Virtual Exhibits

Last week, while continuing my ongoing series on the reel-to-reel tapes Louis Armstrong made between 1969 and 1971, I came across Reel 87, which had an interesting catalog description, written by Armstrong himself: “At Home in Corona–Statchmo [sic]–under the weather–Lucille–Claudine–Louis Panassie (THE SON OF Hugues)–Experimenting (with) the new Stereo Tape Recorder Which Lucille had InstalledContinue reading ““Satchmo Under the Weather”: Louis and Lucille Armstrong’s May 16, 1969 Tape with Louis and Claudine Panassie”

The last few installments of this ongoing series have been particularly action-packed, with lots of strong collages and audio samples from the tapes. A good example is our post on Reels 86-90 which had collages featuring Joe Glaser and the Pope (not together) and audio of Louis on both The Tonight Show and The DavidContinue reading “Louis Armstrong’s 1969-1971 Tapes: Reels 91-95”

Before diving into today’s post, you might want to clear off your schedule for a while because unlike many of the posts in this series, today’s offering has lots of choice audio you won’t find anywhere else. (And as always, catch up on the entire series here.) Reel 96Accession Number: 1987.3.396 We’re jumping right inContinue reading “Louis Armstrong’s 1969-1971 Tapes: Reels 96-100”

The last few entries in this series have been stuffed with rare audio excerpts from Louis Armstrong’s tapes, especially focusing on his 1970 television talk show appearances that you won’t find anywhere else. However, today’s post represents a transitional one, with no collages and no audio to share (except for some Spotify playlists), but stillContinue reading “Louis Armstrong’s 1969-1971 Tapes: Reels 101-105”

Our previous installment was a bit of a transitional one, with Louis preparing for the recording of Louis Armstrong and His Friends, re-dubbing materials from tapes sent to him by engineer Tony Janak, and copying a tape trumpeter Jimmy Owens gave him at the May 29 And His Friends recording session. But this might beContinue reading “Louis Armstrong’s 1969-1971 Tapes: Reels 106-110”

Our previous installment–which included six hours of audio of Louis Armstrong on the Mike Douglas Show!–ended on a cliffhanger as Louis ran out of tape on Reel 110 in the middle of dubbing an interview he did with Orson Welles. Well, we’ll cut the suspense today with the audio of that memorable show and aContinue reading “Louis Armstrong’s 1969-1971 Tapes: Reels 111-115”

Our last two posts have contained and hours and hours of audio of Louis Armstrong’s many television appearances in May, June and July 1970 (in case you missed them, this post has five episodes of The Mike Douglas Show with Louis as co-host, while this one has Louis on the Tonight Show, Dial M forContinue reading “Louis Armstrong’s 1969-1971 Tapes: Reels 116-120”

We’ve said this a few times in recent months, but this might be the most action-packed of all the posts in this ongoing series. No preamble is necessary, let’s jump in! Reel 121Accession Number: 1987.3.421 In our last post, we shared tapes Ivan Mogull sent to Louis of a few dozen songs to be consideredContinue reading “Louis Armstrong’s 1969-1971 Tapes: Reels 121-125”

The posts in this series aren’t getting any shorter, but they are definitely getting more and more packed with content–below you’ll find dozens of handwritten pages, a couple of videos, and about three hours of audio. Budget your time accordingly and dig in! Reel 126Accession Number: 1987.3.426 With Reel 126, we’ve come to the finalContinue reading “Louis Armstrong’s 1969-1971 Tapes: Reels 126-130”

We interrupt our ongoing series on Louis Armstrong’s reel-to-reel tapes to celebrate the 75th anniversary of arguably the greatest live recording in the All Stars’s discography, Satchmo at Symphony Hall. As always, we’ll share some treasures from our Archives–including a long audio segment from one of Louis’s tapes that you won’t want to miss–but first,Continue reading ““Whip It, Big Sid!”: 75 Years of “Satchmo at Symphony Hall””