Louis Armstrong and His Collages...

Everybody knows Louie Armstrong. If you don't, stop reading now. Louie, a trumpet player, singer and actor made music that spanned the 20s to his death in 1971. He was one of the first black artists to cross over to popularity with white audiences. He was a heavy marijuana user and being from New Orleans always signed his letters "red beans and ricely yours." If you stop by the old US Mint in New Orleans you can see an exhibit of his art that is not as well know as the horn playing. Louie made reel to reel tapes and cut out pictures colleges to cover the boxes they were in.

The recordings Louie made were music that interested him. He recorded himself talking about subjects of interest and interviewed friends. He captured back stage environment noise and random sounds at home. The New Orleans Advocate called him an "early pioneer of the mixtape culture."

He decorated the boxes these tapes were kept in. He started in the early 50s with this project and the colleges are a rhythmic visual companion to the recorded sounds. In addition to the boxes the colleges he also decorated the walls of his Queens New York home. Here's a photo I made at the mint exhibit.
   

That's Louie at work in his Queens home. You can see his reel to reels and the walls covered with interesting things he has cut out. In addition to the walls and tape boxes he also made scrapbooks. There are reportedly "hundreds" of the boxes and 28 of them are on display at the Mint museum. 

These are just a few I photographed. 

Louie never said much about the collages. In a 1961 interview he simply told a reporter "for posterities." For us I'm glad to have a look inside this great mind. Check out the jazz museum at the US Mint in new Orleans. It's a great place. They even his first horn that he played in the Colored Waif's Orphanage in New Orleans around 1913.