“Louis’s Lady Lucille”: Lucille Armstrong 110th Birthday Celebration!

Lucille Wilson Armstrong was born on January 13, 1914, 110 years ago today! Previously, we did a deep dive on Lucille’s full life in this post from 2020, but for today’s celebration, we will stick to Lucille’s widowhood and share some rare audio and video of Lucille in conversation that we recently digitized for the first time.

Suffice to say, without Lucille, there would be no Louis Armstrong House Museum. Having already spent 29 years as Louis’s devoted wife, Lucille really sprung into action after her husband’s passing in 1971, spending her widowhood dedicated to Louis’s legacy. In Queens, she had their house declared a national landmark, oversaw the naming of two separate Louis Armstrong Schools, and dedicated Louis Armstrong Stadium, which became the home of the U. S. Open in 1978.

Perhaps most importantly, she kept all of Louis’s tapes and scrapbooks and personal possessions in place, telling multiple reporters that she intended to put it all in a “memorial museum” one day. Sadly, she passed away in 1983 before that can happen but 40 years later, the Louis Armstrong Center opened up to the public across the street from Lucille and Louis’s home and her vision became a reality. (For the full saga on how journey from Louis’s passing to the opening of the Armstrong Center, see here.)

As a Museum, we tend to lean heavily on the Queens-centric side of the story, but Lucille also spent much of her widowhood traveling, including a trip to New Orleans in 1973 where she served as Queen of the Zulus. Here’s a wonderful photo of Lucille on her float, taken by our friend Yoshio Toyama:

But Lucille’s greatest trip came in 1974 when she and her friend, publicist Phoebe Jacobs, headed to Europe for a monthlong tour set up by the United States Information Agency. Here’s their itinerary:

Being a publicist for the Grey & Davis agency, Jacobs put out the following press release:

Before they left, though, Jacobs set up an interview between Lucille and reporter Jim Caravello, which took place at the Lucille’s home in Corona on June 25. Caravello wrote up his conversation with Lucille over ten typed pages and sent a copy filled with handwritten edits to Jacobs. She must have loved it and kept multiple copies of it in her collection–which is also part of our Archives–but from my research, the finished article was never published…until now. We have some multimedia surprises still to come below so feel free to save this for later, but it’s a great chat with Lucille with lots of insight into Louis and their time spent in Queens:

The tour kicked off at George Wein’s Nice Jazz Festival, where a bust of Louis was unveiled in front of a crowd that included Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco:

And here’s the bust; Lucille is talking to the great trumpeter Roy Eldridge:

After Nice, Lucille’s goal was to head to a spot of the world where she didn’t get to visit often with Louis, choosing Eastern European countries such as Bucharest and Poland for a series of multimedia presentations she gave about life with Louis. Here’s a photo of Lucille in Poland at a press reception held at the American Embassy:

Here’s another reception in Poland; that’s Phoebe Jacobs in the center:

And here’s a beautiful photo of Lucille giving the seal of approval to a trumpeter in Romania:

At the end of the tour, Phoebe Jacobs compiled a series of quotes about Lucille and put out another press release; looks like she had a similar effect on the Europeans as her husband did:

Back home in Queens, Lucille did several interviews about her tour; this Los Angeles Times article by Leonard Feather is valuable as Lucille specifically mentions Louis telling her to watch over his reel-to-reel tapes:

But now for the first of today’s two rarities! Back home, Lucille sat down for a televised conversation about her trip to Europe, hosted by Sy Oliver, who arranged some of Louis’s biggest hits of the 1950s. At the completion of the taping, Lucille was sent a copy of it on film, as well as a reel-to-reel tape carrying the audio of the conversation. We had both assets digitized several years ago but the audio level of the film was very low and the tape was longer than the film, having an extra minute or so of conversation, plus it ran at a slightly different speed than the film. It took more time than I’d care to remember but I was able to sync the audio with the visual and am happy to present now, for the first time in 50 years, Louis’ Lady Lucille:

Where or when–or if–Louis’ Lady Lucille aired is a mystery. Newspapers.com has zero mentions of and the reel-to-reel tape box–which has a date of December 4, 1974 for the conversation–only says “USIA” on it, meaning it might have just been produced for the United States Information Agency. Thus, it ‘s possible that today marks its first public airing–can’t think of a more appropriate occasion than Lucille’s birthday!

Naturally, after such an overwhelming response to her stories of living with Louis, Lucille began getting approached to do a book. George T. Simon had known Louis since the 1940s, writing about him in Metronome and producing the Timex All Star Jazz Show television specials in the 1950s. Simon wrote an article in 1972 “The Louis Armstrong I Knew” that must have impressed Lucille because he was the one she agreed to collaborate with on a proposed book. Lucille didn’t want to write a “tell-all”; instead, judging from the papers and correspondence left behind, she planned an oversized coffee table book, loaded with photos and reproductions of Louis’s letters. Lucille even started writing to old friends asking for copies of their letters so she could put them in the book (some sent them to Lucille and unfortunately, she didn’t send them back, but they’re safe in our Archives today).

It wasn’t hard to find a prospective publisher and sure enough, Lucille and George T. Simon signed a contract with Harper & Row in October 1977. For whatever reason, nothing happened and the deal fell through. Simon rescued it and submitted a new proposal, which was accepted by McGraw Hill in August 1982. The deal was in place, but Lucille passed away in October 1983 and Simon must have decided not to pursue it any further without her.

At some point, though, most likely between 1977 and 1982, Simon sat down with Lucille to interview her, asking broad questions in an attempt to get Lucille to open up about different aspects of Louis’s personality. The questions are kind of clunky at times and Lucille occasionally sounds a bit impatient (being asked to remember details about a specific argument that caused Louis to write her an angry 21-page letter) but Lucille is very open and gives some great perspectives on Louis the man, his generosity, his love of the kids of Corona, his stance on Little Rock, his favorite modern jazz artists, and much more.

The tape begins in the middle of the conversation and it ends in the middle of the conversation. There might have been more taped discussions, but only this one has surfaced in our Archives, recently transferred from the original cassette tape, which had no details written on it (I only deduced it was Simon from the multiple mentions of Metronome magazine). Thus, here’s our final gift for Lucille’s birthday, one full hour of her talking candidly about life with Louis Armstrong.

Side 1:

Side 2:

Thanks for everything, Lucille, and Happy Birthday–we hope to continue the work you started and make you proud for a long, long time!