Photograph of Louis Armstrong, Velma Middleton, and Ray Martino backstage in Italy, 1949. A professor I had during my graduate program in Italy had my cohort and I report to… Read more
On the Louis Armstrong House Museum’s (LAHM) digital collections webpage, I keep a folder entitled “Random Items” that holds a group of interesting but unrelated digitized archival objects. This past… Read more
The Palace of Stories. That’s the name my friends and I settled on calling our first floor, two-bedroom/ basement apartment located in a modern gentrified Brooklyn building. We made it… Read more
In 1970 Louis Armstrong made an appearance on The David Frost Show. During his visit, he sang an intimate version of “What A Wonderful World,” a song originally released by… Read more
My last post ended with the possibility of considering the use of artistic and social practices as a way to engage in nonviolent direct action; specifically referencing the concept from… Read more
Listening to Louis as an ethnomusicologist Do I listen to Louis as an ethnomusicologist? This is a question I have been pondering since my last blog post in which I… Read more
It was the invitation to “engage in a nonviolent direct action program,”1 that brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Birmingham, Alabama in April of 1963. In his letter written… Read more
Listening to Louis in “my little corner of the world” It is another day. I walk into my living room, where my beat-up black Ikea desk rests against one of… Read more
While writing my last post I began thinking more about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. I began considering what his ideals were, who was impacted by them and therefore impacted… Read more
Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Disney, Rachel Robinson, Jackie Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Coretta Scott King, and Lucille Armstrong — these are some of the names of American women whose stories are told… Read more
