Louis Armstrong

Tom Williams, a 28-year-old Army jazz trumpeter raised in Baltimore's Forest Park, one recent weekend acted out the "Hit the Road Jack" song routine of his old boss Ray Charles.He ended the period winning the $5000 second place prize in the Louis Armstrong International Trumpet Competition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, beating out all but one of the original 300 contestants who sent in tapes.Baltimore jazz fans will get a chance to hear Williams' playing when Morgan State University's radio station WEAA FM (88.9)

A throwback to the 1940s and '50s, the Cadillac Parade and Royal Theater Music Festival was revived for the ninth year Saturday. The original Cadillac Parade was a major event in the city's black community, in which Baltimoreans would ride along or watch as Cadillacs cruised down Pennsylvania Avenue. Before the 1960s, The Avenue was a center of commerce and night life, home to the Royal Theater, the Lucky Number Club and the exclusive Sphinx Club. Jazz greats including Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane performed here.

Baltimore-born bass player Ben Wolfe is on the phone in a hotel room in North Carolina talking about Louis Armstrong and about the stand-up string bass and about jazz, which is the music he loves to play."

Joe Smitherman, 75, whose decades as a councilman and mayor in Selma, Ala., included the turbulent civil rights era, died Sunday in a Montgomery hospital. A former appliance salesman, Mr. Smitherman was a 34-year- old city councilman when first elected mayor in 1964 as a segregationist. At the time, about 150 blacks were registered to vote in Selma. Six months later, marchers seeking equal voting rights were beaten by police on a Selma bridge in what came to be known as "Bloody Sunday."

NEW YORK - For a few sweet, sultry seconds recently, the notes of Louis Armstrong's gold-plated trumpet once again blew magically over working-class Queens. It was a sound that serenaded 107th Street for almost 30 years beginning in 1943, when Armstrong's wife, Lucille, bought the modest frame house where the jazz legend often played for neighborhood children, who called him "Pops." When the city of New York unveiled the house as a museum, the Gully Low Jazz Band, featuring clarinetest Joe Muranyi, who once played with Armstrong, transformed the street into a New Orleans-style party.

By the time Louis Armstrong moved into his first real home in 1943, he had already transformed American music. With his soaring trumpet, unmistakable voice and dazzling sense of rhythm, Satchmo enchanted audiences throughout the world. But he often lived out of a suitcase, spending more than 300 days a year on the road. So when Armstrong's fourth wife, Lucille, said she wanted a house, he let her buy one and decorate it before he'd ever seen it. Now called the Louis Armstrong House & Archives, the home at 34-56 107th St. in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., is a national landmark and open to tourists.

WASHINGTON -- For many, the enduring image of Louis Armstrong comes from his later years, the days of old Satchmo with horn and white handkerchief, smiling and bugging his eyes before another raspy-voiced chorus of "Hello Dolly."While that is a true image, there are others: the eminently stylish young man gazing in wonder at the instrument of his magic; the remarkable musician whose brilliant solo on "West End Blues" still wins admirers almost 70 years later; the little boy riding atop a junk cart in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, a tin horn at his lips.

Only God could have created Louis Armstrong. Who else would take a little black boy, put him on a junk wagon rolling through the muddy streets of New Orleans in 1907, tin horn in hand, and let him blow a child's prelude to a life no one could have imagined? Louis Armstrong would have been 100 years old yesterday, which is reason enough to commemorate the indelible mark he left on our culture. If you don't immediately recognize his brilliant horn, or his 1,000-watt smile, then surely you know his voice, gravelly and rough, a soulful bullfrog of a voice.

Beryl Bryden, 78, a jazz singer dubbed "Britain's queen of the blues" by Ella Fitzgerald, died in London on Tuesday of cancer. In a career spanning 50 years, she performed with many of the jazz greats, including Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong.Pub Date: 7/17/98

Never underestimate the archaeological prowess of the folks at Nick-at-Nite.Just when you thought they'd brought back to television just about everything there was to be brought back, they dig up another relic. This time, it's one of the most popular shows of the early '70s, a comedy/variety half-hour that spent two seasons as the No. 2-rated show on television before both it and its star faded from view.Remember Geraldine and Killer? The Rev. Leroy Jones of the Church of What's Happenin' Now?

THE MEMORY of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago. Louis Armstrong One of my choice amusements during my stay in New Orleans was going down to the old French Market, especially of a Sunday morning. ... I remember I nearly always on these occasions got a large cup of delicious coffee with a biscuit, for my breakfast, from the immense shining copper kettle of a great Creole mulatto woman (I believe she weigh'd 230 pounds)

By the time Louis Armstrong moved into his first real home in 1943, he had already transformed American music. With his soaring trumpet, unmistakable voice and dazzling sense of rhythm, Satchmo enchanted audiences throughout the world. But he often lived out of a suitcase, spending more than 300 days a year on the road. So when Armstrong's fourth wife, Lucille, said she wanted a house, he let her buy one and decorate it before he'd ever seen it. Now called the Louis Armstrong House & Archives, the home at 34-56 107th St. in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., is a national landmark and open to tourists.

There's nothing unusual these days about a hospital marketing itself, but the advertising campaign unveiled yesterday by Johns Hopkins Medicine is a bit different. Although it will eventually run in Baltimore, the campaign is starting nearly 200 miles away, in New York City. It doesn't mention any specific Hopkins services, and rather than showing Hopkins doctors or Hopkins patients, it invokes such figures as jazz great Louis Armstrong, movie star Ingrid Bergman and Winston Churchill.

Are you hip enough to read a book on the history of hip? To paraphrase what Louis Armstrong said about jazz, if you have to ask the question, you already know the answer. But here are some ways to make sure: If you drink Pabst Blue Ribbon while wearing a trucker hat and listening to the Strokes, forget it. If you registered for Friendster within the last year or style your hair into a faux-hawk and take part in flash mobs, forget it. If you use the word metrosexual. If -- heaven help us -- you are a metrosexual.

It's a great time to be a jazz singer in your 20s," Jane Monheit says, with the slightest hint of nervousness. The 26-year-old performer admits to being a little surprised by the explosion in vocal jazz over the last few years. When she began singing professionally in the late 1990s, Monheit was among a lonely handful of young artists attempting to further the grand tradition of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. Now, as the major labels strive to superserve those bewitched and bedazzled by Norah Jones, there are scores of fresh-faced stylists, each hoping to put his or her stamp on the Great American Songbook, each selling a different shade of saloon croonerismo, each determined to buff the standards until they're fabulous again.

NEW YORK - For a few sweet, sultry seconds recently, the notes of Louis Armstrong's gold-plated trumpet once again blew magically over working-class Queens. It was a sound that serenaded 107th Street for almost 30 years beginning in 1943, when Armstrong's wife, Lucille, bought the modest frame house where the jazz legend often played for neighborhood children, who called him "Pops." When the city of New York unveiled the house as a museum, the Gully Low Jazz Band, featuring clarinetest Joe Muranyi, who once played with Armstrong, transformed the street into a New Orleans-style party.

Paul Vathis, 77, whose 56 years as an Associated Press photographer included a 1962 Pulitzer Prize for his picture of President Kennedy and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower walking together at Camp David after the Bay of Pigs invasion, died Tuesday in his sleep in Harrisburg, Pa. From the AP bureau in Harrisburg, where he spent most of his career, Mr. Vathis built a national reputation for his skill with a lens, his instinct for news and his boundless...

Lillian Clark,70, a big band singer who recorded with Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, died Tuesday in New York of cancer. Born Autilia Ventimiglia, she studied at the Julliard School, intending to become a classical pianist. However, when one of the members of the Clark Sisters left the popular singing group, she auditioned, got the job and changed her name.Alberto Gonzalez,33, the first man in the United States convicted of attempted murder for having unprotected sex while carrying the AIDS virus, died Friday of complications from the disease at Salem Hospital, according to the Oregon Department ofCorrections.

Lyle Lovett is a musician, sure - one of the smartest and wittiest around, in fact - but he's also a music fan. He's a fan of the standards on his latest album, Smile, a collection of tunes he has recorded for various movies since 1992. It's telling that the word "fun" pops up a lot in a recent conversation with Lovett, who answers his cell phone somewhere near Santa Barbara, Calif., where he's driving himself to a gig. It's as if the Texas singer is still a little awed that he makes music for a living.