QUEENS JAZZ SCENE

Submitted by ub on

All the major jazz clubs were located in Manhattan. However, Queens is where many, like Louis Armstrong, settled down for good.

Satchmo (a truncation of “Satchel Mouth”) lived inside a wood-frame house with a small, second-floor study where he created countless scrapbooks and filled journals chronicling a remarkable life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOAYACB7c6Y  https://www.louisarmstronghouse.org/

It is where Count Basie and his wife, Catherine, threw the finest parties of summer, in a backyard that took up a whole city block. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-FNaKFeh8U

It is where Milt and Mona Hinton came after years on the road, spent in ''Colored Only'' motels in the Jim Crow South and in rented rooms in NYC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYbsXIXDVaA

By the late 1930s and 40s, they and other musicians who had flocked to New York City had made enough money to leave the cramped hotels and apartments of Manhattan. While white musicians scattered to the suburbs, African-American jazz musicians, thwarted by segregation, clustered in two corners of Queens: Corona, where Louis Armstrong's wife, Lucille, bought a two-story house in 1943, soon drawing fellow musicians in droves, and southeast Queens, where the composer Clarence Williams and his wife, the singer Eva Taylor, moved in the '30s, with dreams of starting a black artists' colony. The musicians who followed were among the first African-Americans to move into these neighborhoods, helping to establish what would later become a mecca for the city's black middle class.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission marked Black History Month by granting landmark status to the Queens neighborhood of Addisleigh Park. The section of St. Albans was also once home to jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js6Us255beg

Lena Horne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi1zpN3InVo

Not just jazz Titans, but also baseball legends Jackie Robinson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwlbIAmKXe8 and Babe Ruth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rqVJO1wdlY

While the area's jazz community had disintegrated by the early 1970s, the homes of the iconic residents still stand. The Queens Jazz Trail Walking Tour offers a look at the neighborhood's rich history. 1010 WINS' Terry Sheridan reports on the lives and legacy of some jazz greats. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/a-look-at-the-historic-queens-jazz…

Queens Jazz Trail Map http://ephemerapress.com/queens-jazz-trail.html

NYC’s Louis Armstrong House Museum opens its massive new center in July

It’s the largest archive for a jazz musician with 60,000 photos, recordings, manuscripts, letters & mementos.

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/nycs-louis-armstrong-house-museum-…

Topic