“The greatest honor for me as a trumpet player is to have learned enough to know how great Louis Armstrong actually was,” said foundation president Wynton Marsalis, who spoke and performed at the gala.
(Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images (Courtesy of Louis Armstrong House Museum))Jul 7, 2026 12:35 PM
On June 18, exactly 100 years after Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five accompanied Butterbeans and Susie in a Chicago studio to cut the insinuating “He Likes It Slow,” the Louis…
Sonny Rollins performing at the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1992
(Photo: Ronald Heard)May 26, 2026 11:21 AM
“Is this going to be another negative, punch-Sonny-Rollins-in-the-eye article for DownBeat?” the man asked with weary resignation as he plopped into a den chair. “Well, I agreed to do it. I know how it’s going to come out anyway. So, go ahead, ask me. I’m ready.”
It was a telephone interview. I imagined Sonny Rollins sitting there in his Hudson River Valley country home north of Rhinebeck, New York; sitting there in a nimbus of ennui waiting to be prodded and poked with an assortment of those unpleasant, blunt instruments we journalists…
