We found out today that we have been invited to play at the Louis Armstrong House Museum out in Corona Queens. The performance isn’t until August 22nd but I though I’d post about it this evening as it did make me quite excited.
I remember when I took a few lessons with Eddie Henderson. He showed me a whole bunch of licks and patterns and each one was attributed to a certain artist or even a certain cut from a certain album. Eddie himself had studied with Freddie Hubbard who in turn had studied with Roy Eldridge. Eldridge was nuts for Coleman Hawkins and as a trumpet player at that time must have played alongside Louis Armstrong at least once or twice. The impression those lessons created in me was that I had joined a long lineage of trumpet artists. And in America, that always leads back to Louis Armstrong.
Here’s an excerpt from an email I received this afternoon:
The Louis Armstrong House is where the jazz great lived w. his wife Lucille for nearly 30 years. The House is perfectly preserved with their belongings and is a National Historic Landmark. We receive visitors from all over the world everyday. It’s an incredibly intimate and powerful space to work and perform; everyone who comes here tells us so. The Armstrongs added another lot in the last few months of Louis’s life and built a Japanese inspired garden. It is a beautiful, shady site in the summer and perfect for enjoying some live music.
Really cool! I read this story once about how much Louis loved music. It seemed that he had a HUGE music collection on vinyl. Whenever people would come to visit or interview him he would invariably take them to a room and begin playing all this music for them.
He was a great man.