New Orleans is often cited as the birthplace of jazz, and Chicago, Harlem, and Kansas City are recognized as critical launching pads for the music. But the borough of Queens is where the coolest cats chose to crash when they were beat, ya dig?
WHAT A WONDERFUL NEIGHBORHOOD
In 1943, after more than two decades of traveling and performing, jazz great Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and his wife, Lucille, settled down for the first time and bought a house at 34-56 107th Street in Corona, Queens. It remained his home until his death in 1971, and after Lucille passed away in 1983, the two-story house became the Louis Armstrong House Museum. To this day, the interiors are preserved as the Armstrongs left them, and the den features an extensive archive of Satchmo’s personal reel-to-reel recordings. And although Armstrong mostly maintained a level of modesty appropriate for a man who grew up in the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, he did allow himself certain household indulgences, including a kitchen with all its appliances built-in (including the blender) and gold faucets in the bathroom.
Why did Satchmo settle in Queens? The cultural diversity and domestic possibilities that Queens offered are best summed up by Armstrong himself: “I am here with the black people, with the Puerto Rican people, the Italian people, the Hebrew cats, and there’s food in the Frigidaire. What else could I want?” And he wasn’t the only jazz great to call Queens home.
THE SAINTS OF ST. ALBANS
Many notable musicians made their homes in the Queens neighborhood of St. Albans, particularly in the enclave of Addisleigh Park. A list of the notable residents reads like a poster for a jazz festival:
• Fats Waller (173-19 Sayres Avenue): This master “tickler” (jazz slang for “piano player”) and writer of such classics as “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose” came to the neighborhood in 1938. Many jazz historians name him as the first African American to call Addisleigh Park home. His house boasted a Steinway grand piano and a built-in Hammond organ.
Most recent nation admitted to the U.N.: Montenegro (2006).
• Count Basie (174-27 Adelaide Road): A native of Red Bank, New Jersey, Basie and his wife, Catherine, lived in Addisleigh Park from 1946 to 1971. The couple was popular among neighborhood youths for generously granting access to their backyard pool.
• Ella Fitzgerald (179-07 Murdock Avenue): The “First Lady of Song” never had a stable home as a child. Her parents separated when she was young, her mother died when she was a teenager, her stepfather abused her—and there were stopovers at reform school, a period of homelessness, and a short stint working lookout at a New York bordello. But as a teenager, she won an amateur talent show at Harlem’s storied Apollo Theater, and a star was born. She moved into the house in Queens with her husband, bassist Ray Brown, in 1949. The couple divorced in 1953, but Fitzgerald stayed put until 1956.
• Milt Hinton (173-05 113th Avenue): A resident of Queens for 50 years until his death in 2000, Hinton was a bassist and sideman for a staggering number of artists (as a studio musician, he appeared on 1,174 recordings), including Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Ben Webster, and neighbors Louis Armstrong and Count Basie.
• Cootie Williams (175-19 Linden Boulevard): From 1947 to 1953, this star trumpet player of the Duke Ellington Band lived in a three-story Tudor-style house that featured a prominent fairy-tale-style turret. Another notable musician lived there in the 1960s: Godfather of Soul James Brown.
ROYAL FLUSHING
The Flushing Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, is the final resting place for two prominent jazz trumpeters: “King of Jazz” Louis Armstrong (1901–71) and “Crown Prince of Bop” Dizzy Gillespie (1917–93).
“There’s two kinds of music: good and bad. I play the good kind.”
—Louis Armstrong
New Yorker Rangers record for the most goals scored in a single NHL season: 54 (Jaromir Jagr, 2006).