NEW YORK–The Louis Armstrong House Museum has acquired the only known film of the jazz great in a recording studio after it was discovered in a storage facility.
The 33-minute film captures Armstrong recording his 1959 album “Satchmo Plays King Oliver” for Audio Fidelity. The record producer, Sid Frey, had the film made but wound up not doing anything with it or telling anyone about it.
Michael Cogswell, the museum’s executive director, calls it “a ground-breaking discovery.”
Frey’s daughter, Andrea Bass, helped the museum acquire the film. She first learned about its existence in a chat room discussion of her father’s company. A person who bought the contents of abandoned storage facilities informed her that he had it.
Unbeknownst to Bass, her sister had put the film in storage with other family items. TVJ
