Farther out, in Corona, is the newly enlarged and expanded Louis Armstrong House Museum. The actual house Armstrong bought in 1943 and lived in until his death in 1971 is just the way it was when his fourth wife, Lucille, died there in 1983. The long white couches, bright blue kitchen cabinets, and wall-mounted reel-to-reel tape decks behind his desk in the upstairs den remain, all extraordinarily well-preserved. Just north of there, in Flushing Cemetery, you can visit Armstrong's grave.
Pops, as he was affectionately known by friends and fans, was an inveterate maker of scrapbooks and tapes of his music. By spring 1969, he had a pair of Tandberg reel-to-reel recorder/players up and running. One of his then-new treasures was a set of tapes made by the BBC from television broadcasts recorded the preceding summer. Music from those tapes-13 tracks in all, four for the first time ever-has just been released on CD, LP, and streaming, as Louis in London.
Louis in London was produced by Ricky Riccardi, director of research collections for the Armstrong House Museum and today's foremost Armstrong expert, and Ken Druker, VP of Jazz Development at the Verve Group at Universal Music. The tapes were transferred, mixed, and mastered by Kevin Reeves at Nashville's East Iris Studios.
This story is from the October 2024 edition of Stereophile.
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This story is from the October 2024 edition of Stereophile.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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German kitchens, Japanese amps, and Afropop gems
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