A visit to Satchmo’s home, sweet home Story and Photos By Adam Goldstein goldstea@mscd.edu

 

   The Corona neighborhood of Queens looks like many of its countless counterparts in the five Boroughs of New York City. The cramped maze of tenements, storefronts and train lines is unsettling for a visitor accustomed to wide-open spaces, or at least the relatively geometric and orderly landscape of Denver.
   As we drive along the crooked and crowded streets of New York, I am awash with excitement and restlessness. I am en route to the home of a musical hero, an unparalleled innovator who won the world with his notes, and my own unlimited admiration with his integrity.
   We are on our way to Louis Armstrong’s house.
   Amid the blare of traffic and the bustling crowds of pedestrians that fill the main thoroughfares, a three story, red-bricked building stands on 107th Street. No neon signs or loud marquees announce its significance as the home of an artistic genius, whose innovation would guide the course of modern    American pop music. From a distance, its vivid color is the only mark that distinguishes it from the rest of the residential buildings on the street.
   The first part of Armstrong’s life was marked by innovation, but also by vagrancy. As a young boy growing up in the rough and tumble streets of New    Orleans’ poorest neighborhoods, Armstrong knew no stable and steady home life. He did not know his father, his family subsisted at the baseline of poverty and by the time he was barely a teenager, his raucous behavior had earned him a slot in a boys’ home. His talent as a musician would pull him from the depths of deprivation and give him the resources of luxury, but with his constant touring and tumultuous romantic life he knew no constant harbor.
   It was not until 1942, more than 20 years after he’d achieved his status as a musical superstar that he united with Lucille Wilson, the sassy Cotton Club dancer from Queens who would give his life its roots and its constancy.
   The following year, when he was on the road, she bought the humble tenement on 107th Street that would become the constant home he had never known.
   We pull up to the building that housed the jazz giant in his later years. On the sidewalk is a placard touting tours, in the window a silhouette of a trumpet player.
   I am with my older sister and my infant niece, the perfect company for this outing. Armstrong’s clarion trumpet call and gravely, straightforward singing tone has always spoken of sheer love, of joy that breaks the boundaries of the blues. His tunes and his spirit have always uplifted feelings of personal pain and transcended spates of sadness. His art has made him an honorary member of the family, so it is only fitting that I visit his home with my biological relations.
   As we clamber out of the car, anecdotes flood my mind.
   Armstrong first visited his homestead after coming off the road in 1942. He was so nervous as he pulled up to the driveway, he told the cab driver to wait in case anything went amiss. When he saw how much effort Lucille had made to establish a true home, Armstrong invited the driver in for dinner.
   Although Louis and Lucille never had children, the internationally renowned jazz star was a father figure to the children of the neighborhood. He’d give them trumpet lessons and buy them ice cream.
   The Armstrong garage has become the lobby of the Louis Armstrong House and Archives, a recognized historic landmark. The entrance is filled with albums, books and other memorabilia. We sign up for the full tour, accompanied only by an Australian couple and the graduate-student guide.
   The tour begins and we are ushered past the glass cases that fill what was once the laundry room. The objects contain no new information for me; they document his fame, his talent and his achievements. I’m more interested in what is waiting upstairs, finding the man behind the horn.
   Our first stop is the Armstrong den, a rectangular sitting room filled with a comfortable set of sofas, a piano and a view of the street. The guide explains that the crystal chandeliers, the Moroccan screens and the other splashes of classy décor were chosen by Lucille, whose painted portrait hangs on the wall, watching over the room like a stern landlady. This small sitting room was where the Armstrongs would entertain friends and sit down in front of the cabinet television. The guide presses a button, and we are treated to a recording of Armstrong crooning the theme song from the film “High Society.” The melodic timbre of his voice immediately soothes my niece, who had started to cry and squirm.
   We climb a floor to the dining room and kitchen, where Lucille made her best efforts to create an area that made efficient use of limited space. Although the building was designed to house two families, it seems like an exceedingly humble abode for such a cultural giant. In the dining room, we hear another clip of Armstrong; this time he’s musing about whether people from Brussels eat brussels sprouts over a mellow background of instrumental dinner music and clangs of forks and spoons. The gruff voice on the recording is relaxed, and old ghosts seem to reclaim their stomping ground.
   Armstrong’s restored office is perhaps the only room in the building that bears his full touch. There are shelves full of records, multiple reel-to-reel machines and reams of catalogued albums. This is the study of a genuine audiophile, an avid music listener who loved everything from Bach to Bix Beiderbeck.
The final flight of stairs includes a mechanical chair that was meant to carry Armstrong up the steep steps in his final days. The second bathroom we see speaks further of an addiction to music, as speakers carrying music from the study line the walls. As we enter the bedroom, my heartbeat quickens. Here is his deathbed. Here is where he spent his final hours on earth.
   Louis Armstrong died in 1971, more than 40 years after he had made the historic recordings that set the world’s ears afire. In his role as musician, artist, innovator and cultural ambassador, he set the standard for those who would follow.
   Still, as I stand in his home, Armstrong’s greater achievement hits me. Armstrong was a superstar, a man who could have lived in some sprawling estate instead of this cramped tenement in Queens. Armstrong was a man who didn’t let his ego outsize his joy or his laurels weigh down his integrity.
   The man who roamed these narrow halls and filled this humble home lived for his art, his loved ones and his passions. Nothing more, nothing less.