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78s, Photos, Even Sweat From Brow of a Legend

Another fragment of Louis Armstrong’s legacy is back where it belongs.

The Armstrong museum and archive in Queens has received a treasure-trove of rare 78-r.p.m. records, bootleg tapes, five personal letters, candid photographs, European posters, news clippings, discographies, even weight-loss tips — 192 cubic feet in all — from the estate of a Swedish man known as the world’s second-largest private collector of Satchmoiana.

There is also a sweat-stained handkerchief that belonged to Armstrong, who was famous for theatrically wiping his brow between the trumpet solos he blew better than almost anyone else.

“We’re excited about it because there might be some valuable DNA in it, what with cloning and all,” joked Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona.

The gift comes at an especially auspicious time for the museum because construction plans have been completed for a two-story, $17.5 million visitor center to be built across the street from the modest brick detached house at 34-56 107th Street where Armstrong and his wife Lucille lived from 1943 until his death in 1971. Lucille remained there until her death in 1983, and the home, almost precisely as it stood at her passing, was opened to the public in 2003. The money for the visitor center has been raised and construction is expected to start next summer, with the opening envisioned two years later.

Read the full article at NYTimes.com