For those of you that live in Queens, NY, you should know that you’re in good company. Queens, NY was the home to many of the early Jazz greats. Count Basie, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Milt Hinton and Lena Horne lived in the Addisleigh Park neighborhood of St. Albans, Queens.
Probably the most well known Jazz musician in the world lived in Queens. Louis Armstrong lived in Corona. In fact, his home has been made into a museum that you can visit and tour. One of the great features of the tour is that they play some of the recordings that Louis used to make when he was home. Here is a video about them. By the way, there’s a guy in this video named Michael Cogswell, who is the director of The Louis Armstrong House Museum. When I first visited the museum about 7 years ago, he was the one who gave us our tour. Cool!
For more info or to go and visit Louis’s home, go to the website for The Louis Armstrong House Museum at http://www.louisarmstronghouse.org.
It’s a great summer outing! Ask your parents to take you!