Booklist Review
This is the official book of the Louis Armstrong House and Archives, marking its October 15, 2003, grand opening as a national historic museum. That is to say, it is a souvenir book. But what a souvenir book! One culmination of Cogswell's 12-year labor of ordering and cataloging the great jazzman's belongings, it is loaded with some 300 previously unpublished photographs of the trumpeter and his associates; of the house, inside and out; and of letters, other writings, and the collages of photos and clippings that Armstrong created in his spare time. Cogswell presents these in chapters devoted to Armstrong's career, the house, the archives, and Discoveries --that is, things that record forgotten and underdocumented aspects of Armstrong's life. Sections within each chapter home in on particular topics, making for an exceptionally browsable book, for which Cogswell's plain writing is pretty much ideal. An invaluable, keenly lovable treasure-trove about a great American, marred only by far too many typos. --Ray Olson Copyright 2003 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Cogswell (Queens Coll., New York) has been arranging, preserving, and cataloging materials from his institution's Louis Armstrong Archives since 1991. This excellent book is the result of those years of effort and will be the official companion to the recently opened Armstrong House National Historic Museum in Corona, Queens, where Armstrong and his wife, Lucille, lived for 40 years. Along with hundreds of photographs (300-plus never before published), Cogswell presents transcriptions of Armstrong's home-recorded tapes, quotes from an unfinished memoir, and numerous collages from Armstrong's scrapbooks, many of which pay tribute to musicians who influenced him and important moments in his life (e.g., being crowned King of the Zulus at the 1949 Mardi Gras). Readers will gain a greater sense of the man's humor, creativity, and joie de vivre. An excellent supplement to previously published biographies and autobiographies of Armstrong, this is one coffee-table book Satchmo's fans will want and is highly recommended for all libraries. [For more information on visiting the Louis Armstrong House, see www.satchmo.net.-Ed.]-James E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
