
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:56,960
Speaker 3: Sometimes we're the last, right before they boarded the plane.

1052
00:52:57,080 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 3: But we're not going anywhere.

1053
00:52:58,680 --> 00:53:01,240
Speaker 2: So as long as people have any tristin Lewis Armstrong

1054
00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:05,399
Speaker 2: or music or twentieth century culture, race, film media, we're

1055
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:06,440
Speaker 2: here to tell that story.

1056
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:08,359
Speaker 3: Thank you, Ricky, Thanks both.

1057
00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:12,920
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a

1058
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:16,840
Speaker 1: Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes with your friends

1059
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:20,439
Speaker 1: and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking

1060
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:24,359
Speaker 1: a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1061
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:26,879
Speaker 1: and wherever you get your podcasts.