Louis Armstrong's 'wonderful world' of papers, records, letters at new center in Queens

When jazz legend Louis Armstrong’s fourth wife went searching for a home for the couple to live in, she looked east — to Queens. Lucille bought it herself, without telling Armstrong, with money she had saved up.

They would live there together — in the modest brick house at 34-56 107th St., in the Corona neighborhood — from 1943 until his death from a heart attack upstairs in his bedroom, in 1971.

“When he went to Manhattan, he was mobbed. He was a huge megastar. Everybody knew him. And he would be mobbed. When he came to Queens, he could live,” said Regina Bain, executive director of The Louis Armstrong House Museum at the site, which is now landmarked and open to the public for tours.

And the other day, across 107th Street on the site of a formerly empty lot, the museum opened a new, 60,000-item archive of Armstrong’s papers, records, letters and more, housed in a two-story, 14,000-square-foot building that cost $26 million to build.

It is open Thursdays through Saturdays, with advanced tickets recommended. Other days there are group tours, including by schools.

Armstrong, born in poverty in New Orleans, grew up to be one of the most influential jazz musicians in history, performer of “What a Wonderful World,” "Hello, Dolly," "When You're Smiling," "It Don't Mean a Thing” and many more.

Armstrong’s tours around the world made stops on Long Island through the years — at Jones Beach Theatre in 1966, in Stony Brook in 1968, at what was then Adelphi College in Garden City in 1960, at the Malibu Shore Club in Lido Beach in 1961.

Armstrong played Westbury Music Fair

“Maybe I’m wrong to play this long … ,” he told Newsday that year, when he was 60 years old, after playing at the Westbury Music Fair.

The reporter wrote about how “the gargled voice of Louis Armstrong trailed off before he could say that ‘but.’ ”

“The ‘but’ was there nonetheless, and there was no doubt that old Satchmo” — one of several of Armstrong’s nicknames — “felt deeply that he most certainly was not wrong to play this long.”

At the museum and archives, which also features a 75-seat jazz club in the back, the collection includes seven of Armstrong’s trumpets, including a Selmer gifted to Armstrong by King George V, and even a painted life mask from the 1950s that features baggy eyes, creases on the forehead and scars on the lips from a career of playing the horn.

On the trumpet King George gave him, Armstrong would have played hits such as “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” “I’m in the Mood for Love,” “Swing That Music” and “When the Saints Go Marching In,” said Bain. 

In the archives, which since the 1990s had been at Queens College, are also thousands of letters sent to Armstrong — he would often write back to his correspondents — as well as reel-to-reel tape boxes he would personally decorate.

Armstrong annex bustles with visitors

“Of course, he was an amazing vocalist, an amazing trumpeter, he acted in many different films,” said Bain of the raspy-voiced legend. “He was a prolific artist. He made collage art.”

On Friday afternoon, the exhibition was bustling with visitors tapping interactive displays, listening to audio narration and taking in encased objects from the archive’s collection, including the instrument given by George, an engraved mouthpiece, Armstrong’s 1965 Grammy and his albums — as well recordings Armstrong surreptitiously made of conversations and even arguments with his wife. On one of them, he refers to his home as being on Long Island, which is, of course where Queens is technically.

Julian DelFavero, 18, was visiting Friday afternoon from outside Albany, listening to an audio clip in a display about Armstrong's tours and their global impact, including on the American Civil Rights Movement.

DelFavero said he isn't particularly a musical person, DelFavero said, but the exhibition resonated nonetheless.

"It doesn't really make a difference whether or not you're into jazz to appreciate the historical output that he's had on the world," DelFavero said.

DelFavero was touring an exhibition — “Here to Stay,” brought together by the Kennedy Center’s curator for jazz, Jason Moran, looking at Armstrong’s five-decade career.

The title is a reference to a Gershwin hit also performed by Armstrong: “We've got something permanent, I mean in the way we care,” Armstrong sang. “It's very clear our love is here to stay.”

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.