The presentation opens with the origin of the song "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" and Louis Armstrong's reworked version, recorded in 1929, transforming it into the first major racial protest song in American popular music. He consciously included it in performances during his career to emphasize his ground-breaking musical statement on race in America. Armstrong's recording of "Black and Blue" took on a new life in 1952 when writer Ralph Ellison included it in the Prologue to his award-winning novel Invisible Man. It's integral to Ellison's thematic exploration of a Black man and his ability to fulfill the possibility of the American Dream. Ultimately, through their critical and cultural assessment of Armstrong and his music, Ellison and his colleague Albert Murray played a central role in elevating him to the stature he has achieved today and a testimony to the possibility inherent in Armstrong's life and music.

Using their encounter in Paris in 1934 as a starting point, the presentation seeks to explore parallels between the lives of Louis Armstrong and Panama Al Brown, the first Latin American World Boxing Champion, from their upbringing in New Orleans and Colon (Panama) to their triumph in Paris as icons of modernism and muses of the Surrealism Movement during the Jazz Age. The presentation also explores their mutual friendship with Luis Russell.

Roger Lewis is a founding Dirty Dozen Brass Band member and has played with numerous other artists, including Fats Domino, Eddie Bo, and the Treme Brass Band. He sits down with David Kunian, Curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum, to talk about his storied life in music.

Luis Russell's passion during the last eight years of his life was filming and editing 8mm home movies. Visits to Louis Armstrong's House in 1961, New York City area scenes (a Caribbean parade in Harlem, visits to Coney Island, classic venues along Lenox Avenue, the funeral of Shelton "Scad" Hemphill attended by luminaries of Louis Armstrong's Orchestras) form a fascinating picture of a musician's life in New York City from 1956 through 1963.

The most talked-about Armstrong release of 2024 is Verve's Louis in London, a dazzling set of live recordings made at the BBC in 1968, capturing the "last hurrah" of Armstrong's storied career. GRAMMY-award winner Ricky Riccardi, who served as the set's co-producer and wrote the liner notes, will tell the tale of this release, sharing audio and video clips from ​the BBC concerts.

Big Chief Donald Harrison with the ICONS featuring Choppa, BlaqNmilD, and Tonya Boyd-Cannon

A staple of Louis Armstrong's repertoire from 1943 until the end of his life, the beloved classic tune "Back O' Town Blues" is used as a metaphor to explore both the transformative nature of Satchmo's artistry and the politics of music publishing. Performance film footage and rare archival materials from the Catherine Russell collection, saved by her father, Luis Russell, co-writer of the tune, will illuminate the story.

Regina Bain is an artist and educator who serves as the executive director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Amid the reverberations of slavery, Jim Crow laws and the great migration, Armstrong became America's first Black popular music icon. The Museum preserves his home and archives and develops programs grounded in the values of artistic excellence, education and community. This year, Ms. Bain recently opened the new 14,000 sq. foot Armstrong Center, housing a multimedia exhibit curated by Jason Moran, a 75-seat performance space, and the 60,000-piece Armstrong Archives — the most extensive archives of any jazz musician and one of the largest of any Black musician.

Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong were arguably the twentieth century's two most influential jazz musicians. In their own way, each shaped the sound we call jazz through their extensive musical contributions as composers and performers. Although the two knew one another and had performed numerous times at the same festivals, it wasn't until April 1961 that the two jazz giants finally got together to make a joint album. The resulting "Great Summit" LP became an instant classic, which will be presented and reviewed in the context of Armstrong's magnificent string of late-career classic recordings by author and music educator Keith Hatschek.

Chris Thomas King will take us back to the roots of jazz, exploring the historic blues session in Richmond, Indiana, in 1923. This session marked the beginning of a legendary relationship between Louis Armstrong and his mentor, King Oliver.

The Beatles descended upon the United States in early 1964 and quickly dominated the entertainment world, leading to 14 straight weeks of number-one hits—​until they were surprisingly dethroned in May 1964 by Louis Armstrong's single "Hello, Dolly!" To celebrate the 60th anniversary of this improbable achievement, Armstrong scholar Ricky Riccardi will tell the entire story of how Armstrong took an unknown song from a Broadway production that hadn't even opened yet and turned it into the biggest hit of his lifetime.

Matt Lemmler's New Orleans in Stride